Leona quickly finalized the tactical plan.
"Sylvia, take every single heavy knight you have left and stack them up."
"You are the spearhead, I’ll cover the flanks. Archers and mages will bring up the rear. At all costs, you will carve open a one-thousand-meter path straight through the Blackstone orcs and escort Soren to his target coordinates."
Sylvia didn't hesitate for a second. She mounted her warhorse and pulled on her full-face heavy helm. Within the narrow slit of the visor, her eyes revealed neither joy nor sorrow.
"Understood, Commander."
"On this sortie, I will act as the sacrificial pawn. I will die at that spot to ensure we nail down that one-thousand-meter mark without taking a single step back. Until Soren fires that arrow, nothing will step over my corpse."
The surrounding heavy cavalry sat astride their mounts, gripping their lances tight. No one spoke a word.
"Vice Commander, you'd better stay alive."
Soren chimed in, his eyes focused as he inspected the flowing runes on the [Windwhisper Bow].
Sylvia stiffened for a fraction of a second, turning her head to look at the recruit.
"I never make a losing trade, ma'am, " Soren said, stretching his joints. The newly acquired Titan Bloodline was boiling in his veins, surging with an overpowering sense of physical strength.
"My plan doesn't require martyrs. We push forward one thousand and one hundred meters, hold position, and the moment I take the shot, we fall back to defend at full speed."
"I expect you to come back and drink with me, not die out there."
Sylvia stared at him for three full seconds before letting out a complicated scoff.
"Lecturing your superior officer? I'll teach you a lesson when we get back alive."
The winch chains were loosening.
RUMBLE.
The two thousand-pound cast-iron gates finally separated.
The roars and the foul stench of blood from outside immediately flooded in.
Leona hoisted her massive door-sized greatsword.
She spoke only three short sentences, her voice tearing through the howling blizzard.
"Today, you either die like cowards behind these walls, or you charge out and die as heroes! Pick one!"
"Brothers of the Crimson Moon! Go tear the throats out of these beasts!!"
"ALL FORCES—CHARGE!"
THUD! THUD! THUD!
Iron hooves shattered the frozen earth.
Outside the gates, the Blackstone Warband was entirely in chaos, bottlenecking themselves in their frenzy to claim the breach.
The towering elite orcs in the front ranks were actively using their heavy axes to hack down the low-tier goblin slaves blocking their path.
The goblins wailed as they were trampled into the snow, their backs completely exposed and defenseless.
The vanguard of heavy cavalry, led by Sylvia at the absolute tip of the spear, brutally smashed straight into the densely packed cluster of orc infantry at the gates.
"KILL!"
The goblins and low-tier orc slaves, shoving and crushing each other in their greed for merit, never in their wildest dreams expected the doomed humans to actually launch a counter-attack.
The initial impact was absolutely devastating.
Dozens of fragile goblin bodies were instantly pulverized beneath the hooves of the armored warhorses, their blood and viscera spraying meters into the air.
But that was nowhere near enough.
The orcs quickly reacted. A suffocating wall of axes and warhammers began to press inward.
The space was violently compressed to the point where even swinging a sword became difficult.
To reach the target location as fast as possible, Soren stayed less than half a meter behind Sylvia, positioning himself on the most lethal edge of the frontline, surrounded entirely by the stench of sweat and severed limbs.
Soren wasn't wearing heavy armor. By all conventional logic, he should have been dead within seconds.
But the Titan Bloodline granted him reaction speeds far beyond human limits, and his [Grandmaster Level Swordsmanship] provided him with unparalleled evasion techniques.
He slipped to the left.
Narrowly dodging a rusted, spiked mace.
With a backhand grab, he snatched half of a broken javelin from the mud.
Soren’s fingers locked tight around the jagged shaft.
Nock!
There was no arrow.
That didn't matter.
The wind-attribute runes flared violently.
Soren didn't bother with a standard draw-and-aim stance. His movements were more akin to point-blank gun-fu—explosive and deadly at extreme close quarters.
He released the string.
TWANG!
A bizarre, muffled snap echoed.
That irregular, broken shaft of wood was propelled forward by pure, compressed wind pressure.
SPLAT!
Half a meter away.
The head of the massive orc who had just swung the mace abruptly exploded. His skullcap was blown completely off like a smashed watermelon.
The knights didn't even have time to process what had just happened.
Two ghouls leaped high into the air, lunging straight for him.
Soren bent down, his hand plunging into the puddle of freezing blood and mud, pulling out exactly what he needed: a heavy horseshoe lined with iron nails, and a jagged chunk of an enemy’s shattered skull.
VMM. VMM.
Two barely audible, blindingly fast hums of the bowstring.
One of the airborne ghouls had its chest blown wide open by the horseshoe, flying four meters backward. The other had its windpipe completely severed by the skull fragment, its head was left dangling from its neck by nothing but a flap of skin.
