At this moment, below the city wall of Yurilland it remained blazing hot.
As the dry, scorching summer wind swept past, the searing white water-vapor that had filled the whole sky at last began slowly to thin.
Below the city wall, the three thousand Crimson Vulture deathsworn, originally so menacing in their momentum, had by now utterly lost every means of resistance.
That jet-black armor, smelted by the high heat of quicklime and wet mud, was like one heavy set of shackles after another, nailing them fast into the white-slurried mud-water.
On the long street there remained only the despairing low whinnies of warhorses, and the convulsive twitching of the surviving soldiers after their violent agony.
"First squad, second squad, charge down there with me! Pin every last one of these sneak-attacking rats down for me!!"
Atop the west-gate city wall, that centurion of Vala tribe origin roared with reddened eyes.
At his single command, the ten thousand Mason recruits and surrendered soldiers—who had long been bottling up a bellyful of fury upon the long wall—surged frantically downward along the inner-side long ladders and the gate passage, like a black flood bursting through a dike.
The brand-new refined-iron spears in their hands glinted with a cold light under the sun, and with crisp, clean movements they pinned fast those attackers still struggling in the mud-water.
For these lowborn soldiers who had only just received their Black Rose notes and lived a few days of full-bellied life, anyone who attempted to wreck the Yurilland Temporary Palace, to smash apart their new lives, was someone who absolutely had to be utterly erased.
"Behave yourself! Throw down your weapons!!"
"Search their clothes, strip off all the armor, move fast!!"
The cleanup work of the battlefield displayed, in an extremely short span, an efficiency that made one shudder.
The Mason recruits roughly tore away that sticky lime-mud slurry still giving off residual heat, and dragged this band of deathsworn—gravely wounded by the high heat—out of the mire one by one like dead dogs.
"Your Majesty! We've found something!!"
Before long, a Mason Captain covered all over in white lime, his footsteps heavy, trotted all the way up onto the watchtower, his expression somewhat agitated.
He knelt on one knee, and with both hands reverently held high several heavy-metal objects that had just been searched off the bodies of those attackers' leaders:
"On the chests of those ringleaders' corpses, we searched out this batch of specially-made black-iron tokens in full! Please examine them, Your Majesty!!"
Sophia still stood quietly at the very edge of the watchtower, her slender figure appearing especially cold and aloof wrapped in the black leather armor.
She slightly lowered her long eyelashes, her pale-gold pupils falling without the slightest fluctuation of emotion upon those several black-iron tokens.
They were several military-merit badges forged from the finest dark iron; having just undergone the baptism of quicklime, a layer of dried white powder still clung to their edges.
And at the very center of each badge, rendered in extremely rough, bold lines, was carved a savage vulture in the act of spreading its wings and soaring high, its two talons clutching a skull in a death-grip.
At the eyes of that vulture, two tiny dark-red crystal stones were also embedded with utmost concealment, giving off the sinister menace and greed peculiar to an old-era ruler.
Oh, the Crimson Vulture.
Sophia remembered now—in Yurilland's former records of national-strength and trade accounts, at the cliff-edge of the far western side of the Northern border, there did indeed seem to exist a tiny micro-state called the 'Crimson Vulture Duchy.'
How interesting. Tina is besieged inside the Royal City, unwilling to honestly break the city herself, yet she actually concealed from everyone the fact that, on the far western side of the duchy, she'd left this deeply hidden long-term investment.
Going by the news from outside, it shouldn't be hard to know that Olan by now has already been surrounded on all sides.
Under such circumstances, that this little state would still send men to assist truly came as a surprise to Sophia.
Upon Sophia's exquisite, deadpan face there remained the stillness of an ancient well.
She extended a fair, delicate fingertip and, with a trace of distaste, picked up one of the black-iron badges from the tray, holding it before her eyes and glancing at it blandly for one-tenth of a second, before tossing it casually back into the brass tray like discarding rubbish.
