29：No Prisoners

"Roar!"

The centurion bellowed in a frenzy:

"Tear these two insects to shreds!"

A dozen goblins on either flank shrieked, raising their short bamboo bows as they charged toward the withered vines.

Twang!

A nearly imperceptible, sharp hum drifted down from mid-air.

A feathered arrow, trailing a gleam of cyan light, pierced through the mist and struck downward at a sharp angle.

An armored orc charging to the centurion's left had just raised his blade to hack at the vines.

Thwack!

The arrow shattered straight through his black iron helmet. The broadhead shredded his left eyeball, punched through his brainstem, and exited the back of the helm in a spray of gray and dark red gore.

The massive beast didn't even utter a grunt. His body slammed stiffly into the muddy puddle at the centurion's feet, sending up a splash half a meter high.

The beacon had struck.

The floodgates of slaughter were open.

"Throw!"

Rocks and mounds of dirt along both sides of the cliffs shifted simultaneously as camouflage was cast aside.

Forty human soldiers, having held their breath in wait, violently hurled their arms forward.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

The first volley of forty forged-iron short spears—accelerated by gravity and the explosive power of the soldiers' arms—wove a grayish-black net of death. It entirely covered the flat valley floor, which was barely thirty paces wide.

The density of the strike made evasion impossible.

To the completely caught-off-guard goblins below, the sky simply went black.

Thud! Squelch!

The sickening sounds of flesh and bone being instantly punctured merged into a single, gruesome cacophony.

The short spears skewered the frail bodies of ten goblins, pinning them firmly to the muddy ground like dead beetles.

Two black-iron-armored orcs, too slow to react, had their armor joints penetrated by the sharply angled javelins.

One of the orcs, speared straight through the neck, dropped his axe. Both of his hands desperately clamped over the spurting wound, emitting a wet, wheezing hiss as he crashed to his knees.

"Ambush!! Shield wall!"

The centurion violently swung his greataxe in a wide arc, deflecting two short spears aimed squarely at his face.

But the command was useless. To maintain their forced-march speed, these Blackstone infantrymen had not been equipped with heavy infantry tower shields—only their large, overlapping scale armor.

Without a second's hesitation, the second volley of short spears rained down!

Desperate to avoid the javelin rain, a few orcs panicked and broke formation, scattering toward the shallow banks on either side.

Their iron boots stomped onto the mossy earth.

Crack!

The woven vines and dirt concealing the spike pits instantly gave way.

Most of the legs of two orcs plunged into the two-meter-deep pits. Upward-facing poisoned wooden spikes at the bottom pierced right through the soles of their leather boots, skewering their feet and shin bones.

"Aaaargh!" an orc shrieked in agony, his body violently lurching downward.

Before he could even attempt to drag his impaled leg out of the trap, three short spears arrived like reapers from above. They instantly pierced his back, pinning him dead against the dirt wall of the pit.

The slaughter was entirely one-sided.

Up on the cliffs, the human soldiers moved like machines: turn, draw spear, hurl.

Over a hundred short spears now littered the valley floor, forming a chaotic, jagged forest of iron.

All thirty goblins had been reduced to pulped meat.

Out of the fifteen elite, armored orcs, only six were still standing. Gripping their weapons, they stood back-to-back atop a pile of rubble in the center of the pass.

Every remaining orc bore injuries of varying severity. Dark blood dripped down, dyeing the crushed stones beneath their feet red.

Above them were steep cliffs and humans hidden in the mist. Below them was a quagmire of traps and thick mud.

Even though the centurion possessed the brute strength to rip apart tigers and leopards barehanded, without being able to touch his enemies, he was nothing but a target.

"Fall back! Retreat! Get out of the gorge!"

Three heavy chips had been gouged out of the centurion's battle axe, and his left pauldron was shattered and hanging loosely after a javelin strike.

He finally realized that this place was a graveyard.

Their opponents were undoubtedly a highly trained regular army!

Trampling over the dismembered goblin corpses, the remaining six orcs let out furious, frustrated pants as they spun around and sprinted wildly toward the rear exit of the gorge.

As long as they reached the end and escaped the range of the projectiles, they would live.

Fifty meters.

Thirty meters.

Just as they were about to burst through the narrow, crack-like exit of the gorge—

Clack! Clack! Clack!

From the shadows on both sides of the narrow bottleneck, camouflaging mud peeled away.

Kyle, leading twenty-two soldiers, entirely sealed off their escape route.

Three rows of human soldiers clad in coarse linen gripped their meter-and-a-half-long gray-black short spears with both hands. They dug their heels into the dirt and raised their spearheads in unison.

They formed a seamless, impenetrable spear wall.

"Carve a path through them!"

His eyes bloodshot, the centurion tapped into the terrifying, desperate strength of his orcish bloodline. He hoisted his greataxe high and spearheaded the charge to crush the spear wall.

Up on the cliffs.

[Eagle Eye Perception]

In Soren's pupils, the world shifted into a deep monochrome gray.

