"Fool."
Queen Tina glared down from on high at Una, slumped on the floor, a flash of barely concealed fury and humiliation flickering through her eyes.
This did not look like a normal dose at all — it looked more like four or five times the dose?
Did this fool not know that the moment a virulent poison was overdone, it produced an extraordinarily violent reaction?!
Now look at this — not only had they failed to silently dispose of Sophia, they had instead splashed the conspiracy and the face of the Royal House of Olan, as though dousing them in strong acid, into the open in the ugliest possible way!
But matters had come to this. The hypocritical socialising was utterly shattered.
Queen Tina stared fixedly at that exquisite face of Sophia's, still without a ripple. The cold sweat down her back, in the corner of desperation, turned instead into a near-hysterical resolve.
Since the poisoning was exposed, since this little queen knew it was a dead end and yet had dared to sit calmly here with only four companions, then that meant Mason's devastating weapons had surely already locked onto this fortress long ago.
Rather than sit and await death, waiting for the other side to deploy that unknowable absolute trump card, it was better to do the job to the end — while these five people were still within her core attack range, to tear them utterly to shreds!
"Crack!"
Queen Tina hurled the cup in her hand savagely against the steps before the throne. The crisp shattering sound, together with her murderous roar, exploded in an instant through the stench-filled hall:
"Since Mason will not drink this cup of wine, then use your blood to add some colour to this supper!
All troops, hear my command — This Queen orders you, kill them!!"
As that crisp shattering sound echoed through the City Lord's Mansion hall, the Olan heavy infantry, who had been hidden outside the doors and windows, in the side halls, and even on the roof beams, came roaring forth like a pack of wolves that had caught the scent of blood, surging out in waves.
The dense clatter of steel armour gathered into a stifling metal flood. They raised heavy tower shields, their sharp longspears glinting with cold light, attempting in the shortest possible time to utterly engulf the five figures at the centre of the hall.
However, Sophia, at the eye of the storm, remained as cold and composed as ever.
She did not even rise from that exquisite high-backed chair. She merely slightly adjusted that intricate black Gothic skirt, so as not to be splattered by the still-bubbling puddle of poison on the floor.
Everything was within expectation. It was only that this foolish younger sister, Tina, had forcibly accelerated the settlement schedule.
There was not the slightest panic in Sophia's pale-golden pupils. She merely raised her right hand with extreme casualness, her slender index finger gently pressing downwards in mid-air.
This was the authorisation command to attack.
"Right on!"
"This genius has been waiting a long time for this moment!"
Irene, who had long had a bellyful of rage pent up, in the instant she saw Her Majesty's authorisation, kicked the dining table in front of her clean over.
With practised ease she shouldered that extended-version Black Rose Reformed Model, her sapphire-blue eyes peering through the specially crafted alchemy scope, and locked directly onto Queen Tina, who was just preparing to duck back behind the Royal Guards.
"Bang!
Bang! Bang—!!!"
Deafening peals of thunder exploded one after another inside the hall, the searing muzzle-flashes spitting out blinding tongues of fire.
The instant Queen Tina heard the first report, every hair on her body stood on end.
It was that ultimate sense of crisis cultivated through years of rolling about on the battlefield.
Almost by pure instinct she hurled herself sideways, and on the way snatched up the extremely heavy banquet main table before her, carved from a single block of redwood, holding it as a shield in front of her.
"Thwip!
Crack—"
Even half a foot of solid redwood, before Irene's improved lead bullets, was as fragile as a piece of cheap biscuit.
With a teeth-grating splintering noise, splinters of wood combined with extraordinarily powerful kinetic energy bored straight through the tabletop in an instant.
Tina felt only a terrifying impact slam, through the wooden table, savagely against her arms.
"Aagh!"
Tina let out a muffled grunt, her entire person sent staggering back by that enormous force, finally crashing heavily against the steps of the throne.
She looked down in terror — that fine steel arm-plating she had been so proud of had, beyond all expectation, already been jolted with fine, dense cracks by the force that had punched through the tabletop.
Her two arms had been numbed senseless by the shock, fierce pain coming in like a tide.
So this was the power of the black muskets?!
This was the legendary weapon that could chew ten thousand Vala heavy troops to pieces?!
Tina drew in a sharp breath, the horror in her heart simply beyond words.
She had originally thought the intelligence reports had exaggerated the killing power of this weapon, but when she herself was truly facing that dark, black-mouthed tube, she finally understood that before such speed and destructive force, the so-called invincible plate armour Olan had built up over several centuries was simply an absurd joke.
"Sister!"
Una, slumped on the floor, saw Tina driven back and shrieked in terror.
"What are you all standing dazed for?!
Kill them!
This Queen orders you, kill them!"
Tina, gritting through the searing pain, hysterically roared at the heavy infantry that had now poured into the hall.
"Protect the Queen!"
