Chương 43: 43：Not a Single Drop of Blood

Soren released the winch, swung over the edge to slide down the thick rope, and landed lightly on his feet. He stared down the seven-meter-wide stone corridor before him. It was a god-given slaughterhouse. Seven meters wide. Even if five hundred orcs packed into this tunnel, they could only stand fifteen abreast. In this narrow chokepoint, the enemy's overwhelming numerical advantage was completely nullified.

"Formation," Soren ordered, his voice dangerously low. Kyle, Gary, and Ein immediately strode forward. Fifty-four men in total. Fifteen men to a row, divided into three ranks. Front and rear ranks staggered. The remaining nine men at the very back were tasked with hurling javelins.

"Lower pikes!" Gary roared. Clack! Fifteen two-and-a-half-meter-long, armor-piercing heavy halberds leveled at chest height in the first rank. The second rank's halberds thrust through the gaps over the shoulders and necks of the first. The third rank leaned back, weapons raised and ready to strike. A triple-layered pike formation completely sealed off the corridor.

Just then, out in the inner keep's courtyard, a goblin who had wandered out to take a piss during a shift change caught sight of the dense, metallic gleam of weapons reflecting in the dark passageway. The goblin's piss caught in its throat. It tore open its coarse, grating voice and shrieked:"Enemy attack!!" The piercing scream shattered the predawn silence of Shatterbone Pass. Soren didn't hesitate for a second. He issued the order for an all-out assault:"Advance!"

The orc barracks in the inner keep erupted into chaos. The Black Iron Infantry of the Blackstone Warband possessed a beastly, violent temper when roused from their sleep. The moment they heard the alarm, tents were violently ripped apart. Dozens of orcs didn't even take the time to strap on their black iron chest plates. Bare-chested and wild-eyed, they snatched up their long-handled battle axes and charged out of the encampment.

"Roar!" They only saw a small, frail-looking squad of human silhouettes creeping into the corridor. The first twenty orcs to emerge didn't care; they directly swarmed into the passageway, hefting their heavy axes for a downward cleave. Humans? One swing would smash right through their armor and bones alike!

"Thrust," Soren commanded coldly. The right boots of the three ranks of soldiers slammed into the ground in perfect unison.

"HA!" Driven by the immense forward momentum of the advancing formation, forty-five armor-piercing halberds plunged straight ahead. Squelch!! The vanguard of the orcs, their battle axes still raised high, met five or six halberd blades directly with their bare chests. Without the protection of their black iron heavy armor, their flesh was no different from wet paper against the coordinated thrust of two-and-a-half-meter polearms. Two orcs were instantly skewered into pincushions.

The halberd tips burst through their backs, trailing chunks of viscera. Their massive corpses crashed backward, tripping up their charging comrades.

"Retract!" Gary roared. Forty-five soldiers violently yanked their arms back. The withdrawn weapons dragged out a massive spray of blood, splattering against the cliff walls and washing over the faces of the second wave of orcs.

"Second thrust!" There was no need to aim; the weapons were all kept at a uniform height. The long halberds lashed out once again like striking vipers. In the narrow corridor, the brute strength the orcs prided themselves on was utterly severed by the dense pike formation. The orcs in the rear pushed against those in the front, and those in the front were skewered by the advancing halberd points. Bereft of their heavy armor, this was nothing more than a one-sided slaughter.

The ground was quickly littered with severed chunks of meat, spilled intestines, and violently amputated limbs.

"What is going on?! Hold the line! Armor up! Put on your damn armor!" Deep within the inner keep, a deafening roar exploded. An Orc Thousand-Commander, standing nearly two and a half meters tall and fully encased in black steel plate armor, kicked down the wooden barricade of his quarters, hefting a massive heavy horse-cleaver. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

His bloodshot eyes swept over the disciplined human formation holding the corridor entrance.

"Left and right Centurions, blow the rallying horn! Bring up the tower shields and push! Crush them to death inside the passage!" The Thousand-Commander possessed exceptional battlefield instincts. He instantly recognized that the enemy was using polearms to choke the chokepoint and immediately directed his flanks. Two Centurions roared as they charged out from the rear, while the heavy infantry behind them frantically fumbled with the leather straps of their tower shields.

Soren stood at the very rear of the pike formation, right at the corridor's entrance, the gentle breeze lifting his black hair. [Eagle Eye Perception] activated. The world instantly leached of color, and all sound was stretched into an agonizing crawl. A translucent crosshair spanned a distance of a hundred paces, locking directly onto the throat of the roaring Thousand-Commander—specifically, the seam in his plate armor, a gap barely two fingers wide. The Windwhisper Bow was drawn to the full.

The three wind-attribute runes carved into the bow's belly instantly flared with a cyan-green luminescence. He loosed the string. THWANG! The bowstring shuddered against the air, unleashing a shrieking boom like rolling thunder. A streak of light tore through the void. The Thousand-Commander had just raised his horse-cleaver above his head. In the exact fraction of a second he was about to bring the blade down and loose a furious roar... Thwack!

