Moonlight flowed like water.
Five hundred paces beyond the city gate, a single black horse stood silently in the moonlight.
Delilah held that heavy greatsword reversed in one hand, its point toward the ground, while the long red hair bound behind her head snapped and crackled in the howling wind.
Behind her warhorse, the carriage compartment of an exquisite Imperial Capital merchant guild coach had been smashed to pieces.
Countless alchemy gems and assorted colored jewels, glittering with dazzling streams of light beneath the moon, lay scattered carelessly across the muddy, water-logged ground like so many worthless bits of gravel.
In the very center of those gems sat Princess Una, bound hand and foot by two thick Mason iron chains, slumped in the mud. Her once-delicate face was streaked with tears and terror as she screamed shrilly toward the city wall.
"Sister—! Save me! Save me, Sister!
That red-haired woman is a demon!
They knew all along that I would run...
They lay in wait for me on the mountain road for three whole hours!
Boo-hoo-hoo... Sister!!"
Looking at her little sister sobbing piteously in the mud, and then at those royal gems radiating their mocking glow under the moonlight, Queen Tina felt the scene before her swim with dizziness.
"Tina."
A hundred paces away, Delilah's voice—charged with abundant physical vigor—detonated flat across the deathly-silent obsidian Royal City, clear enough to deliver a final declaration of assets right into the ear of every Olan soldier:
"Her Majesty said it before: the impurities of the old era always love to tangle up the accounts before they make their exit.
Since you've thrown open the royal grand vault, intending to crouch in the city and wait to die guarding scrap iron too heavy to haul off, then this General, on behalf of the Mason credit system, will confiscate on the spot this little treasure of yours that you were preparing to smuggle to the Imperial Capital."
Delilah slowly raised the greatsword, its tip refracting cold light beneath the moon, and leveled it at a slant toward the deathly-pale Tina atop the wall:
"Tomorrow at high noon, if you still haven't grown accustomed to aligning yourself to the Black Rose banner of Mason in the most standard kneeling posture, then this General...
will, here, two hundred paces out, before the eyes of your fifty thousand cavalry, carry out a forced liquidation of every last future this Second Princess of Olan has left!!"
"Roar—!!"
Behind her, ten thousand well-fed Mason soldiers, black muskets cradled in their hands, simultaneously erupted into an ear-splitting roar.
The unbridled, jeering laughter of those ten thousand Mason heavy infantry was like countless red-hot steel needles, stabbing viciously into the ears of every Olan soldier on the wall.
"Loose the arrows!
Loose the arrows for This Queen!
Kill that traitor!!"
Queen Tina's bloodshot eyes were all but dripping fresh blood as she bellowed hysterically.
Her uninjured left hand seized the collar of a crossbow commander beside her and hauled the whole man clean off his feet.
Violent rage and humiliation had stripped away the cold composure of her former days. The purple-black wound on her right arm, torn open by a gunshot, split apart once more from the violent motion, and blood mixed with pus instantly dyed her bright-yellow royal robe crimson.
"Your Majesty! You must not, Your Majesty!"
The Duke and several old ministers were frightened out of their wits. They lunged forward and clung desperately to Tina's royal robe, pleading over and over:
"She's gone mad... Her Majesty the Queen has been driven utterly mad with rage!
It's a full several hundred paces from here to Delilah!
At this distance, even if our composite great crossbows could shoot that far, they would lose all their force—yet those fire-spewing black tubes of Mason's could blast the battlements right off the wall with the greatest of ease!
What's more, Her Highness the Second Princess is still down there in the mud serving as bait. Loose this volley, and not only will it fail to kill Delilah, it will first send Princess Una straight to hell, and utterly enrage that silver-haired Witch of Mason!"
"Let go! You spineless gutless cowards, every one of you, let go of me!!"
Queen Tina thrashed frantically, the blood at the corner of her mouth growing ever redder, but those ministers who normally hung on her every word were, at this moment, as iron-resolved as if they had swallowed a lead weight, and would not let go for the life of them.
Two hundred paces away, Delilah coldly watched the Olan high command thrown into chaos atop the wall.
In those dark-red eyes there was not a trace of pity—only the deepest contempt for the weaklings of the old era.
"Since you need time to acquaint yourselves with the rules of Mason, then this General will give you one night."
Delilah gave a cold snort, slid her long sword back into its scabbard, and pulled the reins with one hand.
Under the fearful, despairing gaze of countless Olan soldiers on the wall, the jet-black heavy warhorse turned smoothly about.
The Princess Una dragging behind the carriage let out one final, piercing scream of agony, and along with those royal gems glittering with their mocking light beneath the moon, was hauled mercilessly back by Delilah into that pitch-black encampment formed of countless black muskets.
Half an hour later, the air inside the field-headquarters Council Hall was so oppressive it felt as though it would crush a person's very bones alive.
A floor strewn with shattered glass silently mocked the grand plan of dimensional-suppression counterattack that the Duke of Tulan had laid out only moments before.
