Chương 360: 360:Dead Silence in the Imperial Court

The adjutant swallowed a mouthful of cold sweat, speaking with desperate urgency:"We must immediately petition His Grace, the Grand Duke! We must request the Empire immediately mobilize heavy border legions! Hell, we need to deploy the Royal Mage Corps and draft an absolute strategic contingency plan against Soren and Greywater Village!" He pounded his fist, his voice shaking.

"We absolutely must treat him as a high-threat hypothetical enemy!" Hearing this staunch, Empire-first advice, Alaric slowly came to a halt. He turned around, his gaze piercing the blizzard to look south, like a prophet peering into the future.

"You are right. In the future of the Erythian Continent, the Holy Halycon Empire's primary adversary will no longer be the Orc Alliance."

"It will be this army of monsters led by Soren—a legion forged from absolute unknowns, fanatical faith, and terrifying tactical mastery." Facing his adjutant's desperate plea for defensive preparations, Alaric fell into a long, heavy silence. Then, this once-arrogant Commander of the Griffon Knights let out a hollow, profoundly impotent, bitter laugh. The usual blazing confidence in his eyes was completely extinguished.

"Defensive preparations? Draft a strategic contingency plan?" Alaric tilted his head back, staring up at the dim stone ceiling of the command post. He spoke as if asking his adjutant, yet simultaneously interrogating his own soul:"Our heavy knights? The absolute second they step into that swamp, they won't even be able to build up charge momentum before they are violently shredded by their heavy repeating crossbows."

"Our Royal Mage Corps? If they dare to stand on the front lines and chant their overlapping shields, they will end up exactly like Warchief Blackstone. They won't even know how they died before a single arrow blows a hole straight through their hearts."

"Our heavy infantry phalanxes? Facing those phantom, hyper-mobile guerrilla tactics executed in the dead of night... they are so laughably clumsy they would just stand there like massive, waiting meat targets." Alaric helplessly spread his hands, his voice dropping into absolute despair:"Tell me. With this obsolete, rigid military doctrine our great Empire has relied on for hundreds of years... how the hell are we supposed to defend against that?!"

While the apocalyptic blizzard continued to rage over the Misty Swamp, thousands of miles away, the Capital of the Holy Halycon Empire basked in a serene, sunlit winter's day. Beneath the magnificent Sun God Dome, the Imperial Court of the Halycon Empire radiated the blinding, obscenely extravagant luster of interwoven solid gold and pristine white jade. Sunlight pierced through stained-glass windows dozens of feet high, casting dazzling, kaleidoscopic halos across the immaculate jade floors.

In the corners, ornate censers slowly burned priceless ambergris imported from the southern isles. The soothing aroma didn't just banish the winter chill; it practically suffocated the air with the sheer, arrogant wealth of the Erythian Continent's apex human empire. Currently, the morning court session was underway. Nobles and ministers draped in lavish silks were lined up on both sides of the jade steps. The vast majority of them wore relaxed, utterly complacent expressions.

Some were even whispering about a masquerade ball hosted at a Count's manor the night before, while others casually critiqued the wheat harvest yields from the Empire's southern provinces. Standing at the very front of the civil officials, the Imperial Minister of Finance was speaking with a languid, almost lazy drawl, reporting his projections for the Northern frontier to His Imperial Majesty.

"Your Majesty, according to the Supreme Command's tactical simulations, it has been exactly four days since the Orc Alliance mobilized their forces into the Misty Swamp." The Minister of Finance let out a pathetic sigh of mock pity.

"That miserable settlement of Greywater Village, defended by a mere two thousand ragged refugees... by now, they and their little Lord Soren have undoubtedly been butchered by thirty thousand Orc elites. I wager there isn't a single intact corpse left in that mudhole." A noble wearing a Marquis's badge on the right chuckled lightly, chiming in.

"It was an absolutely preordained conclusion. Those imbeciles in the Silvermoon Kingdom can't even hold their own defensive lines, yet they actually expected a lowly border lord to stall the apocalyptic vanguard of Warchief Blackstone? It's laughably absurd."

"Still, the annihilation of Greywater Village isn't entirely a bad thing for our Empire," another aristocrat said, elegantly adjusting his velvet cuffs.

"With Soren dead, the Orcs' fury will be sated. Grand Duke Valentine's pressure on the Northern Defense Line will naturally ease. We can continue to peacefully enjoy this tranquil winter right here in the Capital." In the eyes of these high-and-mighty, self-important Imperial elites, a bloody war thousands of miles away was nothing more than a few trivial numerical write-offs. The life or death of two thousand peasants wasn't even worth a second of their concern.

They were absolutely convinced that Soren—the man who had sparked a brief, fleeting moment of discussion in the Imperial Capital—was already a corpse. He was destined to be buried by the snow, a forgotten footnote of the past. However, this sickeningly comfortable Imperial complacency did not last long. VMMMMM! Deep within the grand hall, the Royal Magical Communication Array—used exclusively to receive maximum-priority military intelligence—suddenly violently erupted with a shrill, ear-piercing alarm!