"Anything is a perfect arrow."
Soren's footwork was like a waltz with death—elegant and utterly ruthless.
A veteran who had just skewered an orc with his lance glanced to the side.
His eyes nearly popped out of his head.
Is that how you're supposed to use an Elven Greatbow?!
"Watch your right, three meters! The orc line is buckling—push through!" Soren roared, his hands never stopping.
A dagger and three jagged shards of shattered plate armor were all loosed from his fingertips.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
Four perfect hits. Four full penetrations. Four charging enemy soldiers dropped dead directly in their path of advance.
The sound of carving a path through the storm was dull, rhythmic, and terrifyingly efficient.
Pushed forward 500 meters.
Pushed forward 800 meters.
Every knight along the entire battleline was watching Soren, the archer slaughtering his way through the absolute frontline with manic precision.
Morale began to detonate in the most unimaginable way!
. . .
The Orc Main Camp.
The towering command platform was constructed from the massive, bleached vertebrae of a fallen Titan Beast.
Commanding an army of tens of thousands, the Warchief of the Blackstone Warband stood there, as burly and imposing as a giant.
Warchief Blackstone had not personally entered the fray. He simply stood amidst the blizzard, looking down with his single eye, observing the frenzied desperation of the human counter-attack below.
He saw the Crimson Moon Knights and their seemingly suicidal, yet incredibly precise, tactical insertion.
He also saw that heavy cavalry formation constantly thrusting into his forces' depth like a razor-sharp blade.
That commander of the Crimson Moon Knights. . . what terrifying tactical control. A born leader.
But the smarter the human, the more utterly repulsive they are.
Beside him, a half-orc herald stood dripping with cold sweat, awaiting orders.
Blackstone extended a finger covered in stiff black bristles and absentmindedly tapped the railing in front of him.
"The Bone-Bow formation in the rear."
"Angle of elevation: fifteen degrees. Volley fire."
"Blanket the area right in front of the fortress gates. Drop it directly on the heads of that human formation pushing through."
The herald froze, hesitating.
"Great Warchief Blackstone. . . our elite vanguard is fighting for merit over there. No, they are locked in close-quarters combat with the humans. . ."
"To have our mighty vanguard killed by the arrows of our own bone-bowmen. . . the tribe will heavily criticize this."
CRACK.
With one hand, Blackstone effortlessly snapped the thick bone railing in half.
He slowly turned his head, baring his jagged, overlapping beast-like fangs.
"Execute the order."
"I don't care who is friend or foe."
"Blanket them. Shoot. Crush them all."
. . .
The wind currents above the battlefield suddenly shifted. A foul, rancid gale swept across the earth.
On the distant ridge, hundreds of Blackstone orcs wielding massive white bone-bows released their bowstrings in unison.
BOOM.
The deafening twang of the massive strings merged into a single, rolling clap of thunder.
The white snow drifting through the sky was instantly eclipsed by a torrential downpour of black arrows.
These were no ordinary arrows. They were bone-shafts ground down from the leg bones of magical beasts.
Crude, incredibly heavy, and possessing utterly terrifying armor-piercing capabilities.
"RAISE SHIELDS!" Sylvia screamed at the top of her lungs, hefting her tower shield with one arm.
The massive bone arrows instantly plummeted.
The chaotic frontline instantly turned into a slaughterhouse.
Warchief Blackstone didn't care who the enemy was, this was an indiscriminate, carpet-bombing of pure destruction.
A bone arrow punched straight through the top of an elite orc vanguard's skull. It didn't even have time to scream before its massive body crashed heavily into the mud.
Then came two more, three more.
Over a hundred orcs, ghouls, and goblins wielding battered weapons were instantly nailed to the frozen earth by their own kin's arrows, neatly pinned down like rows of dried fish.
CLANG!
CRASH!
SQUELCH!
The Crimson Moon Knights' formation was not spared.
The knights' mastercrafted kite shields managed to block the first volley.
But the sheer kinetic impact split between the shield-bearers' thumbs and forefingers.
The second wave of bone arrows rained down, one violently smashing through the gap in a young knight's pauldron.
He didn't die instantly. He dropped to his knees, screaming in pure agony.
Sylvia forcefully dragged her subordinate back under the protective umbrella of her tower shield.
"Dammit, they've got the high ground!"
Sylvia glanced up at the jagged cliff at her three o'clock, her expression turning incredibly ugly.
"Distance is at least one thousand four hundred meters! Elevation difference of one hundred and fifty meters! Our heavy crossbows can't even reach half that distance!"
This was an asymmetric slaughter.
They had managed to punch through the orcs' melee defensive line, only to become sitting ducks for the bone-bowmen commander on the high ground.
Ahead, a fresh wave of heavy orc infantry was already stepping over the corpses of their kin, closing in fast.
Above, the rain of bone arrows continued to pour.