Chương 55: 55：A Goblin's Worth

The moment Soren's words faded. Bang! The wooden door of the cabin was violently thrown open.

"My Lord! Something's happened!" Gary, the man in charge of scouting, dropped to one knee on the wooden floorboards. The trap expert, usually renowned for his calm and stealthy demeanor, had veins throbbing visibly on his forehead. Soren didn't flare up at the sudden interruption. Instead, his gaze locked onto the object clenched tightly in Gary's fist. It was a snapped, hollow bamboo shoot. Flattened by a tremendous crushing force, it bore several glaring drops of green blood.

"Speak."

"It's one of our hidden sentries posted at the eastern edge of the swamp!" Gary gritted his teeth, his eyes burning with humiliation and rage.

"A third-line goblin scout. He was responsible for keeping an eye on the orc wolf-riders' movements on the outermost perimeter."

"I went to check his post half an hour ago and found it empty. All that was left was this crushed blowdart and the drag marks of a struggle."

"I tracked the scent and indentations for two miles and confirmed the perpetrators' identities... It was ten humans!"

"They were wearing shoddy leather armor issued by orcs and carrying rusted iron blades."

"They're part of the human slave army that surrendered to Warchief Blackstone! They act as the orcs' hunting dogs, capturing refugees in the wilderness!" Gary took a deep breath.

"Those traitors didn't just capture our goblin scout. They also had over twenty newly captured humans strung together with straw ropes."

"I sneaked close enough to overhear their conversation. They're escorting this batch of 'loot' to the [Bloody Colosseum] established by the Orc Alliance!" The Bloody Colosseum. Hearing those words, Kyle, who was standing to the side, instantly paled. It was a slaughterhouse where the nobles of the Orc Alliance sought their twisted entertainment. Any living creature sent there—whether human or beast—would be stripped bare and thrown into an arena blanketed in yellow sand.

There, they would be forced to fight twin-headed demon crocs starved for three days, or even berserk ogres, until they were torn to pieces purely for the amusement of the orcs in the stands. Once you entered that place, survival was impossible. A brief, deathly silence filled the cabin. Sitting at the far end of the long table, Fina Hawthorne paused, the charcoal pencil still pinched between her fingers. The eastern edge was quite a distance from Greywater Village.

And that goblin was nothing more than the most lowly, third-line laborer. To hunt down a human slave army affiliated with the Blackstone Tribe over a replaceable greenskin goblin... If they alerted the orc garrison at the Colosseum and exposed Greywater Village's true strength... The risks were astronomical, and the return on investment was absolutely zero. Furthermore, according to the noble education Fina had received in the Silvermoon Kingdom since childhood, goblins were lower than pigs or dogs.

If one died, it died. It couldn't even be considered a casualty. However— Schwing! The crisp, metallic scrape of a blade against a scabbard suddenly exploded within the cramped confines of the cabin. Soren abruptly stood up. He reached out and snatched the [Windwhisper Bow] hanging on the wall.

"Blow the assembly whistle." There was not a single shred of hesitation in Soren's eyes.

"I want all sixty-four of our elites ready to move." Kyle froze. Fina's head snapped up in disbelief.

"My Lord..." Fina couldn't stop herself from speaking.

"That's... it's just a goblin." Soren halted his steps and turned his head. His gaze swept past Fina, moved over a hesitant Kyle, and finally landed on Gary's tightly drawn face.

"I don't care if it's a goblin or a human."

"As long as it bleeds for me, it is my soldier!"

"When I brought them under my banner, I promised them shelter! I promised them food and drink!"

"In my army, as long as I, Soren, am still breathing, there is no such thing as abandoning a brother! Whoever dares to touch my people, I will chop their hands to pieces! Assemble!" Those few, resolute words struck the hearts of everyone present like a thunderbolt. Never leave anyone behind! Never give up! Even if the one in question was just a lowly greenskin runt! Gary's eyes instantly turned red.

This hardened man, who had spent years hunting alone in the bogs like a lone wolf, suddenly felt a roaring fire ignite within his chest.

"Yes, My Lord!" Gary surged to his feet, threw open the wooden door, and rushed outside. The piercing shriek of a bone whistle tore through the dense fog hanging over Greywater Village. By the blast furnaces, the bare-chested goblins hammering away at iron halted their work. In the muddy fields, the human exiles driving wargs to plow the land lifted their heads. Everyone watched in sheer dumbfoundment.

Sixty-four towering, heavily-muscled elite soldiers took less than half a minute to don their full-body black iron heavy armor and fall into perfect, murderously intent formation. When the old goblin, Cook, learned through Gary's bellows that this fully armed main force was mobilizing just to rescue a single captured goblin scout... The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Clang. The iron hammer slipped from Old Cook's grasp.

