"Olan—nothing more than this."
Delilah lowered her head to look at the ruby-inlaid sword in her hand, and into her mind rose the scene of when Her Majesty the Queen had given her this blade.
Back then, no one could have imagined that a year later it would come to this present situation.
Perhaps Delilah had imagined it, but it seemed she had still been pushed to this point by fate.
Yet since that was so, she would assist Her Majesty to climb to the highest seat of all; only when the one named Sophia sat upon that high throne could there be peace in this world.
In the very second when that ancient western gate—cast from three layers of wrought iron and bronze, braced from behind by a ten-thousand-catty gate-blocking stone—amid a ground full of dust and the snapping of iron chains, finally slid slowly open toward both sides.
The blinding noonday sunlight, following the broad passage of the city gate, spilled without the slightest reservation into the gloomy gate tunnel, and precisely lit up the eyes of the fifty thousand Olan cavalry on the inner side of the gate, men who had already fallen into disorderly chaos.
Outside the great gate, upon the wasteland a hundred paces off.
Those row upon row of Mason troops, leveling their black muskets, giving off a cold metallic gleam in the sunlight, formed a dense black battle array like an iron curtain of a new era, silently waiting for them.
"The gate… the gate's been breached?!"
"Delilah smashed the windlass to pieces!!"
"Run for it! Those fire-spewing tubes are about to come in!!"
"Don't—don't flinch! Don't be a stray cur!"
Watching that slowly opening gate, watching the Black Rose banner outside it that represented absolute order and invincibility.
Fifty thousand Olan garrison troops, clutching pure-gold old coins in their hands but with only a bowl of thin rice gruel in their stomachs.
That last shred of death-defying resolve that Queen Tina had forcibly congealed out of hatred, in this instant utterly met its complete collapse and dissolution.
No matter how frantically Queen Tina waved her longsword at the rear, roaring hysterically, no matter how the Duke, his face ghastly pale, tried to order his private troops to push forward.
Some of the soldiers began, like a flood bursting a dike, to throw away their weapons by whole formations along the broad central avenue of the Royal City, frenziedly trampling and fleeing toward the east gate and the inner city.
Delilah, meanwhile, stood quietly beside the shattered windlass, and facing the blinding noonday light, slowly drove the ruby-set heavy greatsword at a slant into the bloody water and the mud.
However, not everyone could find an escape route in the first moment.
On both sides of the broad western-gate main road, there were still large numbers of elite private troops belonging to the hereditary Grand Duke, as well as those old-noble knights who knew their crimes ran too deep to receive Mason's pardon.
They were jammed tight at the corner of the long street by the dense mass of routed soldiers behind them—ahead lay the Mason army pressing in step by step with leveled black muskets, and behind there was no road of retreat.
"Don't flinch! You are not permitted to be stray curs!!"
The Duke's clothes had been scorched all over black in the raging fire atop the wall; that face of his, usually so pampered and well-kept, was now twisted like a vengeful demon. He drew the command sword at his waist and waved it frantically before the battle-supervision squad.
"Mason's bandits have even captured the Second Princess! Do you fools think surrender will let you live?! That sixteen-year-old little girl is going to drag every one of you off to the mines to be slaves! She'll crush your bones to fertilize her wheat fields! It's death either way—fight it out with these lowborn scum!!"
Under the extreme terror of an unknown fate and the deception of the old-era nobility, this band of Olan infantry and surviving heavy-armored knights, driven into a dead end, finally erupted in their eyes with a beast-like madness.
"Kill! Fight it out with them!!"
"For Olan!!"
Over a thousand Olan die-hard soldiers, clad in heavy steel armor, gripping two-meter spears and tower shields, let out hysterical howls, and with bloodshot eyes formed a somewhat loose but utterly resolute steel line of defense, then charged frenziedly head-on at the Mason vanguard that had just stepped into the gate tunnel!
"Raise shields—! Spear line, forward! Hold your footing!!"
Facing the Olan men's final death-throes, the Mason chiliarch charging at the very front kept a composed expression, without the slightest trace of panic.
"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!!"
A dense volley of black-musket fire abruptly tore apart the dead silence of the gate tunnel. The scorching lead slugs unleashed terrifying penetrating power at extreme close range, in an instant toppling the dozen-odd Olan heavy-armored shield-guards at the very front to the ground.
