Chương 41: 41：Total Silence

Forty-five kilometers of deep infiltration in under three hours. The faint scent of sulfur in the air faded, replaced by a pungent, musky stench carried on the wind, accompanied by the wet snorts of slumbering wargs. The squad came to a halt. Soren paused behind the massive trunk of a dead redwood, pressing his body flat against the rough bark. Fifty paces away, shrouded in heavy fog, rows of sharpened logs driven into the mud formed the outer palisades of Bonecrusher Pass.

The dying embers of campfires bled through the mist, blooming like dark, crimson bloodstains in the night. Yet, Soren's gaze wasn't fixed on the hastily fortified stronghold. It was locked onto the road cutting horizontally past the encampment. Moonlight barely pierced the haze. It was a stone-paved road, entirely free of mud. The surface was layered with crushed granite and countless fragmented bones, compacted by thousands of passes from crude stone rollers.

Even with the swamp water bleeding over its edges, the road hadn't softened in the slightest. It remained unyieldingly hard. In an instant, Soren understood the true strategic value of this outpost. Warchief Blackstone's army of over ten thousand orcs needed meat. They needed black iron ore. Above all, they needed a way to transport siege engines weighing thousands of pounds across a vast expanse of swampland. In waist-deep muck, wagon wheels would sink immediately.

Without a reinforced foundation, maintaining an organized supply train was impossible. And the paved road before him was an extreme rarity in this several-hundred-kilometer stretch of wetlands—an elevated, mud-free artery! Bonecrusher Pass served as the choke point beside this road. Northward, it allowed heavy troops to march and crush the remaining human strongholds still desperately holding the line. Southward, it connected directly to Warchief Blackstone's heartland.

Warchief Blackstone had hammered five hundred elite Black Iron infantrymen into this spot for one reason: to fiercely guard this critical logistical artery and ensure the grain wagons kept rolling. Sever it. Soren's eyes gleamed with a bone-chilling killing intent. Once this thoroughfare changes hands, Warchief Blackstone's supply line to the frontline will be cut completely! Soren narrowed his eyes, silently activating [Eagle Eye Perception]. The dense fog in his vision peeled back layer by layer.

Fifty paces away, the wooden palisade came into sharp focus. Five wooden watchtowers stood along the perimeter. The kobold scouts assigned to sentry duty were leaning against the railings, dozing off while hugging their sharpened wooden spears. They occasionally twitched their highly-prized noses, but against an elite squad smeared head-to-toe in rotting swamp mud, their keen sense of smell was rendered entirely useless. Below the towers sat rows of tattered hide tents.

The continuous chorus of snores, mixed with the low growls of dreaming wargs, blended together into the mist. Soren turned his head. Beside him, Gary, Meyer, Kyle, and Ein lay prone against the damp earth. Their eyes were locked onto Soren's fingers, waiting for his tactical signals. Soren extended his left hand. Holding his index and middle fingers together, he pointed at the two watchtowers on the left, then drew the back of his hand horizontally across his throat.

Flicking his wrist, he pointed at Gary and Meyer. Both men lowered their shoulders and gave a curt nod. Next, Soren thrust two fingers forward, opened his palm to simulate a blanket covering, and pressed it downward toward the cluster of hide tents. He then curled his fingers into a tight fist and drove it softly into the mud. One strike, one kill. Total silence. Kyle and Ein gripped the dull, gray-black tips of their short spears and nodded. Finally, Soren drew the dagger strapped to his outer thigh.

Holding it in a reverse grip, he pointed the blade toward the deepest part of the camp—a massive tent pitched directly beneath the inner stone keep. The commander's tent. Deployment complete. If his sixty-five men charged in directly, they could steamroll these fifty sleeping wolf riders in a single wave. But that was not how special forces fought. The moment a bone whistle sounded, five hundred heavy Black Iron orc infantrymen would flood out from the ten-meter-high inner stone keep.

In this completely open terrain, his sixty-five light infantrymen would be ground into meat paste by heavy axes. The night and the fog were their only lifelines tonight. Soren raised his right arm and brought it down sharply. Two dark shadows slipped through the mud. Gary and Meyer moved left and right, clinging to the shadows at the base of the palisades as they crept toward the watchtowers. It was eerily quiet. The two men moved like boneless loaches. Gary reached the base of a tower pillar.

