Chương 341: 341：Target Locked: Arrow of Concealment

Soren carved through this fragile, disorganized defensive line like a hot knife through butter. Hundreds of enraged Minotaurs failed to even slow his advance, let alone touch the trailing edge of his pitch-black cloak. Fresh blood painted his steel blade crimson and saturated the acidic muck in his wake.

Relying purely on his mind-bending explosive speed and his [Grandmaster Military Swordsmanship], he violently carved a path of slaughter right through the heart of the enemy lines—a domain that by all rights should have been an absolute death zone for any human. Up ahead, the howling blizzard thinned slightly. With a final, effortless horizontal sweep, Soren sheared the head off the last Minotaur blocking his path.

He planted a heavy boot onto the beast's chest, violently kicking the geysering, headless corpse into a deep sinkhole. Taking a deep breath of the freezing air, Soren came to a dead halt. He slowly, deliberately slid his blood-drenched steel longsword back into its scabbard. He raised his head. His field of vision abruptly opened up.

Through the hyper-focused lens of his [Eagle Eye Perception], the obscenely massive, luxurious Royal Pavilion pulled by the eight heavily armored Kodo beasts snapped into crystal-clear focus. The glowing halos of the defensive arrays maintained by the Shamans around the pavilion were so bright they cast a faint reflection across Soren's visor. Five hundred meters. For a modern elite sniper, this was the absolute optimal kill zone. The dead silence didn't last long.

Even though Soren stood entirely alone on the frozen avenue five hundred meters away, radiating absolutely zero detectable mana fluctuations, the suffocating stench of blood he had accumulated from carving through the Minotaur lines, coupled with his bone-chilling, razor-sharp killing intent, finally triggered the pavilion's airtight security perimeter. SKREEE!

The four Wyverns patrolling the airspace directly above the pavilion violently flapped their leathery wings in the darkness, their reptilian eyes locking forward as they shrieked a blood-curdling warning! Almost simultaneously, several Orc Shamans stationed around the pavilion snapped their eyes wide open.

"Directly ahead! Five hundred meters! Human infiltrator! High Alert!" an elderly Shaman shrieked, his raspy voice tearing through the wind as he forcefully slammed his bone staff into the frozen earth. That piercing warning instantly triggered a massive commotion, detonating the defensive perimeter around the pavilion.

"Protect the Warchief!" Accompanied by furious, guttural roars, the elite Black Steel Royal Guards tasked with protecting the pavilion finally reacted. This elite guard was comprised entirely of the Orc Alliance's most robust Pigmen heavy infantry. While their movement speed was laughably slow, their physical mass was absurdly thick, and every inch of their bodies was encased in heavily riveted, pitch-black cast-iron plate armor. THUD! THUD! THUD!

Over a hundred fully armored Pigmen marched in lockstep, swiftly forming a wall directly in front of the Royal Pavilion. Moving with perfect synchronization, they violently slammed their astonishingly thick cast-iron tower shields into the ice. CLANG! The heavy steel interlocking latches on the sides of their shields aggressively snapped together. In the span of just three breaths, a seamless, completely impenetrable black-steel wall forcefully erected itself against the blizzard.

Immediately following that, driven by the rapid, highly complex chanting of the Shamans, an astonishing surge of mana erupted from the earth. VMMMM! A dense, earthen-yellow [Earth Ward] materialized first, expanding into a massive, semi-circular dome that completely enveloped the colossal Kodo-drawn pavilion. Then came a violently rolling [Flame Barrier], followed by a cyan, swirling [Storm Aegis]... A staggering eight layers of high-tier magical shielding violently erupted, overlapping perfectly!

The dazzling, interwoven spectrum of magical light was almost blinding. It not only completely isolated the raging blizzard and bone-chilling frost but radiated an aura of absolute, crushing defense. Against a layered magical fortress of this caliber, standard bows and blades were essentially a joke. Hell, even if Soren dragged all six of Greywater Village's heavy anti-air ballistae out here and subjected it to a continuous, sustained bombardment, he wouldn't be able to breach it in a short timeframe!

Standing atop the wide, opulent command deck of the Royal Pavilion, the Orc Grand Warlord was already seething with fury over the chaotic skirmishes breaking out on their left, right, and rear flanks. Hearing the Shaman's warning, the Warlord violently lunged toward the railing. His bloodshot, ferocious eyes pierced through the glowing layers of magical shields, locking dead onto that solitary, pitch-black figure standing at the far end of the frozen avenue.

When he realized there was only a single attacker, the Grand Warlord's first reaction was sheer absurdity, which instantly boiled over into profoundly insulted rage.

"One human?! A single, solitary human dares to charge the Royal Pavilion of the Warchief?! The sheer fucking arrogance! This insect dares to mock the might of the Orc Alliance?!" Ripping his massive, broad-bladed cleaver from his waist, the Grand Warlord pointed it furiously into the blizzard and roared, "Black Steel Royal Guards! Break formation and charge! Hack off that human's limbs! I want his skull hollowed out for my wine cup!"

