Chương 351: 351：An Unhideable Defeat

He gasped heavily for air, his chest heaving violently. As the adrenaline and fury finally receded, it was replaced by a profound, crushing sense of powerlessness. Staring at the shattered ruins covering the floor, the Governor finally squeezed his eyes shut in pure agony. Deep in his heart, he finally admitted the horrifying reality he had vaguely suspected but allowed his own arrogance to blind him to: Greywater Village was absolutely not some standard border garrison of the Silvermoon Kingdom!

The true military might and magical foundation hidden within that dilapidated village were unfathomable! This was absolutely not an enemy that the Blood Province could casually crush on its own!

"Lord Governor... what do we do now?" The Elder Councilor was completely stripped of his former arrogant swagger. Looking like nothing more than a pathetic, helpless old man, he asked with a violently trembling voice. The Governor wiped the blood from his shredded hands and slowly, mechanically straightened his disheveled uniform. An apocalyptic defeat of this magnitude... three thousand elite Centaurs slaughtered, ten thousand Minotaurs routed in pure terror, and the loss of an exalted Warchief.

He knew full well that trying to cover this up by executing a few deserters was completely, utterly impossible. If this catastrophic humiliation was reported first by his political rivals in the Capital or his enemies in other provinces, his head would absolutely be mounted on the city walls to rot in the wind.

"There is no hiding this. Tell everyone in the 【Supreme War Council】 to prepare for absolute, severe accountability." The Governor turned around. Dragging his profoundly exhausted feet, he walked toward the sealed chamber deep within the hall—the room used exclusively for high-tier magical communication with High Command. Just before pushing open the heavy doors of the chamber, he cast one final glance back at the Elder Councilor. His voice was stiff, dead.

"Prepare the highest-grade Mana Crystals. Draft the formal Document of Confession."

"I am going to report directly to The Beast Court. I will report this catastrophic defeat, with absolute truth, directly to His Majesty, the Beast King who rules all provinces." …… Deep within a vast, endless plateau, an obscenely massive, ancient city radiated a terrifying, abyssal aura. This was the absolute center of power for the entire Orc Alliance. For the past four hundred and fifty years of the Dark Age, this was the very epicenter of humanity's deepest, most inescapable nightmares.

Along the hundred-foot-tall obsidian walls, rusted iron cages hung every ten paces, stuffed to the brim with the bleached bones and wailing souls of human slaves. Raging hellfire violently erupted from an abyssal chasm in the absolute center of the city, permanently dyeing the sky a suffocating, blood-crimson red. Within the core of the Royal City, inside the levitating Magical Nexus Tower, three Royal Shamans draped in ashen robes sat around a black-crystal runic array, deep in monotonous meditation. VMMMM!

Suddenly, the dead-silent center of the array violently erupted with blinding, crimson light. The mana fluctuation was incredibly explosive, causing the ancient runes surrounding the array to violently flare to life.

"A Blood Oath Transmission?!" an elderly Shaman shrieked in absolute terror. Under the draconian laws of the Orc Alliance, only when faced with an apocalyptic crisis that threatened the very survival of a province and the entire geopolitical strategy could a ruling warlord dare to invoke a Blood Oath Transmission—a spell fueled directly by burning their own lifespan.

"Quick! Stabilize the sigils! Receive the transmission!" The other two Shamans frantically poured their massive mana reserves into the array. As the blinding red light violently intertwined in the air, the haggard, terrified, and deathly pale face of the Blood Province's Governor slowly materialized as a phantom projection. When the Governor hoarsely read out the final results of the Misty Swamp campaign... The air inside the entire Magical Nexus Tower froze to an absolute, marrow-chilling zero.

Three High Shamans, entities who had witnessed countless grand, bloody campaigns, stood completely paralyzed.

"This... this is impossible... Warchief Blackstone, killed in action? The elite legions, completely routed? Two thousand humans achieved... zero casualties?!" The elderly Shaman was shaking so violently he subconsciously raised his hand, wanting to smash the array to pieces, fully convinced he was trapped in some absurd, nightmarish illusion.

Yet, the literal blood-weeping Document of Confession, and the magical imprint displaying the violently shattered totem of the Blackstone Clan, declared the absolute, horrifying truth with crystal clarity.

"A catastrophe... apocalyptic doom has descended upon us..." The old Shaman's lips trembled violently. He abruptly spun around, stumbling frantically toward the tower exit. His blood-curdling shriek violently tore through the night sky of the Royal City:"Ring the Death Toll! Quick! Sound the gathering bells of The Beast Court!" DONG! DONG! DONG! The massive, ancient bronze bell was violently struck nine consecutive times.