And yet, this momentary distaste of hers, and that supremely cold, careless toss, falling into the eyes of Victoria and Saint Daphne at her side, once again triggered a storm of thought that magnified her majesty to infinity.
Heh…
The Crimson Vulture Duchy—so it was this band of rotting flesh clinging to the withered trees of the cliffs.
Victoria naturally had not thought of this little state either—or rather, it was because this little state was so utterly barren that one subconsciously overlooked it.
Victoria elegantly folded up the ivory fan in her hand, those beautiful golden eyes flickering with a fervent, meticulous light.
She walked gracefully forward, bent slightly at the waist, and gazing at Sophia's profile—calm to the point of near divinity—her voice carried a faint tremor from extreme excitement.
Magnificent…
This is what a truly flawless, blind-spot-free macro-cleansing looks like!
Victoria had originally found it strange that, with little sister Sophia's methods, she would, in the earlier division of the map, alone have overlooked that resource-yielding-nothing cliff wasteland to the west.
Now she finally understood!
Her Majesty had, from the very beginning, seen through the fact that the Crimson Vulture Duchy was a transaction Olan kept secretly in circulation!
She deliberately let Delilah and Bardess take away the main force, deliberately left these ten thousand recruits at Yurilland's west gate as bait, precisely to manufacture for this pack of greedy vultures a false surplus-appearance of Mason's rear being empty and undefended!
Had there been no such sudden raid, this batch of three thousand elites hidden in the shadows would forever have remained an uncertain risk in the future grand scheme of the autumn harvest.
But now?!
Her Majesty used only forty thousand catties of white powder there was no room to stack in the warehouse, and forcibly drew over—and wrote off on the spot—the last sliver of liquid assets Olan had managed on the far western side for several decades!
This kind of imperial method, calculating the enemy's betrayal, greed, and marching time all to not a hair's error…
is simply ten thousand times more cruel, more elegant, than even the finest supreme commander!!
"Your Majesty's Divine Authority—it seems all the old-era cause-and-effect of this world is unable to escape the Black Rose's reckoning."
Daphne too let out a soft sigh, her hands clasped tightly together before her pure-white robe.
She did not soften the slightest bit at these men's miserable screams; had it not been for Her Majesty's wisdom just now, then by now they too would have become souls slain beneath the blade.
She watched the ghastly-white prisoners below being escorted over squad by squad.
These wicked wolves of the Crimson Vulture Duchy, knowing full well that Her Majesty was reshaping Order with the state letters of the forty neutral nations, still dared to come raid the camp with blades and swords in hand—this in itself was a betrayal of the good days to come.
That Her Majesty had not slaughtered them all on the spot, but instead used the powder of the earth to pledge their greed in full as collateral—this was already the greatest mercy that the Holy Light, descending into the mortal realm, could grant this wasteland.
Listening to Victoria's near-overclocked political praise in her ear, and to Daphne's murmurings that had already wholly inclined toward the faith of Mason, Sophia, seated steadily in the main seat, stirred her eyelids slightly, and through those pale-gold dead-fish eyes there silently flickered a soundless sigh.
Sophia knew very well that at this moment the ten thousand recruits upon the long wall were staring at her with a fervor as though watching a True God descend upon the world; she had to maintain this persona befitting the supreme core of the Mason Duchy.
She slowly rose to her feet from the marching chair, the black light armor refracting a cold, hard texture under the blazing sun, the silver hair bound behind her head carving a crisp arc through the air with her movement.
Sophia tilted her head slightly, her pale-gold pupils turning toward the administrative officer Willow at her side, who was holding a writing-slip ready to take notes, her voice cold and clear without a single fluctuation.
"Since the provenance of the accounts has already been verified clearly, then there's no need to keep the redundant residue that follows here upon this long wall, occupying our spatial assets."
