CHAPTER 201: THE OBSIDIAN COHORTS

Caius stood upon the elevated stone overlook, gazing down at the massed ranks of the Obsidian Legion. Fifteen thousand orcs stood in rigid, perfectly aligned squares across the vast staging grounds, their formidable frames casting long shadows in the dim subterranean light.

Though he harbored a cold, foundational distaste for the brutes, Caius allowed no room for sentiment. He despised their vile nature, but he could not deny their raw physical might. Strength was strength, and in the hands of a sovereign, a crude tool could always be utilized.

Their minds had been thoroughly scrubbed during their subjugation, leaving behind only the pure instincts for battle and slaughter. Embedded within each soldier, small obsidian beads pulsed with a faint dark resonance, tethering their souls directly to Caius and amplifying their physical capabilities to terrifying heights.

Reviewing the disciplined formation, Caius prepared to restructure the force for optimal utility. He divided the fifteen thousand orcs into three distinct legions, each consisting of exactly five thousand soldiers.

The finest among them were designated as his personal escort, selected to accompany him on his future journeys beyond the domain. The second legion would remain stationed within the fortress to serve as the heavy garrison for Castle Precipice.

For the remaining third legion, however, Caius held an entirely different deployment strategy. These were not the cream of the crop, lacking the elite refinement of the first two tiers, but their brutal efficiency made them ideal for regional control across the windswept expanses of the Shattered Steppe, the ancestral orc homeland located east of Aethelgard's secure borders.

He divided this third legion into five distinct cohorts of one thousand warriors each, dispatching them to serve under the command of the five puppet-bound orc elders, led by Shaman Vrak and his four peers.

Rather than ruling the chaotic region through constant, direct human occupation, Caius left the day-to-day governance of the steppe to these bound stewards. Their paramount responsibility was maintaining a strictly enforced political equilibrium across the plains. The shamans ensured that no single clan accumulated enough wealth, territory, or martial momentum to elevate a new warlord capable of unifying the tribes under an independent banner. Through calculated territorial distribution, resource rationing, and direct divine-shamanic intervention, any rising chieftain who demonstrated ambitions beyond his border was quietly curbed or erased long before his influence could spread. The orcs were permitted their traditional skirmishes to keep their combat edges razor-sharp, but the balance of power remained permanently fixed in the hands of the crown.

To enforce this delicate equilibrium, each of the five shamans was assigned one of the newly divided cohorts. Embedded in the foreheads of these elite guards were high-tier obsidian bead cores that stabilized their meridians, amplified their physical strength, and granted them instant access to high-density combat mana. While these cohorts served as immovable bodyguards for the shamans during local disputes, every warrior's bead remained bound first and foremost to Caius's master key. Should any shaman ever entertain thoughts of treason, their own elite guard would cut them down before a single incantation could be finished.

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Beyond their elite cohorts, the shamans held a far more terrifying asset in battle: the Chieftain Guardian Puppets. Carved from void-tempered obsidian and dark-forged metals, these towering, blindfolded constructs were built from the reanimated husks and crude chest-embedded essence beads of the steppe's former fallen rulers. Krag'gath's puppet brought down enemy defensive barriers as an iron siege breaker, Borgath's puppet unleashed a wild storm of high-speed slashes through a flesh-tearer frenzy, and Gor'muka's puppet executed lightning-fast cavalry maneuvers through dire-fang pursuit. Alongside them, the massive rock-skinned vessel of Giant King Thrum triggered caldera shockwaves across the earth, while the withered skeletal husk of Grand Necromancer Mal'kor corrupted enemy ranks with necrotic miasma.

When not deployed in war, these five constructs rested directly inside Caius's Crown Core, bathed in the ambient dual-colored solar-dark mana of his inner sea to constantly recharge their core engines. Through their soul-tethered beads, the five shamans could summon their designated guardian puppet straight out of spatial storage to unleash catastrophic devastation upon any rogue element threatening the central authority. These constructs remained completely neutral during petty inter-clan squabbles, as their sole mandate was guarding the balance and protecting the Obsidian Citadel anchored in the central steppe.

While the orcs were permitted internal autonomy to keep their war instincts sharp, their subjugation came with a non-negotiable martial mandate. Under the binding soul-oaths forged through the shamans' essence bead cores, every clan across the Shattered Steppe was bound to the decree of universal mobilization. Should the Obsidian Realm come under foreign attack or march outward to war, internal blood feuds were instantly suspended. At the first resonant pulse from the central magic tower, the five shamans were obligated to rally every able-bodied warrior across the steppe, raising an unstoppable orc horde hundreds of thousands strong to march as the realm's devastating vanguard.

To sustain this massive standing vanguard, the infrastructure of the steppe had been overhauled. The vast subterranean city chambers beneath the Obsidian Citadel, which had once housed the primary Arachne broods, were completely transferred to the lower vaults of Castle Precipice. Centralizing the spider-kin's incubation, weaving, and spatial manufacturing within the central fortress ensured absolute security over the crown's most vital biological assets.

In their place, the expansive basalt caverns beneath the Citadel were handed over to the shamans and converted into heavy fabrication shops. Manned and maintained directly by the five elders and their trained smiths, these forge halls produced custom spell-forged armor, iron plate, and heavy weaponry for the cohorts. This self-contained supply line allowed the steppe forces to maintain their combat gear independently without draining the high-tier resources reserved for the main stronghold.

Back within the central fortress, as Caius walked past the silent rows of the remaining active legions, he noticed a subtle evolution among a subset of the soldiers. A new, secondary consciousness had begun to take root within them, built upon a foundation of absolute, unshakeable loyalty to their sovereign.

These particular orcs had shed much of their primal barbarism, adopting a disciplined, calculated demeanor. Their quiet focus and steady posture made them comparable to the formal knights of a civilized kingdom rather than mindless berserkers.

Recognizing their potential, Caius bypassed the raw brutes and selected his commanders directly from these awakened soldiers. He organized the active legions into distinct sub-units, appointing the newly civilized orcs as officers to lead them and ensuring absolute tactical coordination and unwavering obedience across every rank.