Yet the Olan soldiers behind them, driven by fear, paid no heed at all to the corpses on the ground; treading through their comrades' blood like a gray tide, they slammed viciously into the fine-iron cheval-de-frise of the Mason battle array!
"Clang!!"
The heavy clash of metal was deafening.
The two armies instantly fell into the most brutal hand-to-hand combat within the narrow long street and the gate tunnel.
Olan spears thrust out like venomous snakes through the gaps between shields, while the Mason veterans, relying on their superb weapon setups and tight coordination, yielded not an inch.
At the center of the battlefield, gunsmoke and blood-mist flew together, yet, strangely, amid this killing that ought to have been oppressive and cruel, the loud-voiced shouting of the Mason soldiers began to ring out.
"Clang!!"
The veteran Hans used his heavy fine-iron shield to viciously knock aside an Olan spear stabbing at his face, then with a clean backhanded battle-axe stroke split the enemy's wooden spear-shaft on the spot.
Looking at the Olan soldier before him—face covered in blood, so excessively starved that even his breathing carried a cracked rasp—Hans couldn't help shouting out with a bit of distaste.
"I say, you! What're you putting in all this effort for?! Did your Grand Duke feed you a whole roast suckling pig this morning, or hand you a sack of gold coins? Is it worth it to gamble your life here for those lords who even skim off your military pay?!"
The Olan soldier across from him staggered backward while drawing a short sword from his waist, and roared with bloodshot eyes.
"Cut the crap! You Mason witches—you've seized our Sachi City, robbed us of our grain; aren't you just going to turn us all into slaves anyway?! Even if I die, I'll never bow my head to that arse-wiping scrap of paper!!"
Hearing this, the several Mason heavy infantrymen beside Hans, far from getting angry, instead reacted as though they'd heard the greatest joke in the world; while methodically pressing forward, they let out laughter in rows.
"Pah! You pauper, is your head stuffed with barley chaff?! Slaves? Open your dog eyes and take a look at this new armor on me! Go ask around about what kind of life Iron Hammer Town and Sachi City are living now! Anyone who's gotten Your Majesty Sophia's Black Rose identity card can earn standard labor credits every day working in the reclamation districts! Not only does your household get allotted two mu of fine cultivated land, but with the notes issued by Her Majesty, every evening you can go to the market and exchange them for two loaves of pure-wheat Black Bread with honey-sugar added, and even bring home a jar of snow-white salt! If you perform well, you can often eat meat and seafood. When you fall ill, Saint Daphne's clinic hands out potions for free, and when your work's done well, Her Highness Victoria will personally grant you an audience and award prizes!"
Hans's axe knocked aside an Olan knight's saber, and his booming voice nearly raised echoes within the gate tunnel.
"Our Your Majesty Sophia is the one and only supreme and wise sovereign in all the Northern border! Living under Her Majesty, you can eat your fill every single day—who'd have the spare time to go to all that trouble to make slaves of you lot?! That old woman Tina—besides giving you a bowl of clear soup boiled from stale rice this morning, what else has she ever given you? Take a word of advice from your brother here: hurry up and throw away those broken-down tools in your hands! Go register honestly now, and tonight you might just be in time to catch the hot, hearty bone broth sent over from the Yurilland great granary!!"
These words, on the clamorous battlefield, carried by the robust, well-fed vigor of the Mason soldiers, drifted clearly into the ears of every Olan garrison soldier nearby.
What?
Black Bread with honey-sugar added?
Land allotted just for working?
Potions you can claim for free when you fall ill?!
And… hot, hearty bone broth you can drink that very evening?!
These survival assets, which were like common sense in the mouths of the Mason veterans, falling into the ears of these Olan lowborn soldiers—who had already been at five-tenths full for a whole week, kept barely alive solely by Queen Tina's single bowl of rice gruel—were no less than a thunderclap that utterly shattered their entire worldview.
"Old—Old Hart… is what they're saying true?"
A young Olan auxiliary soldier gripped a rusty short spear, and looking at the Mason soldiers ahead—ruddy of face, spirited and full of vigor like so many young calves—he couldn't help swallowing a mouthful of saliva, the tears in his eye-sockets in an instant mingling with the filth on his face.
"They won't treat us as slaves… if we surrender, can it really let my whole family eat bread with honey-sugar? My little sister hasn't had a single grain of oats in three days; yesterday she cried until her voice was gone… All I could do was share out the bean soup Her Majesty Tina handed me among my family. What in the world am I even risking my life for here, for Tina…"
"Clang."
