Chương 379: 379： The Widow Who Slaughtered a Noble

Right now, Greywater Town's recruit camp was a deafening cacophony. Following Meyer's rigorous screening, nearly a thousand surviving human commoners, serfs, and wandering mercenaries had been stripped of their weapons and herded into this compound. The knight, Felix, was currently employing brutal military discipline to break in these unruly newcomers.

The air was thick with the acrid stench of sweat, the raw smell of overturned earth, and the choking sulfurous fumes drifting over from the geothermal forge in the distance. The recruits were toiling away with all their might, swinging iron pickaxes to excavate the massive foundations for Greywater Town's grand stone walls. Felix had laid down an ironclad rule: only those who worked would receive a massive, steaming bowl of Swamp Tuber gruel—thickened with real meat jerky—when night fell.

Soren pulled his hood low, weaving his way through the dense crowd. These newcomers didn't recognize him at all. Assuming he was just a regular camp overseer, they hastily parted ways, their eyes filled with a mix of fear and respect. Guided by the cursor gleaming in his mind's eye, Soren's gaze pierced through the overlapping throngs of people. Finally, his eyes locked onto the base of a mud wall in the southwest corner of the camp.

Amidst a group of refugees violently shoving and cursing at each other to claim a spot out of the freezing wind, one woman stood out. Her entire aura was completely alienated from the chaotic atmosphere around her. She wore a patched, coarse linen dress, draped in a tattered cloak of indistinguishable color, with a plain hemp cloth wrapped around her head. Judging solely by her exterior, she looked like nothing more than a destitute, bottom-tier village woman.

But under the sweeping gaze of Soren's [Eagle Eye Perception], all disguises were rendered useless. Though the woman was huddled in a corner, her body was in a state of calculated relaxation. The tips of her boots were perpetually angled toward the camp's widest evacuation corridor. And strangely enough, the violent, short-tempered thugs fighting for territory around her subconsciously skirted a half-meter radius away from her, driven by some unseen survival instinct.

What shocked Soren even more was her terrifying situational awareness. Her head was lowered, yet she was continuously, instinctively evaluating the distance of every person around her. She was timing the shift changes of Felix's patrol squads, and she was even calculating the exact blind spots of the heavy ballistae mounted on the distant watchtowers! A survival expert who has walked the razor's edge of life and death for a very long time, Soren evaluated highly in his mind.

Without hesitation, Soren walked straight toward the mud wall, stopping directly in front of the woman. As his shadow fell over her, Lyra, who had been guarding Soren's flank like a ghost, instinctively rested her right hand on the latch of her throwing knives. Lyra sensed it. The very microsecond Soren approached, the muscles of this seemingly frail woman coiled tight beneath her ragged cloak, entering a state of explosive readiness.

"Evelyn, isn't it?" Soren looked down at her, directly calling out the name provided by the Warlord System.

"Greywater Town is a territory undergoing comprehensive, massive expansion. We need capable people."

"Your disguise might fool the recruit drillmaster, but it doesn't fool me. Your perception and instincts are far too glaring."

"Join my ranks. This territory needs your talents." The woman—Evelyn—slowly raised her head at his words. There was no panic in her eyes. Only a dead, rippleless apathy.

"Sir, you have the wrong person," Evelyn said, her voice flat.

"I'm just a widow fleeing from the Ironpeak Duchy. Just dragging myself through the Misty Swamp cost me half my life."

"What use could a woman possibly be in a military camp?" She sighed, playing the part of an exhausted refugee perfectly.

"I heard from that officer named Meyer that Greywater Town provides for the sick and doesn't kill without reason."

"I just want to be a common logistics worker here. I can wash the bloody linen bandages for the soldiers, or sit in the back kitchens and peel those Swamp Tubers."

"As long as you give me a bite to eat so I don't starve to death, and let me live out the rest of this hopeless life in peace... that's enough. You should go recruit those mercenaries who actually have blood on their hands." Her rejection was incredibly natural and reasonable. It perfectly encapsulated the pleading of a bottom-tier woman faced with authority. But Soren didn't mock her. Instead, he took a half-step to the side, gesturing toward Lyra, who was practically radiating a lethal, blood-soaked aura.

Then, he raised his hand, pointing toward the upper district. There, Fina, the Master of Coin, was currently chewing out several quartermasters, efficiently organizing massive ledgers of population data and financial logistics with absolute authority.

"In the other nations of this continent, even within the Holy Halycon Empire, women are indeed largely reduced to breeding tools or noble playthings. But this is Greywater Town." Soren's voice carried the undeniable weight of a sovereign. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

"In my territory, there is absolutely zero discrimination based on gender or class."

