"What did you say? The main camp fell?" Ignoring the Orcs Signalman's injuries entirely, the Orcs Warlord seized him hard by the collar and roared in furious alarm, "What the hell happened? If the Main Camp fell, why are you only reporting it now?"
Weakly and haltingly, the Orcs Signalman explained what had happened in the fewest words possible. Both arrows embedded in his body were poisoned. He had held on this long not only because of his formidable physique, but because his sense of duty had kept him clinging to his last breath. The moment he finished his report, he died.
"Back to defend the Main Camp!" Overwhelmed by fury, the Orcs Warlord flung down the corpse in his hands and bellowed.
To the Orcs Warlord, this night's battle could not have gone worse. Ever since their outlying sentry posts had been wiped out and they had lost all reliable information on the enemy, every move they made had felt like stumbling into the darkness at the bottom of a pot. Every step seemed to land in a carefully laid trap. The enemy knew their every move, while everything about the enemy remained shrouded in uncertainty.
Their thousand elite Orcs had left through the southern camp gate and pursued the enemy for nearly two thousand meters through the dark woods. Their opponents mostly relied on ranged attacks, firing back as they retreated and refusing to engage at close quarters. Over the prolonged pursuit, however, the Orcs' mid- and high-ranking commanders gradually deduced from the density and number of arrows that the enemy had roughly three to four hundred Elf Rangers and a dozen or so Gryphon Riders.
These surviving Orcs had all fought High Elf Rangers in the Wetlands several years earlier. They were fairly familiar with the High