Chương 340: 340：A Solo Charge Into Hell

Soren swept his gaze across his men, issuing an ironclad, absolute order:"Remember, your only mission is to harass and contain! Under no circumstances are you to engage any Orc in direct melee! If the enemy advances, you retreat. If the enemy retreats, you keep shooting!"

"Tonight, I want Warchief Blackstone's head!"

"Understood! May your blade conquer all enemies!" Sensing their Lord's unyielding will, the three commanders ceased their protests. They offered a crisp military salute, then immediately led the three-hundred-strong mobile strike force, melting into the pitch-black darkness in three different directions. The surroundings immediately fell silent, leaving only the howling blizzard and the chaotic stomping of the Minotaur formations in the distance.

Standing completely alone in ankle-deep muck, Soren took advantage of this brief lull post-deployment to slowly exhale a breath of white mist. The suffocating tension of facing an army of ten thousand alone to assassinate the enemy's supreme commander made him slightly dazed. His thoughts involuntarily drifted back to three months ago—to the tragic, blood-soaked battle at Stormrift Keep. That, too, had been a freezing, blizzard-swept night. And that time, he also only had one shot. Soren remembered it vividly.

The defensive lines of Stormrift Keep had been on the absolute brink of collapse. Leona, Commander of the Crimson Moon Knights, had personally pressed the final [Explosive Fire Enchanted Arrow] into his hands. To deliver him to a viable sniping position, Vice-Commander Sylvia had led the last surviving heavy knights in a completely suicidal charge.

The knights used their very flesh and blood to violently carve a path through the Orc encirclement, weathering devastating attacks to escort Soren to a position exactly one thousand one hundred meters away from Warchief Blackstone. Back then, severely limited by his gear and personal strength, firing into a gale at an extreme range of 1, 100 meters, Soren had only managed to strike Warchief Blackstone's forearm.

Though the explosive impact of that arrow had knocked the Warchief off his command platform—triggering a massive misunderstanding among the Orc army that their Warchief had been killed in action, leading to a total collapse in morale and allowing the Crimson Moon Knights a pyrrhic victory—failing to kill his target in one strike had remained a deep, festering regret in Soren's heart.

"Back then, I needed others to throw their lives into the meat grinder just to buy me a single opening. But today... today is different." Soren looked down at his loadout. His inner layer was Greywater Village's self-produced [Padded Cotton Armor], which not only insulated him against the sub-zero temperatures but provided phenomenal blunt-force cushioning. Over that, he wore the [Dark Silver Armor] tirelessly forged by the Hobgoblin Luger.

The composite alloy of mithril and black-steel granted this full plate terrifying defensive properties while maintaining extremely high mobility. And it wasn't just his gear; his physical body had undergone a comprehensive evolution. Soren closed his eyes, feeling the [Faint Blood of the Titan] violently surging through his veins, blessing him with monstrous strength far beyond mortal limits. His [Hardened Skin] talent granted him a staggering 70% physical mitigation against conventional slash and chop attacks.

In his mind, his ever-vigilant [Danger Sense] radiated outward, acutely scanning his surroundings. Any sniper arrow or hostile magic aimed at him within a hundred-meter radius would instantly trigger his evasive instincts. Not to mention the weapon currently in his grip: the Elven-crafted [Windwhisper Bow]. Laced with potent wind runes, it offered a maximum effective range that no human bow could ever match.

Coupled with his fully mastered [Grandmaster Military Swordsmanship], he possessed absolutely zero blind spots in close-quarters combat. And crowning it all was his [Eagle Eye Perception], piercing through all fog and flawlessly locking onto his target.

"Top-tier talents, top-tier gear, and this absolute one-hit-kill arrow..." Soren snapped his eyes open, his gaze burning with unyielding resolve as he stared dead ahead.

"Warchief Blackstone... you got lucky three months ago. Tonight, let's see how the hell you survive this!" Right at that moment, blinding flashes of cyan light violently erupted in the distant darkness.

"Wind's Whisper!"

"Heavy Repeating Crossbows, loose!" BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Signaled by Ilya and Ein's roaring commands, Greywater Village's high-mobility detachment launched a devastating, simultaneous blitz from the Minotaur army's left, right, and rear flanks! Dense clusters of razor-sharp wind blades detonated in the dark, violently shredding completely unprepared Minotaurs into bloody chunks. Heavy crossbow bolts triggered miniature sonic booms, mercilessly punching clean through their fragile leathery hides.

The Minotaurs, already driven to sheer frustration by their grueling march through the muck, instantly descended into absolute, blood-drunk frenzy upon taking this sudden three-pronged ambush.

