The Lord of the Rings: Lords of Middle-earth.

Chapter 651 The Last Guardian!
The Bloodblade family has really stung all the barons! Good heavens! They dare to slaughter civilians today? Will they slaughter us peasant barons tomorrow? This young man has some nerve!

Then the Bloodblade family received a generous gift: a punitive expedition by the border baron alliance. They were directly overwhelmed by dozens of border baron allies along with the surrounding imperial garrisons! They didn't even wait for the Emperor's order; upon receiving the news, they arbitrarily assembled their army and wiped out this bastard. Forget about being nobles; the noble circles can't bear the shame of slaughtering imperial civilians. Anyone who can do such a thing isn't a noble, they're a beast...

All the high-ranking nobles and royalty remained silent, as this matter had crossed the line for those powerful barons. A long-established powerful baron and a border baron essentially considered their subjects as family; a glance at their surnames revealed they were all from the same clan. Through centuries of intermarriage and assimilation, the bloodlines of these families had penetrated every corner of their territories. This was why the barons were so cautious in their conquests—after all, the soldiers you led weren't just soldiers, but your entire extended family! Your cousin might shield you from bullets, your nephew might charge into battle, and your uncle might die before your eyes. Under such circumstances, no established baron would dare mistreat his subjects and soldiers. Even when collecting taxes, they had to be welcoming and polite; if they ran out of money, they'd even have to pay out of their own pockets… How could a baron so humble not love his people like his own children? Were they just leeks? No, they were my beloved family and friends!

Therefore, among the nobles who fled and abandoned their territories, there were never any nobles with the title of baron. On the contrary, many barons died while covering the retreat of their subjects. The empire would encourage and subsidize them after the war, because protecting the retreat of the subjects and running away were two different things.

The Dark Alliance's army swept through the enemy lines to reach the foot of the Swiftstream Fortress not because the nobles along the way had fled, but because they had wiped out every baron and viscountry. Only by annihilating the nobles and their armies in their entire territories could they advance. Otherwise, those nobles, like leeches, would have stuck to them relentlessly.

As the bards sang, you may not believe the farting conscience of the great nobles, but you must believe in the determination of the lesser nobles to defend their lands!

……

Getting back to the main point, it was the Blood Mist Incident that brought the half-giants into the sights of the Imperial Senate. These powerful units, with their formidable individual combat strength and obvious weaknesses, were simply the best candidates for the Senate Guard. They were reliable and the Emperor was at ease with them!

So the Senate itself funded the recruitment of 50 half-giants to form the Senate Guard. For many years after its formation, the guard played a minor role. If it weren't for the urgency of the Rapids Fortress, no one would have thought of pulling them to the battlefield. As a result, this battle made the Senate Guard famous!
……

"Devil! The devil is here!" Seeing the burly figures and sturdy armor of the Senate Guard, all the orcs lost their will to continue attacking. At first, they thought they were no different from other tin cans, just a bit bloated, but after actually fighting them, they realized that these weren't sheep at all! These were earth dragons!
These Senate Guards are clad in seven layers of armor! Inner layer: enchanted leather armor, enchanted chainmail, enchanted plate armor, outer layer: enchanted leather armor, enchanted plate armor, enchanted chainmail, and outer layer: cloth armor! They're imbued with shock absorption, shields, deflection, recoil reduction, healing, and purification magic—they're practically impervious to any magic! Add to that their massive, three-meter-long, half-meter-wide, serpentine enchanted sword and two-meter-high tower shield… wow! World destruction! The orcs will create a world without the Senate Guards!
Especially in such a confined terrain as the fortress, it was practically a killing field for the Senate Guard. Countless blood mists flew up in the dark passages, which were the flying limbs and torsos of orcs!
These guards, generally at the third tier, could even fight and resist sixth-tier orc overlords or warriors, which drove all the orcs and ogres crazy. Their leader, a sixth-tier imperial guard, even used his familiarity with the fortress's terrain to traverse the main castle, killing two sixth-tier orc professionals before escaping unscathed! So when this metal can appeared in the dark passage, all the orcs shuddered!

"Buzz!" The spells cast by the orc warlock and shaman didn't even cause a ripple on the Senate Guard soldiers, who were armored with magic resistance. Instead, they enraged the savage half-giant. With a roar, he swung his three-meter-long serpentine sword, unleashing a devastating forward slash! Dozens of orc heads obediently flew up from the crowd. The sword's trajectory was perfectly aligned with the orc heads—just right!
"Kill!" The Senate Guard roared as they charged into the enemy ranks...

……

Before the corpses of thousands of orcs, a headless, burly body knelt, before which stood a panting orc overlord, now riddled with wounds, his left arm severed at the root! Just moments before, this Senate guard, who had blocked the orc army's path, had risked his life to save himself, ignoring the battle axe aimed at him and slicing off his arm with a single strike!

"Ah!" He angrily swung his battle axe and chopped at the headless corpse.

"Bang!" The enormous recoil caused it to stumble and fall to the ground. It glared furiously at the half-giant who was still restless even in death, clutching its still-bleeding severed arm!
……

The fall of Swiftstream Fortress was inevitable, but the Imperial soldiers inside resisted until Renault's army successfully recaptured the fortress. In the end, only the Senate Captain, a sixth-rank Imperial Guard, emerged from the fortress. The others, including hundreds of nobles, a prince, a duke, three marshals, and tens of thousands of soldiers, were forever buried there!
The Emperor, moved by his courage and steadfastness, bestowed upon him the title of Guardian of the Swiftstream Fortress and the rank of Imperial Earl. However, this simple-minded half-giant refused the Emperor's rewards, accepting only the title of Guardian and asking for some gold coins before leaving Lagrange to retire to the countryside. Perhaps in his heart, he had already died, for the noble elders and colleagues he had spent his days with had all perished in the Swiftstream Fortress. He left this place that had caused him so much sorrow, and with him went the training methods of the Senate Guard. Although the Senate Guard was re-established afterward, it was no longer the Senate Guard it once was!

For Roland, this was a side story cinematic from the Lord of the Rings games, primarily created for the Senate Guard unit. As the saying goes, each version has its own meta, and in that version, the Senate Guard was practically a bug. Without high-end mage units, melee units were completely suppressed! Roland, naturally, had also experienced its frustration, and the acquisition conditions were extremely demanding! One needed to find the reclusive captain of the Senate Guard in the Great Greenwood and bring him a suitable half-giant for the inheritance… Where would Roland, a minor nobleman from the West, find half-giants, a specialty of the North?

Roland never expected that after arriving in Middle-earth, he would actually have the chance to obtain the former T0 tank unit! This made Roland even more excited. Roland immediately crawled out of the toilet, found Yunfeng, and asked him to pay attention to the situation around the kingdom and whether any half-giants were approaching. This left Yunfeng completely confused, but he could only nod and agree. After all, the king had been acting crazy for a long time, so he could just look around. If he didn't find them, Roland couldn't do anything to him, could he? After casually ordering everyone to pay attention, he continued his alchemical experiments.

Second update! How impressive is that!