No one knew who was the first to let a longspear slip from his grasp.
Immediately after, this loosening of resolve—born of an extreme yearning for a future life, and arising after their bottom line of survival had been utterly pierced through—spread like an unstoppable spiritual plague, swiftly coursing through what remained of the Olan phalanx.
Divine Miracles…
This was absolutely a core ideological forbidden-curse cast upon this long street by that sixteen-year-old silver-haired Queen!
Not only do the iron tubes in the Mason army's hands spew fire, but even every word every one of their soldiers speaks is trampling the lordly authority we Olan have maintained for several centuries as utterly worthless garbage!
Inside the Royal City we starve our bellies and shed our blood for the nobles' property. Yet that girl outside the gate is, with countless supplies, refined salt, and land, inviting us to go and live truly like human beings, a good life!
To keep resisting would not defend any honor at all; on the contrary, it would be refusing the supreme divine grace that Your Majesty Sophia has bestowed upon the whole Northern border! What in the world are we courting our own deaths for!!
"Don't listen to these bandits' nonsense! Push forward! Those who disobey orders are to be beheaded!!"
Watching the battle line begin to fall back on a massive scale, the Olan Duke flew into a towering rage and, drawing his sword, made to cut down the young soldier who had been the first to throw away his weapon.
"Swish—!!"
However, before his blade's edge could fall, the sky-filling gunsmoke at the center of the long street was suddenly torn apart by a violent crimson gale!
Delilah, hair red as fire, like an iron colossus stepping forth from primeval antiquity, had at some unknown moment already crossed the hundred-pace distance.
Her body raised a suffocating blood-colored storm; that heavy greatsword shimmering with ruby light traced a near-perfect arc through mid-air, and with matchless absolute force came smashing coldly down toward the crown of the Olan Duke's head!
"This General has said it before—your tomfoolery is now past its due date!!"
"BOOM—!!"
The heavy sword crashed down, and the Duke, together with the ornate longsword in his hand, was under this single blow as fragile as a doll heaped together from sand. Struck by the immense force, the whole man was sent flying over a dozen zhang away. He slammed hard into and shattered a stone statue at the street corner, becoming utterly a pool of discarded residue that could no longer be settled accounts with.
This single sword-stroke utterly shattered the most obstinate block of cold ice in the western-gate district of the Olan Royal City.
"Long live Her Majesty! May the Black Rose bloom all over the Northern border!!"
Watching the Duke be formatted by the General with a single stroke, the Olan garrison troops, who only moments ago had been trembling, no longer had any superfluous struggle left in them.
Thousands upon thousands of lowborn soldiers knelt down in swathes amid the dust-covered ground, raising both hands high above their heads.
In their eyes there was no longer the earlier fear and despair, but instead a boundless fervor for the honey-sugar bread and hot meat broth soon to come.
While the Olan Royal City, hundreds of li away, was undergoing its baptism of raging fire and steel, the Yurilland Temporary Palace—now the core hub of the Mason Duchy—remained immersed in a stretch of afternoon tranquility.
The brilliant blazing sun pierced through the spotless floor-to-ceiling windows, casting the long table in a glow of crimson.
The air was suffused with the faint herbal fragrance of Black Rose; Willow stood off to one side, with exceedingly light movements arranging the labor-credit ledgers that had just been collected and summed up from the various reclamation districts.
On the soft couch, Irene lay sprawled amid a heap of brand-new mechanical blueprints, a pen clenched in her mouth, her delicate brows knit tight, as if she were racking her brains over the structural improvement of some new-model musket.
And yet, behind this seemingly impregnable peace, there was a deadly undercurrent from the old era, sweeping across the borderland wastes at an unimaginable speed.
At the very moment the interception battle at Red Maple Valley broke out, the most deeply hidden secret ally of the Olan Duchy—one not even detected by the surrounding minor states—the Crimson Vulture Duchy, had quietly torn off its disguise of neutrality.
It was a Crimson Vulture troop with a full establishment of three thousand men.
They wore pitch-black light armor bearing no heraldry at all, and beneath them rode the tall horned horses peculiar to the Northern border.
This band of well-trained deathsworn had abandoned all their heavy baggage, not even carrying any tents, relying entirely on potent alchemical potions to sustain their marching speed.
