42：Blood in the Fog

Soren spoke, his voice a low, raspy growl. The harsh, staccato syllables of the Blackstone Orc dialect drilled into the goblin’s ears.

The goblin froze, assuming it was witnessing an internal dispute. Its teeth chattered uncontrollably. Extending a finger like a withered twig, it pointed tremblingly toward the massive bed behind the partition screen, swallowing hard.

But before it could utter a single word. . .

Soren flicked his wrist. His thumb and index finger clamped onto the side of the goblin's neck, and with a sudden burst of pinching force—

Crack.

The goblin’s neck snapped at a grotesque angle. Its head lolled to the side, lifeless.

Gripping his sword, Soren stepped toward the beast-hide screen. He swept it aside.

An overwhelming stench of blood washed over him.

On a massive bed draped in dire-crocodile skins lay a Gray Wolf Cavalry Captain, a towering brute easily over two-point-two meters tall. The sheer mass of his muscles was grotesque, his thighs were as thick as an average human's waist. Even in deep slumber, his heavy, rumbling breaths echoed loudly throughout the tent.

Resting against the headboard was a massive double-bitted battleaxe, easily weighing eighty or ninety pounds.

Soren’s leather boot stepped onto a stray fragment of bone on the floor. It produced an almost imperceptible snap.

In that exact split second, the hulking figure on the bed went completely rigid.

The battle-hardened Orc Captain’s bestial combat instincts flared wildly to life. Forged through countless life-or-death struggles, an absolute intuition—a terrifying, needle-like sensation of impending doom—jolted him awake from his deep sleep.

His bloodshot eyes snapped open.

In the very same breath, his right hand shot out like lightning, grabbing for the heavy axe. The veins on his bulging arm popped like writhing snakes.

"Ene—"

Only a single syllable managed to scrape its way out of his throat. His palm had barely wrapped around the icy haft of his axe when a chilling flash of steel met him head-on.

As Soren stepped forward, his Military Swordsmanship was unleashed to its absolute limit. The forward momentum of his body, the kinetic torque of his right arm, and the explosive driving force from his legs—everything converged upon the tip of his blade.

Squelch.

The razor-sharp edge severed the vocal cords, shredded the trachea, and snapped the cervical vertebrae. A clean, devastating thrust.

Piercing clean through the back of the cavalry captain's neck, the cold steel tip, now coated in hot orc blood, drove firmly into the wooden bed frame.

The Orc Captain’s right hand went limp, dangling uselessly in mid-air. His bulging, bloodshot eyes were wide with shock and a furious, dying refusal to accept his fate.

Soren twisted his wrist and wrenched the longsword free.

Knowing that the impact of the massive corpse hitting the floor would cause a heavy thud, he immediately lowered his center of gravity. His left hand locked onto the falling Captain’s chest, forcefully steering the three-hundred-pound slab of dead weight so it collapsed quietly onto the furs of the bed.

Blood gushed like a ruptured fountain, soaking deeply into the bedding without a single drop hitting the floor.

Soren wiped his blade clean on the felt fabric of the tent.

The entire operation had taken barely half an hour. From silently taking out the outer sentries to decapitating the commander of the connected camps, the eradication of the encampment had been executed flawlessly.

Over sixty soldiers, armed with short spears and daggers, stood amidst the blood-soaked camp. Their breathing was steady, utterly unfazed by the carnage.

Gary and Kyle emerged from the thick fog, one after the other. Dark green blood dripped from their hands, but a suppressed, fanatical gleam shone in their eyes.

"My Lord!" Kyle kept his voice low as he stepped up to Soren to report."The count is complete."

"The outer perimeter defenses—including the watchtowers, patrols, and those sleeping in their tents—have been wiped out. Five kobold sentries and fifty Gray Wolf Cavalry. Not a single one escaped."

"They never even had the chance to reach for their blades. More than half of them died right in their cots."

Gary chimed in from the side, "We’ve also subdued over fifty wolf mounts using our ropes. No casualties or bite wounds on our end."

Outnumbering the enemy and utilizing sixty-five elite veterans against fifty sleeping cavalrymen had been a completely one-sided slaughter.

Soren nodded. His gaze drifted past them, settling on a crude line of wooden palisades in the distance.

"Good work, " he affirmed coldly."The exterior is clear. Now comes the hard part."

"Meyer, " Soren called out.

Meyer stepped out from the ranks, calmly wiping his dagger. Soren pointed toward the nearby wolf pens.

"Take ten men and hold the outer camp. Those mounts are crucial to our expansion efforts in Graywater Village. Guard them well."

"However, if Orc reinforcements breach the area and you can no longer hold them off, slaughter the wolves and retreat into the swamp. Your lives are the priority. Understand?"

Meyer sheathed his dagger. His expression was icy, yet underscored by that same burning fanaticism."Rest assured, My Lord. I’ll hamstring anyone who tries to touch our spoils."

Soren looked away, lifting his chin to gaze at the fog-shrouded sky. The inky blackness at the edge of the horizon was just beginning to thin.

Dawn was approaching.

