Layered

In fact, before making up his mind to launch a full-frontal assault on the Alliance camp north of Lordaeron, Orgrim had actually considered a sneakier option: ignoring the camp entirely and taking a wide detour from a place further north.

But the Warchief, after a moment of contemplation, had reluctantly given up on that idea.

First off, the Alliance camp was a beast, sprawling for a good ten kilometers wide. Trying to sneak around that was like trying to tiptoe around a sleeping gronn – possible, but highly ill-advised.

Secondly, there was a swamp. A vast, squishy, miserable swamp that stretched for at least twenty kilometers to the north, for reasons Orgrim couldn't quite fathom. Little did Orgrim know, his scouts had stumbled into a swamp spell conjured by some sneaky elven mage, and the 'swamp' beyond that was nothing but a grand illusion, a magical mirage. After losing Gul'dan's dark magical support, the Horde was flying blind when it came to arcane trickery. They were about as magically savvy as a rock.

Orgrim was left with two equally unappealing choices: either smash straight through the Alliance camp, or take a grueling sixty- or seventy-kilometer detour just to link up with Grom's Warsong Clan. Obviously, with powerful enemies breathing down his neck, taking such a long detour was a recipe for disaster, a one-way ticket to a massacre. It was a sure bet that thousands of Alliance troops would come pouring out of that camp midway, turning their detour into a death march.

So, Orgrim, with a grim set to his jaw, chose to storm the camp.

The Horde attacked the Alliance in a meticulously calculated cone formation, like a giant, green, angry arrowhead. In the middle, forming the tip of the spear, were the hulking ogres and the battle-hardened elite of the Blackrock Clan, their armor gleaming with grim purpose. On the two wings, like razor-sharp blades, were the agile, vicious trolls.

After paying a price so heavy it made even the most hardened orc wince, the Horde's offensive was like a sledgehammer tearing down a flimsy shack, violently crushing the Alliance's initial defenses. They were rolling over them like a steamroller over a pebble.

The Alliance's elven rangers, those infuriatingly accurate archers, also fought back with all their might, a whirlwind of arrows and arcane energy. But even with the help of a large number of those infuriating "Three Thousand Kills" mines, those sneaky little death traps, they were unable to stop the relentless advance of the orcish army.

The dazzling, kaleidoscopic light of the explosions illuminated the wide, bloodshot eyes of more and more orcs. Those unfortunate vanguards seemed to be caught in a disco of death, surrounded by all kinds of colorful flashes that scrambled their optic nerves, and then were gorgeously, spectacularly dismembered by all kinds of magic. The result, of course, was a messy, bloody defeat for the poor sods who triggered them. Many orcs who were still alive let out tragic, gurgling wails on the battlefield, a symphony of agony.

But through the screams and explosions, the orcs could also hear the satisfying CRACK of wood as their huge hammers smashed the wooden wall. The two-man-high wooden wall, which had seemed so formidable moments before, was turned into countless pieces of wood chips, splinters flying everywhere under the fierce, relentless attack of these violent demolition workers, the orcs.

"Lok-tar!" The deafening roar of the Horde echoed throughout the battlefield, a primal shout of triumph.

When the first outer wall of the camp finally collapsed, a cheer so loud it could wake the dead erupted from the Horde.

Victory was in sight! They could practically taste it, like fresh goblin stew! According to the orcs' understanding of humans, the walls of the camp wouldn't be too many. Generally, there were only three walls, which would definitely allow them to kill their way to the core area, straight to the juicy center.

The orcs sacrificed five thousand elite soldiers, a truly staggering number, before they even reached the second wall.

There was another round of violent demolition, a furious, hammering assault, and the second wooden wall, groaning under the onslaught, finally gave way, collapsing into a pile of splinters and dust.

This time, the orcs waited, with a mix of dread and anticipation, for the magical attack that they both longed to see and did not want to see.

On a wooden tower a hundred meters away, the high elf magician's robe fluttering dramatically in the wind was clearly visible, a beacon of arcane power. When the magic circle, suspended eerily in the air, glowed with an ominous light, huge beams of magic power bounced off droplets of light and heat, forming disordered streams of flames that swept across the entire orc battle line, turning them into screaming, burning targets.

At the same time, more than a thousand sharp arrows, imbued with the power of the wind, stirred up a violent storm and poured towards the orcs, a deadly rain of death.

Next to the second wall, a literal gate to hell seemed to have formed. Any orc who dared to step into this area would be sucked into the kingdom of death, a one-way trip to the Great Beyond.

