"Praise be to Her Majesty… we're not dreaming, are we?"
A heavily-armored soldier in the front row, once a man of Yurilland, was at this moment gripping a brand-new refined-iron spear in a death-grip.
Even as he thrust in rhythm with Sophia's blade, his eyes rimmed red, he muttered under his breath to the comrade beside him in the faintest of voices:
"Old Hart, hurry, pinch me!
That's Her Majesty Sophia up on the platform!
In the old days, whenever the Yurilland King made his yearly inspection, we'd have to kneel in the stinking gutters and wait three whole watches!
But now… Her Majesty is personally leading us in training our skills!
Last night Lady Willow even sent three notes and a sack of honey-sweetened Black Bread to my home.
This life of mine—from now on it's Her Majesty's flowing asset!
Anyone who dares run up a bad debt against Her Majesty, I'll be the first to smash his skull in!!"
"Shut it! Don't throw off Her Majesty's rhythm and frequency!"
A soldier beside him wearing a high ponytail shot him a fierce glare, yet those eyes fixed on Sophia likewise glittered with a near-fanatical worship and faith:
"Look at Her Majesty's every movement—not a single redundant physical deviation, every step as precise as if measured with a ruler!
This is the true depth of a worthy sovereign!
Back when we were that Tina woman's dogs, we couldn't even get a single bowl of salted broth.
But now, following Her Majesty Sophia, not only can we eat our fill—even our very souls have been fully healed by Saint Daphne and Her Highness Victoria.
If those nations dare disobey the choices laid out in Her Majesty's state letters, then tomorrow I'll follow General Delilah and go chop every one of their thrones into kindling!!"
"Mind the frequency!
One! Two!!"
Amid wave upon wave of high, fervent roars brimming with the utmost cohesion,
upon the Drill Ground of Yurilland, those squads of steel blades that had once belonged to differing camps were, under the personal guidance of Sophia's cold and aloof silhouette, being reforged at a most terrifying speed into a single iron-solid New Great Wall of Mason.
And atop the high platform, Sophia, performing her standard swordsmanship with meticulous care, gazed down at those soldiers whose eyes blazed so fanatically they all but spat fire, her pale-golden pupils seemingly devoid of any emotion.
Sophia found that the breathability of this leather armor was far better than the leather armor of before.
Lately, always sitting in the Council Hall had caused the turnover efficiency of her metabolism to decline; coming out to do a bit of aerobic exercise and stretch her limbs really did make her feel a great deal more comfortable.
The morning sun had just risen.
Over the plains outside the Olan Royal City drifted a thin layer of morning mist.
In stark contrast to the dead silence within the towering, frigid obsidian city walls, the Mason great camp several hundred paces beyond the walls was at this moment sending up wave after wave of physical heat thick with the warm bustle of living.
In several dozen great iron cauldrons, thick meat broth seasoned with coarse salt was rolling to a boil, giving off a domineering aroma in the gentle breeze of the high-summer morning, while the soldiers, holding freshly baked bread that breathed out the sweet fragrance of honey, chewed away merrily in great mouthfuls.
In this purely cold-weapon standoff, the disparity in the physical stamina and the morale-flow of the defenders on either side was plain to judge under the very first ray of morning light.
And beneath several stout old trees at the edge of the military camp, the crisp clang of clashing iron chains rang out especially harsh to the ear.
Princess Una, intercepted on the mountain road the night before, was at this moment slumped without a shred of dignity in the muddy water, that gorgeous royal hunting attire of hers long since so caked with filth that its original color could no longer be made out.
At her side, the dozen-odd Tina loyalists and deathsworn charged with escorting her flight were likewise bound fast to the tree trunks by heavy iron chains, each of them ashen-faced, their eyes holding nothing but despair before the unknown.
A Mason markswoman with crisply cropped short hair, carrying a bowl of steaming wheat porridge and a somewhat hard piece of Black Bread, walked over to Una on orders and held the food out toward her:
"Eat up, Second Princess of Olan.
In the rules of our Mason, there's no logic of abusing prisoners. Eat this—it'll replenish the stamina you've lost."
Una lifted her head somewhat neurotically, those once-exquisite eyes locked in a death-stare on that bowl of wheat-scented food, her body trembling involuntarily from extreme hunger.
Yet at the thought of her own noble royal bloodline, at the thought of her elder sister watching from atop the city wall, that trace of old-era arrogance in the depths of her eyes forcibly aligned itself back into place after all.
"Get away! You lowly dirt-legged peasant!"
Una jerked her head sharply aside, knocking most of the wheat porridge out of the markswoman's hand and spilling it.
Even as she panted violently, she yanked at the iron chains on her wrists and shrieked hysterically at the markswoman:
"This Queen would sooner die than eat the charity of you Mason witches!
Once my sister musters the refined-steel heavy crossbows from the great armory, you bandits with your black tubes will all be bound to the obsidian walls for forced liquidation!
Take away your filthy food! This Princess will not eat!!"
The markswoman sighed somewhat helplessly, looking at the wheat porridge spilled on the ground, feeling that this kind of waste of survival supplies was simply a desecration of Her Majesty's remaking of Order.
She shook her head, turned, and strode quickly to the bonfire at the center of the great camp.
At this moment Delilah was sitting upon an enormous whetstone.
That length of red hair bound behind her head was a little disheveled in the morning wind, and on the dark-red heavy plate armor she wore there still clung the faint smell of gunsmoke left from cleaning out the Olan royal deathsworn the night before.
Delilah held a lump of Black Bread in one hand, chewing at an utterly constant frequency, while in the other she held a coarse oilcloth, wiping down that ruby-set heavy greatsword over and over with the utmost care.
"General."
