But still…
It seemed there really was one more clever little trick available.
Watching those golden eyes of Victoria's, bright to the point of being frightening, and the look on Saint Daphne's face that was almost on the verge of materializing into pure worship, Sophia, standing at the very front of the watchtower, let out yet another sigh in her heart—she had lost count of how many that made this afternoon.
Watching the deathsworn below the city wall who, thanks to the barrier of mud and animal grease, grew only more rampant amid the blazing fire as they hoisted up the red-pine battering logs to ram the gate…
Upon Sophia's exquisite, deadpan face, not even the faintest ripple stirred.
She merely stood there quietly, her long silver hair flying wildly in the hot summer wind, the dark, light armor beneath her clothing tracing out her slender figure into a curve at once cold and noble.
Those pale-gold pupils looked down imperiously upon the ashes strewn across the ground, while in her mind the account ledgers concerning the territory's infrastructure were flipped through, in an extremely short span of time, with extreme efficiency.
Wait.
Animal grease…
Riverbed wet mud…
To guard against the fire-oil, they had smeared a great quantity of moisture-laden wet mud onto their armor.
And Irene, last month, in order to improve the overly acidic soil of that newly reclaimed farming district on the west side—and at the same time to build the outer defensive Cement infrastructure for the Yurilland Temporary Palace—seemed to have, in the Administrative Hall's main warehouse, a backlog piled up of three full great warehouses of…
"Irene."
Sophia's red lips parted lightly, her tone cold and clear as a flurry of winter snow sweeping across a wasteland, without a single fluctuation of emotion.
"Here! I'm here, Your Majesty!"
Irene, who had been gripping her little copper hammer and spinning anxiously in circles on the spot, hurried forward a step, her sapphire-like eyes brimming with anxiety.
"Your Majesty, our fire-oil isn't working anymore—those fellows are pushing on under a layer of wet mud, and I'm afraid the gate will be forced open by them in another two quarter-hours at most! Should I have the musketeer squads brave the arrow-rain and go do close-range shooting inside the gate tunnel?!"
"No need."
Sophia tilted her head slightly, her pale-gold pupils sweeping over her with cold indifference: "Have the throwing battalion stop using all the fire bottles in their hands. Those things have already lost any room to produce value; continuing to use them will only waste the workshop's reserves."
"Eh? Stop the fire bottles?!"
Irene froze on the spot entirely, nearly dropping even her beloved copper hammer to the ground, and exclaimed in alarm: "But Your Majesty, if we don't burn them, then what do we use to stop these three thousand mud-smeared madmen?! They don't look like ordinary soldiers—they're ramming our gate frantically, as if they don't care whether they live or die. So the time it takes them to break through the gate is definitely faster than ordinary soldiers."
Sophia withdrew her gaze and turned instead to look at the administrative officer Willow standing on the other side of the long desk, her voice steady and calm as she issued an order so bizarre it left everyone present utterly baffled.
"Willow, send my written order back to the Administrative Hall's main warehouse now. All the quicklime powder that was prepared last month for neutralizing the soil and for mixing building materials—have it all hauled by ox-cart to the long western wall for This Queen. Tell the centurion of the throwing battalion to swap out all the upcoming clay pots for cloth sacks filled with quicklime. Within two quarter-hours, I want to see the entire base of the western wall fully covered in white powder."
"Quick… quicklime powder?!"
Irene rubbed her own ears, that head of pink short hair grown somewhat disheveled from her extreme bewilderment.
She bit the charcoal pencil in her mouth, her mind racing furiously to figure out just what method Her Majesty had thought of.
"Your Majesty, although that stuff is so plentiful in the workshop we can hardly find room to stack it, can it… can it really be used to fight a war?! The deathsworn down below the wall—I don't know which country they're from—all wear thick wet masks on their faces to ward off smoke and dust, and on their bodies they wear refined-steel light armor wrapped up tight and airtight. Even if we scatter quicklime down on them, at most it would just dazzle the eyes of those warhorses a bit—there's no way at all to pierce through their iron armor!"