He untied the strangler vine from his waist, looped it over a wooden spike on the beam, and pulled hand over hand. Powered by the explosive strength granted by the Troll Serum, his body scaled the wood like a gecko. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Three seconds. Gary vaulted over the edge of the watchtower. In the corner, the kobold groggily opened its sickly yellow eyes. Its nostrils flared, seemingly catching a whiff of fresh blood far too close.

It was just about to open its fang-filled maw... Gary's left hand clamped over its entire snout like an iron vice from behind, while his right hand locked onto the crown of its head. Arching his back, he drove power up from his calves and planted his knee brutally into the kobold's tailbone. Both hands simultaneously twisted back and to the right with explosive force. Crack. A terribly faint, muffled sound. The cervical vertebrae completely snapped at the third joint, instantly severing the trachea and spinal cord.

The kobold's claws frantically spasmed and scratched at the empty air twice before its pupils rapidly dilated into nothingness. Gary didn't let go. He kept his stance low, pressing his chest heavily against the kobold's body until all resistance faded away. Only then did he slowly lay the corpse flat onto the wooden floorboards. Not a single item dropped, not a single sound of impact echoed out.

Simultaneously, on the other watchtower, Meyer pulled his bloodied dagger from the back of a kobold's skull, wiping the blade clean on its fur. He stood up and shot a thumbs-down signal toward the fog below. In moments, the outer gate defenses changed hands.

"Move in, " Kyle whispered. Multiple hands braced the hinges of the thick, log-bound camp gate, lifting it with excruciating slowness before pushing it open. Ein took point, with Kyle close behind. Sixty-three infantrymen, armed with short spears and daggers, poured through the entrance. The sixty-three soldiers fanned out, pairing off into teams of two, and peeled back the flaps of the hide tents.

The gray wolf riders weren't even wearing leather armor, they lay with bare, muscular chests, huddled against their wargs for warmth. Thwack. A soldier lunged forward, his left hand locking around an orc rider's jaw. His right hand drove a short spear directly through the orc's temple with brutal force. The strength granted by the Troll Serum ensured the thrust met absolutely no resistance. The orc's eyes bulged instantly.

A wet, bubbling gurgle escaped its throat, and its legs kicked wildly—only to be pinned securely to the mud by the full body weight of a second soldier. The thick scent of blood finally agitated the resting beasts. One of the wargs shifted its front paws, a glint of feral malice flashing in its eyes as a low rumble built in its throat. But the soldiers were prepared.

The very moment the warg's throat muscles shifted, a soldier violently rammed a thick, dead branch sideways into the corner of the beast's slightly open mouth! The wood jammed between its fangs. Another soldier whipped a pre-prepared length of rope around the wolf's snout, lacing and yanking it tight. Two seconds. The warg's jaws were completely bound and tied shut. This identical scene played out in utter silence across the encampment. Thirty paces away.

Kyle lifted a tent flap and came face-to-face with a minor chieftain who had gotten up to relieve himself. The orc was mid-stream when he turned, saw Kyle, and opened his mouth to roar. Kyle whipped his left hand out, hurling a handful of gravel-laced mud directly down the orc's throat. In the next instant, Kyle slammed his entire body into the orc's chest. Gripping his shortsword with both hands, he drove the blade upward through the soft tissue beneath the jawbone, piercing straight into the brainstem.

As the convulsing orc collapsed, Kyle dropped to his knees and slid underneath it, using his own back as a fleshy cushion. There was no heavy thud against the earth. Only the faint, rustling sound of blood seeping into the soil. It took only five minutes. As the campfires outside the tents dimmed, the lives within were extinguished just as quietly. Soren didn't watch the slaughter on the perimeter.

Keeping a low profile, he bypassed the faint glow of the main road, stepping lightly across moss-covered boulders as he closed in on the main tent. In front of the tent flap, two orc guards were dead asleep, leaning against wooden racks. Two pitch-black short spears tore through the dense fog. Thwack! Thwack! Mid-slide, Soren hurled the spears with liquid grace, precisely pinning both guards through their Adam's apples.

He vanished into a blur, stepping over the falling corpses as he yanked the flap aside and slipped into the main tent. Inside, firelight danced. An oil lamp emitted an acrid odor. Curled up beneath a weapon rack on the left was a goblin slave. It had just been roused by the nearly imperceptible rustle of the tent flap. Rolling over, it laid eyes on Soren—a terrifying figure covered head to toe in black mud, a longsword gripped in his hand. The goblin's sallow, yellow eyes shrank.

It opened its mouth to scream, but Soren's sword was already pressed against its throat. The freezing edge of the blade sliced into a hair's breadth of skin.

"The Thousand-Commander. Where is he?"