Sophia's fingertip rapped lightly against the edge of the brass tray, giving off a crisp metallic clink:
"Willow, pass down my order. All the Crimson Vulture deathsworn outside the city who can still draw breath, including that Commander slumped in the mud-water—chain them all up with the thickest iron chains and stuff them in full into the deepest dungeon at the very bottom of the underground palace. Have the garrison camp's interrogation team begin questioning them through the night, and don't waste any superfluous words on them. Before sundown today, I want to see, on my desk, the full list of every defensive loophole on the far western side of the Crimson Vulture Duchy, as well as the complete inventory of assets Tina left them."
"This minister… respectfully obeys Your Majesty's imperial command."
Willow's expression turned grave, that signature smile vanishing, filled now with utter seriousness.
She bent slightly at the waist, then, with extreme crispness, turned about, lifted her administrative long skirt, and led a squad of Mason elite inner guards radiating a murderous air, striding off toward the ghastly-white battlefield strewn below the long wall.
"Move faster for me, all of you!! Keep a close watch on these vultures' tongues for me!!"
"March every last one of them into the deep dungeon!!"
Amid one orderly, methodical shout of reproof after another and the dense clashing of iron chains, this Crimson Vulture assault squad, which had fancied itself to have found the means to counter Mason's trump card, was in the end shoved in utter disgrace, under the noonday blazing sun, into Yurilland's gloomiest, muddiest dungeon.
Several hundred li away.
At this moment, upon the main thoroughfare of the Olan Royal City gate, there was unfolding a blood-colored storm that truly belonged to the end of the old era.
The ancient, heavy iron-bronze great gate slid feebly open to both sides, and the glaring noonday sunlight, wrapped in rolling heat-waves, lit the entire originally-bustling central avenue a stretch of ghastly white.
Upon the long street, the dense black mass of fifty thousand Olan defenders had long since churned into a pot of boiling gruel.
Discarded spears, trampled-flat heavy crossbows, overturned baggage carts lay heaped helter-skelter in every corner.
Those ordinarily haughty heavy-armored knights were at this moment frantically whipping the warhorses beneath them, trying to seize a path of survival toward the inner city before the Mason black-musket phalanx pouring in through the gate like a toppling mountain and overturning sea.
However, amid the great army, that one streak of glaring blazing-fire red hair was like a vengeful god of slaughter walking out from the depths of hell, in an instant locking dead the lifeblood of the whole long street.
Delilah stepped slowly into the gate tunnel.
The sunlight fell upon that dark-red heavy plate armor of hers, refracting a suffocatingly cold metallic luster.
That tall, slender, delicate frame of hers, wrapped in layer upon layer of armor, far from appearing bloated, instead traced out amid the all-pervading gunsmoke a line of almost heart-stopping elegance.
She did not ride a horse; she simply dragged that ruby-set heavy greatsword along with one hand.
"Scrreeech—!!"
The sharp sword-tip carved an ear-piercing scraping sound across the hard obsidian ground, tearing open in the bluestone-slab road a bottomless pitch-black gully, sparks flying in all directions.
Delilah bowed her head slightly, the red long hair bound behind her head whipping and roaring in the gale and the flames of war.
In those dark-red eyes, there was at this moment no joy of victory won, only a bone-deep fury so profound it made one's whole blood congeal.
She moved.
With every step forward she took, the scene of that day would irrepressibly surface in her mind.
Within that border-fortress Council Hall reeking of stale rice-soup, Queen Tina had worn a hypocritical and venomous smile upon her face, and had Una personally hand Her Majesty Sophia that cup of poisoned wine.
A throat-sealing poison at a full five times the dosage.
That despicable, venomous woman had actually tried, by such a low and filthy means, to erase the future that Her Majesty had built up with such hard effort for the entire Northern border.
The instant she thought of how Her Majesty's cold, flawless face had nearly been sullied by the old-era dregs before her, that furnace in Delilah's chest, piled up out of loyalty and fervor, in an instant utterly overclocked and burst apart!
"Tina—!!"
