28：The Price of a Potion

The Centurion’s single eye fixed on Meyer, his thumb slowly stroking the haft of his axe.

The air was so dead quiet that only the crackle of the brazier could be heard.

Suddenly.

"Heh. . . heh. . ."

A few strange, stifled rasps squeezed from his throat, quickly erupting into a deafening roar of wild laughter!

The surrounding orcs, who had been roasting meat, began banging their weapons together, joining in with unbridled, mocking guffaws.

The goblins didn't quite understand, but they hopped up and down anyway, letting out piercing, chittering shrieks.

The fawning smile plastered across Meyer's face froze.

He had no idea where his act had failed. Pure terror drenched his spine like ice water.

"A silver ring? Gold?"

The Centurion laughed, baring his tusks, and viciously kicked over a nearby wooden stump.

He strode forward, grabbing Meyer by the collar and hoisting his scrawny frame into the air like a helpless chick. His foul, putrid breath blasted right into Meyer’s face.

"You humans truly are the most pathetic breed on this continent, " the Centurion sneered, his lone eye gleaming with absolute contempt.

"Six days ago, an old human who looked a lot like you was kneeling right outside the crossroads of this very outpost, looking just like you do today."

"That old dog wrapped a torn map in a rag and crawled over to lick the mud off my warboots."

On the ground, the moment Gary heard the words "old human, " his body violently jerked as if struck by lightning.

Dangling in mid-air, Meyer felt as though a rusted nail was being hammered directly into his brain.

Ignoring the blood draining completely from Meyer's face, the Centurion kept his tusks bared and spat out the cruelest of truths.

"That old dog said that if I gave him a flask of the [Minor Life Recovery Potion] brewed by the Shaman to cure his terminally ill second son. . ."

". . . he would lead us to a hidden settlement in the back mountains, packed with over two hundred heads of human cattle."

Boom!

Something exploded deep within Meyer’s eardrums.

Six days ago. . . that was the exact day his father disappeared. The very next day, their village was slaughtered by the orcs.

And he, Meyer, was the one with the terminal illness—still able to walk, but destined to die before turning twenty.

It was his father?

The same father who had taught him to chase off wild wolves with a wooden pitchfork. The father who would rather trek dozens of miles through mountain trails just to trade for half a block of salt, always warning him that no matter how poor they were, they must never steal.

That honest man who would always secretly slip his last bite of good food into the mouth of his sickly son!

He was the one who handed over the map.

To save his life! He had used the lives of over two hundred villagers as bait just to exchange for a single vial of medicine!

The Centurion snorted a cloud of hot breath and tossed Meyer into the mud like a piece of trash.

Muddy water splashed into the air.

Meyer collapsed like a puddle of sludge. His eyes lost focus, only able to see the Centurion’s iron-shod boot planted right next to his cheek.

"Did he get it. . . ?"

The voice came from Gary on the ground. Gary had bitten his own lips bloody.

The Centurion hoisted his heavy axe onto his shoulder, mercilessly crushing the last shred of hope they had left:

"A potion? Waste a potion on a human bug?"

"I took my axe and split his skull right down the middle while he watched."

The Centurion pointed a thick finger toward a stone millstone in the corner of the ruins. Several sharpened wooden stakes had been driven into the stone.

Atop one of them sat an elderly human head.

The skull was cleft clean down the middle, its graying hair matted with dried blood and stuck to the wood.

Its hollow eye sockets seemed to be staring dead at Meyer and Gary in the mud.

Meyer dug his fingernails viciously into the flesh of his own thighs, forcefully choking the agonizing scream back down his throat.

He couldn't scream. If he made even a sound, he and Gary would be turned into minced meat in a second. And the two hundred villagers would have died for absolutely nothing.

Forcing his facial muscles to twist, Meyer lifted his head from the muddy water and let out a manic laugh.

"Haha. . . good riddance to the old dog! Sir! My intel is far better than what that old fossil had! The place I'm talking about even has hidden salt!"

Looking at the human bug before him—a creature so desperate for a reward that he would laugh at the miserable death of the old man—the Centurion shed his last shred of suspicion.

Orcs were bloodthirsty, but they also despised rats that turned on their own kind. A rat like this had guts smaller than a fingernail. Aside from selling out their kin to survive, they couldn't make even the smallest wave.

"Haul him up." The Centurion waved his battleaxe at two armored orcs nearby.

"Sound the horn."

"Bring all thirty goblins. I'm going to see for myself just how fat the human meat this gold-grubbing, kin-selling roach can find for me."

The mist was cold and damp, clinging to their cheeks.

Along the desolate trail, the group waded through knee-high weeds.