The markswoman knelt on one knee and reported, somewhat troubled:
"That Second Princess of Olan absolutely refuses to eat anything—she even knocked the wheat porridge over and berated us as witches of the old era.
General, how should this be handled?"
Delilah's motion of wiping the greatsword did not pause in the slightest; in those dark-red eyes there was not even the faintest ripple of excess emotion, her voice cold and hard without a trace of fluctuation:
"Pay her no mind.
If she wants to starve, then let her starve.
In any case, by high noon today, no matter what, the time of final liquidation will have arrived."
Delilah stuffed the oilcloth casually into a seam of her armor and slowly rose to her feet.
That body, like an iron tower, cast an enormously oppressive shadow in the morning sun, the heavy greatsword carving a cold arc through the air before driving slantwise, point-down, into the sand:
"Send word to every chiliarch of the Second Army Group—have the brothers seize the time to replenish their stamina.
By noon today, this General wants to see the white-rose banner of surrender hung out atop the Royal City wall.
And if by afternoon that person inside the city still hasn't made a move that conforms to Her Majesty's model…"
Delilah lifted her head, those eyes brimming with dead silence and battle-intent crossing the distance of five hundred paces to lock fast upon the western gate of that towering obsidian wall:
"…then this General will personally lead the men, storm the city by force, and smash to utter pieces this last shred of Olan's dignity."
Hearing these words, the Mason adjutant seated to one side felt his heart give a sudden jolt; even as he calibrated the bearings of the siege crossbows on the sheepskin parchment, he asked in a low, somewhat puzzled voice:
"General, in Her Majesty's earlier orders, did she not say we could, through siege, exhaust the city's flowing supplies dry within half a month?
We now hold the absolute commanding heights. If we forcibly assault obsidian walls handed down over several centuries, our army's loss of merit and personnel casualties may exceed the earlier budget projection…"
"We can't drag it out any longer."
Delilah turned her head and swept a cold glance over the adjutant.
As the foremost general who had slashed her way out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood, Delilah's instinct had, this very morning, issued her a high-frequency warning of unease.
Though on the surface every string of numbers proclaimed Mason's absolute superiority, on this kind of mundane battlefield—one with no extraordinary Divine Arts, where everything hinged on human lives clashing against steel—the longer time was dragged out, the more variables it would breed.
The gaze of the Imperial Capital is now a variable that can no longer be evaded.
That Tina woman could actually send fifty elite deathsworn slipping out through a culvert last night, which shows that this several-centuries-old kingdom's depth still conceals hidden accounts we have yet to fully grasp.
Should some neighboring nation, in the course of the siege, grow desperate enough to lash out like a cornered beast, or should the movements over on the Imperial Capital's end trigger a dimensional-suppression deployment ahead of schedule, then Her Majesty's entire autumn-harvest grand design would suffer an irreversible blow.
Delilah gripped the hilt of the greatsword in a death-grip, and this unease within her was, in the end, fully converted into an absolute fervor for Sophia's new Order:
"Her Majesty handed Mason's sharpest edge to me—not so that I could sit here squaring up the accounts nice and steady with the dregs of the old era.
To breed more incidents is to add unnecessary, redundant bad debt to Her Majesty's mental computations.
Since matters have already come this far, then we must use the crudest, fastest method to cut off Olan's head this very afternoon!"
Hearing this pronouncement from Delilah, brimming with a commander's vision and iron-blooded slaughter, the Mason soldiers and chiliarchs all around had eyes that, in an instant, turned more fervent than the blazing morning sun.
Divine!
General Delilah's frequency of thought has, sure enough, now achieved an absolute, seamless resonance with Her Majesty in the Yurilland Temporary Palace!
We mortals only see that storming the walls will produce losses, but what the General sees is the time-to-yield ratio that spans the entire map of the Northern border!
For the General to forcibly storm the city this afternoon is no impulse at all.
She means to use the most brutal, most shocking destruction to smash Olan's sturdiest obsidian wall to pieces for all the world to see!
This is using the supreme rite of annihilating an old empire to make the most absolute credit endorsement for Her Majesty's Black Rose notes!!
"Every one of you, polish your blades and spears till they shine!!"
The adjutant abruptly drew his sword, his whole face flushed crimson as he bellowed hysterically within the tent:
"This afternoon, follow the General and break the city!
Plant Her Majesty Sophia's Black Rose banner right on top of that old woman Tina's head!!"
"Roar——!!"
Several hundred paces away, those ranks upon ranks of Mason black musketeers who had long since knelt on one knee once again leveled their muzzles—giving off a cold, hard sheen—with the utmost steadiness and without a hair's deviation, in the light of the breaking dawn, toward that ancient Royal City that seemed invincible.
Inside the Olan Royal City.
The morning sun spilled thinly across the cold obsidian walls, yet brought not the slightest warmth.
Within the Council Hall, Queen Tina had not slept a wink all night; she was staring fixedly toward the east gate, awaiting the good news the Shadow Blade squad would bring back.
In her imaginings, those fifty elite deathsworn should by now have infiltrated the fringes of Iron Hammer Town and Yurilland, tearing apart by the bloodiest of means that so-called credit myth of Mason's.
However, before the wick of the ever-burning lamp had even burned out, a burst of chaotic, terror-stricken footsteps rudely shattered the last fantasies of the high nobility.
"Report——!
Your Majesty! Disaster!
Outside the east gate… there's movement outside the east gate!!"
An Olan defense commander came tumbling and scrambling into the great hall, his helmet askew, his face as ghastly pale as a desiccated corpse freshly dug from the grave.
"What is there to panic about?! Has Delilah begun the assault?!"