Delilah's voice, brimming with abundant combat aura, exploded out of nowhere above the chaotic long street, clear as though it were delivering the final death-declaration right beside the ear of every fleeing Olan soldier:
"Your account—today I'll settle it in person!!"
Hearing this thunderclap-like furious roar, atop the command platform a hundred paces away, guarded fast by over a hundred royal inner-guard deathsworn, Queen Tina's body gave a sudden violent shudder.
That haughty, ghastly-pale face of hers was utterly bloodless as she watched that streak of red silhouette charge madly toward her like a lightning bolt tearing through the gunsmoke.
Tina hysterically waved the longsword inlaid with the Crimson Seal Stone in her hand, shrieking:
"Stop her! Stop her for This Queen!! Hack this traitor into minced flesh!!"
"Roar!!"
A dozen-odd royal inner-guard Commanders, clad in three layers of heavy armor and gripping horse-cleaving greatswords, formed with reddened eyes a steel wall, and charged frenziedly head-on against Delilah.
Facing this pack of the old empire's final trump cards, Delilah, in the midst of her full-speed run, tore a sneer of extreme contempt across the corner of her mouth.
That slender, tall figure of hers abruptly halted in midair, and then, her whole body erupted with an extreme agility utterly incongruous with that heavy, cumbersome greatsword—an agility that all but defied the rules of mortals.
"Swish——!!"
One saw her long, straight, slender legs tap lightly against the ground, her posture elegant as a red-maple swan dancing gracefully amid the raging fire.
That slender waist one could span with a single grasp gave an exceedingly silken twist in midair, and that greatsword broad as a door-plank, light in her hand as though it were but a weightless feather, carved a near-perfect blood-colored arc trailing dazzling red light!
The posture of this single strike was exquisite beyond compare, utterly beautiful.
But behind that beautiful arc was contained a terrifying brute force capable of smashing clean through a whole mountain peak!
"Clang! Bam! Crack!!"
The heavy greatsword fiercely collided in midair with those horse-cleaving greatswords.
Without the slightest suspense, the three weapons forged of finest refined steel, within one second of touching the ruby greatsword, burst in full like fragile ice sculptures into metal fragments flying across the sky.
And Delilah's figure did not pause in midair at all.
Her long legs landed, the leather boots scraping a rhythmic, light sound across the bluestone slabs full of blood-water.
Borrowing the terrifying inertia of the spinning greatsword, her whole person, like a wisp of insubstantial red smoke, silkily grazed the armor-seams of those inner-guard Commanders and flashed instantly to their rear.
"Squelch——!!"
Not until Delilah's silhouette had already crossed beyond this steel line of defense did the breastplates of those dozen-odd inner-guard Commanders burst open with a roar amid an ear-piercing tearing sound.
Great sprays of fresh blood mingled with shattered viscera gushed forth; before they could even let out a scream, they toppled swathe by swathe into the mud-water.
This was Delilah's art of killing.
Figure slender as a maiden, strength mighty beyond compare like a giant dragon.
Every swing of her sword, every twisting leap, combined gentle beauty and pure destructive force to flawless perfection.
"D-don't come over!!"
Watching her most-trusted inner guards all be formatted in less than three breaths' time, Queen Tina was utterly frightened out of her wits.
Had her right arm been fine, she might still have been able to put up a moment's resistance.
But the problem was, she now could not summon the slightest strength.
She backed away, that right arm scabbed with purplish-black blood-crust trembling violently from terror, while the royal longsword in her left hand waved about wildly through the air with no method at all.
"Tina, it's time you apologized to Her Majesty's cup."
Before Tina could even make out the movement before her, Delilah's shadow, carrying a thick reek of gunsmoke, had already pressed down heavily upon the crown of her head.
There was no superfluous riddle-speak nonsense at all.
Delilah's dark-red eyes were brimming with cold cruelty, the muscles of her right arm tightening faintly beneath the armor.
That heavy ruby greatsword, under the noonday blazing sun, carved from below upward a snow-white blade-edge like a new moon.