Several burly Olan generals roared as they raised tower shields taller than a man, trying to form a wall of steel in the front, covering the infantry as they pressed forward.
"Tch, they dodged fast enough."
Irene blew on the wisp of blue smoke curling from her muzzle and pursed her lips.
Then she yanked open the zipper of the work-bag at her waist, revealing rows upon rows of specially made glass bottles flickering with an eerie red light inside.
"But it doesn't matter — what comes next is this genius's secret weapon party!"
Irene let out a strange laugh and, with hands quick as lightning, snatched up two explosive bottles. Without even looking, she hurled them viciously to the left and right sides of the hall.
At the same instant, Delilah, who up to now had not drawn her sword, finally lit the familiar fire of tyrannous violence in those dark-red eyes.
"Those who block the way — die."
Accompanied by a single icy, low growl, Delilah's heavy greatsword, broad as a door panel, slid thunderously from its sheath.
She did not retreat so much as half a step. Instead her whole body, like a pitch-black savage beast, charged head-on directly into that airtight wall of tower shields!
And at her side, Willow smiled. The twin pistols in her hands had already spat their lethal tongues of flame, knocking down with extreme precision those Olan archers who had tried to loose stealth-arrows from the roof beams — picking them right out of the air.
In the chaotic flood of iron armour and the sky-piercing firelight inside the hall, Delilah's greatsword had already torn open the first line of defence, while Irene's explosive bottles blasted both sides of the hall into a hail of flying stone fragments.
Yet Sophia, who from start to finish had been seated calmly on the high-backed chair, did not let those pale-golden pupils so much as lose their focus.
Amid the suffocating din on the battlefield, her sidelong gaze sliced through the dense thicket of longspears and tower shields, locking precisely onto the dishevelled, retreating Queen Tina.
Since the clearance procedure had been initiated, then as the head of Olan's power structure, she was naturally the priority target for settlement.
Sophia's wrist, concealed beneath the intricate black Gothic lace cuff, gave a slight shake.
"Click."
With an extremely faint, yet exquisitely precise, mechanical sliding sound, a slender, sleekly contoured, compactly built personal musket, gleaming with an obsidian-cold sheen, slid smoothly into her fair palm.
From start to finish she did not even rise. She merely raised her right arm slightly, the hem of her long black skirt spreading out beside the chair like dark night.
Within a thousandth of a second, the muzzle, following a physical trajectory pieced together from countless gaps in the iron armour, coldly pointed at Tina.
Open fire.
"Bang—!"
A report crisper, yet more penetrating, than Irene's heavy musket instantly tore through the gunpowder smoke above the hall.
Queen Tina had been able to cut her way out of a pack of scheming old nobles and sit secure on Olan's throne; her own martial strength and intelligence were absolutely not the equal of a fool like the Grand Duke of Vala.
In the very instant Sophia raised her hand, an ultimate sense of crisis, akin almost to a needle-jab, instantly pierced through the crown of Queen Tina's head!
It was a feeling like being held in the dead-fixed gaze of some irresistible ancient behemoth — as though every drop of blood in her body was about to cease flowing in that instant.
I'm going to die!
Dodge!
I must dodge!
Tina's powerful bodily instincts reacted before her brain could. She did not even spare a thought for the searing pain in her right arm, but lurched her whole body desperately, almost in dishevelment, to the left.
"Thwip!"
Almost at the same moment she twisted aside, that lead bullet, bearing its terrifying kinetic energy, at a speed the naked eye simply could not capture, grazed the edge of the shield and brutally bored into her right arm!
The finely steel-forged vambrace exploded in an instant under the bullet's impact into several twisted iron fragments. The bullet drove straight through the flesh of her upper arm, raising a great splash of shocking blood, and slammed deep into the stone pillar behind her, blowing out a bowl-sized crater.
"Aaaaah—!!"
Tina let out a scream of utmost agony. Once again the bullet's kinetic impact left her unable to keep her footing, and she dropped to one knee on the steps.
Blood spread swiftly down her jet-black armour, dyeing the stone steps beneath her a sheet of crimson.
The intense pain caused the veins on Queen Tina's forehead to bulge. Her left hand clamped tightly over her bleeding right arm. She jerked her head up — those eyes that had once been brimming with arrogance were now a sheet of bloodshot red.
She glared fixedly at Sophia.
Those were a pair of eyes filled to the brim with endless venom, fury, and sky-engulfing hatred.
The gaze was so ferocious it seemed to wish to be turned into the most substantial of blades, to take that silver-haired girl seated there and devour her alive, inch by inch, skin and bone alike, down into her belly!
As the nominal sovereign of the Northern border, when had she ever suffered such a marvellous and unprecedented humiliation as this?!
On her own home ground, looked down upon by a milk-mouthed little girl with a gaze as though regarding trash, her poisoning dumped out and mocked on the spot, and now even nearly losing her life under the other's lightly delivered single shot!
