Chương 350: 350：Bane of the Orcs

But what truly drove the Governor to the brink of absolute madness was the total collapse of their logistics.

"Thirty thousand mouths! Soldiers and mounts alike are burning through our grain! Minotaurs and Pigmen are bottomless pits—every single extra day they spend rotting in that cursed swamp drains an astronomical amount of rations! And now?!" Thick veins violently pulsed on the Governor's forehead. He gripped the heavy wooden frame of the strategic sandbox so hard his knuckles turned white, shaking the table until the tiny wooden marker-flags violently rattled.

"Because the Lord of Abysswater Keep and his entire logistics staff were brutally massacred at their own banquet, the absolute core of our supply chain into the Misty Swamp has been completely and utterly paralyzed!"

"Right now, that massive hundred-thousand-strong army hasn't secured a single tactical advantage! Instead, they are completely bogged down in an inescapable logistical death trap!" Pacing frantically, the Governor abruptly stopped. Ignoring the Elder Councilor's shock, he spat out a ruthless decision—one that the 【Supreme War Council】 would absolutely never tolerate.

"If Warchief Blackstone cannot crush the Greywater Village defensive line within the next forty-eight hours, I don't care if every single Clan Chieftain in the 【Supreme War Council】 signs a petition to impeach me! I will forcefully issue an absolute stop-loss command!" Taking a deep, shuddering breath, the Governor's eyes burned with unyielding resolve.

"Not only will I refuse to deploy a single additional soldier as reinforcements, but I will invoke my absolute Gubernatorial Authority! I will sever their supply lines, bypass their comms, and ruthlessly force Blackstone to pull his remaining Minotaur legions and the uncommitted Pigmen infantry completely out of that meat grinder to regroup!"

"Governor! Have you lost your damn mind?!" The Elder Councilor's eyes bulged in pure, unadulterated shock as he furiously slammed his fist down.

"Retreating is absolute cowardice! The supreme prestige of our Orc Alliance will be utterly shattered!" But the Governor didn't flinch an inch. He glared back, his voice dripping with ice.

"A tactical withdrawal is the only way to salvage what pathetic, miserable scrap of dignity the Blood Province has left!"

"I absolutely refuse to stand here and watch our elite light and heavy infantry be thrown into a laughably pointless war of attrition, marching straight into total and complete annihilation!" Hearing the phrase "total annihilation," the Elder Councilor looked at the Governor as if he were a madman. A harsh, mocking scoff escaped his lips.

"Total annihilation? Lord Governor, the grief of losing your nephew has completely blinded your grip on military reality." The Elder Councilor slowly shook his head, adopting an infuriatingly superior tone to comfort the visibly unraveling commander.

"We are talking about an army of tens of thousands! Even if Blackstone commanded thirty thousand mindless pigs, those two thousand human rats in Greywater Village could swing their swords until their wrists violently snapped, and they still wouldn't be able to butcher them all in two days!" To hammer his absolute confidence home, the Elder Councilor pointed a wrinkled finger at the dormant magical communication slate resting on the edge of the sandbox.

"Relax, Governor. I guarantee you, any second now..." BANG! At that exact millisecond, the massive, heavy double doors of the Governor's grand hall were violently kicked open from the outside. A violent gust of howling blizzard and bone-chilling frost ripped into the stiflingly warm hall, violently suppressing the roaring flames in the hearth.

"Insolent bastard! Who gave you the audacity to barge in without an announcement?!" The Elder Councilor's smug comfort was violently choked back down his throat. He spun around, unleashing his aristocratic fury upon the intruder. The man who had burst in was the Chief Intelligence Adjutant of the Governor's Estate. This high-ranking Orc officer—a hardened veteran famous for his absolute, unshakable composure—now bore a face the color of dead ash. His entire robust frame was visibly, violently shaking.

"Where is the victory report? Did Warchief Blackstone finally transmit the official confirmation that Greywater Village has been razed?" the Elder Councilor demanded, a smug sneer returning to his lips. The adjutant didn't even register the Elder Councilor's existence. His knees physically buckled. THUD! He collapsed onto the floor right at the Governor's boots, violently trembling as he held up a blood-stained parchment scroll with both hands.

"L-Lord Governor! Lord Councilor!" the adjutant shrieked, his voice cracking hideously, completely overwhelmed by an abyssal, suffocating terror.

"This military dispatch... it was compiled by our border patrols! It has been violently cross-referenced and confirmed multiple times by the deserters fleeing out of the Misty Swamp!" Hearing the word "deserters," a massive, icy shockwave of sheer panic violently slammed into the minds of both the Governor and the Elder Councilor.

"Spit it out! What the hell did those cowards bring back?!" The Governor lunged forward, violently grabbing the adjutant by his collar and hoisting him halfway off the floor, his furious roar shaking the grand hall.

"T-Total... annihilation." The words squeezed agonizingly through the adjutant's violently chattering teeth, dropping an absolute, apocalyptic bombshell into the room.

"The vanguard! The ten-thousand-strong Centaur army we placed our absolute faith in... yesterday morning, they were completely and utterly shattered before the defensive lines of Greywater Village!"

"Three thousand hand-picked, elite Centaur backbone warriors... they didn't even manage to touch a single piece of human wood! They were unilaterally slaughtered, shot dead right in the mud!" Every single blood-soaked metric the adjutant shrieked acted like a physical sledgehammer, violently bashing the minds of the two Orc elites.

"Three thousand elites, completely wiped out! The remaining six thousand Centaur conscripts lost every shred of their will to fight! They completely routed on the spot! No... worse! They dropped to their knees and surrendered unconditionally to the humans!" The smug, mocking sneer frozen on the Elder Councilor's face instantly shattered. He gripped his gemstone bone staff so violently that sharp cracks echoed from the ancient wood. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road.