Red, orange, bright yellow, emerald green... the exploding magical lights stimulated the orcs' eyes, turning the battlefield into a psychedelic nightmare. The deafening sound was enough to drive any recruit, even a hardened veteran, completely mad on the battlefield.

Mobilizing hundreds of archmages to bombard a single area was undoubtedly a luxury, a display of power that screamed "we've got mana to burn!"

It must also be said that this tactic of concentrating firepower on a local area had never failed throughout history, and this time was no exception. The continuously generated vortex of magical turbulence caused heavy casualties on the Horde side, turning their ranks into a bloody, chaotic mess, and also created an equal amount of terror and an utterly embarrassing atmosphere. This was like pouring a bucket of cold water on the enemy's head just when they were celebrating their victory, extinguishing their arrogance and leaving them sputtering.

Orgrim, his face a thundercloud, grabbed his deputy, Sabek, by the breastplate, practically lifting him off his feet.

"The main camp of the Alliance is behind us!" Orgrim roared, his voice like grinding stones. "Let the troops spread out! Attack in a scattered manner! Don't be a bunch of headbangers and forcefully attack the enemy's strongest point!"

The orcish soldiers seemed to hesitate for a moment, a flicker of doubt in their eyes, but suddenly gave up retreating under the furious scolding of the middle-level commanders behind them, and moved horizontally to both sides, like a spreading plague.

However, this was exactly what the Elf Rangers wanted. They were practically rubbing their hands together with glee.

It turned out that when the orcs were charging and attacking fiercely, the rangers might not have been able to properly replenish their arrows or catch their breath, constantly on the defensive.

Fighting in a minefield sounds like dancing on the edge of a knife, a thrilling, dangerous ballet, but in reality, it is not as easy as imagined. It's a high-wire act with no net.

That's right, the elves won't explode if they step on it. They were light as feathers.

The problem is, if an elven ranger didn't notice an orc approaching, and the orc, in their clumsy haste, stepped on the explosion of a "Three Thousand Deaths" mine not far from the ranger, magic had no eyes, and it would still affect the ranger. And those trolls? They'd still be throwing spears like angry porcupines, regardless of the explosions. Archery requires laser-like concentration. Seeing the big picture, however, requires constant distraction, a mental juggling act. This was not an easy thing to do, even for the most seasoned veterans. Even among the elite members of the Windrunner family, dozens of them had died due to sheer negligence, caught in their own traps.

Of course, this was still much better than fighting the trolls in the jungle without any cover, where every shadow could hide a deadly ambush.

The Horde that was advancing in a roundabout way, trying to avoid the magical bombardment, didn't know that they had actually drawn the worst lottery ticket in the history of warfare. They were walking straight into another trap.

The high elf wizards, their mana pools drained, stopped casting spells, retreated to rest, and handed the battlefield back to the ranger troops, who were now chomping at the bit.

After no longer having to dodge constant magical barrages, the elven rangers poured arrows on the spreading tribe from the third wooden wall, turning the orcish advance into a shooting gallery. According to Sylvanas, it was as relaxing as a Sunday afternoon hunt.

However, the Horde, in their brutal simplicity, had a simpler and more violent way to avoid the incessant rain of arrows. This group of extremely barbaric guys actually used the combined strength of more than a dozen orcs to lift the entire wooden wall with brute force, using the huge wooden wall as a shield and advancing deeper into the camp, a living, clanking battering ram.

As soon as one person was killed in an explosion, another orc immediately stepped forward, without hesitation, to hold up the wooden wall, their lives expendable. This sheer, unadulterated brute force attack stunned the elves. Except for the few rangers who had entered the hero realm, the other rangers had no way to deal with such a huge, mobile "shield."

Duke, watching this unfold, had to let Marian take action.

As a top-level wizard, a veritable killer weapon in all countries, the Moon-level Marian could easily conjure one exploding fireball after another without even aiming, her magic a force of nature. The raging flames painted a bloody and fiery masterpiece on the battlefield. Often, the explosion of a single large fireball meant that hundreds of orcs lost their precious cover and would die in the ranger's subsequent hunt, picked off like ducks in a barrel.

After the orcs paid the price of thousands of deaths, a truly staggering toll, the third wooden wall finally collapsed. Orgrim, ever the opportunist, certainly wouldn't miss this chance, and issued a simple but powerful order to the entire army.

"Assault!"

Logically, the main camp of the humans should have been right behind these three wooden walls. The sacrifice of 7,000 people by the Horde's army was, in Orgrim's mind, worth it. They rushed forward with all their strength, eager to do what they had done in Elwynn Forest – when the giant axe smashed the weak door of the human house, it was the defenseless inner room, ripe for the taking. The combat power of humans in melee, they believed, was not worth mentioning.

