Abar stood on high ground, gazing at the neat rows of soldiers on the training field, his single eye slightly narrowed.
The wind swept through the camp, carrying sand and dust, and a few lonely tribal flags fluttered helplessly in the wind, appearing particularly glaring.
—Greymane, Redtooth, Blackstone. These new recruits that the tribe should have sent have yet to appear.
In the past, he might not have thought much of it. Grassland tribes were unruly and often delayed their mobilization, but things were different now.
The crushing defeat at Stone Bridge Town was like a crack that silently spread through his heart, causing his strong confidence, built up over nearly twenty years of fighting, to begin to wane.
Abar's fingers unconsciously rubbed the battle axe at his waist—the weapon he had used twenty years ago to kill his rival.
He understood the laws of the grasslands better than anyone: the alpha wolf's position is always built on unshakeable strength, and once it shows signs of fatigue, the challengers lurking in the shadows will bare their fangs.
He returned to his tent with a somewhat gloomy expression.
" Great Chieftain," the captain of the guard approached cautiously, "should we send men to oversee a few tribes?"
A warlord stepped forward and shouted sternly, "I request permission to take three hundred cavalry to 'remind' them of the majesty of the Royal Tent."
Abar narrowed his single eye, his bronze knuckles clenching until they turned white. In the past, for such acts of disobedience, he would not hesitate to send out a punitive force—hanging the head of the tribal elder on the gate, and the remaining tribesmen would naturally submit obediently.
" Great Chieftain!" a guard's panicked shout suddenly came from outside the tent. "Urgent report from the steppe—"
Rebellion? Abar stood up abruptly, the word the first thing that came to mind.
The tent flap was suddenly flung open, and an orc stumbled in.
" Great Chieftain," the messenger said, clearly exhausted from his journey day and night. He pulled a piece of red-stained animal hide from his robes. "Humans…human armies have entered the grasslands."
Abar frowned, a bad feeling rising in his heart. "What? Calm down and explain yourself!"
Ten minutes later, Abar and his generals silently looked at the animal skin map on the table, on which the outline of a lake was drawn crookedly, surrounded by a cross mark—a symbol of a human fortress.
Seven bloody handprints dotted the shore like scars, each handprint bearing a tribal totem.
Abar recognized the central handprint—the severed finger of Hultan, the shaman of the Greymane tribe.
"They're building a fortress by the lake," the messenger suddenly coughed violently; he had contracted the disease on the way. "They're not letting the herders near the livestock; flocks of animals are collapsing, and children are falling ill."
The whip in Abar's hand fell to the ground with a thud. He stared at the dried bloodstains on the animal hide and suddenly understood what those "disobedient" tribes had encountered.
He suddenly flew into a rage and smashed the gold cup on the table to the ground, the wine mixed with gold fragments flying everywhere.
Great Chieftain grabbed the messenger by the collar, his eyes blazing with fury: "Useless! You couldn't even handle those rats hiding in the forest?!"
He knew that humans roamed the forests to the west of the grasslands, but he assumed they were all merchants and adventurers.
Having grown up on the grasslands, Abar had no concept of the Northwest Bay's maritime transport capabilities and could not imagine that humans could send an entire army across the sea to the grasslands.
The messenger, his face turning blue from being strangled, still struggled to explain: " The Great Chieftain isn't just a small force of thirty thousand soldiers." His fingers twitched as he gestured, "There are also countless Forest Orc traitors, numbering forty or fifty thousand."
"Bullshit!" Abar slammed the messenger to the ground, his boot pressing down on his injured right leg. "Twenty years ago, I could wipe out an entire forest with three hundred cavalry! Could that kind of desolate, barren place support an army of forty or fifty thousand men?"
The messenger let out a piercing wail, yet persisted, "But their army has indeed appeared, and is equipped with flamethrower weapons." His trembling hand pulled a deformed lead bullet from his robes. "Our warriors fell like wheat before they even reached us."
The generals inside the tent began to stir; it was that damned firearms again.
Abar snatched the lead bullet, his fingertips bleeding from the sharp, deformed edge. His anger suddenly froze—it was standard ammunition from the Aldor army.
Glaeman was simultaneously confronting himself head-on while also sending other armies on a long detour to attack the steppe.
"Forty to fifty thousand people?" The Great Chieftain regained his composure, his voice suddenly deepening. "Are you sure?"
The messenger struggled to his feet, took off his clothes, revealing a shrapnel wound on his abdomen: "I crawled out from a pile of corpses to deliver this message. The shores of Blackwater Lake are now littered with the bodies of warriors from various tribes."
Abar waved his hand, "You must be tired from the journey. Go and rest!"
The messenger asked urgently, " Great Chieftain, what about the reinforcements..."
"Go and rest first!" Abar emphasized.
The messenger silently withdrew from the tent, feeling somewhat pessimistic. He traveled through Yellow Earth Land, hearing many reports along the way, suggesting that the war was not progressing as smoothly as the Royal Tent messengers had described.
After thinking it over all night, Abar finally decided to first win a decisive battle in Aldor before returning to the grasslands. Otherwise, how could he face the people of the grasslands if he went back empty-handed?
The next day, he issued orders that Orc Cavalry should use their speed advantage to wage mobile warfare, and if they were blocked in one direction, they should immediately seek a breakthrough in another direction, so as to keep the human army busy.
However, the development of the situation once again disappointed this ruler of the steppe.
Two months later, Abar stood on a sand dune, the battle report in his hand burning his palm like a branding iron.
"The northern route is blocked."
"The middle lane has been attacked for a long time without success."
"The southern route encountered heavy artillery fire."
Each battle report was like a hammer blow, shattering his strategy. In just half a month, the orcs' proud tactics met with setbacks everywhere—whenever the cavalry attempted to outflank and break through, they would always run into well-prepared human formations. Those blue-uniformed soldiers seemed to have sprung up from the ground overnight, building a death line in every valley and every pass.
"This is impossible!" Abar angrily tore the battle report in his hand to shreds, oblivious to the cuts on his palms. "Just a month ago they were scrambling to get to Stone Bridge Town, where did they get hundreds of thousands of troops from now?!"
A general silently handed over a captured human newspaper. The headline read: "National Mobilization Order— Marquis Glaeman Calls on All Eligible Men of Northwest Bay to Enlist," accompanied by a picture of a recruitment area crowded with new recruits.
Old shaman Otasi suddenly poked at the small print in the corner of the newspaper with his bone staff: "Look at this'Steam trains transport 8,000 troops daily.' Fear flashed in his cloudy eyes. "I've had it verified. Those giant steel pythons spewing white smoke aren't a human fabrication; they're real. They transport countless people and supplies from Glaeman's lair to the battlefield."
"That's impossible!" Abar didn't want to admit it.
Glaeman conscripted so many soldiers, who would cultivate the human farmland, and where did he get so many weapons to arm these soldiers?