Like a flock of bloodthirsty vultures gliding through the shadows, they crossed beyond every conventional line of reconnaissance, and with all caught completely off guard, appeared with extreme abruptness at the very edge of Yurilland's city defenses.
Atop the black-stone long wall on Yurilland's western side, several Mason garrison soldiers who had just changed shifts were habitually resting their hands on the weapons at their waists, conversing in low voices.
"Have you heard? The main army to the west has already surrounded the Olan Royal City."
A young guard, while stuffing a piece of richly wheat-scented sugared bread into his mouth, couldn't help raising his eyebrows with a touch of pride.
"My uncle sent word from Iron Hammer Town the day before yesterday—said our Her Majesty's Black Rose identity card is worth a fortune out there now. A few barons in the neighboring town are lining up wanting to convert their family estates into our notes."
"Just stand your post in peace; so long as you follow Her Majesty, the good days ahead will be long."
The words of a seasoned veteran beside him had not yet fallen when his sharp instinct honed through countless battlefields made his body abruptly stiffen.
On the distant horizon, within the wild grass that had been faintly shimmering in the blazing sun, there suddenly welled up a suffocating expanse of pitch-black tide.
No war drums, no battle cries—only the muffled thundering rumble of several thousand horned horses trampling the ground, like a sudden earthquake, instantly tearing apart the dead silence of the wasteland!
"Enemy raid—!!"
The veteran's pupils abruptly contracted; he bellowed at the top of his lungs, his right hand instinctively reaching to grab the signal torch hanging on the wall-head.
However, the enemy's speed was simply too fast.
"Whoosh—! Whoosh—! Whoosh—!!"
Before the sentry on the high platform could even light the torch, the long sky abruptly burst with a dense, packed expanse of sharp, air-rending whistles.
Those were armor-piercing heavy arrows specially made by the Crimson Vulture Duchy; the refined-steel arrowheads glinted with a ghostly-blue venomous sheen under the blazing sun, and wrapped in immense kinetic energy, like a sudden downpour, covered the entire stretch of city wall overhead!
"Thunk! Thunk!"
Several muffled sounds of blades entering flesh rang out; the two young guards on the wall hadn't even had time to raise the longspears in their hands before the immense impact sent them flying backward, slamming hard into the wooden battlements behind them, their blood in an instant dyeing the white Black Rose banner red.
"Damn it… where the hell did these bastards spring from?!"
The sole surviving veteran took an arrow in his right shoulder; the violent venom instantly robbed half his body of all sensation.
But looking at the black cavalry ahead—who had already charged to within less than a hundred paces of the wall's base and had begun hurling fine-iron grappling hooks—a flash of resolute clarity passed through the depths of his eyes.
He made no attempt to pick up the musket on the ground, but instead clenched his teeth hard, hooked his only remaining left hand into the gaps of the rough black-stone bricks, bent his heavy body into an arc nearly hugging the ground, and with the last of his whole strength, tumbled rolling all the way down the stone steps on the inner side of the wall.
"Clang—! Clang—! Clang—!!"
At the foot of the long wall, within the dust-flying bell tower, that giant bronze warning bell—originally used to announce the opening of the market—under a frenzied, utterly irregular series of violent strikes, erupted with shrill, ear-splitting peals one after another.
The bell-toll, following the wild summer wind, swept across layer upon layer of streets, and carrying an undisguisable terror and urgency, came crashing fiercely into the innermost Council Hall of the Temporary Palace!
"Clang—! Clang—! Clang—!"
The crisp, urgent bell-toll droned and reverberated beneath the empty dome, shaking the glass cups on the long table into ring upon ring of fine ripples.
The atmosphere within the Council Hall congealed utterly in an instant.
The ledger Willow had been flipping through snapped shut with a "clap"; her gaze, usually as gentle as water, sank in an instant, turning into a cold, biting blade of ice.
Irene on the soft couch was startled into an even greater shudder; the charcoal pencil in her hand drew a long pitch-black streak straight across the exquisite blueprint.
"This frequency of the bell-toll… is it the long-wall guards at the west gate giving warning?!"
Victoria elegantly folded up the ivory fan in her hand; in those beautiful golden eyes, the trace of languor they had carried vanished in an instant.
She abruptly stood up and turned her head to look at the silver-haired girl seated at the head of the long table.