The hatred that almost completely burned away her reason caused Queen Tina to grind her teeth together with a rasping sound, even biting her own lips until they bled.
Yet, facing Tina's near-mad, venomous glare, Sophia merely arched her brow ever so slightly, her fingertip flicking lightly across the hammer of the musket, her expression as calm as if she were looking at an impotently raging precision toy.
This utterly unequal, condescending indifference dealt Tina a far heavier mental blow than her physical wound.
"Your Majesty! Protect Your Majesty!"
"Block that direction! Raise the shields, hurry!"
Several of Olan's core generals, seeing the Queen wounded, were frightened out of their wits.
They knew clearly: the moment Tina fell here, Olan's logic of rule would collapse in an instant.
In a flash, dozens of burly heavy-armoured Close Guards bearing massive finely steel-forged shields charged forward with bloodshot eyes. With their own bodies they formed an airtight defensive line, walling Tina, half-kneeling on the floor, away in the deepest recess.
Tina was no fool. She knew her right arm was gravely wounded, her left hand numb. If she remained exposed in that silver-haired demon's line of sight any longer, the next bullet would assuredly blow off the top of her skull.
She shot Sophia one final, vicious glare, then pressed her body low to the ground and, under the desperate cover of more than a dozen generals, swiftly and stealthily melted into the surging crowd behind her.
The hall was simply too enormous, and the Olan heavy infantry that had poured in were now simply too many.
The elite soldiers had packed the originally spacious City Lord's Mansion hall dense as could be — most of them could not even press in any further.
As far as the eye could see, everywhere were jostling masses of black iron armour, shields, and dense gunpowder smoke spreading out from beneath Irene's explosive bottles.
The moment Tina's figure entered the throng, it was like a single drop of water falling into an ocean of iron armour.
No matter how acute Sophia's perception was, beneath such dense interference she instantly lost visual lock on that one specific target.
"Tsk, hid herself quickly."
At one side of the long table, Willow gracefully slid the now-empty pistol back into her waist holster. Looking at the steel forest before her that was about to burst the hall apart, the smile at the corner of her mouth at last took on a layer of cold martial intent.
"Your Majesty, Olan's troop strength is simply too great.
It seems Queen Tina intends to use the most primitive of human-wave tactics to kill us off."
And Irene, standing on a long bench, looked at those soldiers swarming densely toward them — far from being afraid, she eagerly yanked at the zipper on her leather bag.
"Bring it on!
The more people, the higher this genius's secret-weapon usage rate!
Let me show these natives — what cross-epochal art looks like!"
Sophia, watching the Olan soldiers crowd into the room like an endless tide, her cool, clear voice exploded out evenly across the clamour of clashing gold and iron:
"Irene, blockade the entrance — use the fire bottles!"
"Right on, Your Majesty!
The Front-Door Traffic-Jam Clearance Plan is now initiating!"
Irene, almost the moment she heard the command, had thoroughly grasped Sophia's intention.
She let out a peculiar laugh, then suddenly kicked off from the long bench, her whole body cutting an extraordinarily flamboyant arc through the air.
With a backhanded motion she fished out two specially made dark-red glass bottles from her bag and hurled them with precision toward the wide gateway of the City Lord's Mansion.
"Smash! Smash!"
Two crisp glass-shattering sounds suddenly rang out at the gate.
The specially crafted alchemy liquid contained within, in the zero-point-one second after contact with air, instantly burst into violence.
Searing green and orange-red flames, like savage fire-serpents, raced madly along the cracks in the earth and flagstones.
With a roar, the ground in front of the entire gateway turned in an instant into a sea of fire!
The sky-soaring flames and scalding waves of heat sealed the gateway tightly shut.
Those Olan soldiers who had been charging forward with bloodshot eyes had no time at all to brake. The foremost dozen-odd were swallowed directly by the blaze.
The heavy steel armour, in that high temperature, became scalding furnaces in an instant. Shrill, ghastly screams immediately drowned out the clashing of blade and sword.
Seeing this, the Olan infantry behind them — no matter how numerous — looking at that uncanny blaze that could ignite even combat aura itself, were so terrified for a moment they all halted in unison, cut off outside the wall of fire, unable for the time being to charge in again.
"Gate sealed off, the perimeter is temporarily secure!"
Irene neatly leapt down from the long bench, fishing out another short musket as she went, mumbling around the jelly stuffed in her mouth.
Though the gateway had been temporarily plugged, the several hundred elite heavy infantry that had earlier poured into the hall were still there.
Seeing their retreat sealed off and their own Queen wounded, these red-eyed Olan soldiers, knowing they had no way out, came surging toward the centre of the hall as if gone mad.
"Those who block the way — clear them away."
Sophia sat upon the long chair, her slender fingertips gently tapping the barrel of her personal musket, her expression as cold and indifferent as if she were watching a heap of refuse being disposed of.
"Hyah!!"