It wasn't only Irene; the dozen-odd low-ranking squad captains from the Vala tribe and Yurilland standing before the garrison camp were at this moment all staring at one another wide-eyed, bewilderment written across every face, unable to comprehend.
In their military common sense, defending a wall meant either rolling stones and dropping logs, or arrow-rain and black muskets. This quicklime powder, in the Northern border, was nothing but a lowly thing those mud-legged peasants used to whitewash walls when building houses and repairing pig-sties—how was it that in the mouth of Your Majesty the Queen, it had actually become the secret means to dissolve this crisis of enemy assault?!
However, Willow, standing at the desk, had not the slightest inclination to question Her Majesty's thinking.
As the administrative officer who had accompanied Sophia the longest, she knew all too well the methods of this silver-haired queen. Her Majesty never made any decision that did not yield a profit. Back in those years in the Mason territory, Her Majesty had, with a few flimsy slips of paper, collapsed the credit of all Olan; now, facing these three thousand fireproof deathsworn who thought themselves so clever, how could Her Majesty possibly haul over a heap of stone powder with no killing power for no reason at all?
"Your Majesty speaks most truly."
Willow bent slightly at the waist, her tone exceedingly gentle, as if carrying a thought-magic capable of putting hearts at ease: "The quicklime powder backlogged in the Administrative Hall's main warehouse totals forty thousand catties. Since Your Majesty requires it, then this afternoon, this wasteland can be left with nothing but the rules of Mason. Your servant goes now to see it done."
"Tramp, tramp, tramp!"
As Willow lifted her administrative long skirt and walked crisply down off the long wall, the entire defensive force of Yurilland's western gate began to display an execution efficiency that made one shudder.
Though those low-ranking squad captains couldn't figure out the killing principle of this stone powder, the Black Bread and the honey-sweetened notes handed into their hands last night were frantically reminding them that obeying Her Majesty's orders meant they could live a good life.
"Listen up, all of you! Her Majesty's order has come down!!"
That centurion of Vala tribe origin stretched his thick, coarse throat and roared like a madman along the narrow corridor of the long wall: "First squad and second squad, put down all your fire bottles for me! Go haul the quicklime! Third and fourth squad Musketeers, hold those iron tubes in your hands level and steady for me, keep firing downward, suppress those mask-wearing rats! Before the stone powder is hauled up, if anyone dares let the enemy's iron hooks catch hold more firmly, I'll settle his head off his shoulders right now!!"
"For the Black Rose!! For Her Majesty!!"
Amid one rising furious roar after another, on the muddy road behind the Temporary Palace, dozens of heavy ox-carts began, under the lashing of layer upon layer of whips, to align their galloping frequency frantically toward the western gate.
The sacks of heavy white powder piled in the carriages gave off, beneath the blazing sun, a cold, hard, dry texture.
And at this moment, below the Yurilland black-stone long wall, the situation of the Crimson Vulture assault squad had already fallen into a near-pathological fervor.
"BOOM——!!"
"BOOM——!!"
The giant red-pine battering log, under the combined shoving of a dozen bare-chested big men, once again slammed heavily into the seam of the wrought-iron western gate. Iron filings flew, and the heavy crashing sound shook the surrounding wild grass into violent trembling.
"General! The fire on the wall has stopped!!"
A Crimson Vulture adjutant, his whole face smeared with gray mud, suddenly wiped a handful of sweat from his mask and, pointing at the gradually dying sea of green-oil fire atop the city wall, shouted excitedly toward the assault-squad Commander who sat astride a horned horse at the rear: "Those Mason witches' fire bottles have all been used up! Haha! The intelligence Queen Tina gave us was indeed accurate to the last detail—those flame-spewing pots of theirs aren't easy to produce; so long as we hold out against the first wave of high heat, this Yurilland city defense is nothing but a hollow shell that crumbles at a single touch before our iron armor!!"
