35：Brains Over Brawn

"I don't know!" the scout shook his head frantically."The shallows were dyed blackish-red with blood! I climbed a dead tree in the distance and took one look. . ."

The scout swallowed a mouthful of blood-tinged saliva.

"Those monsters—the ones that flattened our kite shields with their bare hands—left two corpses behind in the puddles."

"The remaining eight behemoths were bristling with gray short spears like hedgehogs. They were stumbling toward the deep swamp like routed stragglers fleeing for their lives. . ."

Galahad's grip suddenly went slack.

Thud.

The scout crumpled into the mud.

Galahad’s breathing hitched, coming to a complete halt.

Those monsters—beasts that a hundred-man spear formation couldn’t draw a single drop of blood from—were killed? And routed?

What kind of army in this swamp could accomplish that?

The heavy cavalry of the Silvermoon Kingdom? Impossible. Warhorses could never traverse the deep muck of the Sunken Bone Shallows.

A mystic mage battalion from the Holy Halycon Empire?

After a moment of dead silence, Galahad spun around, drawing his broadsword and pointing it toward the mounting block.

"Saddle the horses!"

"The thirty swordsmen of the vanguard, follow me to the Sunken Bone Shallows."

"I want to see with my own eyes exactly who slaughtered the orc elites in that miserable mud pit!"

……

At that same moment.

The Sunken Bone Shallows.

Kyle planted his boot firmly on the trunk-thick arm of a fallen Son of Titan. Gripping the long shaft of his heavy halberd—which was deeply embedded into the creature's flesh—with both hands, he roared.

"Heave!"

The muscles on Kyle's face bulged tightly as he wrenched the weapon backward with brutal force.

With a sickening schlick, the halberd blade tore free.

On the edge of the razor-sharp, fine-steel blade, two rice-grain-sized chips were visible. The side of the halberd head had also warped slightly from when he had violently twisted it to snap the monster's bones.

Kyle drew in a sharp breath.

Even with the enhanced strength from chugging Troll Serum, combined with the immense leverage of a two-and-a-half-meter heavy weapon, the blade had actually chipped and curled.

The flesh-and-blood density of these monstrosities was comparable to an iron anvil on a dwarven forge.

Not far away, Ein crouched half-submerged in a puddle. He reached out and grabbed the fletching of an arrow protruding from another monster’s eye socket.

His knuckles turned white as he yanked the shaft.

However, he only managed to pull out a splintered half of the whitewood. The arrowhead was wedged so tightly into the monster's steel-like skull that the shaft had cleanly snapped.

"Freaks. . ." Ein muttered, his voice tight as he tossed the broken wood aside.

Nearby, Gary sat on a rotting log jutting out of the water, using a strip of linen to tightly bind his left ribs, which he had only just popped back into place.

Every breath he took tasted of copper and blood.

The eyes of these sixty-five veterans no longer held the absolute, icy calm they had maintained during the ambush, instead, they were filled with a lingering, uncontrollable dread.

If Lord Soren hadn't managed to slay the physical body of the enemy leader at the very last second—forcing the leader's soul to flee—these monsters would have undeniably charged into their ranks in a suicidal frenzy.

Just five minutes of close-quarters combat would have been enough to turn all sixty-five men into sixty-five piles of minced meat.

Soren walked past the busy backs of his men, making his way toward the center of the marsh.

The corpse of the Shadow Priest floated quietly face-down in the water, exuding a lingering, dark green spectral aura.

Soren raised his longsword, using the tip to pull back the priest’s tattered robes. The flesh parted easily, revealing shattered, black-and-purple internal organs underneath.

The heart had stopped, the physical vessel was unequivocally dead.

Yet, even in a state of absolute physical death, this Shadow Priest’s soul had managed to detach itself independently, forming a spectral visage. It had even cast a massive Area-of-Effect Shadow Burst Trap and lucidly commanded the monsters to execute a textbook bounding overwatch retreat.

The variables introduced by magic were terrifyingly immense—enough to completely upend a battlefield.

Soren suspected that the Shadow Priest's soul form couldn't be sustained for long, which was why it had been so eager to retreat. Otherwise, the casualties from this skirmish would have been catastrophic.

Soren tore his gaze away from the priest's corpse and swept his eyes over the fallen Sons of Titan.

These monsters were nearly immune to physical attacks, and their lack of pain receptors meant they didn't flinch or stagger when struck.

Considering the sweeping, grid-like search pattern these Sons of Titan had been employing, Soren came to a firm conclusion.

Warchief Blackstone hadn't deployed these monstrosities to the main front lines. Instead, he had cast them out like a wide net into the heavy fog.

All for one single purpose: to eradicate the small faction that had wiped out his heavy escort half a month ago. Namely, Soren himself.

Warchief Blackstone possessed a terrifyingly sharp sense for war, and his reaction time far exceeded that of a conventional orc commander.

'If we hadn't chosen this wide-open area devoid of cover to lure the Shadow Priest into lowering his guard. . . '

'If I hadn't brought the Windwhisper Bow, failing to pierce the magical barrier and destroy the priest’s heart with a single arrow. . . '

'If even one of my men had failed to hold their breath underwater. . . '

Soren sheathed his sword with a crisp click.