A streak of savagery erupted abruptly in Queen Tina's pair of bloodshot eyes, and her intact left hand slammed down hard upon the long table.
"No… it's not an assault!
Your Majesty, it's… it's corpses!
The corpses of the lords of the Shadow Blade squad—they've all been thrown down before the city gate by the Mason men!!"
"What?!"
Queen Tina's figure swayed violently, her vision swimming with wave upon wave of darkness.
She shoved aside the duke who came forward to support her and rushed, expression maddened, toward the east city gate.
When, amid a throng of ashen-faced ministers, she climbed atop the towering obsidian wall, the morning wind happened just then to scatter the last wisp of thin mist over the wasteland, laying utterly bare before everyone's eyes that bloody, cruel scene below the wall.
On the open ground several hundred paces beyond the city gate lay, sprawled this way and that, a full fifty cold corpses.
Those corpses were riddled all over with dense, charred bullet holes deep enough to show bone, the blood within their bodies long since drained dry, staining the muddy water beneath them a glaring dark red.
They were precisely the Olan royal deathsworn upon whom she had pinned such high hopes the night before, who had prided themselves on being able to cross any defensive line undetected by god or ghost.
And at the very front of that heap of corpses, planted with the utmost insolence, stood a crude wooden placard, upon which words written in dripping fresh blood read:
The trash has now been fully liquidated.
"Aaaah——!
Sophia! This Queen will kill you!
Kill you!!"
Extreme humiliation and despair turned into a surge of reverse-flowing blood; Queen Tina jerked her head back and spewed out a mouthful of fresh blood, her body swaying violently.
In this moment, the last shred of reason in her heart was at last burned utterly to ash.
The assassination squad she had dispatched—their march route and time of flight were royal top secrets, unknown even to the Minister of the Interior.
Yet Mason's army, as though possessed of foreknowledge, had blocked the men squarely at the mouth of the culvert and slaughtered every last one.
What did this mean?
It meant that the silver-haired little queen seated in the Yurilland Temporary Palace had long ago locked down everything here with a pair of unseen eyes!
If she kept on hunkering down in this obsidian cage playing the turtle, then forget half a month—by high noon today her younger sister Una would become, like these deathsworn, a withered skeleton before the camp outside the walls!
The grain in the royal great granary was only enough to feed fifty thousand for half a month, and the Black Rose paper-slips outside had nearly gnawed the morale of the lower ranks clean away.
To sit and await death was to court her own doom!
Since the new Order left not a single survival metric for the old era, then she would use the most brutal, most reckless trampling to fight the motley army outside the walls to the death!
"Convey This Queen's imperial decree… muster the entire army!
To the central great drill field!!"
Tina shoved aside the ministers around her with a single sweep, wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth, her eyes filled with a mad death-resolve to destroy everything.
A short while later, upon the colossal training ground at the center of the Olan Royal City, fifty thousand cavalry and tens of thousands of defending infantry stood packed in dark, dense masses into every corner.
Though they had just eaten thick soup boiled from the royal aged rice, and carried heavy pure-gold coins against their chests, at this very moment every soldier's face was filled with an undisguisable dread and bewilderment.
News of those fifty deathsworn corpses outside the east gate had long since spread through the camp as though it had grown wings, and the aroma of the meat broth wafting over from the Mason great camp outside the walls tormented these soldiers of the old empire all the more.
Queen Tina, under the protection of a throng of royal inner guards, slowly ascended the commander's platform of piled white stone.
Her face was ghastly pale as a specter, and in the instant that countless soldiers fixed their gazes upon her, she actually reached up and, with a single fluttering motion, tore the robe from her right arm, baring without the slightest reserve to the sight of all that wound—gnawed by lead shot until the bone was cracked and the flesh rotted, showing signs of purplish-black putrefaction.
"Warriors of Olan! Look upon this arm of This Queen's!!"
Tina's voice, gone hoarse and shrill from the agony of the wound and her extreme fury, thundered and burst across the empty training ground through an amplifying horn:
"This is the brand of shame those bandits outside the walls—those witches who use slips of paper and sorcery to bewitch the Northern border—have left upon This Queen, upon all of Olan!!"
With her intact left hand she abruptly drew the royal sword at her waist that symbolized supreme authority, pointing it slantwise at the sky as she roared hysterically:
"Just last night!
Those despicable Mason rebel-bandits intercepted your supply lines and smashed the royal carriage!
They even seized This Queen's most beloved Second Princess, Her Highness Una, and humiliated her before the whole army!!
Do they imagine that with a few scraps of paper, with this base means of cutting off our grain, they can make this great empire—handed down over several centuries—bow to them?!
Can make you soldiers of illustrious battle-merit kneel to a sixteen-year-old slip of a girl?!!"
The breathing of the fifty thousand Olan defenders below the platform abruptly turned heavy.
Looking at the Queen's appalling severed-flesh arm, hearing of the princess's humiliating capture, these ordinarily proud knights at last had the honor of the old era within them forcibly ignited.
"This Queen asks you!
What you hold in your hands are the empire's purest gold coins! What you wear upon your bodies is the old era's sturdiest armor!!"
Tina strode a step forward, her bloodshot eyes like those of a wounded she-wolf sweeping fiercely across the dark, dense throng below the platform:
"Will you, or will you not, still be willing to go on pledging your loyalty to Olan?!
Will you, or will you not, still be willing to follow This Queen, and with the spears and warhorses in your hands, go trample those witches' defensive line to dust and seize back all that belongs to our Olan?!!"
"We will pledge our loyalty to Your Majesty!!
Seize back all of Olan!!"
Several royal squad-captains standing in the front row, eyes gone red, were the first to draw their heavy swords and roar their response hysterically.
"Slaughter every last one of Mason's bandits!