"Shng——!!"
One stroke of the sword passed.
The world fell quiet.
Queen Tina's haughty, twisted head, wearing its pure-gold crown, in an exceedingly silken, beautiful arc, flew high up into the air.
Within those crimson eyes there even lingered still the last delusional fixation upon the splendor of the old era.
The head smashed down onto the white stone slabs of the command platform, giving off a dull physical thud, and rolled gurglingly to the very edge of the long steps.
And her headless ruined corpse, having lost its support, swayed and then slumped feebly down atop Olan's shattered Golden Lion banner.
"Siiiister—!!!!!!"
A shrill, wailing cry, almost enough to rupture the eardrums outright, came abruptly from beside the stairway on the inner side of the gate tunnel.
At this moment, Princess Una was being pushed across into the long street by two Mason markswomen in charge of escorting her.
The gorgeous hunting attire on her body was already in tattered ruin, that exquisite face of hers covered all over with filth and tears.
She had originally still clung to one last sliver of fantasy, believing that her elder sister had opened the royal great granary and still held fifty thousand invincible cavalry, that she must surely be able to fight out a rich surplus from within the city and forcibly rescue her from the hands of this band of Mason witches.
But she had never imagined that, the very moment she stepped across the boundary of this Royal City, what she would see head-on would be a blood-colored scene like this that utterly shattered her worldview.
Her elder sister, lofty and supreme, who had claimed she would bring new hope to Olan, was actually, beneath that red-haired woman's greatsword, as fragile as a comical doll heaped together from sand.
That crowned head was rolling about in the mud-water just like that, without the slightest dignity, left to be trampled by those fleeing routed soldiers.
Olan was utterly finished.
The so-called glory of empire, the so-called mountains of gold and silver, before this epoch-transcending absolute destructive power, were nothing but a string of discarded numbers that could be erased at any moment.
"Aaaaah—!! Demons! You pack of lowborn demons!!"
Extreme terror, despair, and the total disintegration of her mental defenses in an instant drove Una, this Second Princess raised in a greenhouse, into a state of utter raving madness.
Her eyeballs filled with dense, teeming bloodshot threads; her whole body, amid the heavy clashing of iron chains, struggled frantically, and actually, under the somewhat astonished gazes of the two markswomen, wrenched herself free of her bonds by sheer force.
She did not run toward the inner city, nor did she run toward Delilah.
Because she knew very well that in this new-world ledger that Sophia had redrawn, there was no longer any space for the circulation of old-era royalty like themselves.
What awaited her would be the lightless dungeon, and endless reckoning and confiscation.
"I won't be a slave… I won't go to the mines!! Long live Olan!!"
Una shrieked hysterically, that originally exquisite, twisted face filled with a sickly madness.
Treading through the blood-water that covered the ground, she abruptly lowered her head, and with all the inertial kinetic energy of her entire body, slammed her head viciously into the sharp, heavy bricks and stones of the inner-city protective wall beside her, piled up from rough obsidian!
"Thud!!"
An utterly dull sound of impact rang out.
This Olan Second Princess, once the doted-upon star of the Imperial Capital's commercial guilds, supremely haughty, had her forehead burst open in an instant into a glaring spray of blood.
That slender frame of hers stiffened against the wall for one-tenth of a second, and then, like a weightless sheet of discarded straw-paper, slid silkily down the pitch-black stone wall, slumping into the mud-water, never again to have the slightest breath of life.
The two direct-line members of the Royal House of Olan, in this single hour of noon, in a manner extremely tragic yet perfectly conforming to the logic of bankruptcy liquidation, simultaneously wrote the final full stop upon the sins of the old era.
At the center of the long street, the all-pervading drifting ashes gradually settled.
Delilah, with a backhand, gripped that enormous heavy greatsword, and stamped one foot fiercely down upon Queen Tina's shattered Golden Lion shield.
She slowly raised her head, that head of fiery-red long hair, under the irradiation of the noonday blazing sun, giving off an almost sacred and terrifying pressure.