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. However, the Warlord's roaring command was met with absolute silence from his supreme leader. Because right at that exact moment, standing just beside him, Warchief Blackstone—who had just been swirling a goblet of spiced rum—was standing entirely frozen, completely paralyzed. Clatter. The pure gold goblet slipped limply through the Warchief's thick fingers, thudding heavily against the velvet carpet.

The Warchief didn't so much as blink. His pupils were dilated to the absolute limit, locked dead onto that pitch-black, cloaked figure standing in the blizzard five hundred meters away. Warchief Blackstone had never seen that specific set of [Dark Silver Armor] before. But that longbow pulsating with cyan wind runes? That cold, perfectly steady, statuesque posture of the archer holding it? It violently, mercilessly tore open the deepest, darkest trauma in the Warchief's memory!

In that split second, Warchief Blackstone felt absolutely zero anger at being provoked. The tyrannical arrogance that came from commanding a hundred thousand troops vanished into thin air. What surged violently through his veins, freezing the very marrow in his bones, was a bottomless, crushing terror!

"It's him... It's that fucking demon... Soren..." The massive Warchief's muscles locked up in pure panic, and a phantom pain caused his left forearm to begin convulsing violently. He was forcefully dragged back to the hellish nightmare of Stormrift Keep three months ago. It had been exactly like this—a freezing, blizzard-swept night. Plunged into a totally inescapable, heavily surrounded death trap, Soren had fired an arrow from an impossible, logic-defying distance of one thousand one hundred meters.

That single, devastating arrow hadn't just blown apart his forearm; it had made the exalted Warchief Blackstone intimately, viscerally taste the cold kiss of absolute death. And now?! He was only five hundred meters away! The distance had been slashed by more than half! At this range, illuminated by the glowing halos of the defensive arrays, the Warchief could physically feel the crosshairs from beneath that human's visor perfectly locking onto his Adam's apple! He's going to shoot through me...

He's actually going to kill me... Warchief Blackstone began to hyperventilate. He had never, in his wildest nightmares, imagined that the suffocating, pathetic impotence of impending death would descend upon him again—here, today, deep within the absolute safest core of his heavily guarded Royal Pavilion. Staring out at Soren in the distance, the only emotion that completely consumed the Warchief's mind was pure, unadulterated regret. He agonizingly questioned himself: Why the fuck did I go mad?

Why did I provoke a human commander who completely defies all bounds of common sense?! If he hadn't issued the order to annihilate Greywater Village, if he hadn't arrogantly tried to extinguish humanity's last spark of hope, he would still be sitting securely on his throne as the supreme, exalted Overlord of the Orcs! Why did I care about saving face and maintaining my supreme authority?! Why the hell did I personally step onto this cursed frontline?! Warchief Blackstone wailed helplessly in his own mind.

He regretted it. He regretted it to his very core. He regretted not immediately making up some bullshit excuse the moment the lord of Abysswater Keep was decapitated, just so he could pack up the army and retreat to the absolute safety of the Orc Alliance's rear! He even regretted not outright abandoning his supreme command over the hundred-thousand-strong army! Right now, he would have gladly thrown away his pride to become a lowly logistics officer counting grain bags, enduring the mockery of the other tribes!

As long as he could just stay alive, it would be a million times better than having this terrifying harbinger of death aiming a weapon at his chest! Power. Status. Supreme authority. This disgustingly luxurious Royal Pavilion pulled by eight armored Kodo beasts... in the face of absolute, impending death, it had all become a pathetic, laughable joke. But while Warchief Blackstone was trapped in a suffocating spiral of panic and regret... Five hundred meters away, Soren made his move.

Soren's movements were as cold and steady as a glacier. His left hand firmly gripped the riser of the [Windwhisper Bow]. His right fingers pinched the nock of that dead-gray, unassuming [Arrow of Concealment], seating it flawlessly onto the bowstring. He pushed the visual lock-on capabilities of his [Eagle Eye Perception] to their absolute maximum limit.

Inside Soren's hyper-processed vision, the overlapping layers of dazzling Shamanic magic shields and the impenetrable black-steel wall completely vanished, rendered totally transparent. A perfectly straight, blood-red trajectory line projected out from the dead-gray arrowhead. It effortlessly bypassed every single physical and magical obstruction in its path, painting a laser-precise crosshair directly over Warchief Blackstone's violently thrashing heart on the command deck. It's over.

Soren whispered the words in his mind. Driven by the monstrous, explosive strength granted by the [Faint Blood of the Titan], his arm flexed, pulling the cyan-glowing longbow into a flawless, creaking crescent. Then, without a single microsecond of hesitation, Soren released the bowstring.