Rescue Her Highness the Second Princess!!"
"For Olan! For honor!!"
Under this final goading of royal chips and the royal house's death-resolve, the fifty thousand Olan defenders at last erupted into a roar that surged like a toppling mountain and an overturning sea.
Their once-scattered and wavering morale was, in the face of the desperate strait of annihilation, forcibly twisted by Tina, by means of the most primitive hatred, into a single desperate and frenzied force.
And Tina, gazing at the army formation seething anew below her, saw at last, within the cold dead water in the depths of her eyes, a flicker of ferocious madness.
Since Delilah meant to wait it out beyond the walls, then this high noon she would lead these fifty thousand cornered beasts with no road of retreat and trample those ten thousand Mason heavy infantry outside the walls utterly into bloody pulp!
The time of liquidation had come.
After a brief midday rest, the clamor within the Mason great camp gradually settled.
The soldiers had already cleaned up the great iron cauldrons and the emptied bowls; the abundant stamina that came of being fed full at every meal left these ten thousand hand-picked heavy infantry full of spirit, every one of them giving off a steady, cold-hard killing intent.
At the center of the great camp, that enormous ruby-set heavy greatsword was slapped down beside the long sand-table desk with a single stroke of the palm.
Delilah pressed down on the hilt, that head of blazing-flame red hair flying wildly in the sweltering summer wind.
Before her, ten chiliarchs and heralds had already gathered into a solemn-faced semicircle, every one of their gazes locked fast upon the iron-hard, cold face of their own General.
"All of you, listen well—the plan that follows, I'll say only once."
Delilah's hoarse voice, infused with combat aura, was pitched very low, yet carried a heavy, deterring force:
"The Olan Royal City before us is a hard bone to gnaw.
The walls are piled up from obsidian handed down over several centuries, and the great western gate is cast from wrought iron and bronze a full three layers thick, with who knows how many tens of thousands of catties of barring stone braced behind it to seal it dead.
The fire bottles Irene made are formidable, but to burn through this kind of thick, heavy iron-and-stone gate—they simply can't melt it through in any short time.
If we stubbornly go to ram the gate, we'll just turn into living targets for those composite heavy crossbows up on the wall.
So our tactics have to change a little: we don't smash the gate—we throw the fire up onto the wall!"
As she spoke, Delilah extended a slender index finger and stabbed it fiercely at the towering crenellations of the wall upon the sand-table:
"Olan's walls are high—that is their one and only thing to rely on.
But the space up on the wall is only so large, and Tina has now driven all of her tens of thousands of defenders up onto the battlements.
Our first wave of attack—pay no mind to the city gate.
Once we've advanced into range, the catapults and the musketeer squads coordinate: every last high-concentration fire bottle, hurl them all for me into the crenellations of the wall!
The moment those clay jars burst open atop the wall, the special fierce-fire oil inside will spread madly along the cracks between the stone bricks.
I want the entire top of that obsidian wall turned into a trench spewing fire!"
In Delilah's dark-red eyes flickered a leopard's cruelty and composure:
"The raging fire and thick smoke will instantly rob those archers of their sight.
The people inside the city were starving for days already, kept alive solely on a single bowl of Tina's rice gruel; scorched and smoked by the great fire, their formation will collapse in an instant—there'll be no way at all for them to bend a bow, nock an arrow, and aim downward.
And that is the moment of our turnaround.
The heavy-infantry phalanx is to immediately hoist the refined-iron-reinforced scaling ladders and charge for me at full speed!
Seizing the gap while the firepower atop the wall is utterly crippled, scale straight to the top!
Once we've taken the battlements, cut our way down along the inner stairs, and smash the windlass of the city gate to pieces on the spot for me—then this several-centuries-old core of the old empire is due for a complete change of master!"
This tactical disposition of Delilah's—utterly without frills, yet striking straight at the enemy's vital weakness—left the adjutant and chiliarchs gathered before the long table thoroughly stunned for a moment.
Then, in the eyes of this band of battle-seasoned Mason generals, there erupted a fervent light all but materialized into substance.
Formidable… truly far too formidable!
This is no temporary change of plan by the General at all—this is plainly her having long since thoroughly digested the resource-substitution logic Her Majesty deduced in the Temporary Palace!
Old-era generals, facing an obsidian royal city, knew only to fill the gate up with human lives.
But the General has taken Miss Irene's productivity advantage and pushed it to its very limit!
Obsidian may be sturdy and fire-resistant, yet it conducts heat extremely fast; let a great fire burn atop the wall, and the entire top of that wall turns into a colossal oven!
Only last night did Her Majesty issue the state letter allowing forty-some neutral nations to make their own choices, and this very noon the General produces this terrifying tactic of turning a sturdy defense into the enemy's own tomb.
This is plainly meant to use one most-shocking trial-by-fire to brand Her Majesty Sophia's supreme majesty utterly onto the whole map of the Northern border!!
"The General is brilliant! This battle we are sure to win!!"
A hot-tempered chiliarch slammed a fist hard against his own breastplate, sounding out a dull metallic clang, his whole face flushed crimson with excitement:
"Those soft-legged shrimps of Olan are all propped up on nothing but a single breath right now; the moment the battlements catch fire, that pitiful scrap of knightly honor of theirs will be burned to ash in an instant!
If this afternoon I can't be the first to charge up onto the wall and hack apart the windlass, I'll bring you my own head, General!!"
"Very good. Every one of you keep that spirit up for me."
Delilah, with a backhand stroke, wrenched her greatsword up out of the sand.
The ruby refracted a blood-red edge that set one shuddering under the high noon sun; she swept her gaze over these ten thousand soldiers whose battle-intent had already utterly boiled over, her voice cold and ringing high:
"Her Majesty is watching us from Yurilland.
