Chương 357: 357:The One-Man Army Miracle

"Those absolute scum in the Capital! They intentionally wanted to sit back and watch Soren and two thousand of his people march straight into their graves!" Veteran General Galahad violently drew the longsword at his hip, viciously burying the blade into a wooden post beside him. Wood splinters exploded into the air. Gabriel lunged forward, frantically grabbing the communications officer by the shoulders.

His fingers dug in so hard his nails practically pierced the man's flesh as he roared for the conclusion:"The result?! What the hell happened to Greywater Village?!" In Gabriel's hyper-analytical tactical mind, the outcome of this campaign didn't even require a second thought. A ragtag militia composed of two thousand refugees, the elderly, women, and children. Facing off against thirty thousand heavily equipped Orc elites. Subjected to aerial carpet-bombing from Wyverns.

And completely abandoned without a single reinforcement or supply line... It was an absolute, inescapable death sentence! To Gabriel, there were only two conceivable outcomes to this massacre. The first: Soren utilized his peerless tactical genius to weaponize the treacherous, toxic terrain of the Misty Swamp and his defensive lines.

He would use two thousand human lives to plug the meat grinder, bleeding his troops dry to the very last man, just to barely stall the Orcs long enough for their logistics to collapse, thereby securing a miserable, pyrrhic withdrawal. The second—and far more logically probable—scenario: Greywater Village had already been violently trampled into dust by thirty thousand Orcs the previous night. Soren and every single one of his people were slaughtered, their bodies rendered into unrecognizable meat paste.

And right at this very second, that victorious Orc horde was marching over the bones of Greywater Village, pivoting their blades straight toward Ironwood Fortress! Facing Gabriel's hysterical roars, the communications officer only gripped the parchment scroll tighter. He slowly raised his head, looking at the two commanders. He sucked in a massive breath of the biting, freezing wind, as if physically drawing the strength to unleash the explosive emotion pent up in his chest.

"Commanders... the Defense of Greywater Village has completely concluded." The officer shrieked, utilizing every last ounce of strength in his body to roar the earth-shattering truth:"It was not a pyrrhic withdrawal! And the line was absolutely not broken!"

"Lord Soren personally led his forces on the barricades! In a frontal clash, they unilaterally slaughtered three thousand Centaur elites! They forced the remaining six thousand Centaurs into a total collapse and unconditional surrender!"

"And last night! Lord Soren personally led a highly mobile night raid! He violently forced an army of ten thousand heavy-axe Minotaurs into an apocalyptic camp-collapse in the mud, causing a complete, catastrophic rout!" Dead silence. Around the courtyard, hundreds of soldiers who had been busy hauling the supplies completely froze in place. It was as if time itself had been violently paused. Every single movement ceased.

The howling blizzard ripped across the stronghold, yet it couldn't mask the absolute, tectonic shockwaves detonating within the hearts of every man present. Galahad's lips trembled violently. His face was a mask of sheer, unadulterated disbelief as he stammered,"S-Say that again. Three thousand elite Centaurs completely eradicated? Ten thousand Minotaurs routed by two thousand men?!" Gabriel was rooted to the spot, his mind completely short-circuiting.

He subconsciously sucked in a massive breath of freezing air, the biting chill catching in his throat and sending him into a violent coughing fit.

"That is impossible... that is absolutely impossible!" Gabriel shrieked, completely losing his composure.

"The ultra-high mobility horse-archery of the Centaurs! The devastating Totem Charge of the Minotaurs! And a full aerial squadron of twelve Wyverns unleashing carpet-bombing from the sky!"

"How in the hell did Soren pull off a counter-slaughter?!" Facing the hysterical exclamations of the two commanders, the communications officer didn't stop. He swallowed hard, forcefully suppressing his violent trembling as he roared the final, apocalyptic details:"This intelligence has been cross-referenced and absolutely verified by Veteran General Rodman! But what is truly horrifying..."

The officer hoisted the parchment scroll high into the air, enunciating every single syllable with crushing weight: "In this absolute meat-grinder of a campaign that completely annihilated the enemy's vanguard... the total number of combat fatalities reported by the Greywater Village forces... IS ZERO!"

"Furthermore! At the climax of the campaign, Lord Soren infiltrated the absolute core of the enemy camp entirely alone! Facing eight overlapping, high-tier Shamanic wards, he used a single arrow to cleanly pierce the heart of Warchief Blackstone!"

"The enemy Supreme Commander was executed on the spot!" When the phrases "Zero Fatalities" and "Decapitated Warchief Blackstone with a single arrow" violently detonated across the courtyard... The minds of the two commanders were ruthlessly battered by wave after wave of tectonic shock. Their initial horror, suspicion, and absolute disbelief rapidly mutated into pure, unadulterated awe and fanatical reverence. General Galahad completely lost his rigid, stoic demeanor. His knees physically buckled beneath him.

