Chương 382: 382：The Warlord's Eyes and Ears

"You are right... My Lord," Lucian said, his voice trembling. His hands clenched into tight fists, as if his very soul was being torn apart.

"My Duke father... he only wanted me to take over the family's three trade ports in the south. He stuffed my bags with gold coins, telling me that even if the human faction is completely annihilated, as long as our family runs fast enough, we can still live out our lives in peace, far from the flames of war..." That had been the anchor weighing on his heart when he first fled to the front lines. He had betrayed his family's expectations.

To defy the will of his immensely imposing father had required unimaginable courage. However! Lucian suddenly snapped his head up. His eyes burned with the fury of a youth who still held onto idealism and kindness deep in his heart! His breathing grew heavy, and he roared with raw emotion:"On my way fleeing to the Misty Swamp, I saw refugees in the fallen territories locked in iron cages, treated like literal livestock!"

"I saw how the aristocratic lords of the Silvermoon Capital imposed crushing taxes just for a few luxury furs, forcing desperate peasant women to sell their own daughters!"

"I am a noble too! I know that every single bite of the fine wheat bread I eat is built upon the tragic, bloody sacrifices of the poor at the absolute bottom of this continent!"

"My father thinks we can just stay out of it, but I find it utterly disgusting! If this sick, rotting world doesn't undergo a fundamental change, we merchants of the Aethel Empire will eventually become nothing but a stockpile of rich supplies for the Orcs to plunder at will!" Lucian stared intently at Soren. His mind echoed with the grand ideals proclaimed in the gazettes about Greywater Town—ideals capable of completely overturning the rules of the old world: No racial discrimination!

The absolute abolition of class oppression! A safety net for the crippled and disabled! Human lives placed above all else!

"You want to shatter that rotting class oppression. You want to eliminate the Orc threat..." Lucian muttered, his tone shifting from confusion to an unshakable, diamond-hard determination. The dormant, hot blood deep within this wealthy young master had been thoroughly ignited by Soren's grand vision! After just a brief moment of thought, Lucian made a decision that not only defied his family's wishes but would likely result in him being permanently disowned! Thud!

The Duke's second son, still wearing his custom silk suit, dropped to both knees in the filthy mud. He struck his right fist violently against his left breast, offering a knightly salute of absolute, genuine loyalty.

"I, Lucian Flores." He raised his azure eyes to look directly at Soren. There was no longer a trace of cowardice or naivety in them; there was only the fierce devotion of a true believer.

"I choose to follow you, Lord Soren!"

"As long as it can bring even a single drop of true hope to this world, from this day forward, I am the man who will gather intelligence and amass wealth for you! No matter how terrifying the circumstances may become, I will never back down!" Inside the Greywater Town Command Post. Soren strode to the head of the heavy wooden table, pulled out his chair, and sat down. His personal guard, Lyra, melted seamlessly into the shadows near the door, exactly as she always did.

Felix, the knight who had just been strictly drilling the refugees in the recruit camp, still carried the sharp chill of the north wind on his armor. Fina, the Master of Coin responsible for finance and population logistics, sat primly to the side, hugging a thick cowhide ledger. And Meyer, the Frontline Screening Officer, had just returned from the dungeons, having used a few red-hot iron nails to ruthlessly extract intelligence from the spy sent by the Orcs' Spire of Shadows.

These three core figures of Greywater Town immediately noticed the two people following Soren. Meyer's razor-sharp gaze instantly locked onto Evelyn. He had just seen this woman in the screening camp little over an hour ago. But now, though she was still dressed in tattered rags, she exuded a chilling, deadened aura that sent a shiver down his spine. Meanwhile, Felix scrutinized Lucian.

Seeing the boy's lake-blue silk suit—covered in foul-smelling acid mud yet undeniably astronomically expensive—the regular military commander felt a surge of pure disdain for the flamboyant noble brat. As if to warm the tense atmosphere, Lyra stepped forward and scooped out several steaming bowls of bone broth from a nearby clay pot, placing them before everyone. The thick soup, boiled with chopped winter herbs and precious magical beast marrow, gave off an incredibly rich, mouth-watering aroma.

Lucian stared at the meat broth in front of him. Back in the Aethel Empire, this kind of crude, unrefined food wouldn't even be fed to his family's hunting hounds. But the sheer starvation from his long, agonizing journey, combined with the brutal physical labor in the recruit camp, had long since drained every ounce of his stamina. Abandoning every shred of his ingrained aristocratic etiquette, Lucian grabbed the coarse clay bowl and gulped the thick soup down ravenously.