Thirty goblins carrying bone spears bounded through the bushes on both flanks, using short knives to hack away the rotting vines.

In the center, fourteen half-orcs clad in heavy, black iron lamellar armor marched in two columns. The Centurion led the way, the edge of his double-bitted axe resting casually against his shoulder pauldron.

Meyer walked three paces ahead of the Centurion.

Gripping the coarse hemp rope used to drag Gary, he slouched his back and stumbled forward, testing the path with uneven steps.

With every step, Meyer's mind flashed back to the ruined outpost and his father's cloven skull.

His father had sold out the settlement. In that initial moment, Meyer had wanted nothing more than to chew the old man's bones to dust.

But the moment the Centurion uttered the words, "to exchange for a Life Recovery Potion, " that hatred had instantly inverted, wrapping a suffocating grip around his throat.

Meyer gripped the rope with a deathly force, the coarse hemp fibers piercing the skin of his palms.

He didn't let go.

He didn't even dare to look back at Gary behind him.

Lead these greenskins into the ambush zone.

Aside from that single objective, his mind held no room for any other thought.

The view zoomed out, passing over the twisted canopy of the forest to Echoing Valley.

Damp vines hung suspended from the sheer cliff faces on either side. At the valley floor, jagged gravel was strewn about, interspersed with puddles of black water reeking of rot.

Soren crouched on a protruding rock at the highest vantage point.

He was waiting.

The wind had stopped blowing.

Down below, hidden among the rock crevices and bushes, forty human soldiers lay perfectly flat. Their faces were smeared with mud, their bodies covered in ferns.

Not a single person whispered, even their breathing was deliberately drawn out. Pressed into the mud by each man's side were three dark-gray short spears.

Soren used his peripheral vision to confirm the array positions of the left and right flanks.

No reflections. No movement.

Finally, his gaze fell on the end of the valley.

There lay a row of fallen, century-old dead trees. In the dark gaps behind those trunks, Kyle angled a heavy wooden spear into the dirt, his right foot planted firmly on its butt end.

Twenty-two soldiers, along with Kyle, had formed a tight, impenetrable inverted wedge formation, utterly sealing off the exit.

The midday sun tore through a wisp of mist. Dappled light fell onto the puddles at the valley floor.

The crunch of shifting gravel finally shattered the dead silence of the gorge.

The bare feet of the goblins were the first to step into the valley entrance.

Following them was the heavy, clanking sound of black iron lamellar plates scraping together. The procession pushed deep into the belly of Echoing Valley.

The terrain abruptly narrowed.

The Centurion suddenly stopped in his tracks.

His single eye swept over the fifty-meter-high cliffs on both sides. His innate orcish battle instincts caught a whiff of something wrong. There was no birdsong here, not even the rustling sound of bone-eating beetles gnawing on dead leaves.

"Halt, " the Centurion barked, his voice booming.

At the very front, Meyer’s knees immediately gave out. He dropped onto the gravel bank, throwing a deeply subservient, sycophantic smile over his shoulder."Sir?"

Thwack.

The Centurion didn’t waste words. Swinging his double-bitted axe down with one hand, the blade cleaved directly into the mud just half a foot away from Meyer.

Sludge splattered all over Meyer's face.

"Human bug." The Centurion yanked his axe free, pointing the blade at the narrow gorge fissure ahead that could barely fit three men walking abreast."Where are the humans? Any further in, and this damned terrain is too tight to even swing an arm. Where are you taking me?"

Not even daring to wipe the mud from his face, Meyer kowtowed right into the puddle and pointed toward the pile of scattered boulders at the dead end ahead.

"Right there! My Lord, look behind that huge, rotting black fir tree! There's an earth cave blocked by rocks. Over a hundred heads of fresh meat are hiding in there, absolutely nowhere to run!"

Meyer’s voice trembled with precise calculation:"My Lord, this batch of fat meat is worth at least ten mana cores! And you promised me the silver ring. . ."

Greed overpowered the Centurion's combat instincts.

"Go move the rocks." The Centurion kicked Meyer forward.

Using the momentum of the kick, Meyer tumbled across the ground twice. By this time, Gary had just been dragged right next to the broken, dead black fir.

With his back to the fifteen orcs, Gary's hands—which had seemingly been bound tightly behind him—suddenly slipped free. The hemp rope dropped into the mud.

Just as the Centurion lifted his foot to walk, his single eye contracted violently.

He instantly realized something was wrong.

Without a split second of hesitation, Meyer did a lateral roll to his feet. Gary grabbed Meyer by the linen collar, and like uncoiling springs, the two of them dove headfirst into a narrow fissure tangled with thorny, dead vines right behind the black fir tree.

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