Queen Tina sat in the seat of honor, deathly pale, letting a trembling handmaiden re-bandage that right arm of hers that was all but ruined.
"Your Majesty...
Since Princess Una has been captured, our earlier plan to encircle and exterminate the drifters—is it perhaps necessary to..."
The Duke's voice was as small as a mosquito's.
"Not only can it not stop—it must be carried out for This Queen at once!!"
Queen Tina snapped her head up. That once-haughty, cold face was now twisted in the lamplight like a blood-thirsty vengeful demon:
"Delilah is treating Una as a hostage chip—which proves that bitch Sophia is also afraid of the royal grand vault in the Royal City!
She wants to use half a month to corner me to death inside the Royal City—then this Queen will, this very night, smash her credit utterly into scrap iron!"
Tina turned to look at the commander of the Olan Royal deathsworn kneeling in the shadows, her eyes flickering with hysterical despair and madness:
"Send the order to the most elite Shadow Blade company!
Now, immediately, don light armor, take up the sharpest poison blades, and slip out of the city for This Queen through the most hidden mountain culvert at the East Gate!
Go to the edge of Yurilland, go to Iron Hammer Town!
Any of those lowborn wretches hoarding scraps of Mason paper, any guides transporting Black Bread—there's no need to bring them back. Slaughter them all by the cruelest means right there in their wheat fields, at the entrances to their villages, and hang up their corpses!
This Queen will make every commoner in the whole of the Northern border watch—the end that comes to those who trust Sophia is death!
I'd like to see, once those traitors burn every Black Rose note in their hands as a death-hastening talisman, just what that silver-haired little Queen has left to carry out the final liquidation against This Queen with!!"
"We will accomplish Your Majesty's royal decree though it cost our lives!!"
In the shadows, fifty Olan Royal deathsworn, every one of them radiating a cold, deathly aura, accepted the command in unison. Their forms, like so many wisps of ghosts, vanished in an instant into the dark passages of the underground palace.
The Northern border wilderness in the dead of night was so silent that not even the chirp of an insect could be heard.
On the east side of the Olan Royal City, beneath a steep, jagged cliff of tumbled rocks, a slab of black stone was slowly pushed aside, revealing a hidden mountain culvert just wide enough for one person to pass.
"Soften every movement!
Avoid the scouting lines of the Mason musketeers outside the city!"
The centurion of the Shadow Blade company was the first to flip nimbly out of the culvert. His body was smeared all over with black herbal paste, and the poison blade in his hand reflected not the slightest gleam of light beneath the moon.
As the sharpest assassination blades of the Olan royal house, they were confident they could cross any army's blockade line undetected, in pure darkness without any magic, leaving not a god nor a ghost the wiser.
And yet, in the very tenth-of-a-second that the fiftieth deathsworn had only just pulled his foot free of the culvert—
"Click. Click."
An extremely regular, precise sound of hammers being cocked, full of mechanical beauty, detonated in chain succession from behind the surrounding heaps of jumbled rock, without the slightest physical warning.
Within a hundred paces all around, in the pitch-black grassland that had been utter darkness, rows upon rows of glaring windproof alchemy torches suddenly blazed to life.
They lit up these fifty top-tier Olan deathsworn as brightly as ridiculous little clowns on a stage with nowhere to hide.
And directly before them, Delilah sat upon a folding camp chair, one hand propped on that heavy greatsword wide as a door-plank, those dark-red eyes brimming with mockery and derision.
Behind Delilah, two hundred well-fed Mason black musketeers, eyes cold and sharp, had long since knelt in ranks on one knee, leveling muzzles that gleamed cold as obsidian, aligned with perfect steadiness upon the deathsworn's chests.
"You... why are you here?!"
That Shadow Blade centurion was so terrified his blood and qi ran backward, his eyeballs nearly tumbling out of their sockets.
This culvert was an absolute secret left from the city's founding three hundred years ago—apart from the direct royal line, not even the Minister of Internal Affairs knew of it!
So why... why would Delilah lead so many people to set an ambush at this very spot ahead of time?!
A Divine Miracle... this is absolutely the omniscient Divine Miracle of that sixteen-year-old little Queen!
Ordinary reconnaissance could never possibly have investigated the timing, the location, and our route of departure so perfectly!
Queen Tina had only just handed down her death-order in the Council Hall, yet before we had even crossed the boundary of this Royal City, Delilah had already locked us down within her ledger!
Which means that even inside that Council Hall reeking of stale rice-water, the eyes of Her Majesty Sophia were coldly watching every single one of us through the ever-present air!
Our every move, in their eyes, is nothing more than a string of discarded numbers whose final result of destruction was written out long ago!
To play chess against a god...
What in the world are we of Olan even resisting?!
"You think rats like you, starved until even the muscles to grip a blade have all but withered away, can go and sabotage Her Majesty's autumn-harvest plan?"
Delilah slowly rose to her feet, swept the greatsword lightly forward, her tone coarse and cold:
"Her Majesty foresaw Tina's asset-transfer routine long ago.