Once the sun rose over this land, stripping away the cover of night, they would be lambs to the slaughter.

They had started with only sixty-five men. With Meyer and ten others left behind to guard the spoils, their numbers were stretched even thinner. And waiting inside the stone fortress ahead were a full five hundred Black Iron Heavy Infantry.

Soren drew his longsword, leveling the blade at the iron portcullis looming faintly through the dense mist.

"The remaining fifty-four of you, " he commanded."Equip your halberds. We move up to the iron gates."

"Prepare to breach!"

Moving in absolute silence, the fifty-four soldiers leveled their armor-piercing halberds at their waists. They fell in behind Soren, stalking toward the monolithic stone wall.

The inner keep of the Shatterbone Pass was built directly into a natural cliffside fault. Nestled at the base of the forty-foot precipice was a massive gate of iron-banded blackwood, built flush into the living rock.

There were no spiked palisades or barricades guarding the approach. Confident in the fifty cavalrymen camped in the outer perimeter, the Orcs inside never imagined an enemy force could slip past the wolf sentries and reach the walls undetected.

Fifty-four shadows pressed themselves flat against the slippery, moss-covered base of the cliff.

Kyle craned his neck upward.

Jutting out directly above the iron gates was a wooden gantry. A massive hand-cranked winch sat near the edge, its two iron chains—each as thick as a grown man's arm—hanging taut down the rock face to secure the heavy gates.

Two burly Black Iron Orc guards were slumped against the base of the winch. They had completely removed their helmets, their long-handled battleaxes carelessly discarded at their feet. The rumbling sound of their heavy snores drifted down from the gantry above.

Soren slung his longbow over his shoulder. He opted against using a grappling hook, in the dead silence of the pre-dawn hours, the metallic clatter against the stone would echo like thunder.

Finding a handhold in a narrow crevice, Soren wedged the toes of his boots into the stone and hauled himself up. Pressing his body tightly against the freezing, slick rock face, he scaled the sheer vertical drop with the weightless agility of a spider.

Below, Kyle, Ein, and the others gripped their short spears in a white-knuckled hold, their palms slick with cold sweat.

Soon enough, Soren's fingers curled over the lip of the wooden gantry. He hauled himself over the ledge. The floorboards didn't utter a single creak—a testament to his flawless kinetic control, instantly distributing his weight across all four limbs to absorb the impact.

Crouching low behind the railing, Soren drew the bone-handled dagger strapped to his thigh in a reverse grip.

The heavyset Orc on the left was slumped against the banister, his chin buried in his chest, sleeping like a log.

Soren slid into striking range. He drove his left knee firmly into the small of the Orc's back, while his left hand shot out like a viper, clamping tight over the creature's massive, tusked maw.

He slid the dagger beneath the jawline, angling it upward through the soft cartilage. A brutal thrust, followed by a vicious twist.

The brainstem was instantly severed.

The Orc’s eyes bulged from their sockets. Yet, its massive frame instantly turned to jelly, slumping backward against Soren’s knee as if every bone had vanished. Controlling the descent, Soren quietly laid the corpse flat against the wooden planks.

The second guard on the right seemed to catch a whiff of the fresh blood. Smacking his lips, his cloudy, yellowed eyes blinked open.

All he saw was a blurred silhouette.

The dagger vanished from Soren's grip. Streaking through the air like a silver flash, it shot straight into the guard's half-open mouth. The blade tore upward, the tip shattering the back of the skull as it punched clean through.

Not a single twitch of resistance followed. The corpse pitched backward, striking the base of the winch with a soft, muffled thud.

Soren stepped forward, yanked his dagger free, and cleaned the blade on the dead Orc’s tunic.

He turned his attention to the winch.

The locking mechanism was held in place by an iron wedge as thick as a man's calf. If he simply yanked it out, gravity would take hold of the thousand-pound gate, sending it crashing down while the violent dragging of the iron chains would roar like a tidal wave.

Soren stripped off his leather bracer and wedged it tight into the interlocking teeth of the gear mechanism.

He clamped one hand onto the heavy timber crank. The muscles in his right arm bulged, stretching his sleeve to the absolute limit. Though faint, the bloodline of a Son of Titan coursing through his veins granted Soren monstrous physical strength.

He slowly worked the iron wedge free. The moment it slipped out, the massive chains yanked downward with terrifying kinetic force.

Soren planted his boots firmly against the floorboards and ground his teeth together. Relying purely on brute, unadulterated strength, he fought the immense drag, manually reversing the massive timber winch inch by agonizing inch.

Clack. Clack.

Faint metallic clicks echoed as the gears turned. Down below, the iron-banded doors slowly parted inward, creating a gap three feet wide.

The fifty-four veterans waiting below possessed an unspoken synergy. Without needing a single command, Kyle took the lead, slipping sideways through the gap. The rest of the veterans flowed in after him in single file.

Beyond the gates lay an excavated tunnel scarcely seven meters wide. Flanked by jagged, uneven rock walls, the passage extended for about fifty paces before opening up into the spacious courtyard of the inner keep, revealing a sprawling cluster of barracks.

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