Only Sophia still sat steadily behind the broad desk.
Upon that face, exquisite as though carved in some god's workshop, although there was still no obvious ripple to be found.
Yet under the illumination of that rustling, flickering candle-flame, within those pale-golden pupils of hers, there at this moment flashed—exceedingly rarely—a barely perceptible trace of surprise.
Wait… someone's attacking me?! How is this possible?
On the power-sandbox model of the Mason Duchy, over half of the fifteen surrounding dependency points have already been excised by Delilah, and Red Maple Valley has been blocked off by Bardess so thoroughly that not even a single mouse could get through. Tina ought to be exactly now besieged inside the Royal City by Delilah. On this map of the Northern border, apart from the forty-some already-exposed neutral fence-sitters, could Olan really, in secret, still be hiding a secret ally that not even my intelligence network has caught?
Sophia's fingertip tapped lightly once upon the desktop.
Although a string of consternation over having her base stolen welled up from the depths of her heart, as a Transmigrator who had received the cultivation of advanced modern thinking, she knew very well.
At this moment, as the supreme core of the entire Mason Duchy, any flicker of wavering on her face would in an instant trigger the utter collapse of the whole system.
And so, she merely slowly set down her quill pen, picked up the well-water berry juice beside her, took a sip, and pressed that trace of surprise firmly down into those fathomless pale-golden eyes.
However, this momentary silence of hers and that supremely cold, deep-set gaze, falling into the eyes of the others in the Council Hall, were in an instant interpreted as a kind of almost terrifying macro-level mastery and control.
"Your Majesty… you—could you possibly have known long ago that they would come?"
Daphne rose somewhat nervously, that pure-white robe rising and falling slightly with her.
Looking at Sophia's profile, calm to the point of near indifference, the panic in the depths of her eyes strangely settled, replaced instead by a near-fanatical worship.
Divine Miracles… this must be the final trial Her Majesty is using to test the order of the whole Northern border! The bell outside is being struck so urgently, the enemy's blades have already pressed up to Yurilland's doorstep, yet Her Majesty's expression hasn't shifted by even a fraction! What does this prove? It proves that those abrupt pitch-black cavalry outside the city, in that supreme deduction model of Her Majesty's, are nothing but a string of useless redundancy whose destruction-outcome has long since been written in! Her Majesty is, in this near-godlike posture of looking down from on high, watching those dregs of the old era make one last futile struggle! With Her Majesty presiding here, how could Mason's order ever produce any bad debt!!
Victoria too stared fixedly at Sophia, the knuckles gripping her ivory fan faintly whitening from extreme excitement.
This Third Princess drew in a deep breath, and those complex thoughts about Sophia in her mind once again began to whirl frantically.
Could it be! A chain of traps… My dear little sister, this move of yours, you've truly hidden it far too deep. Tina thinks that by throwing open the royal great granary and sending out a secret ally on a long-range raid she can catch us off guard—but just look at those eyes of yours; in them there is only contempt and disappointment for the old era's greed. The envoys of those neutral minor states only just lined up at the border this very morning, and the appearance of this assault force happens to become the most perfect opportunity for you to overawe the entire Northern border!
Willow, seated to one side, had already with extreme briskness lifted her skirt and stood, handing the ledger in her hand to the inner guard behind her, and stepping forward, her voice gentle yet carrying a bone-deep killing intent.
"Your Majesty, it seems some who lack eyes are attempting to provoke us. Shall we begin deploying to meet them in battle right now?"
Listening to this string of statements brimming with fanaticism, mental over-interpretation, and inexplicable confidence, Sophia, seated steadily in her chair, blinked those dead-fish eyes slightly, her long lashes casting a swath of cold shadow upon her cheeks.
No, she really didn't know where they had sprung from.
Sophia found herself, rarely, somewhat at a loss.
But looking at the subordinates before the long table who had already taken her for an omniscient, omnipotent Rose True God, Sophia could only maintain that dignified, cold, and aloof imperial posture, slowly rising to her feet, the hem of her black Gothic dress sweeping across the lambskin carpet with a soft rustling sound.
"Come with This Queen to take a look at the west gate—and see just what kind of surprise this force, delivered right to our door, is that Olan has prepared for us."
The thunderous roar of the war bell tore apart the calm above the Temporary Palace; within the dressing room of the Council Hall's side hall, the crisp clashing of armor gathered into a dense din.
