Behind the Reed Bay logging camp lay a deep pit.
Kyle and his men kicked open the heavy iron grate.
An overpowering stench of excrement and severe decay immediately assaulted their senses. In the muck along the sides of the pit, gnawed skeletal remains had been carelessly discarded.
Huddled together in the muddy puddles at the bottom was a tangled mass of living beings.
Over twenty women and children, reduced to mere skin and bones, shivered in clothes that were little more than ragged threads. Hearing the iron grate open, the women instinctively shielded the children beneath their bodies. They trembled violently, having been drained of even the energy to scream.
Reed Bay originally housed a permanent settlement of over three hundred refugees. When the Blackstone Warband swept through, the able-bodied men had been forced into becoming the slave auxiliaries who had just died fighting on the surface.
The elderly, weak, women, and children, however, were locked in this pit—penned up like livestock by the orcs. They were treated as a fresh supply of meat, consumed day by day until only these two dozen remained.
"Break the chains. Tell them the greenskins are all dead. Pull them up and get them some hot porridge, " Kyle ordered his men.
Hearing the human tongue, the pit fell dead silent for a moment before erupting into agonizing, profoundly suppressed sobs. Several women scrambled through the mud, clutching at the soldiers' legs and desperately thrusting their sore-covered children into the men's arms.
Back on the surface.
A cold wind carrying a foul miasma swept through the camp.
After ruthlessly interrogating the Orc Centurion, Kash, Soren became absolutely certain of one thing: Reed Bay had to be abandoned.
A Blackstone Warband force numbering in the thousands was stationed far too close. A High Shaman—an entity equal in rank to a human Legion Commander—had died here. By tomorrow at the latest, Warchief Blackstone would undoubtedly dispatch hundreds of elite wolf-riders to tear this place apart, perhaps even mobilizing an entire thousand-man army to crush them.
"Sweep the battlefield. We are initiating a complete evacuation, " Soren ordered.
"My Lord, what about the camp and the palisades. . . ?" Torn touched the reinforced defensive line, his face showing a hint of reluctance.
"Saw them down, dismantle them. Boards, rivets—even the last handful of ash in the braziers. Take it all. We will not leave a single scrap of supplies for the approaching orc army."
As the orders were passed down, Reed Bay was transformed into a massive demolition site.
Soldiers used captured battle-axes to dismantle the wooden structures, stripping and disassembling the sharpened logs. Every ounce of food was emptied from the stores, and the timber was loaded onto carts.
Soren returned to the stilted wooden cabin. Drawing his dagger, he carefully pried out the totem-carved stone slab—an [Orc Communication Array]—keeping it perfectly intact.
In the hands of an outsider, this item would be utterly useless. But for Soren, who was fluent in multiple regional dialects of the Orcish language, this was a trump card.
As dusk approached, Soren stood atop the ruined mud walls and made a clear, calculated inventory of their gains:
First: A massive haul of mid-tier combat potions and alchemical materials. The survival rate of the wounded back in Greywater Village was now guaranteed.
Second: Two full carts of food rations, completely eliminating their food shortage for the coming winter.
Third: The rescue of the last twenty-something survivors from Reed Bay. They would provide much-needed manpower for sewing and herbal processing at their rear base.
Fourth, and most importantly: His army had truly taken shape.
Soren looked down at the soldiers bustling below. Counting the thirty-eight men who had just survived this bloodbath, along with the twenty-five Crimson Moon Knights recruits continuing their training back at Greywater Village. . .
Sixty-three men.
Every single one of them had now endured brutal, bloody, real combat. They were no longer a disorganized band of stragglers. They were young eagles that had finally shed their downy feathers.
Soren lifted his gaze, peering through the dense, white miasma deep within the Misty Swamp.
To the north lay the heart of the mist. That was where the main force of the Crimson Moon Knights was stationed.
The image of Leona's long red hair flashed through Soren's mind, followed by the sight of Sylvia's heavy alloy tower shield. The Knights' main force was equipped with heavy cavalry and battle mages. Although navigating this swampy jungle was immensely difficult, they wouldn't be easily swallowed up by the Blackstone Warband.
Soren tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword, solidifying his next plan.
He needed to establish a solid rear fortress in this swamp. He would return to Greywater Village—a naturally defensible location blessed with geothermal springs—and utilize these scavenged timbers and alchemical materials to turn it into an impenetrable stronghold.
After that, he would dispatch Ein and the scouts to the north to track down the Knights' main force. Once contact was established, they could share intelligence and resources.
"Light the torches!" Kyle bellowed, walking at the very front of the procession with a blazing torch in hand.
The long convoy and the heavily laden soldiers assumed a marching formation, disappearing into the thick fog.
Thick mist rolled over the murky bogs.
Steel warboots shattered the thin layer of ice crusting the edges of the puddles, foul mud seeping into the crevices of leather armor.
Sylvia raised her right arm, her metal gauntlet halting mid-air.