Looking at the tens of thousands of Olan defenders around her, utterly frightened limp to the ground by this scene, having even forgotten to flee, Delilah drew a deep breath, her voice like the thunder of a god from the ninth heaven, rolling thunderously across the entire ancient Royal City:
"Every one of you, sharpen up your eyes for me!! Tina has already fallen!"
The red-haired General slammed the door-plank greatsword fiercely against the ground, giving off an earth-splitting roar that shook a hundred li:
"Her Majesty has issued a decree——! Anyone who now throws down their weapons and honestly squats at the two sides of the long street to register their identity—all surrenderers will be spared and not killed!! The Administrative Hall's main warehouse's bone broth and Black Bread have already been hauled outside the west gate; so long as you align yourselves with the rules of Mason, good days will be yours every single day from now on! As for anyone who still dares to clutch those old gold coins that can't be eaten as food, holding a broken-down spear in hand and trying to be buried alongside Tina… I don't mind using the implement in my hand to send him down to hell to reconcile accounts together with Tina!! Whole army, lay down your weapons——!!"
"Clang! Clang! Clang!!"
This utterly crisp final ultimatum of Delilah's reverberated above the whole city.
"What? Queen Tina is dead?"
On both sides of the long street, those tens of thousands of Olan soldiers—long since starved until their chests stuck to their backs, their spirits utterly baptized in the face of raging fire and death—no longer had any superfluous wavering left.
The crisp sounds of falling metal gathered densely into a single mass.
Tens of thousands of refined-steel spears and heavy crossbows were cast away into the dust without the slightest reluctance, and a full fifty thousand troops, like believers who had encountered a god's divine-rank dimensional-suppression cleansing, knelt down in dense swathes upon both sides of the long street, in willing and joyful submission.
They held both hands high, in their eyes no longer the earlier opposition and hatred.
At this moment, all that remained in them was a terrified reverence for Delilah's greatsword, and a boundless fervor and yearning for the Black Rose new Order outside the city gate that gave off the fragrance of bone broth.
The noonday sunlight was fierce as fire, and this Olan Empire of the Northern border, with several centuries of heritage, in this moment, at last, beneath Sophia's formless yet vast great-emperor shadow, was wholly merged into that enormous, perfect surplus ledger of the Black Rose.
The noonday blazing sun poured down mercilessly upon the long street of the Olan Royal City, steaming up from the blood-water covering the ground a thick, scorched, burning stench.
As the fifty thousand troops knelt in willing submission swathe by swathe, this rule of the old empire, handed down for several centuries, at last lowered its curtain amid a symphony of raging fire and iron-blood.
The tens of thousands of Olan defenders who had cast away their weapons honestly held their hands over their heads, squatting at both sides of the street, in their eyes no longer the earlier death-resolve, only the fervent anticipation of hot meat broth to come.
The cleanup and gathering work of the battlefield, under the Mason army's downright terrifying administrative efficiency, began to proceed in orderly fashion.
At the center of the long street, several hundred Mason campaign-administrators clad in black robes had already arrayed themselves into several rows; in their hands they each held an exquisite silver tray, upon which lay quietly one "Black Rose Contract Seal" after another, giving off a faint ripple of magic power.
These were a brand-new management tool, jointly crafted and consecrated through the overnight labor of Irene's workshop and Daphne.
"Lift your heads up for me, all of you! Line up one by one!"
The centurion's coarse, booming voice reverberated above the street.
A trembling Olan heavy-armored knight swallowed a mouthful of saliva and, under the guidance of the Mason soldiers, stepped forward with an ashen face.
The administrator expressionlessly picked up that magic seal emitting a glimmering blue light, and pressed it precisely against the joint of this knight's right wrist.
Accompanied by an exceedingly faint ripple of magic power and a warm sensation, upon the skin of the knight's wrist there instantly surfaced an intricate, exquisite deep-black rose emblem.