A low, deep roar issued from Delilah's throat. That heavy greatsword, broad as a door panel, swept through a perfect semicircle in the air, raising an ear-splitting shriek of cut wind.
Three Olan Commanders wielding shields that stood as tall as a man tried to combine to block her, but before Delilah in her prime, their resistance was as paper.
With a thunderous crash, the sturdy fine-steel tower shields were smashed and warped clean out of shape by the greatsword.
The colossal kinetic energy sent those three Commanders flying back along with their shields, slamming heavily into the wall behind them, breath snuffed out on the spot.
Delilah's figure was like a black hurricane, charging back and forth through the hall, severed limbs splashing wherever she passed.
By sheer force of her single self she hewed out, in the centre of the hall, an absolutely safe blank zone.
Willow, meanwhile, bent slightly forward, drifted elegantly along the edge of the storm Delilah had whipped up.
The twin pistols in her hands let off muffled "pop" sounds with an extreme sense of rhythm.
Each report was accompanied by a flower of blood blooming between the brows of an Olan soldier who had tried to circle round and ambush them.
Her eyes were tender as water, the polite smile at the corner of her mouth not displaced by so much as a physical fraction — yet her life-reaping speed was atrocious in its quickness.
Daphne, meanwhile, with both palms pressed together, transformed her pure white Holy Light healing arts into a thin glowing veil, sealing the four of them tightly within its cover.
Any stray bullet or stray arrow that splashed against this Holy Light would be smoothly deflected, ensuring the core team did not suffer even the slightest unnecessary attrition.
Those remaining Olan soldiers and the ministers along the two sides of the long table were thoroughly driven mad by this scene.
From their viewpoint, these five Witches of Mason were not even fighting for their lives.
That silver-haired Queen, in this hall with flames raging to the sky, had not even mussed her hairstyle. With one hand she eyed them coldly, while with the other she unhurriedly changed the lead bullets in her musket.
Mad…
They've all gone mad!
Her Majesty Tina's ten thousand reserve soldiers have been plugged outside the gate by two little bottles, and the several hundred elite inside the hall are like sheep awaiting slaughter before that woman!
Look at Sophia's eyes…
She is not thinking about how to break out — she is studying the load-bearing pillars of this City Lord's Mansion!
Could it be that all of this is within her precise calculation?
Bringing only four people on purpose was so as to draw all of Olan's high leadership here, and then use this kind of hellish flame to net us all in one sweep?!
We thought this was a "Hongmen Banquet" — in fact this is what she prepared for us: the Empire's grave-plot positioning settlement!
"Your Majesty, although the troop density here is dropping, the flames at the gate will be extinguished within half a watch."
Willow blew the top off an Olan centurion's skull with a single shot, then, treading gracefully in her high heels, retreated to Sophia's side and bowed slightly to request instructions.
"Moreover, the air quality here, owing to the inferior poison and combustion reactions, may, if it continues, have a bad effect on the body — even vomiting and fainting. We need to find the direction of retreat."
Sophia gave the hall a faint sweeping glance.
The load-bearing walls on both sides, supported by old black stone and decayed wood, had, under the bombardment of Irene's two overpowered explosive bottles a moment ago, already begun to show faint cracks of disintegration.
"Delilah, behind the wooden screen in the left-side hall there is a skylight passage; its stability is the lowest."
Sophia put away her personal musket and slowly rose to her feet. The hem of her long black Gothic skirt swept across the blood-soaked floor, yet — uncannily — not a single speck of filth clung to it.
She turned to look at the Olan remnant soldiers who, under Delilah's greatsword, had already lost all fighting spirit and were beginning to retreat step by step. A final cold gleam slipped through her pale-golden pupils.
"Force-breach the wall on the left side. Retreat."
"Boom-rumble—!!"
The thick redwood nine-panel screen, more than ten metres long, in the left-side hall of the City Lord's Mansion, in an instant was reduced under Delilah's hurricane-like sweep into a sky of flying fragments.
Those wooden longspears and fine-steel shields, before the absolute kinetic energy of the heavy greatsword, did not have the qualification to obstruct her for so much as a second. Men and armour alike were beaten straight into the depths of the stone wall.
"Your Majesty, this wall is extremely fragile — a single strike can punch through it!"
Delilah's standard-bearer-like figure stood amid the surging gunpowder smoke, those dark-red eyes flickering with a beast-like ferocious gleam.
She held the heavy greatsword, broad as a door panel, reversed in one hand, the tip angled toward the floor. The dark-red blood of the Olan soldiers slid smoothly down the blood groove, dropping onto the bluestone slabs in dazzling flowers of blood.
"Very good."
Sophia, from start to finish, had been seated upon that exquisite carved-back chair. Her slender, fair right hand brushed lightly over the intricate lace edging of the black Gothic skirt.
