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Today, this race, unblessed by fate, has once again reached the most dangerous moment.

On the day we met Zha, the female Barbarian Sword Empress on the battlefield, we learned that she is the daughter of the current leader of the so-called Valkyrie clan, which is the Barbarian tribe. The current leader, now fifty-seven years old, has fathered fourteen sons and nine daughters, an achievement that puts most humans and orcs to shame. However, with the impending catastrophe, this number only brings him endless sorrow, as his children have fallen one by one in successive battles. Today, only a four-year-old son and two daughters remain alive.

Zha is the only surviving adult child, and her survival through the "Thunder Marsh Campaign" and subsequent battles was not due to luck, but her own formidable strength. Originally not a Sword Empress, she, amidst the disastrous defeat of the Thunder Marsh Campaign where three of the four Barbarian Sword Empresses perished, fought through the frenzied onslaught of berserk orcs to carve out a path of blood, leading over ten thousand survivors to escape. In the most perilous circumstances, she broke through her limits to ascend to Sword Empress. Since then, she has organized the retreat and resistance of her fellow clansmen, saving the Barbarian situation to the maximum extent amidst numerous difficulties, earning the support of all surviving Barbarians, and successfully inheriting the strongest epic divine weapon of the Valkyrie clan—the "Absolute Destiny Spear"—a spear renowned alongside the "Spear of Quinilun" in the hands of the Temple's "Blessed Holy Knights," said to be the weapon of the ancient Frost Elemental Giant Kings.

Of course, many doubt the origin legend of this divine spear, as Frost Giants are generally fifteen meters tall, making their weapons too tall even for use as pillars. However, some scholars claim that occasionally, exceptionally short individuals are born among the Elemental Giants, whose combat power doubles, as "good things come in small packages." The evidence is that a fifteen-meter-tall giant couldn't have left descendants averaging two meters in height. Thus, if the Barbarians are indeed descended from Frost Giants, it indirectly proves the existence of "small giants" and the origin of the "Absolute Destiny Spear."

Setting aside the details, we Holy Grail Knights have been almost useless in the war on the ice plains. Orders from the Temple indicate that the safety of the still-veiled mysterious "Mr. Pang" is to be considered as important as the survival of the entire Barbarian race, preventing us from leaving Hurricane Fortress, let alone participating in battles.

I am very glad not to be slaughtering my own kind, but this strange behavior makes me more wary, indicating the Temple's confidence and emphasis on the ultimate contingency plan. What could it be? The desperate counterattack of the Barbarians going berserk to the death? The collapse of glaciers, turning the entire Crystal Grand Canyon into a massive trap? A plague of necromantic spells? Or... a Forbidden Spell?

Forbidden Spell? Forbidden Spell!!!

I suddenly jumped up—it's the Forbidden Spell! If it were any other method, preparations would have already begun. Whether it's the forbidden voodoo spells or large-scale magical traps, long-term preparation is needed to have a decisive impact in battles involving hundreds of thousands or even millions. Even so, two difficulties remain: how to deceive the native Barbarians and the orcs' survival rate.

Orcs, a battle-hardened race that has fought the magic-founding elves for ten thousand years, possess an innate strong vitality and survival instinct. This instinct isn't about cowardly escape but knowing how to resolve the greatest crisis at the smallest cost at critical moments. Even if the orc frontline completely collapses, their mortality rate won't exceed thirty percent. Other orcs, even if disemboweled or mutilated, can recover after a few months of rest and return to battle. As for using plagues or poisons, no toxin can kill more than a small portion of orcs. With "bloodlines containing all the races of the Mainland," their resistance is extraordinary. When facing landslides, snowstorms, or powerful magic, one might initially see all orcs disappear, only for countless heads to emerge shortly afterward. They are the epitome of "wildfire cannot burn them away, spring wind brings them back to life." Neither elves nor humans have been able to deal with the orcs' vitality. Even the great Demon King Bato, who once ravaged the Mainland, lamented, "Orcs, I thought I had exterminated them a dozen times over, but in no time, there are still so many!"

In short, orcs, with their cockroach-like resilience, have suppressed the Barbarians and fought decisive battles against the elves. However, in the entire orc history, there was a period when entire regiments and armies of orcs were completely wiped out, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of warriors, with not a single survivor—a force more terrifying than natural disasters or divine punishment. It not only destroyed the orc empire but also their courage.

The Twelve Sages and their twelve Forbidden Spells are names that still make orcs tremble, forever haunting their minds like nightmares.

The power of a Forbidden Spell is boundless, defying world laws, overturning universal truths, turning the world into hell, and annihilating existence into void. Every target within the range of a Forbidden Spell is subjected to indiscriminate attack, with no blind spots, no escape. Not even ants can flee. Although casting a Forbidden Spell is more time-consuming and complex than regular magic, and today's Forbidden Spell casters are not as capable as the ancient Twelve Sages, requiring more time and preparation, it is still simpler compared to other methods. The Temple's goal is likely to use a Forbidden Spell to wipe out the main orc forces, preventing them from reinforcing the southern frontline from their northern victory. Currently, with orcs dispersed to eliminate Barbarian remnants, it's not yet the time to use the Forbidden Spell, which can only be used once. However, if the Temple drops a Forbidden Spell when the orcs gather their forces to attack Hurricane Fortress, encircling three to five hundred thousand orc main forces won't be a dream.

The number of orc troops doesn't directly represent their strength like human armies. When the Twelve Sages jointly launched "Ragnarok," they faced only six hundred thousand orc reinforcements. Yet, these included ten thousand Lion Clan's "Golden Lion Knights," ten thousand Eagle Clan's "Sky Adjudicators," twenty thousand Bear Clan's "White Moon Berserkers," plus ten thousand Wolf Clan's "Heavenly Wolf Guards" and ten thousand Ox Clan's "Ancestral God Warriors," with even the weakest being Barbarian Sword Heroes. Their combined strength could overwhelm six million human regular legions, which is why the Twelve Sages acted without regard for consequences, destroying both their one hundred fifty thousand human blocking forces and the entire Green Plains. Today, on the northern ice plains, there are still hundreds of thousands, even millions of orc troops, but their combat power is far inferior to their predecessors. After all, those were the elites accumulated during the peak of the orc empire. Yet, there are still over three hundred thousand valuable elite warriors. If they were to perish, the overall strength of the Orc Alliance would drop by at least thirty percent, making it questionable whether they could defend their territory, let alone attack humans.