"Your Majesty, please raise your arm a little."
Willow knelt on one knee on the lambskin carpet; beneath that neat short hair, a pair of fair, slender hands was, with utmost familiarity, tightening the leather belt at Sophia's waist.
By now Sophia had already shed that elaborate, heavy Gothic gown, changing into a close-fitting dark-black leather armor, its lining woven from an exceedingly tough specially-made soft rattan—both lightweight and superbly protective against stray arrows.
Her long silver hair was bound up high with a black silk ribbon, drooping behind her head in a breathtaking arc, making that exquisite, flawless face appear all the more cold as frost.
Beside the soft couch nearby, Irene too was flusteredly pulling on a thick artisan's vest hung all over with various kinds of secret little weapons, muttering all the while:
"Damn it, my new-model fuse isn't finished yet—these sneak-attacking mice really know how to pick their timing!"
Victoria, meanwhile, elegantly fastened a bright silver lightweight breastplate to her front.
Although this Third Princess had changed into marching attire, the ivory folding fan in her hand had still not been set down.
Because she habitually carried this fan, Irene had even specially fitted it with a little hidden blade for her—though its lethality was not great, it could at least serve for self-defense.
Looking at Sophia standing before the mirror, her expression utterly composed, in that pair of beautiful golden eyes, that trace of fervent seeking, far from weakening on account of the enemy raid, instead burned all the more scorching.
Victoria always felt she was about to witness history.
"Thud, thud, thud!"
In the very second when the iron door on the inner side of the Temporary Palace was thrust open with a crash and Sophia, surrounded by a throng of female officials, stepped into the west-gate garrison camp, the long-wall guards—originally somewhat panicked by the sudden raid—fell in an instant into a death-like silence.
At this moment, although those remaining to garrison Yurilland were only ten thousand newly recruited guards and surrendered soldiers from various nations.
But when they saw that silver hair refracting a cold gleam in the sunlight, and the black light-armor in which Her Majesty the Queen had come to personally supervise the battle, the eyes of those lowborn squad captains turned red in an instant.
"Her Majesty… Her Majesty the Queen has come in person to fight shoulder to shoulder with us!!"
A centurion hailing from the Vala tribe slammed a fist hard against his own breastplate, the veins on his neck bulging, and roared hysterically at the soldiers behind him.
"Every one of you, put out every ounce of your strength! Summon every single person in your units! Even those lying sick in bed—so long as they can still move a single finger, every last one of them is to crawl up onto the long wall for me! The lords of old, when they made war, only ever used us as meat shields, but now Her Majesty Sophia stands right behind us! If anyone dares leave the slightest trace of flinching before Her Majesty, your mother here will hack him apart with her battle-axe right now, with her own hands!!"
"For the Black Rose!! For Her Majesty!!"
A tide-like roar of fury exploded with a crash within the garrison camp.
The command chaos that had originally arisen because the General and the Commander were absent was, within a ten-thousandth of a second of Sophia stepping into the camp, forcibly twisted into a near-frenzied cohesive force by the formless imperial pressure radiating from this silver-haired girl.
"BOOM—!!"
"BOOM—!!"
Outside the black-stone great gate on Yurilland's western side, the heavy physical ramming-strikes were like one muffled thunderclap after another, jolting the whole sturdy gate tunnel until dust came drifting down in flurries.
Three thousand pitch-black-armored Crimson Vulture deathsworn had already utterly sealed off the open ground at the foot of the wall.
With bloodred eyes, a dozen-odd bare-chested, brawny giants were jointly hoisting a giant red-pine log wrapped with a fine-iron ramming-head, and with violent momentum, slammed it again and again hard against the seam of the wrought-iron great gate.
Behind them, a large body of archers gripping composite heavy crossbows was frenziedly pouring an arrow-rain up over the long wall; the ghostly-blue venomous light interwove under the blazing sun into an airtight iron curtain of death, pressing down hard upon those Mason recruits on the wall-head holding black muskets.
"Thunk! Crack!"
Several stray arrows, grazing the gaps in the stone bricks, struck up sprays of sparks across the sky; Sophia, under the desperate protection of Willow and several heavy shield-guards, slowly ascended the watchtower at the very center of the long wall.
The wind was strong, blowing the silver hair behind her head into wild, unrestrained flight.