He staggered backward, ultimately forced to grab onto a massive stack of the black-iron heavy armor just to keep from collapsing directly into the snow. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

"Gods above..." Galahad tilted his head back, staring blankly into the howling blizzard. His voice trembled violently.

"While we were blissfully sleeping in our beds, completely oblivious to the fact that Greywater Village was suffocating under a siege of thirty thousand Orcs..."

"Soren... completely in the dark, without a shred of support from us... single-handedly assassinated the Supreme Commander of the Orc Alliance and violently wiped out an army of tens of thousands?!"

"Is that even humanly possible? That... that is the absolute domain of a God of War!" Gabriel, the famously arrogant and ferocious swordsman commander, slowly reached up and removed his silver knight's helmet. Turning to face the direction of Greywater Village, he deeply, reverently bowed his previously unyielding head.

"A miracle... No, the word 'miracle' doesn't even begin to cover this. This is an apocalyptic triumph that will be violently seared into the annals of human history!" Gabriel's tactical mind raced, frantically piecing together the sheer logistics of the campaign. And the deeper he analyzed it, the more an overwhelming cocktail of marrow-freezing terror and boundless awe consumed him.

As the initial shockwaves finally began to recede, Galahad and Gabriel were forced to fundamentally rewrite their entire comprehension of Greywater Village and Lord Soren's absolute military might. They understood the agonizing, crushing weight of this reality better than anyone. Trapped in a completely isolated death trap. Stripped of magical early-warning support. Denied a single grain of wheat in aid. Abandoned without a single soldier in reinforcements.

Staring down a hostile alien elite force that outnumbered them fifteen to one—a force wielding absolute air superiority and overwhelming magical firepower. He didn't just refuse to retreat. He didn't just hold the line. He actively siphoned troops from that hellish meat grinder to execute a hyper-mobile flanking maneuver, landing a flawless decapitation strike that violently shattered an army of thirty thousand!

Across the entirety of the bloody, four-hundred-and-fifty-year Dark Age between humanity and the Orcs, absolutely no Imperial Marshal had ever achieved such a feat! Only Soren. Only he had turned the impossible into reality! In that exact moment, the two battle-hardened Silvermoon Kingdom generals guarding the Northern Frontier surrendered their absolute, unconditional reverence to the Overlord of Greywater Village. The freezing blizzard continued to howl across the courtyard, kicking up violent flurries of snow.

But as the adrenaline began to fade, Galahad's tactical mind rapidly cooled into sharp focus. His gaze inadvertently drifted. It landed squarely on the towering, meticulously stacked mountains of black-iron half-plate armor and three-meter refined steel pikes sitting right in the center of the courtyard. Staring at the heavy, military-grade steel gleaming beneath the frost, the old General's brows twitched. And then, the veil was violently ripped away.

A realization hit him—a marrow-freezing chill far colder and more terrifying than the battle report itself shot straight up his spine.

"Gabriel..." Galahad laughed—a bitter, hollow sound. He raised a trembling finger, pointing directly at the absolute mountain of military-grade armaments.

"Weren't you just agonizing over why Lord Soren was suddenly so obscenely generous? Why he would just hand us all these precious, life-saving weapons and armor entirely free of charge?" Gabriel looked up, his face etched with pure confusion. Galahad reached out, casually grabbing a heavy black-iron breastplate. He callously tossed it into the snow. THUD.

"I finally understand."

"Think about it, Gabriel. If the forces of Greywater Village were wearing the same ratty leather armor as us... if they were relying on this 'standard' black-iron plate and refined steel pikes... how in the absolute hell could they possibly achieve a zero-casualty victory against thirty thousand Orc elites?"

"By tanking Wyvern alchemical-fire with their bare flesh?! By relying on black-iron plate that a Minotaur's heavy axe can casually shatter to halt a Totem Charge?! It's fundamentally impossible!" Galahad locked eyes with Gabriel, dropping the apocalyptic conclusion that shattered their reality:"The only reason Lord Soren is shipping these to us by the wagonload... is because these standard-issue, military-grade armaments that we view as divine, life-saving treasures...

are nothing more than obsolete, discarded scrap to Soren and his elites!"

"Greywater Village must already be entirely outfitted in armor that we cannot even begin to comprehend! Gear with defensive capabilities ten, perhaps a hundred times greater than this black iron!"

"Only by possessing an absolutely massive, unbridgeable generational gap in military technology could he possibly achieve a zero-casualty miracle in a meat-grinder of that scale!" Hearing this profoundly terrifying analysis, Gabriel was completely paralyzed. He stared at the mountains of heavy armor scattered across the snow. His mind instantly conjured the terrifying image of the Greywater Village legions—an unstoppable army where every single grunt was clad in ultra-high-tier magical armor.

He involuntarily gulped. The two commanders stared at this mountain of "discarded scrap" graciously gifted by Greywater Village. Slowly, simultaneously, they let out a long, deeply complex sigh of relief.