Chapter 266 — The Kindled Blade

Anluo Wendel stared at the infiltrators returning from the Dark Mountains, her brows knitting tightly together.

The infiltration of the Dark Mountains had failed. Anluo had considered the possibility of failure from the start, but she had never expected it to come so quickly—and never expected that elven ranger, so formidable, would fail to return.

According to the intelligence the withdrawn soldiers brought back, the first half of the infiltration had gone remarkably smoothly; they had slipped past the Dark Mountains Pass on Ansell's eastern defense line almost effortlessly. But as they approached that legendary frontier domain in southeastern Ansell, the situation turned sharply. One squad suddenly lost contact, and from clues discovered later it was certain they had been annihilated by Ansell's army. Then Suojilin led the main force to investigate, and they too soon dropped out of contact.

None of them had time to send back any word—not even to release their message magic-insects. That could only happen when a force was struck by instantaneous, devastating destruction.

So the remaining squads pulled back with all speed, not staying a quarter of an hour longer.

The soldiers' choice was correct. If even the main force under Suojilin could be wiped out in an instant, then the weaker junior squads pressing on would only be walking to their deaths; withdrawing preserved some of their strength and let them carry the scouted intelligence back to their commander. Yet none of it improved the young Wolf General's mood in the slightest—if anything, having confirmed the existence of that frontier domain and the threat it posed, her mood had only soured.

The frontier domain was real, and judging by its strength, that Gao Yang Cecil was real too—if not a true ancient hero, then at least a formidable figure Ansell had cultivated, one comparable in rank to the Three-Realm Dukes. What they had believed to be the weakest link on Ansell's border had become a thorny problem, and that decaying, sluggish royal house of Ansell was not nearly as feeble as first assumed... They had recognized the grave flaw in their national defense in time and had already begun to remedy it.

And it had to happen just before Tyrann's formal offensive.

Anluo sent the soldiers off to rest, then went to her desk and spread a great map before her eyes.

From the intelligence the infiltration force had managed to bring back, she could roughly determine that the frontier domain lay at the lower reaches of the Whitewater River, near the starting point of the Dark Mountains' eastern spur: its back to the mountains, a river before it, broad open plains and dense forests to either side. A fine piece of land indeed—that "Gao Yang Cecil" had an eye for territory.

In Anluo's eyes this mysterious frontier domain was like an abyss: she knew full well it was there, yet could not probe what lay within. That grated on the Wolf General, who had always been fiercely competitive, but as a worthy heir of the Wendel family, Anluo quickly suppressed the restless temper of youth. She let out a soft breath, took up paper and pen from the side, and began to write a letter:

"Report from Winterwolf Fort... There are indeed weak points in the Dark Mountains Pass; the eastern defense line of Ansell can be bypassed... The Cecil frontier domain does exist and should hold a strong military deployment, though its specifics remain a mystery... The rest of the defense line is as usual, with no further movement from the Ansell side; in recent days..."

A clatter of noise from outside cut her writing short. The young Wolf General raised her head with a frown and called out loudly, "What is going on out there?"

The heavy wooden door was pushed open and a trusted guard stepped in: "Commander! Out on the plain before the fort there are... strange things approaching!"

"Strange things?" Anluo was displeased with the phrasing. "Speak clearly."

"Yes... they look like enormous human-shaped monsters! They came running out from the direction of the Dark Mountains!"

The sonorous bells were already tolling, mingled with shrill horns and the shouts of commanders at every level. Winterwolf Fort reacted to the unknown in the most correct way possible: the gates slammed shut, soldiers rushed to the walls to prepare the defense, scalding oil and heavy logs were hauled to the battlements—and out on the vast snowfield facing the front wall, clusters of ominous red clouds were gathering.

Anluo climbed to the wall, and the keen sight of a high-ranking knight let her make out what those monsters on the plain looked like. For the first time, the youngest female Winterwolf Commander in history wore an expression of astonishment: "What... what is that?!"

Great blood-red humanoid creatures swayed across the plain. They had the immense bulk of the ancient giants of myth, far surpassing human stature, yet wholly lacked human features or limb detail; something like blood-red mud crawled and flowed over their bodies. Those faceless heads were so horrifying that even Anluo, seeing a whole host of such giants marching toward the fort, could not keep her scalp from prickling!

It was the shape of the most blasphemous, most twisted, most terrible nightmare—and here they were, before Winterwolf Fort!

"Get the catapults up here at once! Monsters of that size must be met with catapults!" Anluo shouted immediately. "You, and you—go summon the mage corps, have them take the battle-mage towers!"

While Anluo swiftly set the defense, the giant humanoid monsters swaying on the plain began to speed up. They seemed at last to have "smelled" the living and the magic in the air; in an instant they roused from their dazed wandering, and these dreadful creatures, voicing silent roars, lowered their heads and charged Winterwolf Fort with a fury that scorned death. Some among them, those with the power to cast, raised their arms high mid-charge, and volley after volley of chaotic energy arrows, wreathed in ominous black-red light, shrieked through the air, arcing in long parabolas to slam hard against Winterwolf Fort's solid walls.

Under that uncanny energy's corrosion, the stout wall bricks weathered and cracked apart as swiftly as brittle sand!

Even where the energy arrows had not struck directly, the surface of the walls showed a marked tendency to weaken!

Anluo noticed the corrosive effect of those chaotic energy arrows at once and grasped how dreadful they were. Given the thickness of Winterwolf Fort's walls, the damage these arrows dealt would not be fatal in the short term—yet their power to "transmute" the stone was sapping the strength of the entire fortress!

"Stop them!" Anluo drew her longsword and hewed out a silver-white shockwave, picking off the spellcasting monsters at the very front. "Do not let them near the walls!"

A chaotic and uncanny battle erupted before Winterwolf Fort.

At that same moment, in the newly built arsenal of the Cecil domain, Byron solemnly presented to Gao Yang a single-handed sword of curious design and wondrous beauty.

"My lord, the first finished Molten-Cut Sword has passed its trials."

Gao Yang studied the new weapon, into which the technicians and smiths had poured countless hours of heart's blood, and joy gradually filled him.