It smashed into his toe, but he didn't even seem to notice the pain.

"Master... Our great Master..." Over eighty goblins dropped to their knees in the muddy water with a chorus of dull thuds. There had never been a Lord who would assemble their elite troops for the sake of a goblin. Never in history! The human exiles trembled just as fiercely. If Lord Soren was fiercely protective enough to move troops for the lowliest of goblins, what would happen if they were the ones captured? His Lordship would undoubtedly lead this army of iron to flatten the very swamp to save them!

Soren swung his massive hand forward. Sixty-five men plunged into the vast, white fog. Having consumed the [Basic Troll Serum], the sixty-four elite soldiers moved at the speed of galloping warhorses, entirely unhindered by the dozens of pounds of black iron armor weighing them down. It was a full hour of all-out, maddening sprinting! Had this been the heavy infantry of the Silvermoon Kingdom, they would have already collapsed to the ground, vomiting from utter exhaustion.

But Soren's army of iron hadn't even broken formation.

"Halt." Soren raised his right fist in the gloom of the mist. The platoon stopped dead in their tracks, rooting themselves like boulders. Ahead of them lay a rift where the terrain abruptly narrowed. Flanked by slick, red shale cliffs over ten meters high, the only passage through was a muddy trail scarcely five meters wide. This was the inevitable chokepoint on the path to the [Bloody Colosseum]. Soren activated his [Eagle Eye Perception]. His vision pierced the depths of the dense fog.

From up ahead came the faint, metallic clinking of dragging chains.

"Gary, take thirty men and lie flat in the rubble behind the left cliff face."

"Ein, take thirty-four men and get into position behind the poison ivy on the right."

"Smear your armor plates with mud! No reflections!"

"Nobody makes a sound until I give the command!" Like a dissolving shadow, the sixty-four black iron heavy infantrymen broke formation and slipped silently into the muck and cover on either side of the rift. Ten minutes later.

"Keep moving! You lowly swine!" Accompanied by crude curses, the sharp crack of a leather whip echoed through the canyon. Ten humans emerged from the edge of the fog. They were dressed in a hodgepodge of discarded orc leather armor. Some wielded spiked long whips, while others gripped rusted iron swords. This was the human slave army that had sold their souls to the orcs. Their faces bore the vile sycophancy reserved for their masters, perfectly matched by a brutal cruelty toward their own kind.

Trailing behind them were twenty ragged refugee captives, all strung together by thick, coarse hemp ropes. At the very rear of the procession, a filthy, foul-smelling green silhouette stood out conspicuously. It was the captured goblin scout. Its right ear had been sliced in half by a sharp blade, and viscous green blood caked half its face. A slipknot was pulled mercilessly tight around its neck. Because its stubby legs couldn't keep pace with the humans, it was practically being dragged across the ground.

The tops of both its feet had been scraped down to a bloody, mangled mess by the jagged rocks.

"Boss, we've struck gold with this haul. Once we hand this batch of captives over to the Colosseum's stockade, the Orc Lord is definitely gonna reward us with a hefty pile of silver coins!" A pockmarked soldier of the slave army chuckled, coiling up his whip. The scar-faced leader spat a thick wad of phlegm onto the ground.

"Keep your eyes peeled. Once we're out of this canyon, we're in the Colosseum's outer perimeter. Don't let any of these captives slip away..." His words hadn't even finished echoing. Without a single hint of warning— A dozen meters ahead in the muck, a seemingly rotting clump of vegetation suddenly and eerily arched upward. Splash! From the mud pits, the bases of the rock walls, and the tangled poison ivy on both sides of the rift...

sixty-four hulking figures in black iron heavy armor, smeared from head to toe in black muck, exploded out of the ground!

"KILL!!" Two-and-a-half-meter-long armor-piercing heavy halberds swept out, weaving an impenetrable net of steel within the narrow confines of the canyon. The slave army soldiers couldn't even process their sheer terror, let alone make the motion to draw their blades. Thump! Thump! Thump! The three slave soldiers at the very front were brutally bashed in the backs of their knees and ribs by the rock-hard whitewood shafts of the heavy halberds. The sickening crack of fracturing bones rang out sharply.

In a mere five seconds of contact. All ten of the usually domineering slave soldiers were slammed into the dirt. Over a dozen heavy halberd tips, gleaming with cold malice, were pressed directly against their eyeballs and throats. If they dared to twitch so much as a muscle, they would instantly be skewered into sieves. Without shedding a single drop of their own blood, Soren's forces had utterly dominated and subdued the slave army!