Chương 361: 361:Disaster-Class Threat

"Two thousand men... counter-slaughtering thirty thousand... zero casualties..." The Empire's Minister of Military Affairs—an old Marshal who had spent his entire life butchering Orcs on the border—violently swayed on his feet. He had to physically grip the white jade pillar beside him just to keep from collapsing. Entirely forgetting to request permission from the Emperor, the old Marshal violently broke ranks, taking a massive stride directly into the center of the grand hall.

"Gentlemen! My esteemed colleagues! Do you still not comprehend the horrifying, brutal reality hidden within this battle report?!" The Minister of Military Affairs shrieked, his voice trembling violently as he swept his gaze across the aristocratic assembly.

"This was absolutely not some standard border skirmish! Let us compare the grotesque disparity in military strength!" The old Marshal roared, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings:"The thirty-thousand-strong army Warchief Blackstone dispatched was the absolute core, the ace vanguard of the Blood Province!"

"Do you remember the Battle of Blood Lion Pass ten years ago?!"

"Back then, the Orcs deployed a mere ten thousand Minotaur light infantry! Hauling those damned totem poles into a charge, they violently, unilaterally butchered our fiercely proud phalanxes of forty thousand heavy infantry! They forced this great Empire to cede three entire cities just to secure a ceasefire!"

"And this time, the enemy's loadout was exponentially more terrifying than ten years ago!"

"In the sky, a full aerial squadron of Wyverns ready to carpet-bomb with alchemical fire! On the ground, tens of thousands of ultra-mobile Centaur sharpshooters! And bringing up the rear, ten thousand Minotaurs capable of flattening fortress walls!" The old Marshal sucked in a massive breath of cold air, speaking with profound, marrow-freezing terror:"And what did Soren hold in his hand?"

"Two thousand men! And a portion of those were raw recruits conscripted just days prior!"

"He didn't have towering, impregnable stone walls to rely on! He didn't have the suppressive fire of an Imperial Mage Corps! And he absolutely didn't have a single reinforcement unit watching his back!" The more the old Marshal spoke, the more he realized it was completely, fundamentally impossible to analyze this using conventional logic. The sheer, grotesque absurdity of having all established military doctrine violently overturned caused this battle-hardened commander to feel a tremor deep within his very soul.

"Yet the result?!"

"Not only was Soren not ground to dust in this meat grinder, but he used those hastily assembled two thousand soldiers to completely, utterly annihilate an elite Orc army capable of sweeping across half the human nations!"

"How in the hell is this merely 'forging a miracle'?!" The old Marshal threw his head back, delivering his absolute, final verdict:"If you look at the entire four-hundred-and-fifty-year blood-soaked history of the Erythian Continent, no matter which nation's most glorious military victory you pull out to compare against Soren..."

"It violently violates all conventional military theory!"

"This is an army that fundamentally shouldn't exist in the mortal realm!" The old Marshal's terrifying breakdown ruthlessly pulverized whatever pathetic, lingering self-comfort the Imperial aristocrats held in their hearts. Their initial shock rapidly mutated into a bottomless, suffocating panic. They finally realized that out in that backward, filthy swamp they had so endlessly mocked, an unpredictable, apocalyptic power had violently awakened.

"If... if Soren leads that monster army of two thousand, pivots his defensive line, and launches an offensive against our Holy Halycon Empire's borders...?" A Marquis whose territory bordered the Misty Swamp stammered, his teeth chattering violently.

"Even magical wards can't block that arrow! Wouldn't our castle walls be effortlessly pierced and shattered before him?!"

"If he could precisely blow a hole through Warchief Blackstone's heart amidst an army of tens of thousands, that means every single person in this room, perhaps even..." The Marquis bit his tongue midway through the sentence, violently slapping his hand over his mouth as he realized his horrific treason. Yet, driven by subconscious terror, every single noble in the hall involuntarily shifted their gaze toward the towering Golden Throne. Yes.

If that unblockable, absolutely silent arrow was aimed directly at the Capital of the Holy Halycon Empire, who the hell could block it? High upon the Golden Throne. His Imperial Majesty, Emperor of the Holy Halycon Empire, slowly stood up. This supreme Overlord, who had ruthlessly suppressed numerous domestic rebellions with an iron fist, felt a profound, tectonic shock ravage his mind. The Emperor was shaken to his absolute core.

It was a terror that utterly eclipsed the shock he had felt upon hearing that a hundred-thousand-strong Orc army was marching south. His right hand violently gripped the golden dragon-head armrest of his throne. In his mind, he involuntarily flashed back to the intelligence reports from just a month prior. Back then, when his shadow guards had reported that Soren of Greywater Village had ruthlessly executed the divine envoy, and subsequently butchered Mog, the nephew of the Blood Province's Governor...

the Emperor had indeed taken notice of the young man. At that time, the Emperor had even felt a sense of amused, calculating appreciation.

