CHAPTER 150: Basin BLOOD IN THE BASIN

The sound of twenty thousand fanatical Orcs charging downhill was like a mountain collapsing into a canyon. The earth shuddered under the stampede of clawed boots, their raw war chants echoing endlessly off the basalt walls of the Death Bowl.

At the base of the valley, the frontline Solarian commanders screamed themselves hoarse.

"BRACE FOR IMPACT! SHIELDS UP! SPEARS OUT!"

Five thousand heavy human infantrymen slammed their tall iron shields into the dirt, interlocking the edges to form an impenetrable wall of steel. Behind them, two ranks of spearmen lowered ten-foot ash wood pikes over the shields, creating a forest of gleaming, lethal points.

Then came the impact.

The green tide did not stop, slow down, or attempt to maneuver around the spear wall. Driven mad by the promise of immortality and the intoxicating lure of the Obsidian Crown, the wild Orcs threw their heavy bodies directly onto the pikes.

CRASH!

The force of the collision sounded like a thunderclap. Dozens of Orcs were instantly impaled, their chest cavities torn open by the iron tips, yet their blood-red eyes showed no agony, only unbridled, feral joy. Screaming fanatical oaths, dying Orcs used their own body weight to snap the wooden shafts of the spears, pulling human soldiers forward over the shield wall with their bare hands.

"Pikes snapped! Front rank, hold!" a Solarian captain bellowed, drawing his arming sword just as a massive Orc chieftain leaped over the shield line, smashing his rusted warhammer down through the captain's helmet with skull-shattering force.

The tightly disciplined Solarian phalanx buckled instantly under the sheer, suicidal momentum.

Orcs scrambled over the dead bodies of their own kin, using the heap of corpses as a ramp to jump directly into the middle of the human ranks. What was supposed to be an orderly defensive engagement instantly degraded into a chaotic, bloody melee.

Along the eastern flank of the basin, a Solarian century of veteran swordsmen tried to reform a defensive pocket. A scarred Orc warrior, his chest covered in crude ritual tattoos, charged directly into the center of their circle. A human knight brought a broadsword down hard upon the Orc's shoulder, cleaving deep into muscle and bone. The beast didn't even flinch. Grasping the blade with his bare, bleeding hand to lock it in place, the Orc grinned with blood-stained teeth and drove a massive stone-headed hatchet straight through the knight's visor.

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As the human crumpled, three more Orcs piled over him, tearing away steel pauldrons with brute strength and jagged teeth. Discipline and years of tactical drill meant nothing against this level of rabid, unhinged ferocity. Human officers screamed frantic orders that were instantly drowned out by the thunderous war cries of the horde. Shields were splintered into kindling. Armor plates were dented inward, crushing ribs and internal organs beneath the sheer weight of brutal club blows.

Duke Alban watched from his armored war-horse a few hundred paces back, his face twisting in horror.

"What in the light's name is wrong with these beasts?!" he muttered, his knuckles turning white around his reins. "They aren't fighting to survive, they are fighting to die!"

In standard warfare, an army that lost fifteen percent of its front line to pikes would shatter and break morale. But these twenty thousand wild Orcs were not an army, they were aspirants desperate to prove their strength to the young Sovereign watching from the ridge. Every kill they claimed brought them closer to being granted the dark power of an immortal puppet.

An Orc warrior, his shoulder impaled by a shortsword, laughed hysterically as he grabbed a human soldier by the neck and bit clean through his leather gorget, spraying warm crimson blood across the gravel before collapsing together.

"Archers! Fire into the swarm!" a Solarian lieutenant ordered in desperation.

A volley of three thousand iron-tipped arrows rained down into the dense center of the bowl. The arrows bit deep into green flesh, killing hundreds of Orcs, but also tearing through the exposed human infantry mixed in the brawl. The Death Bowl was earning its ancient name, turning into a churning slaughterhouse where the ground quickly turned into a thick mud of blood and torn limbs.

High on the cliffside, Caius stood unmoving, his dark mantle fluttering gently in the rising heat of battle. His violet eyes passively registered the slaughter below, calculating the flow of souls and mana dissipating into the air.

Old Bones watched the green line push deeper into the human vanguard, taking heavy casualties but inflicting absolute panic on the Solarian front ranks.

"They are wearing down the enemy's stamina, My Lord," Old Bones observed softly, his fingers caressing the black jade token in his pocket. "The Solarian front line is exhausted from holding back such madness, and their formation is completely fractured."

Caius raised a pale hand, the air around his fingers distorting with heavy, suffocating shadow mana.

"The fodder has played its part," Caius said coldly. "Now, give them something true to fear."