The deep, deafening, earth-shattering reverberations rapidly swept through every single corner of the Capital, scattering massive flocks of blood-crows roosting on the black spires. Moments later, in the absolute center of the Royal City, within the Grand Hall of Beasts—a structure forged entirely from the colossal skeleton of an ancient dragon—raging braziers were fully ignited, banishing every shadow and bathing the suffocatingly tense court in firelight.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. Dozzens of the Orc Alliance's absolute highest echelons, individuals who normally looked down on the world with supreme arrogance... Warchiefs commanding elite legions, High Priests of the 【Spire of Shadows】 wielding forbidden magic, and the core decision-makers of the 【Supreme War Council】... all of them had rapidly assembled.

Fully clad in master-crafted armor and tightly gripping their lethal weapons, their faces were etched with unprecedented gravity. They exchanged rapid, hushed whispers, desperately trying to guess which major human regular army possessed the sheer, suicidal audacity to actively launch an offensive against the great Orc Alliance.

However, high above the hall floor, upon the massive Throne of Bones, the absolute supreme Overlord who ruled the entire Orc faction—His Majesty, the Beast King—sat in absolute, dead silence. The Beast King's physique was monstrously imposing. He wore no absurdly extravagant crown, merely a casual set of dark-gold soft armor. Yet, the sheer, soul-crushing pressure he passively radiated forced every single short-tempered Warchief in the hall to subconsciously bow their heads the moment they glanced at the throne.

The elderly Shaman prostrated himself at the foot of the jade steps, trembling as he presented the Blood Oath battle report transmitted by the Governor of the Blood Province. The report recorded every single apocalyptic detail with agonizing precision: The absolute slaughter of three thousand elite Centaurs. The mass mutiny and defection of six thousand Centaur conscripts. The violent deaths of eleven Wyverns. The midnight catastrophic rout of the ten-thousand-strong Minotaur army.

And finally, the logic-defying, earth-shattering actions of the human commander named Soren—who, from five hundred meters away, used a single arrow that completely bypassed all physical and magical defenses to cleanly blow a hole through the heart of Warchief Blackstone, the supreme commander of a hundred-thousand-strong army! And in stark, terrifying contrast... the casualty statistic under the column for humanity's Greywater Village bore a single, violently shocking circle. ZERO.

When the royal herald, trembling violently, finished reading this report aloud to the entire court, the Grand Hall of Beasts, which had been buzzing with whispers just a moment prior, plunged into a suffocating, deathly silence. A split second later, a massive, explosive shockwave of sheer disbelief detonated, and the entire court boiled over!

"Absurd! This is an utterly baseless, absurd lie!" A massive, heavily muscled Warchief of the Direbear Clan violently stepped forward, roaring furiously: "Has that imbecile Governor of the Blood Province had his mind completely shattered by terror?! To actually fabricate such a laughably pathetic lie just to shirk his failures!"

"An army of ten thousand, routed in pure terror by two thousand lowly human rats?! Blackstone, the exalted commander of a hundred-thousand-strong army, hiding behind eight layers of magical wards, one-shot by a single arrow?! Does he think this is some mythical bullshit spun by a drunk bard in a tavern?!"

"The Governor's sins are absolutely unforgivable! To disturb The Beast Court at midnight with a forged report!" A High Priest of the 【Spire of Shadows】 also spoke up, the staff in his hand pulsing with highly dangerous magic.

"It is absolutely, fundamentally impossible for layered magical defenses to be pierced by an arrow completely devoid of mana fluctuations! That is basic arcane law! Those cowardly, incompetent trash in the Blood Province not only lost Abysswater Keep, but now they cower from battle and forge military intelligence! They have brought absolute shame to the entire Alliance!" Furious curses and violent shouts of doubt formed a literal shockwave that swept through the hall.

Not a single arrogant Orc elite was willing to believe a battle record so grotesquely exaggerated it violently shattered all military logic. In their deeply ingrained, centuries-old cognitive reality, even when facing humanity's most elite heavy infantry phalanxes and Knight Orders, the humans were always forced to trade five lives just to kill a single Orc.

How the hell could a dilapidated, miserable village located in the Misty Swamp achieve a kill-to-death ratio that had absolutely never existed in the long, blood-soaked history of the continent?!

"Silence." Just as the grand hall was on the verge of spiraling into uncontrollable, chaotic frenzy, the Beast King upon the throne uttered a single word. The sheer, crushing authority woven into those syllables violently struck the chest of every single roaring elite. The furious Warchiefs instantly snapped their mouths shut, obediently retreating to their positions. Within the sprawling hall, the silence became so absolute you could hear a pin drop. This was the absolute dominance of an apex ruler.

The Beast King did not throw a violent, rage-filled tantrum like the subordinates below him. He slowly stood up, his gaze bypassing the long steps to lock onto the 3D magical strategic sandbox in the center of the hall. As a peerless, tyrannical conqueror who had violently forged over thirty loose clans into a unified empire—and consistently crushed the thirty-nation alliance of humanity—the Beast King was absolutely not a braindead brute who only knew slaughter.

On the contrary, he possessed a terrifying, apex-level strategic intuition.