Expressionless, Sophia lowered her head slightly, and along the narrow defensive gap of the black-stone long wall, coldly looked down toward the foot of the wall.
The Crimson Vulture cavalry below the long street were, like a pack of bloodthirsty fierce wolves, howling frenziedly.
The iron hooks they had hurled had already bitten fast into the edge of the long wall, and countless ferocious-faced soldiers, venomous blades clenched in their teeth, were climbing upward along the ropes using both hands and feet.
Watching this somewhat chaotic scene brimming with aggressive violence, within Sophia's pale-golden pupils, that trace of Transmigrator's calm, far from rippling in the slightest, instead appeared all the more deep and fathomless.
The middle of the day, enduring temperatures of over thirty degrees—even the stench of sweat from inside their armor came drifting up from several hundred paces away.
Disturbing my afternoon nap, and even trying to wreck the long-wall stone bricks I newly built.
Sophia's red lips parted slightly, and in a cold, clear voice that only the few people around her could hear, without the slightest ripple of emotion, she lightly uttered two words:
"Courting death."
These two words were extremely low in volume, even carrying a faint distaste born of the dry, hot weather.
But in the ears of Victoria and Saint Daphne standing at her side, these two words were no different from the final decree of utter destruction issued, when a god descends upon the mortal realm, against those mortals who dare to defy the new order!
Did you hear that… this is Her Majesty's confidence. Even with the enemy having crossed the border line, even with the main-force generals all hundreds of li away, facing these several thousand deathsworn coming on so menacingly, in her eyes there is still only contempt for the dregs of the old era. This single "courting death" is plainly proof that she long ago saw through every last trump card behind this ambush. Tina thinks that finding people from other nations to help can turn the game around, but she has no idea at all that Queen Sophia, standing here now, is merely watching coldly as this pack of fools squanders, in full, their one and only survival asset before this western great gate!!
"Your Majesty, the throwing corps and the control platform are in position!"
Irene at this moment also came hurrying up at a quick pace, carrying a small bronze hammer, a few specks of machine oil still clinging to her pink hair, those sapphire-like eyes brimming with eager, raring-to-go excitement.
"The moment you give the order, I guarantee I'll let that pack of horse-riding mice down below the wall experience what's called an epoch-transcending baptism of art!!"
Sophia turned her head, gave Irene a faint glance, and nodded slightly.
"Begin, Irene. Drop our entire remaining stock down on them."
"Order received!! Sisters, let's get to work!!"
Irene shouted out excitedly, turned around and abruptly swung the bronze hammer in her hand, and at the top of her crisp voice bellowed toward the operating stations behind the long wall:
"Catapults number one through ten! Target the suppression point below the gate! Fuses drawn full—send the whole fire-bottle gift package that Her Majesty has bestowed on them all the way down! Release!!"
"Hu-la—!!"
As a dozen-odd thick draw-levers were pulled simultaneously, the counterweight catapults set up on the level ground inside the wall instantly let out a series of heavy rumbles.
Over a hundred green ceramic jars, giving off a pungent sour stench, traced dense arcs through the air, and came crashing down right onto the cluster of Crimson Vulture deathsworn fiercely ramming the gate below.
"Bang! Crash! Crash!!"
The crisp shattering of ceramic jars rang out in swathes; the viscous, specially-made fierce-fire oil instantly splashed all over the entire stretch of dry-straw muddy ground, and splattered hard onto those Crimson Vulture infantry who were hoisting the red-pine log.
Before the commanders below could even figure out what lethality these bizarre jars actually held, the windproof fuses bound to the jar mouths, soaked in high-purity sulfur, within one second of touching the oil, erupted into clumps of scorching, blinding firelight!
"Rumble-rumble—!!"
In that instant, the area below the Yurilland west-gate wall was, in a flash, turned into a boundless, surging sea of fire.
Searing black smoke mingled with the stench of the specially-made fierce-fire oil instantly swallowed up the several hundred Crimson Vulture soldiers in the front rows, together with that giant log, all within the violent flames.
"It worked!! Burn to death, you sneak-attacking…"
Atop the wall, several young Mason throwers couldn't help waving their fists in excitement.
However, Irene, standing at the very front observing the battle situation through a monocular telescope, found the smile on her face freezing strangely within an exceedingly short span of time.
"Your Majesty… this—this isn't right!"