That Crimson Vulture Commander, draped in a jet-black cloak and astride a tall, sturdy horned horse, the instant he saw the firelight atop the long wall fade entirely into darkness, finally tore a cruel and smug, manic grin across his sinister face.
"Sophia, that sixteen-year-old little girl, really thinks that by relying on a few scraps of paper and the sorcery in her workshop, she can cover the whole sky of this Northern border with one hand? And Queen Tina too—to think she'd actually be put in a bind by the army of such a little girl."
The Crimson Vulture Commander abruptly drew the broad-bladed long sword at his waist and pointed it slantwise toward that faint silver figure atop the long wall, his voice filled with the lofty arrogance of an old-era ruler.
"Pass down This Queen's military order! Have the deathsworn of first and second squads speed up their climbing! Queen Tina has turned over every trump card in the Royal great warehouse. So long as we cut off Sophia's pretty head this afternoon and send it to the Olan Royal City, all of Yurilland's half-year's stockpile of fresh barley, refined salt, and those Black Rose identity cards used to exchange for supplies will all become the assets of our Crimson Vulture Duchy! Playing this game of chess against that yellow-haired girl—she's still too green! Charge for me! The first to break the gate is rewarded five hundred pure gold coins and made a hereditary baron!!"
"ROAR——!!"
Stimulated by the enormous profit and the gold coins, the three thousand Crimson Vulture deathsworn, clad in grease-smeared, wet-mud armor, erupted into beast-like howls.
They didn't care in the least about the sparse black-musket pellets fired down from the wall. Because the heavy armor on their bodies had excellent shock-absorbing and deflecting effects, so long as they weren't precisely struck in the face, those lead pellets smashing into the thick wet mud would at most burst into a small clod of gray mud-spots, utterly unable to inflict devastating injury upon their flesh in any short time.
"Quick! Pull the ropes tighter!"
"The gate's about to split open! Charge!!"
Countless jet-black figures clambered with hands and feet like filthy vultures crawling up out of hell, and borrowing the swaying of the iron hooks, only the last dozen-odd steps remained between them and the edge of the wall's top.
Inside the western gate. That heavy wrought-iron bar had already, under the ceaseless and frenzied battering of the red-pine log, burst open with several glaring white cracks. As if in the next second, the entire last line of defense of Yurilland was about to collapse wholesale.
However, in the one ten-thousandth of a second just as the Crimson Vulture Commander was preparing to enjoy in advance the surplus of victory—when even the ledger of profit the Duke would apportion to him had already been aligned and tallied in his mind—atop the long wall, those rows of heavy counterweight catapults once again gave off a teeth-grating creak of twisting timber.
"Angles aligned and locked!!"
"Quicklime cloth-sacks loaded! Release——!!"
"Whoosh——!!"
With several dozen muffled thuds, what was hurled into the vast sky was no longer those acrid-smelling green clay pots. In their place were hundreds upon thousands of huge white bundles bound tight with coarse hemp cloth.
Those bundles did not fly fast through the sky; in the hot, dry gale of high summer, they even appeared somewhat clumsy.
"Haha! What kind of thing is that?! Cloth sacks?!"
Below the wall, a Crimson Vulture centurion hoisting the log let out an utterly absurd sneer from behind his mask: "Have those Mason women been frightened witless by us?! They're even throwing out cotton bales now! Don't mind them, keep ramming the gate… Aaagh!!"
"Crack! Bam! Bam!!"
Before his sneer could even fully spread across the wasteland, the thousands of coarse hemp bundles had already, in an extremely short instant, come crashing down headlong upon the heads, the shoulders of these three thousand Crimson Vulture deathsworn, and upon the surface of that giant red-pine log.
The hemp cloth itself was extremely prone to shattering, and under the impact of the enormous falling kinetic energy, the bundles burst fully open in an instant.
"BOOM——!!"
In that instant, beneath the western gate's wall for several hundred paces around, no blaze rose up as expected—instead, it was instantly plunged into a boundless, infinite, can't-see-your-own-hand ghastly-white dust storm.