"A tool with courage and drive, yet one perfectly suited for my absolute manipulation." That had been the Emperor's verdict on Soren. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. His original master plan had been flawlessly composed: he would simply wait until the Silvermoon Kingdom backed Soren completely into a corner, or wait until the Orcs ground Greywater Village to the absolute brink of extinction.

Then, he, the magnanimous Emperor of the Holy Halycon Empire, would step in as an exalted savior, reaching down to offer a lifeline. Just a single Imperial Pardon, or a shipment of military supplies, would completely strip away the man's independent will, forcing him to serve as a razor-sharp weapon for the Empire to use against both the Silvermoon Kingdom and the Orc Alliance. That was the absolute, unshakeable confidence of an apex ruler wielding political power. But now.

With this battle report—built upon the corpses of thirty thousand Orc elites and drenched in the blood of Warchief Blackstone—laid bare before him... The Emperor finally realized he was wrong. Disastrously, catastrophically wrong! The Emperor exhaled a heavy, stifling breath, his gaze piercing into the distance toward the Misty Swamp.

"He is a dangerous entity the likes of which we have never seen—a man completely unshackled by the traditional laws of war!" The Emperor's mind rapidly cleared. As the supreme ruler of the continent's most powerful empire, he instantly pierced the veil of this localized victory, grasping the apocalyptic shockwaves it would send across the global geopolitical landscape.

Soren's single, devastating strike hadn't just terminated the Orc Supreme Commander; it threatened to violently shatter the entire existing power structure of the world! When an Overlord emerges who can absolutely crush armies of tens of thousands using a mere tenth of their numbers... All the old orders, all Imperial authority, all numerical military deterrence... it all devolves into an utterly meaningless, empty joke!

"If I cannot assert absolute control over him..." The lingering appreciation in the Emperor's heart instantly mutated into profound, marrow-freezing dread in the face of his Empire's existential survival!

"Then he will be ten thousand times more dangerous than ten Orc Alliances combined!" These fleeting, terrifying calculations surged violently through the Emperor's mind. When this supreme conqueror looked back down at the panicked, trembling ministers in the grand hall, he had already reasserted his absolute, draconian resolve.

"Issue my Ironclad Edict!" The Emperor commanded with a booming, thunderous voice. Relying on his supreme Imperial aura, he instantly suffocated the panic of the aristocrats.

"The Cabinet is to immediately draft a missive! Broadcast it to the entirety of the Empire's Northern Defense Line!"

"Instantly reverse all prior postures of recruitment and domestication toward Greywater Village!"

"From this day forward, the Supreme Command of the Holy Halycon Empire's Northern Defense—including Grand Duke Valentine and the Royal Griffon Knights..."

"Must officially designate Soren, and the forces of Greywater Village under his absolute command, as a Disaster-Class hypothetical enemy!"

"Elevate them to the Empire's highest priority! They are the absolute primary target for defensive preparations!" The Emperor issued his targeted, draconian countermeasures with an ice-cold tone:"Deploy additional Mage Corps to the Northern Border to establish high-tier detection arrays! Mobilize elite heavy crossbow phalanxes to lockdown all transit corridors!"

"I absolutely forbid even a ten-man detachment answering to this man from stepping a single half-inch into the territory of the Holy Halycon Empire without explicit authorization!" Every single aristocrat and minister in the grand hall dropped to their knees in perfect unison, crying out praises of the Emperor's supreme wisdom. Yet, deep in their hearts, every single man knew the terrifying truth.

That young Overlord, who had violently carved his way out of the bloody muck of the Misty Swamp, had used exactly one campaign to force the almighty Holy Halycon Empire into a state of highly reactive, full-scale defensive lockdown. Meanwhile, in the northwest highlands of the Withered Bone Forest. The base camp of the Crimson Moon Knights.

Even with two towering toxic camphor trees serving as a natural barrier on the perimeter, shielding the camp from the brunt of the freezing winds, tonight's howling blizzard was absolutely apocalyptic, violently battering the heavy canvas of the command tent. Leona, Commander of the Crimson Moon Knights, currently stood with both hands pressed firmly against a heavy wooden table. Her piercing gaze was locked dead onto the tactical map of the Misty Swamp spread before her, heavily marked with strategic vectors.

Due to her profound, unparalleled reliance on her Vice-Commander, Soren—a man who had continuously forged absolute miracles—Leona's situation was fundamentally different from Galahad at Ironwood Fortress and Gabriel at Broken Horn Ridge. The Prince Regent and Duke Fernando in the Capital of the Silvermoon Kingdom had indeed abused royal authority to violently sever all magical early-warning frequencies across the Misty Swamp, maliciously attempting to isolate Greywater Village from all external contact.

But Leona had intercepted the intel ahead of time. Just days prior, specifically to bolster the defenses of Greywater Village, Leona had dispatched the veteran ranger Zim, alongside twenty elite heavy knights, straight into Soren's territory. During that deployment, the scouts riding point with Zim's unit had acutely detected the violent tremors in the earth and the terrifying silhouettes of Wyverns in the distant sky—just before the Orc army's massive encirclement completely closed the trap.