Chương 327: 327：The Warchief's Betrayal

In his mind, he agonizingly calculated the catastrophic strategic reality currently strangling him.

"The daily consumption of this grand army is an astronomical figure! Even if I cut rations to the absolute bone and feed my warriors nothing but a single, half-filling meal of rotting meat a day... the provisions I hold can sustain us for exactly five days! No more!"

"Five days! After five days, if we don't take Greywater Village, those humans won't even need to lift a finger! This freezing Misty Swamp will physically starve my ace army to death and trigger a full-scale mutiny!" To break this absolute deadlock, he had originally set a ruthless deadline: obliterate Greywater Village within three days, entirely regardless of the cost.

He had even treated the highly mobile, ten-thousand-strong Centaur horde as utterly expendable cannon fodder, recklessly throwing them into the meat grinder ahead of schedule. But now, the first day had already slipped through his fingers. Not only had the Centaurs failed to flatten the enemy's defensive line, but their morale had been completely and utterly shattered by Soren's phantom-like, unpredictable night-sniping operations!

"Conventional charges cannot win this war anymore! Soren's army... they absolutely aren't some standard human border garrison! They are a hyper-lethal force equipped with heavy, mechanized firepower!" Warchief Blackstone came to a violent halt, his face twisting into a mask of pure, unadulterated savagery.

He realized a brutal truth: if he continued strictly adhering to conventional cold-weapon tactics, feeding troops into the meat grinder wave by wave, he wouldn't just lose this war—he would permanently forfeit the entire future of the Orc Alliance! He had to throw every last ounce of his power into one absolute, final gamble!

"Grand Warlord!" Warchief Blackstone whipped his head around, glaring at the Ironblood Grand Warlord who sat entirely silent within the deep shadows of the command pavilion. The Ironblood Grand Warlord slowly raised his head, his face an unreadable, stoic mask.

"I want the Wyverns! I want every single ounce of aerial power the Blood Province possesses!" Warchief Blackstone roared, issuing his absolute demand. The Ironblood Grand Warlord furrowed his brow, his reply stiff and uncompromising.

"Great Warchief, you should be fully aware that those old fossils in the Blood Province are already harboring immense dissatisfaction toward your leadership."

"The dozen-odd Wyverns deployed on the very first day suffered over fifty percent casualties against Greywater Village's anti-air matrix. Rearing and training a single Wyvern drains a decade's worth of resources. They will absolutely not agree to send the rest to die in a suicidal assault."

"Then tell them this: If I lose here, Soren's next step will be to steamroll the Blood Province! We are all staring down the exact same apocalyptic threat!" Warchief Blackstone lunged forward, violently grabbing the Ironblood Grand Warlord by his collar. His voice dropped into a dark, terrifying growl.

"Tell the Governor of the Blood Province that I am willing to forfeit my entire share of taxes and slave quotas for the next three years!"

"That is my final concession, and it is every last bargaining chip I possess! Mobilize another squadron of Wyverns for me! But this time... they are absolutely not going to execute a dive-bombing run with boulders!" Warchief Blackstone jabbed a thick, scarred finger directly onto the marker for Greywater Village on the tactical map, viciously spitting out four apocalyptic words:"Alchemical Fire-Oil!" Hearing this, a flash of pure horror crossed the Ironblood Grand Warlord's stoic face.

Alchemical Fire-Oil was an outrageously precious strategic resource within the Orc Alliance. Once ignited, it absolutely could not be extinguished by water. It burned hot enough to melt solid steel! It was the ultimate, apocalyptic trump card strictly reserved for breaching the towering, heavily fortified mega-cities of the human empires!

Seeing the Warchief driven to such absolute, unhinged extremes just to achieve his objective, the Grand Warlord realized one undeniable truth: this supreme ruler had officially pushed all his chips onto the table. He slowly gave a solemn nod, turning on his heel and striding out of the pavilion to initiate the desperate negotiations. The moment the Ironblood Grand Warlord left, Warchief Blackstone snatched up the [Orcish Communication Slate].

Violently injecting his mana into the artifact, he established a direct link to the Centaur staging ground on the frontline.

"Heka, you useless piece of trash. Listen to me," the Warchief commanded, his voice dripping with merciless cruelty.

"G-Great Warchief..." On the other end of the slate, Centaur Chieftain Heka's voice trembled uncontrollably.

"Do not bother reporting your pathetic casualties to me. I am issuing your final, absolute military decree right here, right now." Warchief Blackstone ground his teeth, enunciating every single syllable with venomous intent.

"Take every single Centaur currently in your encampment. I don't care if they are elders whose hands are too weak to grip a saber. I don't care if they are unweaned cubs. I don't care if they are pregnant females... Drive every last one of them onto the battlefield!"

"Great Warchief! That will drive the entire Centaur race to total extinction!" Heka shrieked, his voice tearing in a harrowing, desperate plea across the slate.

"If you do not charge, I swear to the ancestors, the very first thing my Tauren army will do the moment they arrive is trample the entire Centaur race into bloody paste!" Click. The communication link was violently severed. Warchief Blackstone stared expressionlessly at the dead slate, his face devoid of even a microscopic shred of pity.

"Go feed your lives to the meat grinder. As long as you four-legged mongrels can securely pin down Greywater Village's defensive line... the absolute second my Wyverns arrive, everything ends." Meanwhile, at the primary defensive line of Greywater Village. The howling blizzard of the early dawn had gradually died down, yet the overcast sky hung oppressively low, suffocating the wasteland.