Grip the weapons in your hands tight for me—move out!
Target: the west gate of the Olan Royal City!
Before sundown today, I will make it so the Northern border bears the name of Olan no longer!!"
"Boom, boom, boom."
The low, rhythmic thunder of trampling once again roused the silence of the wasteland.
Those squads upon squads of Mason heavy infantry draped in Black Rose war-robes, at the noontide moment when the morning sun had turned wholly into a blazing one, like an awakened steel python slowly spat out their deadly forked tongue.
Enormous catapults, refashioned from scrap iron and ruined armor, were laboriously dragged from the tents by stout draft horses, atop them stacked in dense rows green clay jars giving off a pungent, sour stench.
At the very front of the army formation, fire-haired Delilah rode alone and unrivaled, her greatsword pointed slantwise at the earth, bearing an unmatchable domineering momentum as she wound coldly and serpentinely toward that towering obsidian royal city.
And at this moment, the Olan defenders atop the obsidian wall, watching that black tide pressing nearer step by step under the blazing sun, found the composite heavy crossbows in their hands trembling, after all, uncontrollably once again.
Within the Olan Palace, in the field-headquarters Council Hall.
Queen Tina, who had walked back from the great drill field, gave off all over a savagery on the verge of utter desperation.
On that right arm bared to the open air, the wound that had been a bloody pulp was now scabbed over with a thick layer of purplish-black blood-crust; though it no longer oozed blood, it looked all the more hideous under the glaring daylight.
On either side of the long table, the duke and a dozen-odd core ministers stood in a cold sweat around the map, plotting the breakout route for the fifty thousand cavalry to sally from the city and stake everything at high noon.
This was Olan's final madness, and also their one and only path to survival.
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
However, before the secret breakout orders had even been fully relayed down, there suddenly came from beyond the door the scattered, thunderous din of war-boots trampling the marble floor.
A heavy-armored commander guarding the west city gate came tumbling and scrambling, even bursting the door open; out of terror, his foot slipped, and he fell straight into a litter of shattered glazed-tile fragments on the floor.
"Your Majesty! Your Majesty——!
Urgent report from the great western gate!
The Mason army outside the walls—
that red-haired demon Delilah, leading ten thousand heavy infantry and several hundred catapults, has set the whole army in motion and is bearing down upon our walls!!"
The defense commander's hoarse, cracking shriek, like a clap of thunder on a clear day, came crashing down hard upon the head of every Olan high official.
"What?! What did you say?!"
Queen Tina's face abruptly changed; her intact left hand slammed down hard upon the table as she shot bolt upright to her feet.
The violent motion of rising wrenched hard at her damaged bones; even though the wound had scabbed over, that agony piercing to the very marrow still made her draw a sharp, involuntary breath of cold air.
Her pair of bloodshot eyes was filled with extreme disbelief.
"What hour is it now?!"
The Minister of the Interior at her side glanced, trembling, at the sundial beyond the window, his voice quavering almost beyond hearing:
"R-replying to Your Majesty…
It is still one watch until high noon…."
Still one watch!
Queen Tina felt a bone-piercing cold surge in an instant from the soles of her feet straight to the crown of her head, jolting her mind into utter blankness, her whole body slumping limp back against the chair-back.
How could it be…
How could this possibly be?!
She had clearly only just completed the mobilization at the central great drill field, twisting all the defenders who'd been allotted aged rice and old gold coins into a single rope, ready at the stroke of high noon, while the sun was at its most vicious and the Mason camp at its drowsiest, to throw open the gates and launch a suicide raid!
But why…
Why was it that the moment she'd here just made up her mind—before the military order had even reached the centurions at the bottom—Delilah outside the walls would, as though notified in advance,
push that steel-python army formation right up to the foot of the obsidian wall, precisely one watch ahead of time?!
Could it be…
Could it be that the silver-haired little queen seated in the Yurilland Temporary Palace, only sixteen years old, truly possessed the prophetic power to see through time and the future?!
"Your Majesty… th-this must be that witch's sorcery!!"
The duke collapsed with a thud into a chair, the hands clutching his pure-gold old coins trembling violently, the noble flush draining from his face in an instant clean away.
He stared, eyes wide with terror, as those dreadful computation-models concerning Sophia in his mind utterly overclocked and broke down in this moment:
"We had only just gotten the soldiers organized, before we'd even had time to sally out and break through, and Delilah pressed in a full watch ahead!
This plainly means Sophia has calculated, down to not a single hair's error, exactly when we would risk our lives, exactly when we would fight to the death!
Her attacking one watch early is precisely to snuff out the last death-resolve we'd so painstakingly gathered, smothering it to death inside this obsidian wall before we ever sally forth!
Fighting a war against a monster possessed of a prophet's divine nature—what chance of victory do we even have?!
What in the world are we even resisting?!!"
Inside the great hall, those ministers who had only moments ago been impassioned and shouting to seize back Olan's honor were, in this instant, thoroughly tormented to the brink of mental collapse by this terrifying shadow of foreknowledge.
Several aged viscounts had even begun, under the table, to quietly reckon out in what sort of posture they ought to kneel when the city fell shortly, so as to keep General Delilah's greatsword from slicing across their own necks.
"Shut up… every one of you shut up for This Queen!!"
Listening to that string of despairing wails and overwrought imaginings from the lower seats, Queen Tina abruptly clenched her teeth, and black-red blood seeped straight out along her lips.
She looked toward the direction beyond the window from which the rumble of war-drums could already faintly be heard, and in the depths of her eyes, that streak of unwilling hatred, together with the madness of one in a desperate strait, at last fully erupted.