The flowing light of the magic sank deep into the flesh, quietly linking with the life-aura within his body, flickered faintly under the sunlight for one-tenth of a second, and then submerged into the depths of the skin.
This was the brand-new magic seal.
Not only could it, in an extremely short time, discern the true identities of recruits and surrendered soldiers, eliminating any possibility of rebellion by those harboring ill intent—it was moreover the sole contract credential by which this group of people, on this land in the future, would draw their standard Black Bread and enjoy medical welfare.
Looking at that Black Rose on his wrist representing the brand-new Order, the heavy-armored knight let out a long breath, the heart that had been hanging at his throat finally settling fully back down.
He knew that from this moment on, he was no longer a liability of the old era, but a brand-new asset fully merged into that enormous ledger of the Black Rose.
Upon the white stone steps of the command platform, Delilah sat casually just so, letting the wind upon the long street blow through that head of blazing-fire red hair.
That set of dark-red heavy plate armor of hers still bore the dried blood-stains belonging to Tina and the royal inner guards, but in those dark-red eyes, that streak of savage killing intent had long since vanished like smoke, replaced by an almost languid relaxation.
"General, the west-gate main warehouse has been entirely taken over; the stale rice and old munitions inside are being urgently tallied and registered!"
The adjutant came running over, his whole face flushed red, so excited his very voice was trembling.
"Mm. Tell the brothers to keep their hands and feet clean; if anyone dares at this time to falsify the figures on Her Majesty's accounts, I'll skin him alive."
Delilah responded blandly, and with a backhand sheathed the heavy greatsword into the scabbard on her back.
She casually pulled over a sheet of rough sheepskin parchment, dipped her fingertip in the ink the inner guard beside her held out, and directly upon the stone steps of the command platform, stroke by stroke, in a vigorous and forceful hand, wrote out the battle report:
This minister Delilah, kowtowing in audience to Your Majesty.
Today at noon, the west gate of the Olan Royal City has been entirely broken through.
Tina put up a stubborn last-ditch resistance and has now been executed.
The Second Princess Una, fearing the reckoning, took her own life at the inner-city wall.
The fifty thousand defenders within the city have all been disarmed and are in orderly fashion accepting the management-registration of the Black Rose magic seal; the royal great warehouse has fallen entirely into our hands.
With this, Olan is pacified, and the core of the Northern border is wholly taken over.
This humble minister has not disgraced her mission, and herein… misses Your Majesty exceedingly; may Your Majesty enjoy boundless longevity.
Having written the last character, Delilah somewhat awkwardly scratched at that head of red hair, and across her fair face there flashed, rarely, a suspicious trace of blush.
She crisply rolled up the sheepskin parchment, stuffed it into a fine-bronze message-cylinder, and slapped it fiercely against the chest of the most elite flying-cavalry messenger beside her:
"At the fastest speed, switching horses but not riders, deliver this letter by hand to the Yurilland Temporary Palace, and hand it to Her Majesty!!"
"Yes!! I'll deliver it though I die!!"
The flying-cavalry messenger mounted a high-grade horned horse without a single off-color hair on its whole body, kicked up a crisp clatter of iron hooves, and like a black bolt of lightning tore off madly into the distance toward Yurilland.
Several hours later, at the Yurilland Temporary Palace several hundred li away.
The quicklime vapor below the west-gate long wall had by now utterly dispersed; the three thousand executed Crimson Vulture deathsworn were being sent, in a long unbroken line, into the deepest dungeon.
Within the study.
Sophia had by now shed that close-fitting black light armor, and changed back into that cold, comfortable black Gothic long dress.
She leaned somewhat wearily against the back of the broad office chair, her head of silver long hair cascading like a waterfall down one side of the seat, upon that exquisite, god-carved deadpan face her long eyelashes drooping slightly, her pale-gold pupils carrying, rarely, a few traces of emptiness.