"Look closely. The person standing by my side, ready to kill at a moment's notice, is my personal bodyguard."

"The person in the distance, holding the absolute lifeline of rations and supplies for an army of thousands, is my Treasurer. They are both women. But in Greywater Town, even the most hardened, battle-scarred veterans must halt and offer them a crisp military salute!" Evelyn finally reacted. Her eyes followed his gesture to Lyra and Fina. For the first time, a visible ripple of emotion broke through her apathetic facade.

In this man named Soren, she saw an equality that simply did not belong in this dark, rotting era.

"Who... exactly are you?" Evelyn's cold disguise finally cracked. Soren pushed back his hood.

"I am Soren. The Lord of Greywater Town. Now, are you willing to have a real conversation with me?" Half an hour later, inside the Greywater Town Command Post. Soren sat behind his wooden desk, while Lyra stood quietly by the door, guarding the exit. Evelyn stood in the center of the wooden room. While her body was no longer coiled as tightly as it had been in the recruit camp, her profound indifference toward her own life and death remained glaringly obvious.

"My Lord," Evelyn said flatly.

"If you believe I am lying, or if you think my hidden identity poses a threat to your territory... you don't need to waste energy trying to place me. If you refuse to let me rot away in the rear logistics lines..." She looked up, her eyes numb.

"You can hand me an iron sword right now and throw me into your frontline suicide squad."

"The next time we encounter the Orcs, let me charge at the very front for dangerous close-quarters combat. Dying under the giant axes of those monsters... I suppose a life for a meal in Greywater Town is a fair trade. I don't care." Soren leaned back in his leather chair, studying the woman intently.

"Every single one of my soldiers is incredibly precious. They are forged to slaughter the enemy, not to be thrown to the front lines as sacrificial pawns."

"Evelyn, the psychological fortitude required to face me without flinching, and those flawless, razor-sharp instincts you displayed in the camp... those are not born, they are forged." Soren's eyes bored into her.

"Tell me. Why do you use layer after layer of apathy to mask yourself?"

"What exactly did you go through, that would make someone with such terrifyingly high talent view her own life as so utterly worthless?" Faced with this interrogation, Evelyn remained silent for a long time. Suddenly, a miserable, ugly smile broke across her face.

"Fine. I'll tell you. Because I am not just a liar. I am a wanted fugitive with hands drenched in blood." Evelyn slowly closed her eyes, the agonizing memories clawing their way back to the surface. She spoke with a chilling detachment:"I grew up in a low-end brothel on the borders of the Ironpeak Duchy. I'm a bastard who never even knew her father's name."

"From the age of six, I crawled between the feet of stinking, vile men. I took beatings. I emptied chamber pots. When I was fifteen, I contracted Lung Rot. I was coughing up blood all over the floor. The madame thought I was bad luck, so in the dead of winter, she threw me into a freezing, stinking ditch to die." At this moment, a sliver of genuine, girlish tenderness somehow pierced through her hollow shell.

"Just when I thought I was going to be eaten alive by wild dogs, a man saved me. He was a poor, wandering peddler. He was ugly, but he possessed a soul so clean it didn't belong in this disgusting world."

"He took off his only dry coat and wrapped it around me. He carried me on his back for over a hundred miles in the snow."

"To cure my illness, he fell to his knees and kowtowed to the apothecaries. He sold his own blood to trade for low-grade medicinal herbs."

"Miraculously, he dragged me back from the brink of death. After that, we managed to scrape by, making leather shoes to trade for a pitiful handful of flour."

"Even though we went to bed hungry every single night, those were the only days in my entire life where I felt like a human being."

"We fell in love. We swore that we would rely on our own two hands, quietly save up enough money, and buy a tiny patch of barren farmland." As she spoke, Evelyn's body began to tremble uncontrollably.

"But... that life didn't last. In an era where even drawing breath is subject to the oppression of the nobility, the happiness of the poor is the original sin!" Her voice cracked, thick with an agonizing, suffocating sorrow.

"It was the market patrol squad. A distant nephew of a Viscount. He walked past our stall and decided that the 'security protection fee' we paid was short by two copper coins."

"Two copper coins! To make an example out of us to the other merchants, that aristocratic beast took off his iron-shod riding boots. One stomp. Two stomps..."

"He stood right in front of me... and he stomped that man's skull to pieces while he was still alive! I kowtowed until my forehead bled. I offered him every single pair of shoes we had. But he just laughed. He said the sound of a peasant's bones shattering was incredibly crisp..."