"Over there! The humans are over there!" The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Slaughter them all! Smash these despicable human rats to paste with your totems!" Exactly as Soren had predicted, this undisciplined horde of light infantry had zero concept of maintaining formation. Driven entirely by fury and primal bloodlust, massive swaths of roaring Minotaurs hoisted their colossal wooden totem poles and violently broke off from their marching columns. Completely disregarding orders, they surged wildly into the pitch-black flanks and rear where the deadly arrows originated.

The army's macroscopic formation was totally shattered. Stimulated by the agonizing death shrieks of their kin, even the elite Minotaur guard battalions originally stationed around the central Royal Pavilion blindly joined the hunt, surging toward the outer perimeter. In a mere ten minutes, a massive, glaring defensive vacuum had formed on both sides of the frozen avenue where the eight armored Kodo beasts stood!

Aside from a few dozen personal Shamans and Royal Guards, there was virtually no cohesive Minotaur force left defending the Warchief's pavilion.

"Now." Soren let out a chilling sneer. He violently kicked off the ground. The terrifying explosive power granted by his [Faint Blood of the Titan] allowed him to traverse the sucking, muddy swamp as effortlessly as if he were sprinting on solid asphalt. Moving at blistering speeds, perfectly cloaked by the night and the utter chaos, he charged entirely alone, straight toward the colossal Kodo-drawn Royal Pavilion! Just as he had calculated, the mud patches along his path were sparsely populated.

Only a few hundred scattered Minotaur stragglers remained—those trapped in deep sinkholes, or ones who had just turned back from the vanguard and hadn't yet reached the outer skirmishes.

"Moo? Human?" A Minotaur squad leader, currently straining to pull his massive hooves from the highly acidic muck, violently widened his bull-like eyes. He stared in absolute disbelief at the lone human knight sprinting directly at them across the surface of the mud.

"You court death!" the Minotaur roared. Heaving a solid wooden totem pole caked in mud, he swung it in a devastating downward arc, aiming to crush Soren's skull to paste. With hundreds of pounds of blunt weight backed by the Minotaur's monstrous strength, a strike like this would instantly pulverize a standard human heavy infantryman, completely shattering even the thickest steel tower shield. Yet, Soren didn't even drop a fraction of his speed.

Under the hyper-dilated, slow-motion visual processing of his [Eagle Eye Perception], this seemingly overwhelming, earth-shattering smash was riddled with gaping flaws. It was laughably slow.

"Too damn clumsy." Soren simply tilted his torso slightly. The massive totem pole grazed right past his [Dark Silver Armor] and violently slammed into the mire, geysering a massive wave of rancid, acidic mud into the air. In that split second, right as the Minotaur overextended and left his guard completely wide open, Soren's steel longsword was already unsheathed. There were no wasted movements. No flashy, glowing sword auras.

[Grandmaster Military Swordsmanship] pursued only one thing: the absolute, purest efficiency of slaughter. A single arc of silver steel flashed through the dark. SQUELCH! Riding his forward momentum, his blade cleanly sliced open the Minotaur's thick knee tendons. Then, flawlessly reversing his grip, he swept the blade upward in a lethal reverse slash, cleanly severing the beast's throat.

Boiling hot blood erupted into the freezing air like a geyser, but Soren's phantom-like figure was already three steps past the collapsing corpse.

"Stop him! Protect the pavilion!" Over a dozen scattered Minotaurs finally snapped out of their shock. Roaring with fury, they closed in from all directions, desperately trying to form a fleshy wall with their massive bodies to block this impossibly fast, terrifying human.

"With just you?" Soren scoffed, ignoring them entirely. His footwork was a ghostly, unpredictable dance, weaving his lithe frame seamlessly through the massive, clumsy bodies of the Minotaurs. Unprotected by heavy armor and bogged down by the sucking mud, these light infantry grunts were nothing more than massive, passive punching bags when facing a Special Forces operator whose killing arts had reached the absolute apex. A Minotaur threw a devastating haymaker.

Instead of dodging, Soren actually stepped aggressively into the punch! [Hardened Skin] activated at maximum output! BANG! The massive fist grazed Soren's shoulder. It only produced a dull thud against the [Dark Silver Armor]; Soren's posture didn't even shift a millimeter. Keeping a reverse grip on his hilt, Soren drove a brutal elbow straight into the Minotaur's ribs.

Accompanied by the sickening crack of shattering bone, he snaked his longsword upward from beneath the ribcage at an impossible angle, flawlessly piercing the beast's heart. Rip the blade out. Spin. Duck beneath a devastating horizontal axe cleave. Using the mud to execute a flawless slide, he dragged his blade horizontally, cleanly disemboweling a third Minotaur. Massive loops of steaming intestines and gallons of blood spilled wildly onto the earth.