That was a full several tens of thousands of catties of high-concentration quicklime powder. This powder, calcined at high temperature by Irene's workshop from the purest white stone, had extremely fine particles and an utterly terrifying dry water-absorbency. Swept up by the wild summer gale, the white dust was like a blizzard surging upstream, adhering overwhelmingly to every Crimson Vulture deathsworn—following the seams of their armor, following the mouths and nostrils of their warhorses, even following their wet, smoke-and-dust masks.
For a moment, the entire western-gate battlefield turned into a ghastly-white, uncanny world.
"Cough cough… ptui! What is this stuff! Stone powder?!"
The Crimson Vulture Commander, his face smacked full of the all-pervading white powder, his warhorse also snorting somewhat uneasily, covered his mouth and nose irritably with his cloak. Watching his jet-black armor be dyed ghastly-white in an instant, he couldn't help but let out a contemptuous cold sneer: "Hmph, using stone powder to blind the eyes? Such a low, contemptible mud-legged peasant trick—only that unworldly little lord girl Sophia could come up with it. The whole army, don't panic! Centurions of every squad, hold your formations—we have wet-mud armor for defense, this flour-like stone dust can't hurt our flesh in the slightest! Keep ramming the gate for me!!"
Under the Commander's suppression, those deathsworn, originally somewhat dazed by the white lime, once again gripped tight the weapons in their hands.
However, Daphne, standing atop the city wall, watching that ghastly-white mist below, swallowed somewhat nervously, her sapphire-like eyes full of startled uncertainty: "Your Majesty… the lime powder has all been poured down. But does this stuff really not need to be set alight? It looks to me as though they've only had their clothes dirtied—their marching frequency hasn't dropped much at all…"
Sophia stood quietly at the very edge of the watchtower, her two small hands tucked somewhat disdainfully into the gap of the belt of her dark light armor, those pale-gold pupils appearing all the more bitterly, piercingly cold amid the white dust storm.
She watched the jet-black assault squad below, plastered all over with quicklime and riverbed wet mud, and across her exquisite deadpan face she drew a cold curve belonging to one who had been reborn—one who had seen through the fundamental laws of matter.
At this moment Irene too finally understood Her Majesty's profound intent, and she greatly admired that Her Majesty could, in such a short time, analyze out just how it ought to be done.
No need to set it alight. Calcium oxide coming into contact with a large area of moisture is, in itself, the most natural exothermic furnace—one requiring no intervention of any external force. To guard against my fire-oil, they had deliberately smeared such a thick layer of wet mud onto their armor, and even soaked their masks in warm water. These tens of thousands of catties of quicklime coming down… they themselves are the best fuel.
"Begin the settlement."
Sophia's red lips parted lightly, her tone cold and clear as a divine sigh untouched by any mortal fluctuation.
In the very full second after Sophia uttered those few words—below the wall, within the phalanx of Crimson Vulture deathsworn that had still been laughing rampantly and desperately hoisting the red-pine log to ram the gate, there suddenly fell, physically, an extremely uncanny dead silence.
Then came a violent, near-inhuman sobbing and shrieking that surpassed every brutal sound effect of any cold-weapon battlefield, exploding in chain succession through the ghastly-white dust storm without the slightest warning!
On siege ladder number one, a Crimson Vulture elite who was biting a poisoned blade in his mouth and climbing desperately upward suddenly let out an extremely shrill, voice-cracking scream.
He discovered in terror that the thick wet mud on his shoulder, originally meant to defend against the blazing fire, after the white stone powder adhered to it, had actually—within the time of not even two or three breaths—begun to roll up layer upon layer of dense, teeming white bubbles in a frenzy!
Quicklime meeting the massive water content within the wet mud erupted, in one ten-thousandth of a second, into a violent exothermic reaction that the mortals of this continent simply could not imagine!
"BOOM——!!"
There was no open flame, no gunpowder smoke. Yet below the western gate, for several hundred paces around, there rose up in an instant an overwhelming, scorching white water-vapor!
