Chương 330: 330：The Weight of Mercy

The soldiers' bloodlust reached an absolute fever pitch. They waited only for Soren's longsword to fall. The microsecond it did, they would surge ferociously from the trenches and butcher every last one of the remaining six thousand elderly, frail, and infantile Centaurs.

"All units, make ready!" Soren hoisted his longsword high into the air, drawing a deep, freezing breath. Yet, right at this absolute, critical precipice... Clang. A dull, heavy metallic thud echoed from the distant enemy ranks. Commander Luke, the highest-ranking officer of the surviving Centaurs, executed a maneuver that completely defied everyone's expectations. He unbuckled his heavily scorched, tattered leather armor and unceremoniously cast his heavy cavalry saber into the mud.

Dragging a right leg catastrophically burned by the Alchemical Fire-Oil, he stepped out alone. Staggering and swaying violently, he emerged from the protective huddle of shivering women and cubs. Beneath the lethal, locked aim of over a thousand repeating heavy crossbows, Luke limped into the desolate no-man's-land between the two armies. Then, under the absolutely bewildered gaze of the entire battlefield, this fiercely proud Centaur general slowly bent his front hooves...

and collapsed heavily to his knees in the blood-soaked mire.

"Lord Soren... we have lost. The Centaur race... has lost," Luke shrieked, his hoarse voice cracking with profound, absolute desperation. He pressed his forehead deeply into the freezing, filthy mud, weeping aloud as he roared:"I refuse to fight anymore! I, Luke, representing the remnants of our kin, hereby formally surrender to you!"

"Heka is dead! The warriors who charged your lines have all been slaughtered! The only ones left are elders whose hands are too frail to even draw a bow, and cubs who haven't even grown as tall as a warhorse's knee!"

"The horrific burns scarring their flesh were inflicted by Warchief Blackstone's own fire-oil! They were forced into this slaughter!" Luke raised his mangled, blood-stained face. Hot tears carved clean tracks through the mud and soot on his cheeks.

"I beg of you, Lord Soren! Please, show your mercy! Spare these elders, women, and cubs! They pose absolutely zero threat to your territory anymore!" Faced with Luke's total, absolute surrender—an act that violently discarded every last microscopic shred of his racial dignity—the Greywater Village defensive line plunged into a suffocating, breathless silence. Soren's arm, hoisting the refined steel longsword, froze rigidly in mid-air. A violent, intense struggle erupted within his heart.

Only he truly understood the agonizing weight of the decision currently resting upon his shoulders. Ding! [System Notification: Enemy Commander Surrender Detected.] [System Prompt: The Host's current quest objective is the TOTAL ANNIHILATION of the 10, 000-strong Centaur army.] [If the Host accepts this surrender and spares the enemy remnants, the quest will be deemed INCOMPLETE. The Host will permanently forfeit the Quest Rewards: [Armored War Elephant] and [Mid-Tier Life Restoration Potion Recipe].] Soren's heart violently seized. That was an [Armored War Elephant]! A gargantuan, eight-meter-long siege behemoth draped in heavy plate armor! A war beast capable of completely ignoring conventional physical attacks—an apocalyptic juggernaut fully capable of going toe-to-toe with the Orc Alliance's Ironclad Earth Dragons on future battlefields! And that [Mid-Tier Life Restoration Potion Recipe]!

It was a priceless, strategic treasure that would trigger a qualitative, exponential leap in Greywater Village's medical infrastructure! As long as a soldier hadn't breathed their absolute last, it could drag them back from the very precipice of death! All he had to do was swing his longsword down. All he had to do was unleash his soldiers to execute a completely one-sided, merciless massacre. The microsecond he did, these staggering, world-altering rewards would instantly fall into his grasp.

In this rotting world, possessing supreme military might equated to possessing the absolute right to survive.

"My Lord! Show them no mercy! These alien beasts all deserve to die!" Talon roared anxiously from the trenches behind him. Soren slowly lowered his eyelids. His piercing gaze bypassed the kneeling Luke, locking onto the pathetic cluster of frail, elderly Centaurs huddling together for warmth amidst the howling blizzard. He saw a Centaur mother, half her face gruesomely charred by hellfire, desperately using her mangled body to shield her violently trembling cub.

He saw a blind, elderly Centaur aimlessly reaching out with a trembling hand, fruitlessly attempting to wipe the blood and grime from his grandson's face. In this singular moment, they weren't terrifying alien invaders. They were merely fragile lives, deeply terrified of impending death. A sudden, vivid memory violently flashed through Soren's mind. It was a memory from his past life as an elite special forces operative on Earth.

He recalled the endless, suffocating warzones he had deployed to—the shattered, smoking ruins, and the countless pairs of utterly helpless, despairing civilian eyes he had witnessed.

"If, just to acquire the cold, mechanical power of the System, I am willing to completely abandon my absolute bottom line... If I am willing to butcher entirely defenseless women and children..." Soren coldly interrogated his own soul.

"Then what fundamental difference is there between me and Warchief Blackstone, a tyrant willing to burn his own kin alive just to secure a victory?"

"I was cast into this cruel, rotting world. I established Greywater Village. I implemented universal education. I forged an ironclad safety net for the crippled and the wounded... I did all of this to establish an entirely new, unyielding order! I did not do it to become the next, even more cold-blooded tyrant!" Haaa... Soren slowly exhaled a long, heavy breath.