Even though her surroundings had become a mortal-world hellscape of severed limbs and raging fire intertwined, that exquisite, almost unreal face of hers showed not so much as a ripple of emotion.
Pale-golden pupils swept across the smoke-wreathed wall of the side hall. Sophia's red lips parted lightly, her tone cold as the first snow of winter:
"Delilah, charge up. Take the three cracks left by the explosive bottles just now as reference points. Physically breach the wall."
"Your servant accepts the decree!"
Delilah let out a low growl, her thick legs slamming suddenly into the floor.
As the flagstones, unable to bear the pressure, instantly spread out spider-web cracks, her whole body, like a pitch-black cannonball, shot up from the ground.
Both hands gripped the greatsword's hilt; the ferocious combat aura around her, which had been quiet, in an instant erupted in full force.
"For me — shatter!!"
It was an absolute strike that seemed to draw out even the air itself.
The broad greatsword, accompanied by an ear-piercing shriek of cut wind, slammed savagely into the fragile load-bearing wall built of black stone.
"Boom—
Crack!!"
Along with a deafening crash, the entire several-metre-high black stone wall, under the absolute pressure of the greatsword, collapsed thunderously. Broken stone and dust surged outward like a volcanic eruption.
The originally dim left side of the hall had, in an instant, been smashed open with a huge and savage breach.
The blazing, bright lingering glow of the sunset poured down through the breach, lighting exactly upon a narrow skylight passage leading toward the stables at the rear of the City Lord's Mansion.
"Entrance cleared, retreat path ready!"
Willow drifted gracefully through Delilah's shadow. The twin pistols in her hands once again gave off two crisp "bang-bang" muffled reports, accurately blowing off the heads of two Olan centurions who had been trying to crawl out from the heap of rubble.
She even had the leisure to stretch out her left hand and meticulously pat the slightly dust-stained hem of Sophia's long black skirt, the polite smile at the corner of her mouth as gentle as ever:
"Your Majesty, the air here is continuing to deteriorate. If we stay any longer, the mixed gas of high heat and inferior alchemy toxin will produce harmful attrition to your respiratory tract.
Please follow your servant."
"Let's go."
Sophia slowly stood up. The long black Gothic skirt trailed across the floor strewn with blood and broken stone — yet, beneath Daphne's ceaselessly spreading pure white Holy Light protection, uncannily, not a single speck of filth clung to it.
She did not even let her stride frequency lose any rhythm. Treading over the steel wreckage strewn across the ground, her expression was as composed as if she were strolling in the rear garden of her own Mason Palace.
The few dozen Olan ministers and defeated soldiers left in the hall could now only watch, wide-eyed, as the backs of these five women walked slowly toward that gaping breach.
The flames before the gate were still madly belching dark brown violent bubbles — that was the terrifying chemical reaction produced by the five-fold overdose of Night God's Tears under the catalysis of Irene's explosive bottles, sealing off the tens of thousands of troops outside from entering, and also utterly locking down within everyone in the hall any nerve to give chase.
That is simply not a power a human being can possess.
A black stone load-bearing wall that thick, and that woman shattered it with a single sword strike?!
Look at Queen Sophia…
Her expression has not even changed.
She knew from early on that wall was a weak spot. She knew from early on Una would poison. Even the great fire before the gate that has plugged our ten thousand reserves, even that was within her calculation!
It's over. Olan's fortress, to her, is not a kiln of slaughter at all — this place is just a temporary settlement waypoint she enters and leaves at will, and incidentally cripples Her Majesty Tina in passing!
A monster like this…
How are we supposed to fight her army head-on?
"Tap, tap, tap."
Low-heeled little leather shoes trod upon the slightly damp flagstones of the skylight passage, giving off an extremely regular and crisp sound.
At the end of the skylight passage lay the rear stables where the City Lord's Mansion kept its warhorses.
When Sophia's group came breaching through the wall amid the sky-filling dust and smoke, the several dozen Olan elite knights stationed around the stables, who had been tasked with cutting off the retreat, had not even reacted yet.
"Who goes there?!
How could you come through the wall—"
A leading Olan Knight Captain had just drawn his longsword, when what greeted him was Irene's somewhat perversely excited, cute little face.
"Hi~
Natives of the old era, have a taste of this genius's extra-meal by-product!"
Irene let out a strange yelp. Without needing Sophia's command at all, the Black Rose Reformed Model in her right hand, a full ring thicker than an ordinary musket, snapped up in an instant, and her finger squeezed the trigger.
"Bang—!!"
It was not the dull thunder of an ordinary black musket, but a near-shrill metallic bursting noise.
Beneath everyone's horrified gaze, an improved lead bullet mixed with shards of Tearstain Stone, at an acceleration the naked eye could not capture at all, tore through the void in an instant.
That Knight Captain charging at the very front, together with the costly fine-steel full-body plate armour on him that was reputed to withstand a crossbow's close-range bolt, in the zero-point-one second the bullet touched him, thunderously exploded into fragments!
