CHAPTER 137: THE BORDER ESCORT

Two months remained before Caius’s seventeenth birthday.

Deep in the subterranean domain of House Vel'drin, Old Bones stood before three massive iron cages, rubbing his temples with a raspy sigh. The assignment had nearly given him a gray hair or two.

"How in the abyssal depth was I supposed to tell the difference between a male and a female Arachne?" he grumbled to himself, remembering the frustrating days he had spent digging through dusty archives.

Physical differences between mature Arachne were almost impossible to spot to the untrained eye, save for one distinct trait recorded in the ancient scrolls: the thorax. Males possessed completely smooth, jet-black chitin across their lower bodies. Females, however, bore intricate, unique bioluminescent patterns woven into their thorax plates, distinct markings that glowed faintly in the deep dark.

Armed with that knowledge, Old Bones had gathered a squad of five elite dark elf trackers, seasoned hunters from House Vel'drin who owed him debts from his active days. They descended into the Obsidian Ravine, a razor-sharp subterranean abyss where wild Arachne colonies nested.

The hunt had been a nightmare of venom and web-snare traps. For three days, they tracked silk-drag lines through claustrophobic tunnels. When they finally located a high-tier hunting pack, Old Bones did not simply slaughter them. He used shadow-smoke bombs to blind the pack, while his trackers flushed the beasts toward narrow choke points.

Using his own shadow arts, Old Bones pinned the thrashing monsters against the stone walls. While his men held heavy steel nets over the screeching beasts, the old assassin calmly stepped into striking range, dodging dripping shadow-venom to inspect the chitinous lower bodies. He bypassed seven smooth-shelled males before identifying three exceptional females, each displaying jagged, pale-blue thorax patterns that pulsed with innate mana.

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Subduing them required reinforced dark-iron chains, paralyzing dark-elf toxins, and three days of brutal, hand-to-hand containment. But he had personally secured the absolute best of the brood.

Now, three fierce Arachne female warriors thritted and hissed inside the reinforced cages, their eight compound eyes gleaming with lethal intelligence and their blade-like chitinous spider-arms scraping against the iron bars.

A week later, the small dark elf caravan emerged from the underground tunnels into the blinding sunlight of the surface, dragging the heavy covered wagons toward the southern border of the Shattered Steppes.

As they crossed into the open plains, the dark elf guards suddenly halted, their hands instantly flying to their weapons. Their eyes widened in sheer disbelief at the sight waiting for them along the horizon.

A thousand dark-armored juggernauts stood in flawless, terrifying formation.

It was the First Great Cohort. At the vanguard stood the towering, blindfolded puppet construct of Krag’gath, his massive iron war hammer resting against his shoulder. Behind him, two hundred heavy boar riders, six hundred heavy infantry, and two hundred support units stood in absolute silence. Every single Orc warrior was clad in dark iron plate reinforced with black mana threads, a glowing Black Obsidian Bead embedded into the center of their foreheads.

The dark elf scouts trembled, their faces turning pale. They were seasoned veterans of the under-realm, but the presence before them was unlike anything they had ever felt. These were not the wild, chaotic Orcs of surface legend.

"By the Ancestors..." one dark elf guard whispered, his voice shaking as he felt the oppressive aura wafting off the ranks. "These aren't normal Orcs. The mana leaking off them... it's overwhelming!"

Old Bones leaned back against his wagon, looking at the silent, thousand-man legion lined up strictly to escort a single old assassin. A raspy chuckle broke from his throat as a wide, crooked grin spread across his scarred face.

"That brat," Old Bones muttered, a proud smile cutting across his scarred face as his eyes glinted with deep satisfaction at just how much the boy had achieved beneath the desert sun. "He certainly knows how to roll out a red carpet."