Irene abruptly turned her head, a rarely-seen flash of consternation and anxiety passing through her sapphire-like eyes, and pointing below the wall, shouted:
"Those soldiers… the armor on them seems a bit fireproof!! Hurry, look over at the deathsworn by pit number one—the black light-armor on them has been smeared with something or other; the fierce-fire oil simply can't burn into it. The splashing sparks have only scorched through their outer garments, but the lining and steel plates inside are completely undamaged! They're still ramming the gate!!"
Hearing Irene's startled cry, the faces of the officers atop the long wall all paled by a few shades in unison.
Sophia again looked downward along the gap in the wall.
Just as Irene had said, those Crimson Vulture deathsworn wrapped in raging fire—although the horned horses beneath them, terrified by the great blaze, kept letting out shrill whinnies.
But those soldiers who had rolled to the ground, after rising again, far from being roasted alive like those garrison troops at the Olan Royal City, instead extremely briskly patted the sparks off their bodies.
The surface of their pitch-black light-armor, after being scorched by the raging fire, had unexpectedly taken on a layer of bizarre, heavy, viscous texture of gray clay mixed with damp animal hide.
That was a fire-warding method—extremely primitive yet extremely effective—in a world without extraordinary power.
Using large quantities of aquatic-animal grease, mixed with storm-proof riverbed wet mud, smeared layer upon layer over the surface of the refined-steel armor.
This specially-made gray-clay coating, the instant it met the fierce-fire oil, would, by rapidly shriveling and flaking off itself, forcibly block the scorching high temperature and the stickiness of the burning oil on the outer side of the armor.
These people had come prepared.
Ah—it seems those several great victories earlier have leaked out the secret of our weapons. Tina, though besieged inside the Royal City herself, has in secret packaged up the full details of the battle reports on our use of fire bottles at the Black Stone Fortress and Red Maple Valley, and sent them in their entirety to this secret ally of hers. Targeting the properties of our fierce-fire oil, they've specially fitted out this kind of mud-coated fire-warding heavy armor?
Amid a somewhat tense city-defense atmosphere, Sophia slowly withdrew her gaze.
On that exquisite, mask-like face, there was still not even the slightest trace of panic or fluster to be found.
Her pale-golden pupils shimmered under the blazing sun with a calm that saw through everything, and in an exceedingly steady, even voice, she lightly spoke:
"No need to panic. It seems these people have been secretly surveilling us all along, and have already worked out a countering plan aimed at our way of waging war."
Her words slowly reverberated through the hall and along the corridor of the long wall.
That kind of absolute calm, untainted by any emotion, in an instant forcibly pressed back down that flicker of panic which had just welled up in the depths of Irene's and the surrounding centurions' hearts.
And at her side, Victoria, upon hearing this utterly ripple-free judgment of Sophia's, in that pair of beautiful golden eyes, the trace of worry they had originally carried, within one second, utterly sublimated into a near-trembling dread and worship.
Divine… Her Majesty isn't analyzing on the spot at all—she's, in a near-mocking, looking-down-from-above posture, deriding the petty cleverness of those dregs of the old era! An ordinary monarch, seeing his trump card countered, would long since have been so frightened he'd be at his wits' end. But Sophia? On that beautiful face of hers, there isn't even a shred of superfluous expression! This proves that this nameless force, which thinks it can counter Mason's armor, is in Her Majesty's ultimate map-plan nothing but a low-level variable that has long since been deduced countless times! Her Majesty deliberately let them put on this fireproof junk, precisely so that in the coming settling of accounts, she can—together with the country behind them—smash their most solid confidence utterly into the ashes of history in an even more terrifying, even more epoch-transcending way!
Victoria, somewhat unable to restrain her delicate frame trembling from extreme excitement, stepped forward, her golden eyes frighteningly bright.
"Your Majesty, since this pack of eyeless impurities has even flipped out the trump card to counter us, then for the coming match… shouldn't you be deploying those final killing moves—the ones not even Delilah and Bardess know of, specially used to cleanse the supreme core of the old era?"
Hearing this question of Victoria's, brimming with fanaticism and extreme self-assured over-interpretation, Sophia tilted her head slightly, silently letting slip a faint sigh.
No, that's not it, Victoria! I really don't have any final killing move.
Right now, apart from various black muskets and weapons, all that's in my workshop is the plowshare for tilling that Irene just made.
But still… it does seem there's still a little petty-clever method left.
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