Kinetic energy overload.
The entire Knight Captain was as though slammed head-on by a fully-charging adult earth-dragon.
Before he could even utter so much as a scream, a terrifying hole appeared in his chest — so transparent that one could even see the scenery behind him through it.
His entire body, carrying the huge inertia, flew backward more than a dozen metres, crashing heavily down and overturning an entire row of wooden stable fences.
"Neigh—!!"
The dozen-odd warhorses in the stables, startled, neighed wildly in panic.
"Delilah, clear the field.
Willow, select the number of strongest mounts."
Sophia stood expressionlessly at the passage's exit, her cool, clear voice swiftly issuing the most efficient action directives.
"You got it!"
Delilah gave a great laugh. That greatsword spun out a chilling black curtain of blades in the air.
She had no need of any flashy techniques whatsoever — just the purest of physical overwhelming force. Each striding lateral slash was accompanied by the ear-piercing noise of finely steel-forged armour being violently torn apart and the muffled report of bones cracking.
Those Olan knights who tried to encircle her were, before Delilah, as fragile as ripe wheat in a field — falling in swathes upon swathes in pools of blood.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
Willow, meanwhile, under Delilah's violent cover, stepped elegantly over the wreckage strewn across the floor.
The twin pistols in her hands were like the roll-call book of the Reaper himself. With each flash of muzzle-flame, an Olan soldier trying to mount and ride off to report would take a bullet to the forehead.
In a mere thirty seconds, the entire interception position in the rear courtyard of the City Lord's Mansion was wiped flat by these two women with a near-mechanical, brutal efficiency.
"Your Majesty, the warhorses have been selected."
Willow walked over, treading through the bloody water, leading a magnificent Olan warhorse. She pushed the monocle on her nose-bridge and spoke in a meticulous, respectful tone.
The dense smoke from the direction of the hall had already begun to spread toward the rear courtyard. Further off, on the fortress streets, large numbers of Olan garrison troops, awoken by the bells, were frantically gathering toward the City Lord's Mansion.
"Prepare to mount up and break out."
Sophia gave a faint sweeping glance toward the corner of the corridor, where countless swaying longspears could already faintly be seen.
In those pale-golden pupils, the killing intent had not lessened in the slightest — on the contrary, owing to the interference of these impurities, it had become only colder.
Owing to the urgency of the situation, the tens of thousands of heavy infantry outside the City Lord's Mansion were frantically going around the burning main gate to encircle the rear courtyard.
And the few of them needed, while riding at full gallop out of Black Stone Fortress, to simultaneously deal with those Olan centurions and Captains chasing them like leeches clinging to bone from behind.
"To ensure Her Majesty's freedom of movement and field of fire remain uninterrupted, the tactical riding plan needs improvement."
Willow took the reins. Her long sleeves stirred slightly, and in a calm tone she allocated the warhorse assets.
On these narrow black stone streets, soon to be encircled to death by the Olan host on the perimeter, if each rode their own mount, the physical bulk of five horses would be too great; in narrow alleyways and against obstacles, mobility would be greatly reduced.
Moreover, Daphne and Irene's close-combat advantages were extremely low. Riding alone, they could easily be disrupted by Olan's lassos or thrown longspears.
"Lord Saint, you will take charge of Her Majesty.
Your servant will take Miss Irene; General Delilah, riding alone, will be in charge of breaching the centre line."
"Y-yes!
Please leave Her Majesty to me!"
Daphne, somewhat nervously, wiped the cold sweat from her palm. Putting one foot in the stirrup, she swung up onto the horse lightly.
She had never done these things before. Now she too was somewhat excited and thrilled, repeatedly telling herself inwardly that the ones they killed were all wicked people who wanted them dead!
She then extended a hand toward Sophia, who was standing on the ground.
Sophia looked at the tall warhorse, then at her own layer-upon-layer outfit — a long black Gothic dress with astonishing defensive power but indeed somewhat limiting to straddling.
Driven by absolute efficiency, she did not choose the astride posture.
Her fair, slender hand rested in Daphne's palm. Borrowing the leverage, Sophia gave a gentle leap. Her whole body was like a wisp of ghostly feather drifting down out of the night, landing lightly in front of Daphne.
She did not straddle her legs on either side of the horse's belly, but in an extremely splendid, elegant — yet, in the midst of battle, somewhat incongruous — side-saddle posture, sat steadily in front of Daphne's saddle.
The wide black lace skirt-hem, like a blooming black rose, spread out layer upon layer along one side of the horse's belly. Her long silver hair, like a waterfall, streamed forward before Daphne's pure white Holy Light armour.
This posture, in the social settings of old-era nobility, was the etiquette of well-bred young ladies attending tea parties.
Yet now, performed by Sophia, in concert with her face cold as a deity's, it gave off a terrifying weight of pressure that made everyone wish to fall to their knees in worship.
