Chapter 610 — Breakout and Siege

Belk Loren walked step by step along the path leading to the castle district of the inner city, the sharp stings from several small wounds on his body constantly goading his exhausted mind, goading him to stay awake.

The fog had thinned, but the smell of blood lingering in the air still clung stubbornly, and suspicious shadows still flickered past, footfalls sounding from deep within the nearby streets and alleys—every shadow and every footfall might be a lurking monster, one that might already have completed its transformation, or might be in the midst of it; in any case, Belk could not afford to take the risk.

That voice still lingered in his mind:

"Ending up like this... eat rocks and you can live... my lord."

For that reason alone, a person could willingly turn into a monster.

In that moment, the young marquis suddenly recalled a sentence he had read in a report:

...Grain requisitioned six times in the aforementioned region, households emptied, leaves all eaten, the number of starving...

Once it had been merely a description, a few figures; he had found it shocking too, but only shocking.

Now, at last, he had seen with his own eyes what that "world" looked like.

What was hard to believe was that between that "world" and his own "world," there was only a city wall, only a castle.

He finally understood why most of His Highness the Prince's decrees were so hard to carry out, finally understood why those noble lords could never be relied upon.

The people who lived inside the castle could not imagine what the world outside was like.

Belk raised his head and saw that the main gate of Solinborg was right before him; the drawbridge... had not been raised, and there were no guards in sight.

An indescribable unease suddenly surged up in his heart, and Belk at once quickened his pace.

Gripping his longsword tightly, he crossed the drawbridge, passed through the empty courtyard and the barracks area, pushed open the main keep's door, which had been left ajar, and entered the ground-floor long hall, likewise deserted and empty.

No living figure moved anywhere in sight, yet an unsettling stench of blood was everywhere; all through the long hall were traces of battle—human blood, and shattered fallen crystal clusters.

This was no invasion from outside; the fighting had erupted from within. The guards had resisted briefly, but within a very short time they had voluntarily ceased fighting...

Belk swiftly drew these dreadful conclusions from the traces at the scene, and without slowing his steps he raced by memory up to the second floor, toward the great hall on the castle's second level.

The doors of the hall stood wide open, and again no guards were to be seen; and in the center of the hall Belk saw the sight he least wished to see.

A tall figure clad in black armor stood there—Edmund Morn, hearing the commotion from the doorway, turned his head, and a face overgrown and fused with crystal clusters came into Belk Loren's eyes.

Belk felt his heartbeat skip a beat, and at once he drew his sword and readied for battle; but soon he realized that Edmund Morn's gaze toward him was not wholly confused and mad—in those eyeballs already close to becoming crystalline, a glimmer of human reason still remained.

He approached cautiously: "Your Highness—can you hear me?"

Edmund Morn stared fixedly at Belk, his body trembling slightly, as though two wills were contending for mastery of this body; and in the midst of that struggle a hoarse sound came from his throat: "Kill me. Do it now."

That dreadful command left Belk's mind briefly blank, but two seconds later he came to his senses and made the calmest judgment.

He raised his longsword and strode forward: "Yes, Your Highness."

Phantom yet searing firelight kindled along the longsword; knowing full well what strength the prince before him possessed, Belk gathered all his magic into this one strike, and with a shrill tearing of air his blade thrust toward Edmund Morn's heart.

Yet when the tip was but a few centimeters from the heart, Edmund's left hand suddenly rose, and the palm covered in crystal clusters seized that searing adamantine longsword outright; after a burst of dazzling sparks and a teeth-grating screech between palm and blade, Belk's sword could advance no further.

Two pairs of eyes stared fixedly at the scene, and then Edmund raised his head and spat out a single word: "Run."

Belk released the hilt in an instant; without a moment's pause he dashed to one side of the hall, leaped, and smashed straight through the window, out of the castle.

In the shadows of one corner of the hall, a winding growth of vines stirred slowly; with a faint rustling they at last all contracted back into the depths of the dark.

...

West of the Giantwood Pass, in Boulder City and the White Pine region, on the lands held by the royal house, the dense fog had wholly dispersed.

The fog had left the cities and the countryside, and wherever the fog had tainted, people had become monsters.

Countless twisted giants, formed of flesh and blood fused with crystal clusters, were gathering, spreading like a firestorm of calamity; wherever men had once dwelled, a dreadful crystal legion would mass, and black-robed, giant-like individuals were the commanders of these legions. Under those commanders' lead the crystal giants seized every village and town within mere hours, then began to spread toward the positions held by the royal army.

Boulder City, one of the royal army's key strongholds, was under attack; this city famed for its massive walls now faced the greatest trial in its history.

"Hold the line! Hold the line!! Shield-bearers—hold fast!"

"We need more fire oil here! More stone shot!"

"The battle mages are spent—get the catapults up! The Guard Mage Corps is almost here!"

Oil sacks blazing with fierce flame and rune-etched stones whistled up into the air, flying from the walls into the distance; giant bolts tore through the air with the thundering snap of the bowstrings, smashing into the "crystal tide" far off. Knights and noble officers overseeing the battle ran along the walls, hoarse from shouting orders, using every spell to reinforce the walls and rouse the soldiers' fast-crumbling morale; yet below the walls those monsters only gathered in ever greater numbers.

This was a crystal legion transformed from the entire population of the region, and before numbers that had already brought about a qualitative change, mere stone shot and fire oil—even the mages' fireballs and lightning—seemed feeble; these attacks fell upon the monsters' heads like a pebble flung into the sea, scarce able to raise any great spray.

A noble officer in dark blue armor with a sash across his shoulder stood on the wall, watching ever more crystal monsters pour in from the distance. Those monsters did not fight by their mighty bodies alone; they had dreadful spellcasting power as well—powerful arcane lightning kept bursting from where the monsters were thickest, and after each bolt, a fresh dreadful crack would appear in Boulder City's walls, or a swath of soldiers would fall. If matters went on this way, the fall of Xuanyue City would be only a matter of time.

"How much fire oil and stone shot do we have left?" The noble officer turned his head and fixed his gaze on a nearby knight lieutenant.

"Enough to last two days, my lord, but I fear that still won't be enough—there are too many monsters, and countless more behind them!!"

Fire oil was the most effective means against those monsters, but the oil sacks flung by the catapults could not halt the tide-like assault, and the mages capable of unleashing large-scale flame spells in succession... there were too few of them, and all had exhausted their magic!

The noble officer's face was grim; he heard a tremendous crash from the western stretch of the wall, and hard upon it a chorus of screams and uproar.