The sounds of ecstasy among the orcs suddenly died down, replaced by a stunned, horrified silence.

Another wooden wall. Another bunch of rangers. Another group of mages. And another damn bunch of mines, scattered all over the ground like deadly confetti.

This situation almost drove the orcs mad. It was like a cruel, unending joke.

But did the orcs have a choice? Several kilometers away, the sound of hundreds of thousands of people fighting could be heard clearly from here, a constant, terrifying reminder. Every moment of delay meant a large number of orcs would die in battle, caught between a rock and a hard place.

Although the chieftains wanted to let Grom's Warsong Clan escape on their own, the orcs' brutal nature, once they stepped onto the battlefield, made them lose all thoughts of self-preservation. They were driven by pure, unadulterated bloodlust. The centurions shouted and cursed, encouraging the orcs who followed to charge forward more bravely, screaming at them to "get some!"

"Breakthrough! We broke through the human wall!"

There was a raw, desperate joy in the shouts of the orc warriors coming from the front line. However, Orgrim, who had already pressed to the outer wall of the initial camp, did not seem to feel the joy of the frontline warriors. His face was grim, unreadable.

"Too thin…" the Warchief muttered, his voice low, as if he were a rookie orc recruit grumbling in dissatisfaction for not being able to satisfy his insatiable desire for killing.

Sabek, his deputy, understood what his boss meant. The defensive formation formed by Duke should not have been broken so easily. You know, Edmund Duke was a super defensive master, a tactical genius who had made hundreds of thousands of tribes suffer in Stormwind City, Southshore Town, and other places. He wasn't one to build flimsy defenses.

"There will be another wall right away," Sabek predicted, a grim certainty in his voice.

Almost as soon as he finished speaking, the messenger from the front came running, breathless, to report that there was indeed another wooden line of defense, just as Sabek had predicted.

With a dexterity that was totally inconsistent with his massive size, Orgrim climbed up a human arrow tower that had not yet been knocked down and looked towards the human camp. He had expected to see the interior of the human camp, to finally gaze upon the heart of the Alliance's defenses.

The Warchief was sorely disappointed.

The Alliance had obviously used some kind of magic. Above the latest wooden wall, there was a thick, swirling fog rolling around, like a viscous, unknown soup cooked by a particularly devious wizard. It was impossible to see through it at all, a magical curtain drawn across their path.

Magic!

Magic again!

This non-offensive magic, while not costing the opponent's wizards too much mana, effectively made Orgrim's blood boil with frustration. It was a cheap trick, but it worked.

How many wooden walls did humanity have?! It was like they were building them faster than the orcs could tear them down!

"If this one is conquered, there may be another one," Orgrim muttered, a dark premonition settling in his gut.

Orgrim's ominous premonition came true in less than fifteen minutes. At this moment, Orgrim finally understood Duke's sinister intentions, the full scope of his elaborate, maddening trap.

"Damn Edmund Duke—he doesn't have many soldiers at all!" Orgrim roared, the realization hitting him like a thunderclap.

Orgrim had finally guessed right.

Duke's entire army only had a little over 8,000 men, and less than 5,000 of them were actually engaged in combat. Not only did he not have many soldiers, he didn't even have many mines. Orgrim had thought Duke was so rich, so absurdly wealthy, that he had truly spread the "Three Thousand Lives" mines all over the camp, a literal carpet of death. This was, in fact, an elaborate illusion, a masterful bluff.

At this moment, behind the wooden wall where Duke was, nearly a thousand new soldiers were busy laying mines, working like a well-oiled machine. They placed the mines on the ground as carefully as possible, like laying precious eggs, and then covered them meticulously with grass and soil. And they all laid mines precisely according to Duke's orders and the direction of the Horde's breakthrough, ensuring maximum impact. No minefield would be set up even if it was one hundred meters longer than necessary; every single one was placed with surgical precision.

Beside Duke, Alleria, Lirath, and Halduron were wiping their sweat, chugging water, and catching their breath, looking like they'd just run a marathon.

Duke, ever the charming rogue, asked, "Are you tired?"

Alleria responded with a confident, almost cocky smile. "It's more intense than warm-up exercises," she quipped, her eyes sparkling.

Duke glanced at the rangers under their command. Although they were not yet completely exhausted, they had obviously consumed a lot of physical strength. Duke had set up so many lines of defense, but it would all be for naught if his own troops ran out of gas first. If he didn't rotate them, what would it mean if he ran out of energy before Orgrim did?