Prophetic power or mind-reading, call it what you will!
Before this kind of iron-curtain death-lock with no road of retreat, even if Sophia were the true Rose True God, she, Tina, would still tear a piece of flesh from her opponent's body!
"The grain and gold in the great granary have already been handed out, and the backbone of fifty thousand warriors has already been roused forth by This Queen!"
Queen Tina, with her left hand, savagely drew the royal sword, leveling its point straight at the great doors of the hall, her features ferocious as she rasped out a howl.
"Since that red-haired demon-wolf can't wait to come and throw away her life, since the new Order won't even leave us the gap of a single watch, then everyone…
begin the battle!!
Draw every last composite heavy crossbow on the obsidian wall to full for This Queen!
Every duke, every Marquis—drive your private troops up onto the battlements for This Queen!
This Queen will watch in person from atop the obsidian wall, and see whether those fire-spewing black tubes can, in the end, chew to pieces all fifty thousand of This Queen's cornered beasts with no road of retreat!
Whole army, ascend the battlements——!!"
"Yes… we will pledge our loyalty to Your Majesty!!"
Under the Queen's final hysteria, the duke and the throng of ministers stumbled and staggered out of the Council Hall after her.
Atop the towering, majestic obsidian wall, the howling gale tore the bright-yellow golden-lion banner of Olan to shreds.
Tina looked down commandingly from on high. On the wasteland several hundred paces beyond the city gate, those ten thousand Mason heavy infantry draped in Black Rose war-robes had already arrayed themselves into several seamlessly tight, colossal phalanxes.
And at the very front of the phalanxes, fire-haired Delilah was reining in the bridle of a jet-black warhorse with one hand, that ruby-set heavy greatsword broad as a door-plank laid carelessly to one side of her saddle.
Behind the warhorse, Princess Una, bound fast to the old tree by iron chains, had long since wept and screamed her voice hoarse, slumped in the muddy water and shivering.
"Delilah——!
You country-betraying, honorless cur of a broken spine!!"
Queen Tina, with her intact left hand, abruptly drew the jewel-set royal longsword at her waist, pointing it slantwise down below the wall, her sharp, hoarse roar thundering and bursting across the open wasteland where the two armies stood in confrontation:
"You think you've found some enlightened lord?!
Sophia is nothing but a white-haired chit of sixteen, deluding the masses with a few mental paper-slips too stiff even to wipe one's backside with!
Look at these five army-formations behind This Queen!
Look at these fifty thousand elite warriors, fed full on royal aged rice, sworn to defend the empire's glory to the death!
We have several centuries of inherited foundation, mountains of gold and silver too vast to be carried off, an entire iron fortress piled up from obsidian!
With your ten thousand vagrants clutching black tubes, what will you use to smash apart the bones of our Olan?!"
Upon Tina's somewhat contorted, ghastly-pale face—twisted with extreme fury—flickered the madness and arrogance of a cornered beast still fighting on:
"This Queen will give you one last chance to repent!
So long as you now turn your muzzles around, smash to pieces every one of those fire-spewing tubes behind you, and drag that wench Sophia over to kneel at This Queen's feet,
This Queen will not only absolve you of the capital crime of treason, but can also apportion you refined rice from the royal great granary and let you sit once more in the seat of Grand General!
Otherwise, once the noon assault drums sound and these fifty thousand troops of This Queen trample over, we'll leave not even a single whole corpse and bone of yours behind!!"
Facing this mad, stern-voiced howl of Tina's, which all but maxed out every shred of the old era's grand righteousness and grand-ducal momentum,
below the wall, Delilah, astride her black warhorse, couldn't even be bothered to lift an eyelid.
"You do go on."
Delilah gave a cold snort, in those dark-red eyes of hers not a trace of excess emotional ripple.
Having undergone the reshaping of thought at that business-style long table in the Yurilland Temporary Palace, this hysterical Olan queen before her was, in her eyes, nothing but a remnant of accounts stubbornly guarding a heap of dead assets with no liquidity whatsoever, on the very brink of bankruptcy liquidation.
"Her Majesty is waiting in the Temporary Palace for me to go back and reconcile the figures. I've no idle time to stand here listening to you recite the documents of the old era."
Delilah, with a backhand, seized up the ruby-set heavy greatsword from the side of her warhorse, the muscles of her arm bulging beneath the light armor.
She couldn't be bothered to waste half another word on Tina; the greatsword abruptly carved a cold arc through the air, pointing straight at that obsidian west gate towering several yards high ahead, her coarse and mighty voice carrying across the whole army in an instant:
"Catapult squads!
Haul out every last special trick Miss Irene prepared for us!
According to the earlier tactical plan… set the wall ablaze for me!!
Open fire!!"
As this command to open fire came down from Delilah, crisp to the utmost, the Mason army formation—which had stood as still as black bedrock—erupted in an instant into an efficient operation that set one shuddering.
"Number One machine, angle three point five, oil canister ready!!"
"Number Two machine, catch-lock seated, windproof fuse already lit!
On my command—loose!!"
At the rear of the great formation, beside those two hundred-odd enormous catapults crudely refashioned from old-era scrap iron and ruined armor, the veteran Mason soldiers manning them moved as practiced as hired hands on a workshop assembly line.
Not only was there no panic or oppression of imminent great battle on their faces—each of them even had a stalk of dry hay clamped in his mouth, their expressions relaxed.
"Uncle Hans, my palms are pouring sweat—those heavy crossbows in the Olan men's hands up on the wall look like they pack no small punch."
Little Pete, the young vagrant in charge of loading Number One machine, muttered in a low voice as he placed a green clay jar giving off a pungent, sour stench into the net pouch, unable to keep from wiping the cold sweat off his brow.