Those tens of thousands of catties of quicklime powder, the instant they touched the wet mud and animal grease, saw their temperature soar madly in geometric progression within an extremely short time, instantly breaking through the critical point of boiling!
That fireproof mud originally meant to protect their flesh, in this moment—because of the animal grease's water-locking and adhesion—turned into a layer of huge, high-heat steamer, sealed seamlessly and clinging fast to the surface of their refined-steel armor!
"It's scalding!! Quick, help me get this armor off!! Aaagh!!"
"My face! The mask is burning! No… it's not fire! It's water! It's scalding me to death!!"
The most brutal scene played out smoothly amid the ghastly-white vapor. Those dozen-odd storm-deathsworn hoisting the red-pine log were now utterly unable to maintain the motions in their hands. The heavy red-pine log crashed down with a roar, snapping several men's thighs clean through on the spot. Yet they couldn't even spare attention for the agony of their broken legs, because their whole bodies had already been steamed alive by the violently boiling, melting, high-heat mud armor upon them!
The quicklime corroded their skin, and the high-heat vapor poured fully into their airways through the seams of their wet masks, scalding their throats and windpipes into a charred black in an extremely short time.
"Hwee-eee——!!"
The thousand tall horned horses also let out extremely shrill, primal wails of grief. Their hooves and bellies were likewise plastered with this sticky, boiling lime-mud, and the violent high heat made these beasts lose control entirely, trampling and crashing into one another madly across the ghastly-white long street, treading great swathes of Crimson Vulture infantry into bloody pulp.
"This… what in the world is this sorcery?! There's no fire… why is there this kind of temperature…?!"
The Crimson Vulture Commander tumbled completely down off his horned horse. His magnificent jet-black cloak had by now been smoked fully dry and shriveled by the scorching vapor. On the surface of the light armor at both his legs, that layer of wet mud was, like boiling porridge, bubbling densely with scalding white froth, scalding the flesh of his thighs inch by inch into outward-curling, disintegrating ruin.
He used his intact left hand to claw desperately at the mud on his thighs. But once the quicklime touched the sweat of his palm, it triggered yet a second violent boiling, the pain twisting his whole face in an instant into something no longer human, as he let out a near-despairing, broken-down shriek.
This was simply not a war logic that humans could comprehend. There was no fluctuation of magic, no radiance of Divine Arts. That silver-haired little queen had merely scattered down, with a casual hand, a few tens of thousands of catties of contemptible white wall-whitewashing powder, and turned their undefeated heavy armor—the kind they had spent tens of thousands of gold coins and three painstaking months preparing, specially to counter Mason—into one iron coffin after another that scalded and steamed them alive!
Upon the black-stone long wall of Yurilland, a deathly silence slowly spread.
Several of Sophia's loyal officials remained dumbly in their pose of holding up the copper hammer, those sapphire-like eyes goggling wide, their whole persons like exquisite wooden puppets turned to stone. They watched below the wall, where amid the all-pervading white vapor, the three thousand Crimson Vulture elites—their flesh split and torn, screaming to the heavens—collapsed wholesale in less than a quarter-hour, and the conceptions in their minds about modern weaponry suffered, in this moment, the most violent blow.
Your Majesty… my heavens, Her Majesty truly is, without the slightest exaggeration, a genius. She actually directly exploited the enemy's greed! She had calculated that the enemy would use wet mud to guard against fire, and so deliberately stockpiled quicklime in the Administrative Hall's main warehouse! This kind of grand, macro-scale method of letting the enemy steam themselves alive… it's simply ten thousand times more cruel, more elegant, than even the finest art of war!!
At Sophia's side. Victoria's elegantly spread ivory folding fan stiffened in the air for a full three seconds, then, with an extremely faint rustling sound, somewhat feebly drew closed once more.