He didn't even pause when the scalding broth burned his tongue. Because he drank too quickly, he choked and began coughing violently—a display that made Felix roll his eyes with even deeper contempt. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"Enough," Soren said, his voice instantly silencing the room.

"Everyone is here. Let's get straight to business."

"Meyer's vigilance today is highly commendable. Plucking an Orc spy out of thousands of refugees proves that the enemy's attempts to infiltrate Greywater Town are constantly ongoing." Soren swept his gaze across the room, his tone suddenly growing heavy.

"But this precisely exposes a massive weakness of ours! We are being watched, yet we know absolutely nothing about the movements of our enemies!" Soren stood up, walking over to the sprawling map. His finger slashed heavily across the northern defensive lines, before aggressively pointing south—toward the Holy Halycon Empire and the Silvermoon Kingdom.

"Everyone, right now, the entire world knows that Greywater Town pulled off a zero-casualty miracle and assassinated Warchief Blackstone."

"This means that not only have we been marked as a mortal enemy that must be eradicated by the Beast Court... we are equally being watched with high alert by the power players of Halycon and the corrupt nobles of Silvermoon!"

"If we don't proactively strike out to gather intelligence, the next thing waiting for us might be a casual remark from some Grand Duke that instantly cuts off all our external supply lines. Or worse, a rogue assassin sent to quietly dump lethal poison into our water source!" The expressions of the core members instantly turned grave. They knew perfectly well that their Lord was describing a very real, imminent threat.

"Therefore, I have made a firm decision. We are going to construct a human-exclusive intelligence network for Greywater Town!" Soren declared with unshakable authority.

"This is not just a tactical defensive necessity to counter Orc assassinations and enemy infiltration right now. In the future, it is an absolute requirement for us to project our influence and our ideology into the more than thirty nations of the Aerethian Continent!" Hearing such a monolithic phrase as 'infiltrating more than thirty nations,' Meyer's heart practically skipped a beat.

Before this very moment, Meyer had honestly believed that his two-hundred-plus Goblins only needed to keep an eye on the narrow borders of the Misty Swamp to defend against Orcs. But now, staring in absolute awe at Soren's towering back, a terrifying realization dawned on him: The Lord isn't just forming a simple squad of scouts. He is plotting a grand, sweeping strategy that will encompass the entire continental map! He intends to plant an intelligence network inside every single human nation!

"To achieve this goal, we need talented people," Soren said, turning around. His gaze fell upon Fina and Felix.

"Felix, you command the recruit camp. Fina, you control the population registries."

"I am ordering you to secretly select ten suitable candidates from the massive influx of refugees and new recruits. They will serve as the first batch of human operative reserves for our new intelligence department!" Hearing a military order, Felix immediately snapped to attention, his back straight as a ramrod. He shouted enthusiastically:"Rest assured, Lord Soren! First thing tomorrow morning, I will force those nine-hundred recruits into a fully loaded, heavy-armor cross-country run around the swamp!

I guarantee I will personally pick out the ten fiercest warriors with the best stamina, the most ruthless sword skills, and absolutely no fear of dying to Orcs!"

"Wrong!" Soren mercilessly shattered the medieval knight's archaic line of thought.

"Felix, if I wanted fearless, muscle-bound brutes, I would shove them all over to Talon to plug the frontline gaps in the [Macedonian Phalanx]!" Soren corrected him sharply, deciding right then and there to forcefully instill the selection criteria of modern special-operations espionage into this old-school knight:"For this specific batch of people, I do not need them to be able to swing a fifty-pound greatsword. I don't even need them to be physically strong."

Soren locked eyes with Felix, laying out a series of grueling, highly unorthodox requirements that the knight had never even conceived of:"I want people whose minds are hyper-agile. People who can maintain absolute, icy rationality even when backed into a corner of certain death."

"Starting tomorrow, during the ration distribution, I want you to intentionally prepare ten fewer portions. Observe them secretly. Find out who among them can completely suppress their anger, or who uses clever bartering and manipulation to secure food for themselves."

"Toss a blood-stained dagger onto the training grounds. Observe whose eyes instinctively dart to the reactions of the people around them first, rather than staring at the dagger itself."

"When you sound the anti-air sirens in the dead of night, memorize whose first, instinctual reaction is to put their back against a solid wall and locate a blind spot for cover, rather than running out blindly with the panicked herd."

"The standard will not be lowered!" Soren stressed, his voice echoing with absolute finality.

"Even if it takes you one month, or two! If their minds aren't agile enough, if their insight into the darkness of human nature isn't piercing enough, I don't want a single one of them!"

"These ten people must survive the most rigorous psychological and camouflage assessments ever conceived!"