The outcome was painfully clear: tonight, sixty-five corpses would be lying neatly in the muck.

Realizing this, Soren knew that simply training elite soldiers was not enough. If he wanted to increase their odds of survival, he needed to impart military command skills to them as well.

"Fall in!"

Soren’s cold voice cut through the early morning fog.

Kyle lowered his heavy halberd, Ein stowed his longbow, Gary used his log to push himself to his feet, and Meyer cut his rest short.

The sixty-five men rapidly assembled, forming three orderly ranks in the knee-deep water. Though every single one of them bore wounds, they stood as straight and rigid as javelins.

Soren strode over to the corpse of the largest Son of Titan.

"Kyle, " Soren said, raising a hand to point at the carcass."Use your experience as a swamp crocodile hunter and tell me—why did we win last night?"

Kyle paused, glancing around at the barren, watery expanse.

"Because. . . we're good at holding our breath underwater? We had a lot of throwing spears? A tight formation?" He answered without a shred of confidence.

Soren pulled a dull gray short spear from the ground and casually planted it upright in the mud. His gaze swept over his three provisional captains.

"War isn't just about gripping your sword hilts tightly and stabbing blindly, " Soren said.

"Do you think last night was luck? Look closely at the water beneath your feet and remember my words."

"This lesson will save your lives a hundred times over in the future."

Soren yanked the short spear back out, using the tip to trace an imaginary line above the water's surface.

"First. In war, you must target the psychological blind spots of your enemy."

Soren pointed to the vast, open expanse of water stretching out for three hundred paces in every direction.

"This is the Sunken Bone Shallows. It’s entirely barren. You have a completely unobstructed view. There isn’t so much as a scrap of tree bark out here to hide behind."

"High-tier Shadow Priests are incredibly dangerous. They possess detection spells that allow them to sense threats lurking behind cover."

"But when a caster like that walks into a completely open body of water like this, they instinctively lower their guard."

"Preparing an ambush in an open field? It's considered a fatal taboo in any military manual."

"Yet, it was precisely because of this taboo that he felt safe enough to skip casting his magical detection. Using reverse psychology to set a trap in the most illogical location—that is how you exploit a psychological blind spot."

The soldiers held their breath.

Gary subconsciously swallowed hard.

It was completely true. He had fought in numerous village defense skirmishes, and the defensive lines were always set up behind wooden palisades or atop high platforms.

If someone ordered troops to lie prone in an open puddle of water, anyone with an ounce of common sense would assume the commander had lost his mind.

"Second. Nullify their strengths."

Soren shifted his weight, trudging two laborious steps forward through the muddy water. The suction of the thick muck was immense, generating a heavy, sluggish squelching sound.

"According to the wolf rider we interrogated, these monsters are called the Sons of Titan."

"Based on what we just experienced, these creatures stand three meters tall and possess terrifying muscle density. The kinetic energy they generate when charging on flat ground is equivalent to a fully barded draft horse."

"On solid ground, an infantry spear phalanx would be instantly crushed and splintered by the sheer momentum of their charge."

"But look beneath your feet right now. This is a deep, thick bed of muck."

"When a two-thousand-pound monstrosity steps into this quagmire, the sludge clamps down relentlessly on its feet with every single step."

"They couldn't run. They were forced to rip their feet out of the mud like pulling up radishes just to take a single step, reducing their mobility by a full seventy percent!"

In the back row, Gary unconsciously clenched his fists.

He remembered how, when their formation had pressed forward, the monsters had been completely unable to leap into the air for a counterattack. At the time, he had assumed the behemoths simply had sluggish reflexes. Hearing this explanation now sent a sudden chill down his spine.

The terrain had literally locked the monsters in place!

For Gary, who already had a knack for utilizing his environment, this revelation deepened his understanding of terrain warfare to an entirely new level.

Soren stopped in his tracks, turned around, and tossed the short spear back to Kyle.

"Third. Pinpoint firepower, blending ranged and melee combat!"

"Because they were unable to sprint or evade, they were reduced to sitting ducks in the mud. That is the only reason the one hundred and ninety-five short spears you carried on your backs could achieve saturated coverage within a fixed, unavoidable range."

"And that is what allowed your subsequent halberd thrusts to actually finish them off."

Soren's voice dropped to an intense murmur.

"In a head-on clash, you would absolutely never defeat these orc elites. But by using our brains to meticulously orchestrate the battlefield, we can lure seemingly invincible foes into a death trap—and completely eradicate them!"

The wind swept across the shallow waters, causing the soldiers' leather armor to flap and rustle.

Kyle’s sweaty palms tightened fiercely around the shaft of the short spear.

Ein’s fingers, resting on the grip of his bow, trembled slightly, as he stared at the dark-haired youth standing before him, only one word echoed in his mind: Terrifying.

Gary and Meyer had also fallen into profound contemplation.

Orc monstrosities were invincible?

Then they just had to manufacture the conditions required to butcher them!

Within the hearts of Ein, Kyle, and Gary—three future commanders—and indeed within the minds of all sixty-five men present, the seeds of military leadership began to sprout. Right then and there, they began their transformation from mere elite grunts into brilliant tactical commanders.

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