That veteran soldier called Hans rolled his eyes, raised a hand, and slapped Little Pete across the back of the head, cursing him with a laugh:
"Look at that gutless way of yours!
The salted meat broth and sugared Black Bread Lady Willow had carted over this morning—all of it stuffed into that dog-belly of yours, kid.
However loud those people up on the wall holler, what good does it do?
Tina was just shouting until her throat all but cracked, but take a look at those centurions of theirs—they haven't even cleaned their armor.
Gold coins in hand, and on the black market they can't even buy a tiny jar of insect-repelling fragrant balm.
Once this fire gets going, can the gold in their hands be drunk like water, or eaten like bread?
Pull your ropes steady, and don't disgrace Her Majesty's ledger! Loose!!"
"Whoosh——!!"
As hundreds of thick, heavy braided ropes were severed all at once, the huge counterweight iron blocks crashed downward, and two hundred-odd special green jars carved dense, scalp-prickling parabolic trails through the vast sky.
Atop each of those jars was bound a length of windproof fuse, improved by Irene's own hand and steeped in high-purity charcoal and sulfur, dragging an ear-piercing shriek through the air.
Like a green meteor shower that crossed over the very rules of the age, they came smashing down, blotting out sky and earth, toward the crenellations of the obsidian wall.
And at this moment, the Olan crossbowmen standing atop the wall, watching those mysterious clay jars swelling at frightful speed in their field of view, before the composite heavy crossbows in their hands could even pull the firing hammer, had the bewilderment in their eyes spread first of all.
"Wh-what are those things?
They're not refined-steel crossbow bolts, nor boulders either?!"
"Take cover! Take cover, quick!!"
"Bang! Crack! Crack!!"
Before the Olan generals could even sort out the killing logic of this strange weapon, the first wave of two hundred-odd clay jars had already come crashing down with the utmost precision, in full, onto the inner side of the obsidian wall's crenellations.
In the instant the clay jars shattered, the special black fierce-fire oil refined within Irene's workshop—viscous in the extreme—spread wantonly through the cracks of the stone bricks at once.
Those fuses that had been quietly burning, within one ten-thousandth of a second of touching the oil, erupted with a low yet terrifying roar!
"Boom——!!"
In that instant, the entire top of the obsidian west wall, stretching several li in length, was in a single moment wholly engulfed by a boundless, scorching sea of fire!
This batch of high-concentration fierce-fire oil, improved by Irene's own hand, was extremely viscous and extremely hard to put out.
Once those glazed jars shattered, any spark splashed onto clothing would burn madly like maggots clinging to bone.
Worse still, the wall of the Olan Royal City was piled up, layer upon layer, from the purest obsidian.
Though this stone was, in its physical properties, cold, hard, and sturdy, fearless of any ordinary crossbow bolt's impact, it possessed one fatal trait—it conducted heat extremely fast and absorbed heat extremely strongly.
Under the fierce sun's blazing exposure and the overclocked searing of several thousand catties of special fierce-fire oil, the temperature of the stone bricks atop the entire wall began, in an extremely short span, to soar madly upward in geometric progression.
"Aaaah! My feet! My leather boots have burned through!!"
"Hot! Too hot! These battlements have turned into an iron griddle!!"
The fifty thousand Olan defenders who had originally packed the wall's arrow-merlons, ready to wage a death-battle against Mason at high noon, were in an instant plunged into utter, overwhelming catastrophe.
The raging fire spread beneath their feet, and the thick, viscous black smoke, carrying a pungent sulfurous reek, instantly robbed every archer and crossbowman of his physical sight.
Those knights and ministers' private troops clad in full refined-steel armor, in this moment, far from enjoying the defensive asset-appreciation their armor brought, instead met with the most despairing torment.
The refined-steel armor, atop the scorching obsidian wall, was seared by the high heat outright into red-hot branding iron!
"Your Majesty! Save me!
This armor won't come off! Aah! Aah!!"
A squad-captain who had only moments ago been shouting "for honor" was now rolling madly about atop the battlements, the plate armor on his body having fused the garments and skin beneath it fast together, giving off a nauseating stench of charred flesh.
"Loose your arrows! Counterattack, you pack of fools!!"
Queen Tina, under the escort of a dozen-odd royal deathsworn draped in water-soaked felt, had retreated in utter disgrace into the shadow of the west gate-tower.
Watching the obsidian wall before her turned into a living hell on earth, watching those soldiers screaming and wailing in the raging fire—some even, to escape the high heat, leaping straight from the wall dozens of yards high and smashing into bloody pulp—she shook all over with rage, biting her own lips into a bloody mangle.
Counterattack?
On this wall fully covered by thick smoke and raging fire, the Olan soldiers could not even maintain the muscle-tension to stand, let alone draw the composite heavy crossbows that demanded such enormous stamina.
The fifty-thousand-strong numerical advantage they had so prided themselves on had, in this moment, instead become the most bloated, most readily self-trampling and trampled-to-death useless liability up on the battlements.
"Number Two catapult formation, follow the trails from just now and hurl the remaining ten crates of bursting bottles up there too for me!"
On the absolute safe line two hundred paces below the wall, Delilah coldly watched all of this.
Watching the heavy-crossbow fire-line atop the wall gradually weaken, a streak of composed certainty—of holding the wisdom-pearl in her grasp—flickered in the depths of her eyes:
"Musketeer squads, advance fifty paces forward in ranks!
Any Olan officer who dares show his head at the crenellations to command—blast their skulls clean off for me with pinpoint precision!
Scaling-ladder squads, push the shield-carts and bear down for me!
Plant the ladders right in their faces!"
"Order received!!"
"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!!"