At this time, a magic message crackled to life, it was Lothar.

"Duke, how's the situation over there? Are you holding up?"

Looking at the excited, yet a little nervous Lothar in the magic mirror, Duke answered Lothar with a smile that was described as mysteriously confident by all the Alliance leaders, a smirk that promised victory.

"Hey, Anduin," Duke began, his voice dripping with casual confidence, "for today's battle, I've prepared eighteen layers of hell for Orgrim since day one. Oh, excuse me, it's eighteen lines of defense. Unfortunately, the Horde didn't really put their backs into it, and it's taken them this long just to get beyond the sixth line of defense."

Duke shrugged, as if to say, 'Don't blame me for not taking it seriously, blame the Horde for not being strong enough.' Not only did he make Lothar laugh, but even Alleria beside him, despite her exhaustion, burst out laughing.

Duke found himself momentarily fascinated by Alleria's gorgeous, unrestrained laughter.

Lothar held his forehead, a wry smile on his face. "Cough cough," he pretended to cough, trying to regain his composure. It was convenient, he thought, to have a girlfriend who could fight like a demon and look like an angel. Even if he was in the army, no one would dare to say anything bad about Duke, not with Alleria Windrunner by his side.

"What?" Duke asked, feigning innocence. "How long do you want me to hold on? Three days or a week?" If Duke's words were heard by Orgrim, he would probably be so angry that he would drop dead on the spot.

It was Lothar's turn to feel a little embarrassed. He had drawn so many troops from Duke and made him do the hardest, dirtiest, and most tiring work.

Lothar said quickly: "No, no, no, it's great that you can hold off the Horde for two more hours. Of course, if you can hold out until this evening, I can guarantee that not a single tribe member will escape. Not one."

Lothar's progress was indeed smooth, with the army surrounding them from three sides, like a tightening noose. The Horde was just struggling to hold on, in Lothar's view, like a drowning man grasping at straws. If this allowed the Horde's western army to escape as a whole, then these elite soldiers of the Alliance would be too stupid to tie their own boots. The only variable lay on Duke's side. If Duke couldn't hold on, then Lothar could only prepare early and kill as many as he could before they slipped through his fingers.

Now Duke was as relaxed as if he were on a picnic, enjoying a leisurely stroll, so Lothar felt a wave of relief wash over him.

In order to reassure Lothar, Duke even showed him the battle scene through the magic mirror. Indeed, not many elves were injured or killed in the battle. All the dead, every single one, were from the Horde. It was a slaughter.

After turning off the magic communication, Duke rubbed his brows, a slight frown creasing his forehead.

"Well, my Alleria," he said, turning to her, "you may soon be testing the endurance of you and your men. Get ready for the long haul."

"Um?" Alleria quirked an eyebrow, intrigued.

"After all," Duke explained, a sly grin spreading across his face, "our enemies are the most intelligent beasts. It's not easy to be a good hunter when your prey keeps learning new tricks."

"It's okay," Alleria said confidently, a fierce gleam in her eyes. "I love this kind of challenging work the most. Bring it on!"

Duke had reassured Lothar, after all. He knew better than to underestimate his opponent. If the leaders of the Horde were really so stupid, the Alliance wouldn't have had to fight for so long and suffer such a terrible defeat in the first place. The one on the opposite side was Orgrim Doomhammer! A cunning, brutal Warchief.

After breaking through the fifth line of defense, Orgrim touched his chin, a thoughtful, dangerous glint in his eyes.

"Sabek," he commanded, his voice low and firm, "take ten thousand men and attack from the swamp."

"But..." Sabek began, his eyes widening.

"No buts!" Orgrim snapped, cutting him off. "I doubt the swamp is fake. Go!"

Sabek, though hesitant, did so.

Twenty minutes later, Sabek led 10,000 Horde warriors to bypass the north, a desperate flanking maneuver. However, as they approached the swamp, they encountered an impenetrable fog, thick as pea soup, and a real, squelching, utterly miserable swamp. Duke had specially arranged a 2,000-man city guard force and two ranger squadrons to cover Marian's mage group, and they had directly conjured Dense Fog and Swamp spells, precisely targeting the direction of the Horde's attack.

The Warchief, frustrated at not being able to resist the Alliance's relentless magic, immediately ordered the Hordes that were attacking the camp to split into three groups and attack simultaneously, hoping to overwhelm them. As a result, they encountered a swarm of demon spirits... and the real nightmare began.