On the other side, Willow, with extreme roughness, hauled Irene — still frantically stuffing explosive bottles back into her bag — up onto the saddle behind her.
"Hey, Willow, slow down!
My new toy almost fell out!"
"Miss Irene, please hold tight. The acceleration of the coming movement will exceed your psychological expectations."
Willow, still smiling, suddenly clamped her right heel into the horse's belly.
"Delilah, advance and breach the line.
Retreat!"
Sophia sat side-saddle on the horse, her long skirt rustling in the wind, that cool clear voice like the bugle of a charge.
"Hyah—!!"
The three steeds turned into three streaks of afterimage, slamming open the wooden gate of the rear courtyard of the City Lord's Mansion, charging straight into the now chaotic streets of the Black Stone Fortress!
"They are in the rear courtyard!
They've changed mounts!"
"Don't let that silver-haired witch escape!
Loose arrows! Loose arrows quickly!"
On the narrow streets of Black Stone Fortress, several Olan soldier Captains who, under Una's dying orders, led red-eyed interception squads, at the sight of those three steeds galloping wildly toward them, instantly screamed in frenzied roars.
On the rooftops of the civilian houses lining the street, dozens of archers with fully-drawn repeating crossbows appeared in an instant; icy ghost-blue poison arrows came down like a torrential rain over the three riders.
At the corner of the street ahead, four Olan Captains armed with heavy longspears, in officer-grade iron armour, with two hundred heavy infantry already at their backs, had used their thick tower shields to plug the only passage out of the city tight as could be.
"I said it once already —
Those who block the way — die!!"
Delilah at the front, together with her warhorse, seemed transformed into an unbreakable siege-ram.
She did not even slow down. The greatsword in her hand, wrapped in violent combat aura, slammed savagely into the first row of fine-steel tower shields.
"Boom—!!"
It was an asura's slaughterground born of the collision of the purest flesh and force.
Dozens of Olan infantry, together with their tower shields, were under Delilah's single sword-strike smashed and trampled to pieces.
But further to the rear, those four Olan Captains in charge of command, seeing how ferocious Delilah's offensive was, exchanged a look and instantly issued their cold orders:
"Spearmen, hear the order!
Lunge for the warhorse!
Bring down that silver-haired Queen for me!!"
Dozens of heavy iron spears, several metres long, threaded through the gaps in the iron defence line like an airtight thicket of hedgehog spines, jabbing savagely toward the warhorse beneath Daphne.
At this distance, the moment the warhorse was damaged, Sophia, sitting side-saddle, would inevitably lose her ability to move.
At that desperate moment, with the dozens of iron spears mere feet from the horse's face.
Sophia, sitting side-saddle at the front of the saddle, slowly raised that pale right hand which had all along been concealed beneath the lace cuff.
Her long silver hair danced wildly in the gale. In those pale-golden pupils there was not the slightest panic; there was only the deepest indifference toward these parts that were disturbing order before her.
"Click."
The obsidian-cold-gleaming personal musket once again completed its unlocking smoothly at her fingertips.
Because she was in side-saddle posture, Sophia's entire upper body had a broader field of fire than was normal in riding.
Her lower abdomen exerted a slight force, perfectly aligning the centre of her body with the rhythm of the warhorse's gallop. Her right arm was as stable as the support beam of a cast-iron lathe.
Beneath the Olan soldiers' looks of near-madman regard, this little queen in the cumbersome Gothic skirt — seemingly so fragile — amid the violent jolting of the horse, expressionlessly pulled the trigger.
"Bang!"
The first report.
The pungent stench of gunpowder smoke from the hall had not yet dispersed. In the iron-armoured thicket ahead, that spearmen Captain who had just been brandishing his sword and frantically issuing commands had, in one one-thousandth of a second, a brilliant flower of blood explode without warning between his brows.
His roar cut off mid-cry; his entire body, blown back by the enormous kinetic energy, fell straight backward, smashing into disarray an entire stretch of spear-formation.
"What?!
On such a violently jolting horse-back, how could she possibly…"
Beside him another shield-bearing Captain in charge of supervising the battle stared in horror.
Yet, before his mind could process this terrifying fact, Sophia's right wrist, with extreme precision and physical deflection, once again swept through a fine arc.
Consecutive shots.
"Bang!"
The second report.
That shield-bearing Captain's fine-steel helmet was like a watermelon struck by a great hammer. The lead bullet, bearing splinters of Tearstain Stone, bored straight through the front of the helmet, opening a terrifying breach. Red and white fluids mixed with iron shards instantly splashed across the faces of the soldiers around him.
"Gh-ghost!
She is a Reaper come up from hell!!"
The two remaining Captains in the rear were utterly terrified out of their wits by this scene.
In their military common sense, even the most top-tier marksman of the Olan Empire — to hit a moving target a hundred paces off with bow or crossbow from a horse at full gallop, would have to halt the warhorse and steady the breathing.