The thick plume of white vapor rapidly dissipated into the freezing gale, carrying away every last microscopic shred of hesitation and struggle from his eyes. When his gaze refocused, it was piercingly clear and absolutely resolute. Shing! With a fluid, decisive flick of his wrist, Soren violently slammed his refined steel longsword back into its scabbard. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

"All forces, hear my command!" Channeling his inner strength, Soren's voice boomed like thunder across the desolate, blood-soaked battlefield:"Cease fire! Stand down! Abandon all pursuit of the enemy remnants! Let them walk!" The absolute second those words left his mouth, a massive, uncontainable uproar swept across the trenches.

"What?!"

"My Lord, what did you just say?! Let them walk?!" Down in the trenches, from the fiercely arrogant Wolf Cavalry Commander Buck, to the stoic, disciplined Macedonian Phalanx Vice-Commander Darion, all the way down to the two thousand regular soldiers—every single face warped into an expression of sheer, unadulterated bewilderment and shock.

"My Lord! They are Orcs! These are the very Centaurs who trampled our homes into dust! How can we just let them walk away?!" Talon roared, violently stomping the muddy floor of the trench, temporarily completely forgetting his profound reverence for Soren in his sheer agitation. Faced with the indignant, deeply unwilling faces of his own commanders and soldiers, Soren did not show a shred of anger.

He took a massive, heavy stride, stepping up onto the absolute highest vantage point of the trench barricades, his commanding gaze sweeping over his entire army.

"Are you angry? Do you believe my mercy makes me a fool?" Soren's voice effortlessly pierced the howling blizzard. He spoke with absolute clarity to every single human soldier, and even to the over six thousand surviving Centaurs on the opposing side:"Close your eyes! Carefully recall what just happened! That apocalyptic Alchemical Fire-Oil raining from the heavens... who dropped it?! It was Warchief Blackstone! It was the Orc Alliance!"

Soren violently pointed his finger toward the pathetic, mangled, and profoundly traumatized cluster of Centaur women and children.

"Did they volunteer to march over a hundred miles through a freezing swamp just to throw their lives away against our trenches?! No! Warchief Blackstone pressed a blade against their throats! They were brutally, physically coerced into acting as nothing but expendable meat shields to drain our bolt reserves!" Soren looked down at his bewildered, battle-hardened soldiers.

He then unleashed a profound, world-shattering declaration—a truth so absolute it felt like a physical blow to the mind of every single person present:"I want every single one of you to carve this into your souls! The true, absolute essence of war... is merely one farmer's son, bewitched by politicians and rulers, marching a thousand miles just to butcher another farmer's son he has never even met!"

"And then what happens?! Then, those high-ranking politicians, those bloated nobles who incited the slaughter, will sit at velvet-draped negotiating tables, shake hands, and carve up the profits!"

"And in the very end, the only thing left behind... is the grieving mother of that dead son, standing entirely alone in the freezing wind, weeping bitterly before his tombstone!" These profound, soul-piercing words struck the heart of every single individual on that battlefield like a sledgehammer.

In this rotting world that worshipped aristocratic supremacy—where the lives of the common folk were entirely worthless—absolutely no supreme commander had ever dared to so nakedly, so brutally rip away the hypocritical disguise used by the ruling class to justify war! Soren's commanding gaze swept over his entire army.

For the very first time, he publicly unveiled to this continent, and to his soldiers, the grand, epoch-making ideological blueprint he had buried deep within his heart:"You harbor a blood-feud against the Orcs because the Orcs brutally oppress humanity."

"But I want you to open your eyes and look closely! The internal class oppression within the Orc Alliance—Warchief Blackstone's absolute, cold-blooded butchery of these lower-class Centaur civilians—is not one microscopic fraction lighter than the Orcs oppressing humans, or those pampered noble lords in the royal capital oppressing us!"

"What I, Soren, am forging here is absolutely not some mindless revenge machine that exists solely to slaughter Orcs!"

"I am going to forge an entirely new world! A world completely devoid of class oppression! A world devoid of aristocratic exploitation! A world entirely devoid of racial discrimination!" Soren pointed his longsword directly at the kneeling Luke, his voice echoing with unshakeable, absolute conviction:"To perfectly embody this ideal, I am fully willing to permanently forfeit the staggering spoils of war sitting right in front of me today!

I will absolutely not bring my butcher's blade down upon the necks of women and children who should have never been dragged into this slaughter!"

"Because their true, absolute enemy is not Greywater Village! It is the Warchief Blackstone who treats them as expendable meat shields! It is the Orc Alliance! It is the rotting ruling class that brings endless, apocalyptic suffering to all the common folk of this world!" Absolute, pin-drop silence. Whether it was the battle-hardened soldiers of Greywater Village, or the broken, traumatized remnants of the Centaur army opposite them...

at this exact moment, every single soul was so profoundly shaken that they entirely forgot to breathe. None of them knew the true, agonizing price Soren had paid to deliver these words. They didn't know he had permanently sacrificed the exquisitely exorbitant System rewards of the [Armored War Elephant] and the [Mid-Tier Life Restoration Potion Recipe].

Yet, even without knowing that, this world-shattering declaration—a truth that effortlessly transcended narrow, primitive racial hatred and brutally struck at the very core of class oppression—had profoundly, irrevocably touched the souls of everyone present. Talon's white-knuckled grip on his repeating heavy crossbow slowly, powerlessly loosened. He stared blankly up at Soren, his eyes churning with a profound, unprecedented level of absolute worship.

In this rotting world, Kings would effortlessly send them to die in the mud. Nobles would ruthlessly squeeze out every last drop of their blood and sweat. Only this man standing before them—this peerless Lord—truly viewed them as absolute equals. And it was this man alone who was actively, fiercely striving to forge true justice for every single "farmer's son" across the continent!