48：The Mud-Covered Noble

The sprawling convoy began to turn, cutting into a hidden valley trail.

Over eighty goblins marched at the vanguard, trudging through the thick mud. Fifty massive wargs, foaming at the mouth against their bits and reins, panted heavily as they hauled wooden carts laden with flour, dried meat, potions, and catapult components. Armed halberdiers escorted the convoy, securing both the front and rear.

Over a hundred exiles were corralled in the center of the formation.

They huddled together with their necks drawn in, casting terrified glances at the snarling wargs. Yet, whenever their eyes drifted to the mountains of dried meat and grain sacks piled on the carts, they completely forgot the sharp pain of granite shards biting into their bare feet. All they could do was swallow uncontrollably.

"Gary, Meyer, keep an eye on the flanks. Don’t let anyone fall behind and sink into the bogs."

Astride a massive warg, Soren sat at the highest vantage point of the convoy, scanning the ragged group of exiles.

[Talent Appraisal] activated.

When he opened his eyes again, a faint luminescence hovered above each exile's head, glowing with varying intensities based on their innate talents and physical attributes.

His gaze swept toward the rear of the procession. Suddenly, his eyes locked onto a distinct cluster of light near the grassy shoulder of the path.

It was a girl.

She was frail and emaciated, draped in little more than a frayed gray burlap sack. The tattered fabric barely covered her budding chest and one of her bony shoulders. Her entire face was caked in a thick layer of putrid, fermented swamp muck. Even her hair was matted into stiff, muddy clumps. She looked like a little mud-monkey, blending seamlessly into the wretched mass of fleeing refugees.

Yet, as Soren observed her, he noticed a glaring inconsistency.

It was her gait.

When the other exiles navigated the downhill slope, their steps were mostly frantic and heavy, their centers of gravity wildly unstable. But with every step she took, the ball of her foot touched the ground first. Only after securing a firm footing did she lower her heel, her back slightly arched. This was an incredibly seasoned footwork technique designed to absorb impact and avoid slipping.

Even more telling was when she passed a deep puddle. She intentionally lurched to the side, feigning a stumble. In doing so, she dragged her damp sleeve through the foul muck, purposefully smearing fresh mud over her jawline—the only spot where a hint of fair skin had been exposed.

She was actively and desperately concealing her true appearance.

In this dog-eat-dog wasteland, a beautiful young woman—whether she fell into the hands of orcs, exiled criminals, or even ordinary soldiers—would suffer a fate worse than death.

Such decisiveness. Such sharp survival instincts...

Interesting.

Soren withdrew his gaze and casually tapped his saddle. He didn't expose her disguise. It didn't matter. Once they entered Graywater Village, regardless of whether she was a noble or a peasant, this girl would become his subordinate.

The girl leaned heavily on a sharpened branch of hard birch, trudging through the deep ruts left by the cartwheels.

With every step, the dried crust of black mud on her face would flake and crumble. Every so often, she had to subtly use the fresh mud slathered on her wrist to patch up the cracks.

No one paid any attention to her. To the outside observer, her eyes appeared hollow and completely numb to the world. Yet, deep within those muddy, obscured pupils lay a gaze as cold as solid ice.

Her calf throbbed with a dull, persistent ache. Whenever she closed her eyes, visceral, blood-soaked images flashed through her mind.

Viscount Blake’s ruby-encrusted boots.

The heavy rosewood doors of her family’s manor shattering under the charge of knights in the dead of night.

The gruesome gash on her calf, torn open as her loyal guards shoved her into the hidden cellar.

And her father... hanging from the branches of the ginkgo tree in the front courtyard, his mouth forcefully stuffed with fabricated "evidence of heretical treason."

The Silvermoon Kingdom was rotten to the core.

There had been no tribunal, no trial by the Noble Council. Simply because Viscount Blake desired a tax-free smuggling route that bypassed the border checkpoints, he had framed her merchant-born family.

The women of her house had been condemned to serve as military comfort women. She had only escaped by throwing herself off a cliff, miraculously landing in a supply cart piled high with animal pelts. From there, she had smuggled herself among this herd of condemned prisoners being marched into the Misty Swamps.

At first, she had merely been waiting to die.

That was, until she encountered this contingent of halberdiers.

The girl bit her lower lip, stealing a covert glance at the black-haired man riding the warg at the front. The commander known as Soren.

Initially, she assumed they were merely a covert Silvermoon Kingdom detachment operating within the swamps. But everything she had witnessed on this journey had completely shattered her worldview.

Those massive wargs chained to the supply carts—those were the cavalry mounts of the Blackstone Orcs!

The pungent barrels stacked on the wagons were undeniably alchemical fire-oil, a strictly contraband military resource.

But what truly made her skin crawl were the eighty-plus green-skinned goblins toiling at the vanguard, repairing the road as they marched.