"My Lord, something is wrong. Horribly wrong." Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. Meyer, the Captain of Intelligence, materialized from the rotting mire and rapidly ascended the wooden steps of the command watchtower. His face was painted with sheer, unadulterated disbelief as he reported.

"Every single soul in the Centaur encampment has mobilized. But they possess absolutely zero formation."

"Heka... he's using whips to ruthlessly drive the elders, the weak, and even females clutching infants—the ones hiding in the rear yesterday—directly to the absolute vanguard of their lines!" Standing before the wooden railing of the watchtower, Soren's brow furrowed into a harsh knot. He cast his piercing gaze into the distance. Within his line of sight, an apocalyptic, hyper-cruel spectacle was unfolding.

In the rotting mud roughly half a mile from the defensive line, a staggering mass of elderly and infantile Centaurs, their skin frozen a sickly purple, were unleashing harrowing, grief-stricken wails. Gripping snapped branches, rusted shards of iron, or simply bearing their bare, freezing hands, they were being violently shoved and physically dragged forward by a rear guard of a thousand saber-wielding Centaur elites.

They were being forcefully herded straight into the kill box of Greywater Village's repeating crossbows! Centaur Commander Luke rode in the rear guard. Tears of actual blood streamed from the corners of his eyes, yet he viciously gritted his teeth, wielding a heavy leather whip to forcefully drive his own kin into an absolute dead end.

"My Lord, have they completely lost their minds? Using the elderly and the frail to breach a heavily fortified defensive line?" Talon, Commander of the Macedonian Phalanx, gripped his repeating heavy crossbow tightly. Staring at Centaur cubs who couldn't even walk steadily in the mud, this fiercely rugged, battle-hardened man couldn't help but reveal a look of profound shock. Soren's mind operated with chilling, mechanical efficiency, instantly dissecting Warchief Blackstone's venomous scheme.

"The Centaur elites were already butchered in droves yesterday. Heka has been forced into an absolute, inescapable corner by Warchief Blackstone."

"They are deliberately using the elders, children, and women as a meat shield for one singular purpose: utilizing a gargantuan mass of physical bodies to completely exhaust the bolt reserves of our siege ballistas and repeating crossbows!"

"This pathetic horde of sacrificial pawns possesses absolutely zero combat lethality. But... ten thousand corpses are more than enough to completely fill our trapdoor spike-trenches! Ten thousand targets are enough to force our shooters to fire until their arms physically dislocate!" However, the razor-sharp tactical intuition Soren had honed as a special forces operative screamed a lethal warning. Things were absolutely not this simple!

Since Warchief Blackstone had coldly decided to sacrifice an entire race to fill the meat grinder, he unequivocally possessed a catastrophic, follow-up trump card!

"All forces, hear my command! Eradicate every last shred of your unnecessary sympathy!" Soren's voice rang out with absolute, unyielding authority.

"On the battlefield, as long as they are charging our lines, they are enemies that must be completely annihilated!" Soren violently drew his longsword, his resonant decree riding the wind to echo across the entire trench network.

"Repeating Heavy Crossbows, make ready! The absolute microsecond they breach the effective kill zone, unleash maximum suppression fire! Do not allow their corpses to pile up against our chevaux-de-frise!" Wooooooo! Accompanied by the harrowing, mournful blast of beast-horn war trumpets from the Centaur rear guard, this apocalyptic, tragic charge officially commenced. There were no bloodthirsty battle cries. There were only harrowing, agonizing wails.

Thousands of Centaur women and children, ruthlessly driven forward by the execution squads, squeezed their eyes shut and stumbled blindly through the freezing muck, sprinting desperately toward Greywater Village.

"FIRE!" THWUMP! THWUMP! THWUMP! From within the trenches of Greywater Village, a thousand [Repeating Heavy Crossbows] once again unleashed their lethal storm of steel. It was a blatantly obvious, utterly one-sided massacre. Armor-piercing heavy bolts effortlessly punched straight through the frail chests of the Centaur elders. The staggering kinetic force physically tore the bodies of the young cubs to absolute shreds.

Massive geysers of crimson blood violently painted the rotting mire, as corpses piled up, layer upon gruesome layer, into mountains of flesh.

"This is too cruel..." Down in the trench, a young human recruit subconsciously, mechanically pulled the trigger of his heavy crossbow. The rims of his eyes grew red, and his hands trembled violently. The apocalyptic spectacle unfolding before him had completely shattered the boundaries of conventional wartime cruelty. Just as the frontline plunged entirely into this brutal, meat-grinding war of attrition... Soren's innate [Danger Perception] talent suddenly erupted with a piercing, brain-splitting alarm!

"The sky!" Soren violently snapped his head upward. Unbeknownst to everyone, from within the dense, overcast cloud cover hanging directly above Greywater Village, the violently familiar, heavy beating of massive wings echoed once again. But this time, the dozen-odd Wyverns did not execute an arrogant, low-altitude dive like the day before.

Instead, displaying cunning malice, they maintained an absolute, unbreachable safe altitude of four hundred meters—completely exceeding the maximum effective elevation and range of the anti-air siege ballistas!

"They aren't diving. What the hell are they trying to do?" Ein raised his Imperial Military Longbow, his piercing gaze locked entirely onto the sky. In the very next microsecond, the horrific answer was unveiled. The Orc Wyvern Riders sitting atop the beasts erupted into a chorus of savage, arrogant laughter. With wicked grins, they violently severed the thick ropes securing payloads to the Wyverns' bellies. WHOOSH!

Dozens of gargantuan, dark-gray clay vats plummeted from the four-hundred-meter sky, executing an impossibly dense, high-altitude carpet bombing!

"That's... Alchemical Fire-Oil!"