This Third Princess, watching the silver-haired girl who—calm and composed beneath the blazing sun—had settled the life and death of three thousand deathsworn clean in an instant with a heap of *powder, felt only an indescribable shudder crawl frantically up her spine, shaking her until even the frequency of her breathing somewhat over-revved.
The powder of the earth… could this be the principle of mutual restraint of all things. What terrifying power of thought-control! My good little sister, you always walk so fast—even I can scarcely keep up with the frequency at which you cleanse away the old era!
Tina thought that by secretly hiding away a unit of deathsworn, she could catch you off guard. But in your eyes, all the matter in this world is nothing but a footstool you use to operate Mason's new order!
You deliberately left tens of thousands of catties of quicklime in the Administrative Hall's main warehouse, deliberately did not suppress the leaked information about the black muskets—all so that on this high-summer afternoon, before the faces of those forty-some envoys of neutral nations, you could give the entire Northern border the most perfect drill in writing off bad debts!
This is what becomes of the petty cleverness of the old era when it confronts a supreme divine nature… the most merciless, and the most despairing, scattering into ash and smoke!
From this day on, beneath the sky of this Northern border, apart from the paper slips of the Black Rose, who would still dare to write down even half a character of resistance?!!
"By the Holy Light above… this—this is Her Majesty's mercy and destruction."
Saint Daphne had by now collapsed utterly limp against the railing of the long wall, both hands clutching tight that pure-white robe. Watching the ghastly-white corpses below gradually fall still amid the white vapor, her eyes held not the compassion of former days, but instead brimmed with an absolute fervor for the new law of Order.
She truly had not imagined that Her Majesty, who had no magic at all, could actually resolve these people who'd tried to do them harm in such a way. In her view, Her Majesty Sophia had not used blood-soaked black muskets to slaughter them. Rather, she had used the white lime of the earth to send this gang of sneak-attacking sinners into the earth's furnace—and this, in itself, was the greatest cleansing and deliverance of the old era!
"Your Majesty is wise and brilliant!! We pledge our full loyalty to Your Majesty!!"
"Long live the Black Rose——!!"
"Your Majesty's divine power!"
Below the long wall, those ten thousand newly recruited Yurilland guards and surrendered soldiers of various nations, watching at this moment the back of Sophia in her black light armor, found the awe in their eyes had already twisted entirely into faith in a True God. They frantically smashed the refined-iron spears in their hands against the ground, erupting into wave upon wave of fervent cheering that set the whole earth trembling violently.
Listening to that succession of mountain-toppling, sea-overturning roars of "long live" behind her, and to Victoria's fervent gaze that all but formatted her on the spot into a True God—Sophia, seated in the main seat of the watchtower, slowly let her originally somewhat tense shoulders relax.
Upon that exquisite, flawless deadpan face, her long eyelashes stirred faintly, and through her pale-gold pupils there silently flickered a dead-fish-eyed sigh.
Prepared long in advance? No—she had truly only, last month when approving the agricultural infrastructure ledgers, carelessly written one extra zero onto the quicklime production quota. She'd even thought back then that all that powder piled up in the warehouse took up too much room—who'd have guessed it would come in handy just perfectly today.
The blazing sun after dawn remained scorching. And outside this western gate where rolling white high-heat steamers surged up, those forty-some envoy carriages of neutral small nations who had originally still been hesitating, looking on…
At this moment they were receiving the terrifying battle report relayed back by scouts at the rear—of three thousand elites steamed alive by quicklime—and each one was so frightened he slid straight out of his carriage into the muddy water. Scrambling and crawling, they clutched tight the state seals and mineral-resource ledgers in their hands, wondering whether the sincerity they had prepared might not be quite enough.
And so, each of the nations began to act once more. The kings of the small nations who had originally already traveled some distance along the road one after another turned their convoys around, preparing to go back and bring a little more sincerity.
Even those nations who had originally only meant to come and simply express that they harbored no intention of being Mason's enemy now all began to seriously consider how they ought to face this. If they still came, as before, to tell Her Majesty Sophia that they were neutral… would Her Majesty Sophia really let them leave alive?
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