Chapter 59: Norona’s Secrets [1]
The heavy iron doors of the Norona Military Headquarters groaned as Roy pushed through them.
The skin of his face felt thick, coarse, and tight—the physical markers of the eight-foot Ogre captain whose identity he had just stripped and assumed.
The massive iron broadsword slung across his back clattered rhythmically against my breastplate with every heavy step he took down the torch-lit stone corridor.
Hey, Torga! Back from the slum detail already?"
A booming voice rattled the narrow hallway.
A broad-shouldered Orc captain named Varg, his skin a mottled, sickly green and his lower tusks jutting out like rusted spikes, slapped a heavy hand against Roy’s shoulder armor.
Walking beside him was another Ogre captain, a cross-eyed brute who smelled heavily of stale ale and old grease.
Roy gave a short, guttural grunt, keeping my flat yellow eyes fixed ahead. "The trash in the lower rings is cleared."
"Good. Come on, the briefing room is finally open for our tier," Varg said, gesturing toward a pair of reinforced oak doors guarded by two heavily armored Orc sentries.
The guards took one look at our captain-level insignias and stepped aside, unbarring the entry.
Inside, the room was thick with the stench of sweat, cheap tobacco, and raw meat.
A dozen captains—Orcs and Ogres alike—were gathered around a large, iron-rimmed war table, leaning over maps of the southern borders.
"The Hudeii wasteland is a bottleneck," the cross-eyed Ogre laughed, slamming a massive, calloused fist onto the table, rattling the tin cups.
"Once General Tagar gives the word, we’ll ride the frost-vanguard straight through their gates." he chuckled.
"Those soft desert beastmen won’t even know what hit them." the second Orc captain chipped.
"Soft is right," an Orc near the hearth sneered, spitting into the fire. "Especially their women." the Orc grinned.
"I’m going to drag a couple of those sleek Leopard-kin girls back to my tent by their tails. Let them see how real northern soldiers live before we break their necks.
They’re nothing but livestock playing at running a city."
The room erupted into a chorus of harsh, guttural laughter.
They joked about the slaughter, trading crude fantasies of what they would do to the merchant factions of Yeren City once the desert sands were stained with blood.
Roy stood near the edge of the shadows, his massive Ogre arms crossed over his chest, watching their mouths move with the detached focus of an editor looking at a rough draft.
Then, Varg leaned closer to the table, his loud laughter suddenly dropping into a low, cautious murmur. "Enjoy the talk while you can, boys. But don’t forget the shift in the upper ranks. The air up there is turning foul."
Roy’s ears twitched. He tilted his head slightly, shifting his focus toward him.
"What shift?" Roy grunted, his deep, gravelly voice blending perfectly with the room’s low hum.
Varg looked around, ensuring no eyes from the upper balconies were on us, before leaning in.
"Three of the Grand Generals... completely vanished over the last two cycles. No notices. No public funerals. Just gone from the roster."
"Deserted?" the cross-eyed Ogre asked, his brow furrowing.
"Deserted? Don’t be a fool," Varg whispered harshly. "They were peak-enlightened stage Martial Masters"
Varg exhaled a deep sigh, "But right after they went cold, that Troll General, Tagar—the one who was just a standard Martial Master last season—suddenly broke into the Martial General realm overnight."
"The King handed him absolute authority over the entire vanguard invasion force this morning."
The Orc captain rubbed his tusks, a look of genuine unease crossing his green face. "There are whispers in the inner keeps... conspiracies."
"What conspiracies?" Roy asked.
"Well" the Orc captain shrugged, "They say the missing generals didn’t run. They say they were fed to Tagar’s core, or used as fuel. The Trolls are hiding something big under the permafrost."
Before Roy could press for more information, the heavy drapes at the front of the room rustled violently.
The casual chatter in the room died instantly. Every captain, including myself, straightened up and bowed their heads in a rigid, synchronized display of deference.
In Norona City, Orcs and Ogres were the muscle, but the blue-skinned Trolls held the absolute sovereign power.
A Troll Commander stepped into the light of the torches.
He was tall, gaunt, and carried himself with an icy, suffocating arrogance.
His long, pointed ears were pierced with bone rings, and his frost-white eyes looked over the gathering of captains as if we were nothing more than dirt beneath his boots.
"Silence, cattle," the Commander spoke, his voice thin but carrying a sharp, biting edge that made the ambient temperature drop.
"Your pathetic daydreams of southern plunder can wait. The King has a direct assignment for your units tonight."
He flicked a piece of parchment onto the table.