When the knights of the Silvermoon Kingdom encountered goblins, their standard procedure was to drive a spear straight through the creatures' ugly, oversized ears. There was absolutely zero precedent for letting the vile monsters live.

Yet, these goblins behaved like thoroughly domesticated warhounds. They were terrified of the human commander, obeying his every word in deathly silence, practically working themselves to the bone to earn his favor.

Graywater Village...

The girl silently muttered the name, rolling it over in her mind.

Seeking vengeance through the laws of the Silvermoon Kingdom was an impossibility. The aristocratic bureaucrats shielded one another; everything was driven by profit. If she wanted to kill the powerful Viscount Blake—and slaughter the border orc armies that colluded with him—her own strength would never be enough.

The only things she had left were the texts her father had drilled into her head since childhood: An Introduction to Kingdom Finance and Taxation, Solutions in Advanced Arithmetic, and so on...

Since this man was hauling exiles like her to Graywater Village, she would play along. She would observe.

She needed to see exactly what kind of territory could tame wargs and goblins, and capture military siege engines. If this Soren’s army possessed the strength to butcher nobles and slaughter orcs, then so what if she sold her life and all her knowledge to serve him? She would gladly become Lord Soren’s tool.

The grayish-yellow mist was violently torn apart by the massive procession. The familiar scent of rotten eggs drifted through the air—the sharp tang of volatile sulfur.

"We've arrived." Sitting atop the lead warg, Soren cast his cold, unyielding gaze forward.

As the mist parted, a unique landscape revealed itself to the exiles and goblins. To their left was a venomous bog, violently bubbling with toxic green gas. To their right lay a boiling, smoking pool of liquid sulfur. Sandwiched between these two deadly natural barriers was a narrow, bottlenecked strip of dry land.

At the end of this path, two wooden watchtowers loomed at the edge of the dense fog.

"Who goes there?! Halt!" A hysterical, trembling shout echoed from the top of the watchtower.

The two Graywater villagers left on guard duty clutched sharpened wooden spears. Their legs shook so violently they nearly toppled headfirst from the platform.

Who could blame them for what they saw? Emerging from the mist were fifty massive wargs, each over two meters long, exhaling plumes of white steam. They advanced like rolling mountains of muscle! Behind the beasts marched over eighty green-skinned goblins and a hundred ragged, unidentifiable humans!

But the most terrifying sight of all was the sixty-odd soldiers flanking the convoy. Clad in crude leather armor, these men were absolutely drenched from head to toe in thick, viscous green blood. The suffocating aura of slaughter radiating from them made the guards believe that butchers from the Blackstone tribe had finally come to annihilate their home.

"Are you blind, you dogs?! Open your damn eyes and look at who it is!" Gary scoffed, wiping a streak of black mud from his face as he roared at the tower.

The villagers in the watchtower vigorously rubbed their eyes. When their vision finally focused on the sixty-five-man halberd phalanx, and specifically on the black-haired man leading them...

Clatter.

Their wooden spears slipped from their trembling hands.

"It’s the Lord!"

"Lord Soren has returned!!"

Over two hundred of Graywater Village's sallow, emaciated elderly, women, and children flooded out of the village gates, supporting one another as they ran.

But the moment they reached the entrance, everyone's feet froze as if nailed to the muddy ground. A collective gasp echoed through the crowd. With chapped, open lips, the villagers stared in absolute shock as wagon after wagon of supplies was hauled into their village.

"By the Gods..."

The first wagon held a mountain of scavenged black-iron breastplates and combat boots.

The second wagon carried sulfur-scented barrels of alchemical fire-oil and the sinister, heavy components of siege catapults.

But it was the third wagon that completely paralyzed the villagers.

Strips of wind-dried meat, cured and gleaming with fat! Pure, refined white flour!

There were thousands of pounds of high-quality rations and pure meat! In a desolate, starving wasteland like the Misty Swamps, this caravan of supplies was nothing short of a divine miracle!

"What are you all gawking at?!" Kyle strode forward, slamming the butt of his halberd into the ground with enough force to make the loose pebbles dance. "Lend a hand! Unload the wagons! Lead the wargs to the beast pens and lock them up before they go rabid and bite someone!"

Jolted awake from their trance, the villagers erupted into deafening cheers. They surged forward like madmen, eager to help.

Soren dismounted his warg. Behind him, his sixty-five elite soldiers stood at attention at the village entrance, their movements uniform and precise. Not a single man broke rank to rest.

The hundred-plus exiles watched the frenzied, adoring villagers, and then stared at this horrifyingly disciplined army.

Standing at the fringe of the crowd, the fallen noble girl disguised as a mud-monkey felt her heart pound wildly against her ribs.

She was finally certain. This man named Soren... he was forging a private army that surpassed even the regular military forces of the Silvermoon Kingdom!

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