Falling water droplets froze.

Dust hung motionless in the air.

He captured every detail of the madly dashing centurion below, down to the ripples formed as his heavy boots smashed into the muddy water.

In the midst of his furious roar, the thick veins on the centurion's neck bulged. As his chest expanded with a drawn breath, his jaw angled upward, exposing a fatal, two-finger-wide gap between his collarbone and the lower edge of his jaw.

Soren lowered his stance, pinching the fletching of the long arrow nocked on the Windwhisper bow.

His fingers released.

Thrum!

The centurion's greataxe was already cocked back, ready to bring down a devastating cleave.

And then, his body locked up completely.

The shot was absurdly precise. It threaded perfectly through that two-finger gap beneath the side of his jaw. The arrowhead erupted from the back of his neck, trailing a gory clump of flesh, before burying itself deep into a jagged rock behind him.

The centurion’s throat could only emit two wet, gurgling clicks.

The massive axe slipped from his grasp, dropping harmlessly inches above Kyle's head.

The centurion's hulking frame pitched forward, burying his face into the filthy water. He twitched for two seconds, then went perfectly still.

With the centurion dead, the remaining five orc infantrymen completely broke.

They stared at the corpse of their chieftain, then back up at the bristling human spear wall, entirely lost and bewildered.

"Kill!" Kyle stomped his boot forward. With a unified battle cry, the spear wall surged forward two steps.

Fifteen iron spearheads drove violently into the gaps in the five orcs' defenses.

Squelch!

The two vanguard orcs had their abdomens completely skewered by the combined thrust of four flanking spears.

There was no counterattack. The three remaining, chaotic orcs attempted to turn and flee, but in that very instant, a dozen javelins rained down from the cliffs, pinning them dead to the earth.

The battle was over.

At the bottom of the gorge, the wind swirled, carrying the heavy, cloying stench of blood.

Gripping his bow in one hand, Soren leaped from the rocky outcropping, landing squarely in the muddy puddles below.

He strode toward the pile of corpses in the center of the valley.

The soldiers maintained their grip on their spears. Though their eyes burned with fanaticism, they stood in disciplined, dead silence.

Soren’s gaze swept over the dismembered limbs of the goblins, the orcs collapsed in the puddles, and finally, the centurion lying dead at Kyle's feet.

"Clean up the battlefield. Strip their iron and scale armor. Do not leave a single intact arrow shaft behind."

Soren then drew the fine-steel longsword at his waist. He casually tapped the tip of the blade toward a few half-dead orcs in the mud whose chests were still weakly rising and falling.

"No prisoners."

"All of you, take your short spears, aim for their hearts, and run them through one more time."

The execution was carried out without a moment of hesitation.

Kyle tightened his grip on his spear shaft, walked over to an orc still bubbling blood from its mouth, and shoved the blade cleanly through its heart.

Gary had climbed down from his crevice. He stared at the ground—now coated in green, pulped flesh—and slowly sank to his knees.

Meyer, following right behind him, stared at the massive corpse of the centurion. He didn't laugh, and he didn't cry.

Instead, facing the direction of their destroyed village, Meyer buried his face in a muddy puddle. He scrubbed his face with both hands, washing it over and over, as if trying to scrub something away that just wouldn’t come off.

After what felt like hundreds of scrubs, Meyer stopped his hands and stared at his own reflection in the muddy water.

The image that had been haunting him—his father’s gray-haired head, mounted on a sharpened stake in front of the Gravel Town posting station—finally began to fade from his mind's eye.

Gary didn't wash his face.

He walked over to the corpse of the centurion. Gary bent down and picked up the massive double-bitted greataxe from the dirt.

The haft was immensely heavy. He gripped it tightly with both hands, struggling to hoist it above his head. Aiming squarely at the centurion's broad back, he brought it down with every ounce of strength in his body.

Thwack.

The spine snapped.

Gary tossed the axe aside. He turned and walked to the base of the rock outcropping where Soren stood, dropping heavily onto both knees atop the sharp, crushed stones.

Meyer quickly followed suit, kneeling right beside him.

The two brothers pressed their foreheads against the gravel.

"My Lord!"

"An entire village. . . two hundred and ten souls. . . all gone!"

"All we want is to nail every single greenskin in this swamp to a wooden stake!"

Meyer lifted his head, his eyes freezing cold:

"If your camp needs a hidden sentry, I will do it. If you need any intel, I will scout it!"

"From this day forward, my life is yours."

Standing atop the high rock, Soren slowly lowered the Windwhisper bow.

The very instant the brothers' voices faded. . .

[Ding!]

[Quest Completed]

[Condition Met: Annihilate 15 Orcs and 30 Goblins with zero casualties.]

[Reward Issued: Basic Troll Serum x100 Vials]

[Rewards can be extracted from the System Storage Space at any time.]

Soren’s gaze swept across the system interface, a cold light glinting in his eyes.

One hundred vials of serum, secured.

"Fall in and tally the loot, " Soren ordered, sheathing his sword.

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