Ten thousand Mason soldiers, fed and watered full, black muskets leveled in their hands, pressed forward in steady, orderly fashion to the earth-shaking rhythm of their war-chants.
Those rounds of specially made lead shot, amid the roar of gunpowder, pierced the thick smoke with precision, blasting away on the spot several Olan viscounts and centurions who tried to organize a counterattack up on the battlements.
Under this textbook-cold, airtight infantry-and-fire coordinated assault of the Mason army formation, the western defensive line of the Olan Royal City—unbreached for several centuries—met, in less than a quarter of an hour from the battle's start, with total paralysis.
"Brothers, the General's fire is burning good and hot, the ladders are set steady—up with me!!"
As several hundred enormous scaling ladders, forged of refined iron and hardwood, were slammed fast against the scorching obsidian crenellations, those squads upon squads of Mason heavy infantry, who had bottled up all their strength, began to scramble madly up the ladders toward the top of the wall like fierce tigers descending a mountain.
And at the very center of all the ladders, red hair flying, Delilah did not even use a ladder.
Like a leopardess, at a physical distance of still several yards from the wall, she abruptly slammed both legs down upon the shield-cart, the enormous reactive force stamping the steel shield-cart into a thunderous collapse.
And her tall body, borrowing this surge of violent tension, carved a dazzling streak of red light through midair, landing squarely and steadily upon the white-stone platform of the west gate-tower!
"Delilah! You traitor!!"
Three inner-guard deathsworn standing watch outside the west gate-tower, eyes gone red, brandished refined-steel two-handed greatswords and stabbed fiercely toward Delilah's vitals in a three-pronged formation.
"Out of my way!!"
Delilah let out an explosive roar, and that ruby-set heavy greatsword broad as a door-plank swung an utterly silken yet violent perfect circle through the air.
The heavy sword crashed down upon those refined-steel greatswords, producing not the slightest skillful deflection, but rather, by sheer top-tier force and the material superiority of refined-iron reforging, smashed all three longswords on the spot into metal fragments scattering across the sky!
The enormous force's lingering might undiminished, the door-plank greatsword swept on across, striking the three royal deathsworn—armor and all—flying at the waist, hurling them hard against the obsidian wall, where they burst into three pools of blood-froth that could never again be liquidated.
"Tina! Get out here for me!!"
Delilah kicked the heavy gate of the west gate-tower flying with one foot.
However, on the inner side of the gate there were only a few interior officials, so frightened they'd lost control of their bladders and bowels, clutching pure-gold coins against their chests and trembling—while the figures of Queen Tina and the duke and ministers had long since, under the desperate protection of the deathsworn, fled in utter disgrace down the hidden stairway on the inner side of the wall toward the fifty-thousand-strong cavalry camp at the foot of the wall.
"General! The battlements are entirely taken! The Olan infantry have all fled!!"
"Number One squad has secured the inner passage! Please instruct us on the next order, General!!"
More and more Mason soldiers surged up onto the battlements along the ladders; those once-proud Olan defenders, having undergone the chain dimensional-suppression cleansing of hunger, raging fire, and black muskets, had long since lost all will to resist.
Watching these Mason soldiers, demonic in their Black Rose banners, who gave off the fragrance of cooked meat even from the seams of their armor, a portion of them actually threw down the weapons in their hands outright, and in great swathes after great swathes knelt down in the scorching dead ash, weeping and wailing as they begged for a single Black Rose paper-slip that might let them live.
"Don't waste time on these soft-legged shrimps up on the wall!"
Delilah, with a backhand, shouldered her sword, those dark-red eyes locked fast on that fifty-thousand-strong Olan cavalry formation below, fallen into widespread turmoil at the collapse of the battlements:
"Cut your way down with me!
Smash to utter pieces for me those three layers of iron-bronze windlass on the inner side of the great western gate!
Throw open the city gate, and let the musketeer squads outside in to settle the accounts!!"
"Kill!!"
One thousand of the most elite Mason vanguard-battalion soldiers followed behind Delilah, like a red-hot blade, hewing unstoppably down the narrow obsidian stairs, gouging madly toward the lowest level of the west city gate.
At the lowest level of the Olan Royal City's west gate, the light was dim and damp.
Here were set three full sets of enormous windlasses, assembled from bronze bearings thick as a man's embrace and wrought-iron chains—the supreme core for controlling the tens-of-thousands-of-catties triple-layered iron-bronze gate.
Several hundred Olan city-defense deathsworn were bracing their bodies in a death-grip against the catch-pins of the windlasses, every face written over with the despair of doom come upon them.
"Bang!!"
The wooden door at the lowest level was kicked into splinters by Delilah with a single foot.
"Shatter for me!!"
The red-haired General wasted no words at all; the ruby-set heavy greatsword in her hand carried an ear-piercing sonic boom through midair as it smashed down hard upon the central main axle of the first set of bronze windlasses.
Amid an utterly ear-piercing crisp clang of metal, that enormous windlass—cast of refined copper, undamaged for several centuries—under Delilah's furious smash of a force beyond mortal limits, had its main axle burst in an instant into a hideous gap, and then, accompanied by countless gears flying loose, disintegrated with a thunderous crash!
"Clang! Clang!!"
Losing the binding of the windlass, the balance of the first layer of wrought-iron gate, weighing tens of thousands of catties, was utterly broken; amid an ear-piercing screech of friction, it slid irreversibly and thunderously upward along its stone groove!
Next came the second set, then the third!
Under the orderly hammering of the Mason soldiers' iron axes and heavy mallets, the last three sets of gate windlasses upon which the Olan Royal City depended for survival were, in the span of mere dozens of breaths, liquidated in full into bronze scrap littering the ground.
"Rumble, rumble——!!"
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