Support the author by reading it there. Yet, the apocalyptic nightmare was far from over.

"And?! What about the ten-thousand-strong Minotaur legions?! They are the absolute apex light infantry of our Alliance!" The Governor's bloodshot eyes bulged from his skull. Deep down, a terrifying premonition was already clawing at his mind, but his rationality violently rejected it.

"Routed... Total, catastrophic rout!" The adjutant squeezed his eyes shut, his face twisted in absolute agony.

"Just before dawn today, deep within the absolute core of the swamp, the ten-thousand-strong Minotaur army suffered a complete, apocalyptic camp collapse! They threw away their weapons! They violently stripped off their armor! They stampeded blindly north in pure terror! Right now, the entirety of the Misty Swamp is absolutely crawling with our panicked deserters!" As the adjutant's final, hysterical shrieks echoed through the hall, the Governor and the Elder Councilor were utterly drained of all color.

The untouchable, supreme glory of the Blood Province had been violently ripped down and trampled into the mud. A massive, multi-legion theater war! A campaign backed by an aerial squadron of Wyverns, high-tier shadow magic, and tens of thousands of absolute elite troops! And the final, defining battle report wasn't delivered via a majestic, authoritative transmission from Supreme Commander Warchief Blackstone... it was delivered by the pathetic, weeping mouths of deserters crawling back to the border!

A suffocating, deathly silence violently seized the grand hall. It lasted for several agonizing minutes. The only sound left in the world was the sharp, popping cracks of the burning logs in the hearth. The Elder Councilor's hands finally lost all strength. The gemstone bone staff slipped from his grasp, landing on the plush velvet carpet with a muffled, pathetic thud. He violently collapsed backward into his high-backed chair, his eyes staring blankly into the void.

"This is a fucking nightmare... Tens of thousands of elite warriors... How in the hell could they be unilaterally slaughtered by two thousand measly humans?" he muttered, his mind completely broken. This was no longer just a catastrophic military defeat. This was a completely unprecedented, history-shattering humiliation! In the hundreds of years since the Blood Province was founded, they had never suffered a disgrace of this magnitude!

As the supreme aristocratic overlords of the 【Supreme War Council】, they had always viewed humanity as nothing more than livestock—weaklings to be slaughtered at their absolute leisure. Yet today, their invincible, multi-legion army had been ruthlessly, fundamentally crushed by a mere two thousand of those very same "weaklings"! The Governor's brain literally short-circuited. He hadn't just lost a massive theater war that completely stripped the province of its pride.

Those thousands of fleeing deserters were going to act as an unstoppable plague! They would frantically, uncontrollably broadcast the horrifying, apocalyptic legend of Soren's zero-casualty annihilation to every single, dark corner of the Blood Province! From this day forward, the mere whisper of the words "Greywater Village" would instill such bone-deep terror into the low-ranking Orc grunts that they wouldn't even be able to hold their weapons straight!

"Wait... what about the commanders?!" The Elder Councilor suddenly jolted in his chair, a horrifying realization seizing him.

"If the frontline collapsed, where is Chieftain Heka?! Why the hell didn't Warchief Blackstone step forward and violently enforce military law to rally the routing troops?! Where are they?!" The adjutant kneeling on the floor convulsed violently. He slowly raised his head, his eyes completely bloodshot and streaming with tears of pure, unadulterated trauma. He wailed:"Dead! They're all dead, my Lords!"

"Chieftain Heka was violently turned into a pincushion by a storm of heavy arrows right before the human barricades!"

"And the Supreme Commander... Warchief Blackstone! Even while hiding behind the overlapping, impenetrable magical wards cast by eight High Shamans... he was assassinated by that human commander, Soren!"

"From five hundred meters away... without a single sound... without a single ripple of mana... Soren fired a single arrow that completely bypassed all defenses and violently exploded the Warchief's heart!" HISSSS! The Elder Councilor violently sucked in a breath of freezing air, the absolute chill piercing straight into his lungs. Deep within the absolute core of a ten-thousand-strong army... fully protected by eight overlapping, impenetrable magical wards...

and he still effortlessly sniped the Supreme Commander with a single shot?! What kind of logic-defying, utterly monstrous entity was this human?! In the past, the Orc High Command had merely brushed Soren off as a slightly more cunning, troublesome border officer of the Silvermoon Kingdom. But today, in this very moment, the Elder Councilor was violently, profoundly forced to realize the truth. That name—Soren—had officially ascended to become the absolute, apocalyptic Bane of the Orc Race!

"Soren... SOREN!" A guttural roar, boiling with sheer indignation, bottomless terror, and apocalyptic fury, violently detonated within the hall. CRASH! The massive, incredibly heavy blackwood strategic sandbox was violently flipped over! The Governor had completely, utterly snapped. Like a rabid beast, he violently smashed everything within his line of sight.

Exquisite crystal goblets, priceless ancient artifacts, and the intricately carved wolf-fang marker flags were ruthlessly swept onto the stone floor, shattering into a million pieces.

"I'm going to flay him alive! I am going to mobilize the absolute entirety of the Blood Province! I will grind him, and that miserable Greywater Village, into absolute fucking dust! I'LL KILL HIM!" The Governor's hysterical, blood-curdling roars echoed violently through the grand hall for a full fifteen minutes. When his rampage finally ceased, he stood panting heavily amidst the absolute ruin. His massive hands had been sliced to ribbons by shattered porcelain, dark crimson blood dripping steadily onto the carpet.

Yet, completely consumed by an abyssal, burning hatred... he couldn't feel a single ounce of pain.