"A high-priority transport mission," the Troll Commander instructed, his slitted eyes narrowing. "A batch of captured southern beastmen slaves arrived through the lower gates an hour ago."
For a moment, his eyes scanned through the room.
"You will personally escort them through the outer plains to the remote subterranean mining site at Coordinate Seven. No questions. No auxiliary guards. If a single slave screams or a single local soldier sees you, your heads will line the trenches."
He didn’t wait for a response.
He spun on his heel and disappeared back into the private corridors of the high command.
The arctic night was dead silent as we moved across the barren, wind-scoured plains outside the city walls.
The other captains had brought a few trusted elites from their respective units, but Roy came alone in his Ogre captain disguise, claiming his squad was handling the slum cleanup lockdown.
Nobody questioned it.
The tension among the group was too thick for idle chatter.
In the center of our formation, a dozen beastmen slaves—their spirits entirely broken, their bodies covered in frostbite—stumbled forward, bound together by heavy iron chains.
Most were of the Sheep-Kin and Deer-kin.
They dragged them down into a yawning, unmapped tunnel mouth that cut straight into the heart of the frozen hills.
The air inside the tunnel didn’t smell like iron or earth; it smelled faintly of old, copper-like blood and a strange, stagnant divinity that Roy recognized instantly.
’This is....’ Roy’s eyebrows furrowed.
A ritual site.
An altar.
He recognized this divinity for it belonged to Damascus.
But he didn’t react.
As they reached a massive, vaulted cavern at the end of the pathway, the stone floor opened up into a wide basin.
Standing at the center was the same arrogant Troll Commander from the briefing room.
But he wasn’t alone.
From the dark recesses of the cavern walls, dozens of high-tier Troll elites materialized, their long spears and heavy broadswords already drawn, their frost-white eyes gleaming in the dim light of purple mana crystals.
"Commander?" Varg stepped forward, his green brow furrowing as he looked at the surrounding ambush. "The slaves are delivered. Where do we—"
"You don’t," the Troll Commander interrupted smoothly.
With a cold wave of his hand, the execution order was given. "Clear all traces. No one outside the bloodline can know the location of the vessel’s anchor."
’Vessel’s anchor?’ Roy’s gaze darkened the more.
He suddenly felt the urge to kill everyone but he held himself back.
’Something’s going on here, I need to figure it out before it’s too late’ Roy clenched his fist.
Before the Orc and Ogre captains could even draw their weapons or process the betrayal, the Troll elites lunged forward with terrifying, master-tier speed.
SPURT.
A heavy spear pierced Varg’s throat from behind, choking out his scream in a spray of dark blood.
The cross-eyed Ogre beside Roy was violently decapitated by a sweeping broadsword, his massive body crashing heavily into the frozen dirt.
"Arrrrrgggghhh"
"Hieeekkkkkkkkkkk Please....please don’t kill me"
Screams echoed through the walls.
The cavern became a frantic, brief slaughterhouse as the captains were systematically butchered to preserve the absolute secrecy of whatever layout was being prepared beneath the frost.
A massive Troll warrior lunged toward Roy, his iron halberd swinging toward his chest.
He didn’t counter.
He didn’t unleash his divine energy.
Instead, he let the blunt side of the halberd strike my heavy iron breastplate with a loud, ringing CLANG.
Using the kinetic force of the blow, he threw Roy’s massive Ogre body backward, crashing into the snow and dirt right beside Varg’s twitching corpse.
Roy let my eyes close, his breath slowing to an absolute stop, letting his massive form go completely limp as the pool of dark Orc blood spilled across the floor, washing over his boots.
The heavy footsteps of the Trolls crunched through the bloody slush as they walked the perimeter, driving spears into the chests of any captain still breathing.
When they reached my body, a soldier gave his ribs a rough kick.
Roy remained perfectly still, a hollow shell in the dirt.
"All the cattle are dead, Commander," a voice called out.
"Good. Throw the beastmen onto the primary arrays," the Troll Commander commanded, his footsteps moving toward the center of the ritual site.
"The vessel requires fresh lifeforces to stabilize, we await the day our God descends" the Troll Commander turned towards the corpses of Orcs he had slained.
"Throw them into the pit"
Lying in the dark, Roy’s eyes closed to the physical world, his internal system grid was wide open.
He began to track the precise leyline coordinates of the pulsing, dark divinity glowing just fifty paces ahead of him.
The trap had been sprung, the loose ends were being buried, but the architect was now inside the room.
Whatever this vessel was.....
He must put an end to it!