"Halt."
In the dense fog behind her, the clanking of metal armor instantly ceased, fading away like a receding tide.
Three hundred heavily armored infantrymen of the Crimson Moon Knights crouched to the ground in unison. Blades were kept low, and tower shields were firmly planted into the muck. Everyone held their breath, staring intensely at the grayish-white wall of fog ahead.
Sylvia slammed her two-meter-tall heavy alloy tower shield into the ground before her, her cold eyes scanning the surrounding terrain.
During the past half-month stationed in the Misty Swamp, the Crimson Moon Knights had undergone a world-shaking transformation.
Sylvia pulled a crude clay canteen from her waist and took a swig of boiled, filtered tree sap. Her gaze swept over the veterans beside her. The veterans were chewing on finger-thick black roots—Stonehammer tubers dug from beneath the swamp floor.
Half a month ago, when Commander Leona defied the pressures of the Royal Capital's Council and led their two thousand six hundred main troops into this death trap, the first three days had truly been hell. Warhorses sank into the bogs and died by the dozens. Supply lines were cut, forcing the soldiers to chew on wild weeds growing near highly toxic vines just to survive.
But on the fifth day, scouts from the vanguard struck luck. On an elevated ridge behind several stagnant pools, they stumbled upon a human refugee settlement hiding from the fires of war.
A mutual agreement was quickly reached. The Knights provided military protection, slaughtering the stray orcs and wandering demonic crocodiles that plagued the settlement. In return, the villagers provided safe dry land, firewood, and their local expertise in identifying non-toxic mushrooms and edible fish.
Proud knights in full plate armor removed their gauntlets, stripping to the waist to dig irrigation trenches and plant potatoes in the muck alongside the refugees. Battle mages used their Create Water spells to irrigate the crops.
Free from the whips of the noble overseers at the Storm Rift Fortress, free from embezzled military pay, and free from plugging endless holes in collapsing defensive lines, the soldiers of the Crimson Moon Knights experienced a strange peace. Here, in this miasma-filled wasteland, they finally tasted hot meat stew seasoned with real salt.
Everyone realized just how correct Leona’s decision to defy orders and march into the swamp had been.
"Vice Commander, the wooden markers placed by the scouts are just ahead, " a squad leader whispered, hunching over as he approached."Two hundred paces forward is the Reed Bay logging camp. According to yesterday’s scout report, there are fifty regular Blackstone soldiers stationed there, along with a refugee dungeon."
Sylvia gave a slight nod.
To wipe out these fifty orcs, she had mobilized a full three hundred elite heavy cavalrymen.
Warhorses couldn't charge in the muddy bogs. Stripped of their mobility and momentum, the knights were forced to fight on foot. Yet, the foundational strength of the Crimson Moon Knights remained. Even dismounted, a single veteran—clad in reinforced, thickened plate armor and wielding a heavy greatsword—could go toe-to-toe with a black-iron-scaled orc.
Three hundred against fifty. A six-to-one tactical advantage.
In her tactical calculations, this battle would be a breeze. They simply needed to form a shield wall and advance. Within half an hour, they would completely slaughter the enemy, reclaim the stockpiled winter timber, and secure the potential recruits from the camp.
Casualties would not exceed twenty men.
"Raise shields, " Sylvia commanded, drawing the hand-and-a-half sword from her waist."Wedge formation. Advance."
Three hundred armored figures parted the dense fog, closing in on the gates of the Reed Bay camp.
There were no warning arrows.
No blaring alarm horns.
No furious roars of orc sentries.
It was dead silent, save for the sickly gurgling of the bubbling mud.
Sylvia narrowed her eyes. Angling her tower shield forward, she was the first to step out from the brush.
The sight before her caused her pupils to shrink to pinpricks.
There was no camp.
More accurately, the defensive fortifications marked on her military maps—the log palisades and elevated watchtowers—had completely vanished.
The muddy ground was littered with fresh craters—the lingering scars of deeply buried load-bearing logs being violently uprooted. The roofs of the storehouses had been dismantled, and the load-bearing pillars of the cabins had been sawn off and hauled away. Even the extinguished fire pits had been scraped completely clean of their ash.
The entire encampment looked as though a swarm of ravenous, iron-mandibled ants had picked it clean. Not even a single rusty nail was left behind.
"Maintain formation! Break into groups of three and fan out to search!"
Sylvia kept her tower shield raised as her boots crunched against the sandy muck. She caught a very faint metallic tang in the air—the smell of blood, heavily masked by the scent of pine resin.
"Vice Commander! The dungeon is empty!" a soldier shouted from the western flank."The iron grates were smashed to pieces! The prisoners have been taken!"
"Commander! Something's wrong with the soil over here!" Near a low-lying methane pool on the western edge of the camp, a squad leader drew his heavy sword, using it to pry away a top layer of dead branches and packed yellow earth.
Whoosh!
An overwhelming stench of blood immediately erupted into the air.