Leading ten thousand recruits in aerobic exercise upon the long wall in the dead of noon was really quite a drain on one's physical stamina.
Still, since that little state called the Crimson Vulture could secretly send men over to raid the camp, it showed that the western defensive line still had a not-insignificant loophole on the macro level; once back, she'd have to have Willow double the number of sentry posts in each reclamation district.
Just as Sophia was rubbing her somewhat sore temples, silently calculating in her heart the cleanup costs to come, the oak great door of the study was pushed open exceedingly lightly.
"Your Majesty, urgent dispatch from the front line! General Delilah's personally-written letter has arrived!!"
Willow, holding that fine-bronze message-cylinder in her hands, walked in with extremely fast yet extremely steady steps.
Irene and Victoria on the soft couch simultaneously straightened up, their gazes converging in unison upon that message-cylinder.
Sophia reached out to take the cylinder, her fingertips stirring slightly as she crisply peeled away the seal and slowly spread the sheepskin parchment inside flat upon the desk.
When she saw those several lines of vigorous, forceful handwriting—the Olan Royal City fully broken through, Tina executed, fifty thousand defenders surrendered—those pale-gold pupils of Sophia's, ordinarily as still as an ancient well, seemingly devoid of all emotion, at last, in this instant, exceedingly rarely rippled with a trace of genuine relaxation.
Those somewhat taut slender shoulders of hers, too, in this moment, utterly relaxed.
Whew… the city's broken through at last.
Once this current biggest time-bomb vanishes, the survival resources of the entire core region of the Northern border will not, in the short term, again face the risk of being maliciously cut off.
This deal was even more perfect than expected.
Sophia let out a long breath in her heart, and that ever-hanging Transmigrator's heart, in this moment, at last settled completely at ease.
However, this sense of ease brought on by the lifting of the crisis lasted, in the absolutely rational Sophia's mind, for less than three seconds before being forcibly hedged back down by a string of even more vast, cold, and complex brand-new data flows.
She slowly set the sheepskin parchment in her hand down at the corner of the desk, her fine brows knitting slightly, her pale-gold pupils returning once again to that cold, ripple-free dead-fish-eyed look.
She'd celebrated too early.
Though Tina was dead, what Olan had left behind was an enormous, ravaged mess that had been entirely out of grain for a full week.
Fifty thousand surrendered soldiers crying out to be fed, plus the lowborn commoners within the city who might erupt into internal chaos at any moment—the Black Bread and refined salt consumed by this each day would be an astronomical figure.
What's more, this camp-raid by the Crimson Vulture Duchy had already utterly lifted the lid on the old era's final trump card.
However blind those old fellows of the Imperial Capital might be, faced with a duchy of several centuries' heritage utterly destroyed, they would absolutely have to make the most intense head-on reaction in the near future.
The troubles to come… would only multiply in geometric progression.
"Your Majesty, it seems General Delilah has sent you the most perfect summer-finale gift."
Beside the long table, Victoria gently swayed the ivory fan in her hand, those beautiful golden eyes making a circuit across Sophia's still-cold countenance.
Truly worthy of Sophia, who masters all.
Even though the front line had relayed back 'Olan destroyed, fifty thousand troops surrendering in orderly fashion'—an epic-grade triumph enough to be inscribed in the annals of the entire continent—upon her face there was not even a hair's worth of worldly joy.
What did this prove?!
This proved that the destruction of Olan, in Her Majesty's supreme map-planning, was nothing but a logical, inevitable result that had long since been calculated to the utmost!
Sophia's deep, cold gaze at this moment had clearly already crossed beyond this wasteland of the Northern border, and was, in a high-dimensional posture, calmly weighing out all the surplus probabilities of the future game against the Imperial Capital's supreme core!
Tina's self-righteous resistance, in Her Majesty's eyes, was nothing but a string of insignificant dust at the descent of the new Order.
Daphne at one side also lowered her eyelids slightly, her hands clasped before her pure-white robe, her face filled with piety toward the supreme new Order.
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