Blinding, blood-red magical light violently flared, completely overpowering the soft sunlight pouring through the stained glass, instantly painting the entire Imperial Court in a terrifying, apocalyptic crimson. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

"What is the meaning of this?! A maximum-priority Crimson transmission?!" The aristocrats, who had just been casually chatting, instantly snapped their mouths shut, staring in absolute bewilderment toward the hall entrance. BANG! A Royal Herald, holding a parchment scroll high above his head with both hands, stumbled so frantically he completely lost his balance, crashing violently onto the white jade steps of the grand hall. Because he had been sprinting so madly, he wiped out hard on the stairs.

Yet, scrambling frantically on his hands and knees, he shrieked with pure, unadulterated adrenaline:"Your Imperial Majesty! A GREAT VICTORY!"

"Grand Duke Valentine has transmitted an absolute top-secret joint dispatch from the Northern Supreme Command! The Misty Swamp Campaign... the siege against Greywater Village... the definitive conclusion has arrived!" That single scream instantly caused the atmosphere in the grand hall to violently tense. Seated high upon the absolute apex of the golden throne, the Emperor of the Holy Halycon Empire leaned slightly forward from the shadows.

With a voice dripping in deep, imposing majesty, the Emperor ordered:"Read it. Let every minister and noble in this hall hear exactly how many days that young lord—stripped of all support and facing an overwhelming foe alone—managed to hold out under the Orcs' siege before heroically dying in battle. The Empire shall consider granting him posthumous honors."

In the Emperor's calculations, the only reason Grand Duke Valentine would transmit a battle report with such frantic urgency was to report that Warchief Blackstone had completely razed Greywater Village, and the Orc main forces were now bearing down on the Empire's borders, demanding immediate reinforcements. Granted the Emperor's absolute permission, the herald unfurled the parchment with violently trembling hands.

"The Defense of Greywater Village completely concluded late last night!" Sucking in a massive breath, the herald expended every single ounce of strength in his lungs to roar:"A GREAT VICTORY! An unbelievable, apocalyptic triumph!"

"Lord Soren of Greywater Village actively launched a counter-offensive right before his defensive lines! He violently ripped the Orc vanguard's formation to shreds!"

"He achieved the total, localized annihilation of three thousand elite Centaur sharpshooters! Chieftain Heka of the Centaurs was shot dead by Lord Soren on the front lines! Executed on the spot!"

"The remaining six thousand Centaur elders and conscripts completely collapsed and surrendered unconditionally!" As those earth-shattering declarations violently detonated across the hall, the previously solemn, arrogant atmosphere of the Imperial Court was instantly blown to pieces, erupting into a frenzy of completely unhinged uproar!

"What?!"

"Total annihilation of three thousand Centaur elites?! Forced the surrender of six thousand more?! How is that physically possible! How many soldiers in Greywater Village can even hold a sword?!" The Minister of Finance completely abandoned all aristocratic poise, violently shrieking in pure shock. He fully believed the herald had just misread the words. But the herald didn't stop reading.

In fact, his voice grew increasingly hysterical, climbing to an absolute fever pitch, because the contents that followed were what truly, violently shattered all bounds of common sense:"IMMEDIATELY AFTER! The enemy's reinforcing army of ten thousand heavy-axe Minotaurs attempted to execute a total encirclement in the swamp!"

"Commander Soren personally led a strike force of exactly three hundred elites! Utilizing the cover of a midnight blizzard, he penetrated the absolute core of the enemy forces, executing relentless guerrilla harassment! He forcefully drove the ten-thousand-strong Minotaur army into an apocalyptic camp-collapse! In pure terror, they abandoned all weapons and armor, routing completely to the North!"

"And amidst this catastrophic chaos, Lord Soren plunged into the absolute core of the enemy's Royal Pavilion... ENTIRELY ALONE!" The herald himself was finding it difficult to breathe, practically suffocating as he roared the ultimate, world-shaking conclusion at the stunned sea of nobles:"Surrounded by a hundred Black Steel heavy infantry guards... facing eight overlapping magical wards cast by High Shamans... Soren loosed EXACTLY ONE ARROW!"

"Spanning a distance of five hundred meters, he blew a hole straight through the heart of the enemy Supreme Commander... Warchief Blackstone!"

"Warchief Blackstone was executed on the spot!"

"And the combat fatality statistic for the two-thousand-strong forces of Greywater Village... IS ZERO!" Dead silence. As the word "ZERO" violently echoed back and forth beneath the massive dome of the grand hall, the Imperial Court—which had just been clamoring out of control—instantly plunged into an absolute, suffocating silence so profound it was physically difficult to breathe.

Every single Imperial aristocrat, the warlords who personally commanded tens of thousands of private troops, the high-and-mighty ministers who always loved to bloviate and posture... in this exact moment, they were all rendered completely, rigidly statuesque. If this had been some Knight's novel written on cheap parchment, they would have immediately thrown whatever drunken bard penned such an absurd, logic-defying myth straight into the deepest dungeon. But this wasn't a novel.

This was the absolute, official battle report bearing the private wax seal of Grand Duke Valentine himself! Every single logic-breaking, mind-bending metric on that parchment was the ironclad truth, violently verified and re-verified by the Supreme Command before they even dared to present it to the Emperor!