But this silver-haired girl?!
She wasn't even controlling the horse, just sitting there side-saddle with elegance and even a hint of disdain.
On the one hand, letting the wind blow up her splendid Gothic skirt, on the other, calling out names with her finger in the air as casually as one might please, one shot per kill, settling up these rigorously trained officers of theirs like dead dogs on the spot!
This absolute dominion that surpassed the rules of the old era — in an instant the inner defensive mechanisms of the Olan soldiers around them, who had been red-eyed and risking their lives, comprehensively collapsed!
"Bang! Bang!"
Two more crisp peals of thunder.
The two remaining Captains, who had tried to find cover, together with the two layers of thick iron-bound wooden shields before them, before Sophia's cold-as-can-be, deviation-free bullets, were as fragile as two pieces of water-soaked sheepskin. In an instant they were bored through, torn open, and both, vomiting blood, fell to the ground, dead with eyes wide.
"The Commanders are dead!
All the Commanders have been killed!"
"Don't come over here!
Don't point that black tube at me!!"
The moment all four Captains fell in sequence, the formation utterly disintegrated.
The fighting spirit of several hundred heavy infantry was chewed to pieces by that omnipresent terror that even shields could not block.
They could not even spare a thought to keep their longspears pointed at the mounts; as if mad, they scrambled into the ruined civilian houses along both sides of the street, terrified that the next target of those pale-golden pupils might be themselves.
"Hahahaha!!
Your Majesty! That side-saddle quick-draw stance just now was simply too cool!!"
Irene, tucked behind Willow, seeing the enemy formation up front in complete collapse, wriggled madly on horseback in her excitement. Her sapphire-blue eyes were filled with fanatical worship:
Side-saddle! On the battlefield, side-saddle sniping!
Just what kind of god-tier domineering-CEO setting is this?!
Those natives didn't even touch the hem of Her Majesty's long skirt before being directly formatted on the spot!
The combination of Her Majesty's cold expression and the muzzle-flash when she fired is simply ten thousand times more striking than any female-lead drama I watched in my previous life!
It's no good — when I get back I must absolutely engrave this scene in the most exquisitely detailed copper plates and hang them in the main hall of Mason Palace, so the people of Mason can worship daily!
As for those small-fry behind us who, not knowing whether they live or die, are still trying to encircle us…
As this genius is the number-one favoured retainer, how could I let you trashes disturb Her Majesty's exit performance?!
"Willow! Crank the speed to maximum!
This genius is going to draw the most splendid curtain-fall for these dregs of the old era!!"
Irene shouted, reaching backhand into her bosom and yanking out the last three specially made "Black Rose Reformed Model" high-concentration fire bottles she had left.
"Go and die! Olan trash!!"
Irene, in the final instant as the warhorse crossed the corner of the street, about to charge out of the gates of Black Stone Fortress, turned in mid-air and hurled those three dark-red glass bottles viciously against the walls of the narrow street they had just passed through.
"Smash—!!"
The sound of glass shattering was particularly crisp under the moonlight.
The next second, a wave of dark-green flames far more violent, far more scorching than that of the City Lord's Mansion hall, like a flood of lava welling up from the depths of the earth, in one thunderous roar utterly swallowed up the entire street stretching dozens of metres!
The flames stood several yards high, accompanied by ear-piercing physical bursting sounds, and instantly burned the stone buildings on both sides red-hot and cracking.
Scalding waves of heat and toxic dense smoke rolled upward, sealing off — utterly — the thousands of red-eyed Olan infantry charging out behind with longspears raised, on the other side of the wall of fire.
"Aagh! Fire!
This witch's fire again!"
"We can't get across!
Even the longspears are on fire!!"
On the far side of the wall of fire, countless Olan soldiers, looking at that scorching green curtain that could even twist the air itself, were terrified to such a degree that they collapsed to the ground in swathes upon swathes. Not a single one dared to advance even half a step further.
They could only watch, separated by that insurmountable wall of fire, terrified and powerless, as those three warhorses, beneath the collapsing gaze of the fortress garrison, utterly charged out through the gates of Black Stone City and disappeared into the unending night of Sunset Glow Canyon.
On the city wall, Una stared, soul scattered, at the field of charred wreckage on the ground and the rolling clouds of dust receding into the distance. Her fingernails dug deep into the stone brick, blood streaming.
Meanwhile, supported by countless Royal Guards, Queen Tina, clutching her ceaselessly bleeding right arm, walked out of the ruins of the City Lord's Mansion with a deathly pale face.
She looked at those flames soaring to the heavens, listened to the terrified wailings of the remnant soldiers on the streets concerning the silver-haired Reaper killing side-saddle. Those eyes that had once been filled with ambition were, in this instant, at last utterly occupied by a despairing, bleak chill.
The sunset glow faded; the night of the Northern border officially descended.
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