Any who do not hold a Mason pass will be cleared away on the spot tonight.
Open fire—full liquidation!!"
"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang—!!"
Deafening peals of thunder instantly tore apart the silent night sky of the Northern border, as the searing muzzle flames spat out deadly tongues of fire.
Those so-called invincible Olan deathsworn, before this epoch-transcending speed and destructive power, were as fragile as sheets of cheap straw paper. Before they could even let out a scream, they collapsed in swathe after swathe into pools of blood, their bodies dismembered and scattered...
Deep in the night.
In the study of the Yurilland Temporary Palace, a faint candle-flame quietly flickered.
The summer night outside the window had grown deep. Now and then a few breaths of cool wind stirred the curtains, carrying off some of the stuffy heat within the room.
Sophia sat upright behind the desk, her fair fingers turning, now and again, the pages of the earlier supply-allocation accounts.
"Your Majesty, General Delilah's urgent secret letter, in her own hand, has arrived."
With a series of very light footsteps, Willow walked in wearing that ever-gentle smile of hers.
In both hands she held an exquisite brass tray, and in the center of the tray lay, quietly, a scroll of parchment sealed tight with Black Rose sealing-wax.
On the soft couch, Irene and Victoria both lifted their heads at the same moment, their gazes falling in unison upon that secret letter.
Sophia reached out and took the parchment. Her fingertips moved slightly, and she crisply peeled away the wax seal.
Once she had spread the parchment flat upon the desk, a hand of writing—extremely vigorous and forceful, even faintly carrying the sharp edge of swordsmanship—met her eye.
This handwriting was highly distinctive; it was indeed penned by Delilah's own hand.
The letter did not run to many words, but in the eyes of the absolutely rational Sophia, every single character upon it represented the most precise intelligence of the frontline war situation.
Your subject, Delilah.
Late this night, your subject led the Second Army Group to set an ambush outside the Olan Royal City, and successfully intercepted in full the Second Princess of Olan, Una, who had intended to disguise herself and flee.
The culprit and the spoils were both seized, and in passing we captured three crates of top-grade alchemy gems requisitioned out of the Olan national treasury, along with sundry other royal antiques and valuables.
This batch of goods has now all been registered and entered into the books, held in asset trust as a reserve fund for Mason's new order.
The situation in the Royal City has been completely locked down by our army.
It is only that this Tina is a stubborn sort; though her right arm is gravely wounded, she has now thrown open the royal grand vault and is making a desperate last stand.
Your subject judges that the coming several days will still require some time of matching wits and courage with Tina, to carry out the final clearing-away of the dregs.
The win-rate of this campaign is already aligned; this humble subject will surely present a flawless Olan to you with both hands. I beg Your Majesty not to trouble yourself, and to take care of your precious health.
Reading to this point, a flicker of satisfaction passed through Sophia's pale-golden pupils.
Una's capture meant that Tina had lost her last line of retreat, and those crate upon crate of alchemy gems could directly replenish the workshop capacity losses Irene was about to face. The output ratio of this transaction was a full three energy-levels higher than anticipated.
However, when Sophia's gaze moved to the very end of the letter, she discovered that the ever-rigorous and cold General had, beside the signature, added in a cramped, faltering hand—the strokes so heavily pressed that they had even faintly soaked through to the back of the paper—a single crooked line:
P.S.: The Northern border night is deep and the dew is heavy. Your subject, here within the camp tent, misses Your Majesty most dearly.
For a moment the study fell rather quiet.
Sophia gazed expressionlessly at that final line of writing. Her lovely brows stirred ever so slightly, and a rare trace of tenderness flickered through her pale-golden pupils.
Yet this momentary, minute pause of hers did not escape the eyes of the two clever people beside her.
"Oh my, Your Majesty, what exactly did General Delilah write in the letter?
Looking at your expression, the front lines must surely have struck it rich, am I right?!"
Irene scrambled up from the soft couch in one motion, even tossing aside the beloved charcoal pencil in her hand.
She sniffed, and rather excitedly leaned in toward the desk, her sapphire-like eyes full of fervor.
"I just heard from the herald that Una was caught—are those three crates of top-grade gems really true?
Can you spare me a few to use as the hammer cores for a new model of black musket?"
She'd been hankering after this for ages!
"All confiscated to the public coffers. Once Willow finishes tallying the accounts, your workshop's needs will be given priority."
Sophia responded indifferently, picking up the fruit juice beside her and taking a sip.
At the other end of the soft couch, Victoria at this moment elegantly covered the smile at the corner of her mouth with an ivory fan.
The Third Princess's golden eyes circled once over Sophia's face, then glanced at that secret letter deliberately set at the corner of the desk, the admiration and teasing in their depths all but spilling over.
Just look at Sophia's cool, aloof manner—unmoved in expression even as a mountain collapsed before her. Hearing that a third of the Olan national treasury had been captured, she hadn't so much as lifted an eyelid.
What did that prove?
It proved that Tina's move to spirit away Una and spirit away the gems had been calculated by Her Majesty from the very start.
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