The enchanted heavy arrow shaved past the Thousand-Commander's jawline and flawlessly pulverized the windpipe hidden within the crevice of his gorget. A mist of crimson erupted from the commander's throat. He didn't even manage to gurgle a single syllable. The massive, heavily armored behemoth of a body violently tipped backward, crashing heavily onto the two Centurions who were still scrambling to equip their armor. Clang-clatter. The Thousand-Commander's heavy blade clattered onto the stone pavers.

"The Commander is dead!" screeched a goblin, half its face splattered with brain matter, howling like a slaughtered pig. Panic rippled through the ranks. One of the Centurions who had just been pinned beneath the corpse kicked the screaming goblin away.

"ROAR! Form up! Get in there!" The Centurion hoisted his long-handled greataxe. Soren's eyes remained entirely emotionless. He didn't even need to recalculate the wind resistance. A second arrow was knocked to the string. Lock onto the audio source. Draw fully. Release. Swish! A second gale swept through the courtyard. The cursing Centurion still had his rallying cry caught in his throat when the long arrow shot straight into his open mouth, blowing out the back of his skull in an explosion of bone and gore.

He dropped dead instantly. Through [Eagle Eye Analysis], every single orc command node within the inner keep lit up like a beacon in the dark of night. Whoever dared to organize a resistance, whoever shouted the loudest—the arrow of the Windwhisper Bow would skewer them in less than a second. Ten arrows fired in rapid succession. All four Centurions had their heads blown off.

Of the dozen or so Decurions who had rushed out of the barracks attempting to rally the troops, three had gaping holes blown clean through their chests, and another three were pinned dead to the wooden palisades.

"Push forward!" At the front of the corridor, Gary led the charge with a guttural roar. The human halberd phalanx marched over a knee-high pile of orc corpses, driving out of the corridor and thrusting directly into the inner keep like a dagger. The orc encampment descended into absolute anarchy. The Thousand-Commander was dead. The Centurions were dead. The Decurions were dead.

The five hundred Black Iron soldiers, who had been deep in sleep mere moments ago, could only stare in horror at the dense, bristling wall of human pikes slowly, methodically advancing from the darkness. The night was pitch-black, and the fog was incredibly thick. Bereft of any command, and having witnessed their most elite officers inexplicably annihilated in seconds, their primal, beastly instincts caused their brains to short-circuit. It has to be a massive army! A human heavy legion has breached the pass!

We can't stop them!

"The humans have broken in!" Panic spread like toppling dominoes, entirely shattering the morale of the mostly unarmored greenskins. One Black Iron orc, wearing nothing but a helmet, chucked his heavy axe aside, turned tail, and fled toward a gravel slope at the rear of the keep. This single act triggered a total collapse. One runner turned into ten. Ten turned into a hundred.

Deprived of their officers' enforcing presence, the orc tribal soldiers had their morale utterly crushed by the cold, relentless human phalanx. The greenskins trampled over their own kin, scattering like madmen toward the wilderness beyond the stone walls.

"Loose javelins!" The rout was complete. The nine soldiers in the rear rank seized the opportunity, unhooking the ash-black javelins from their backs. They took a few running steps and hurled them at a high arc directly into the chaotic, fleeing mass of orcs. Screams of agony, the sounds of desperate shoving, and the sickening cracks of bones breaking under stampeding feet echoed throughout the valley floor. It was hard to tell how much time passed.

When the final clashes of steel and the desperate sounds of melee combat finally faded, the battlefield fell into an eerie stillness. The only sound remaining was the gurgle of boiling hot blood. Sluicing from hundreds of brutalized, gutted corpses, it pooled onto the stone ground, merging into a steaming, bubbling crimson stream. Soren flexed his fingers, which were bleeding slightly from the immense recoil of the bowstring, before holstering the Windwhisper Bow across his back.

His boots sank ankle-deep into the thick, dark green gore. In exactly one hour, over a hundred and sixty Black Iron orc corpses littered the ground. Most had their chests or abdomens punctured, their necks mangled, or a sharpened javelin protruding from their backs. Fifty-four blood-drenched soldiers stood in absolute silence in the center of the hellish killing ground. Some leaned heavily on their halberds, their bodies trembling violently—a physical reaction to the extreme adrenaline.

Gary leaned against a wall, panting heavily, while Kyle's entire face was painted in fresh blood.

"Roll call," Soren demanded.

"How many dead?" Ein quickly jogged a lap around the formation before returning to Soren. His voice trembled slightly, but his eyes were terrifyingly bright:"My Lord! The tally is complete. Two men sprained their ankles, and three sustained minor scrapes."

"Fatalities... zero." Ein delivered those final words with a burning, violent fanaticism. Fifty-four men had broken a force of five hundred regular heavy-armored orcs, slaughtering over a hundred and sixty of them! They had successfully captured the entirety of Shatterbone Pass! On the horizon, the thick fog parted like a black shroud pierced by a sword, revealing the dazzling crimson heart of the dawn.

The first rays of the morning sun finally crested the mountain walls, cascading directly downward to illuminate the dripping, armor-piercing heavy pikes. Daybreak had arrived. Soren bent down, hoisted the fallen Thousand-Commander's massive horse-cleaver from the stone floor, and turned to face his men.

"Sweep the battlefield! Strip every intact piece of black iron armor from the dead! Locate their supply stockpiles!"

"Lock the gates to the pass down tight. It's time to tally our loot."