Chapter 644 — The King's Price

When the Cecil armoured gryphons swept across the sky, Count Uriel still had the leisure to admire the scenery of Crow Terrace—this high ground, once dotted with watchtowers and a small fortress, had been one of Saint Sunir's garrison strongholds, but it now lay shattered by war; among the scattered ruins one could see only the banners and equipment left behind by the defenders in their panicked retreat, and the dismembered corpses of crystal-cluster giants, while brand-new banners now fluttered amid these broken ruins, lending the scene a strange, contrasting beauty.

A cool breeze drifted over, carrying with it a faint reek of the battlefield; Count Uriel drew a deep breath and said with a smile, "The past few days were truly hard—but happily, those hard days are finally over."

"We met hardly any resistance—there were only a few gravely wounded, dying monsters in this place," a viscount said from beside him. "I'm afraid this achievement won't quite suffice?"

"It doesn't matter. We can gather up these ready-made remains," Count Uriel said offhandedly. "Our king will be quite busy next, so presumably he won't have time to scrutinize such trifles."

"Our new king, eh..." the viscount beside him said with a light laugh, then glanced up at the sky with curiosity. "Strange—why are those few gryphons circling around here all this time?"

"Those should be the Cecil gryphons," Count Uriel said, looking skyward. "Have they come to greet us?"

The armoured gryphons circled above Crow Terrace a while longer, then suddenly beat their wings and flew off at a slant into the distance.

Count Uriel narrowed his eyes, and after a moment, a sense of unease finally surfaced from the depths of his heart.

He thought of Count Lucre, whom the king had executed.

"This is a trap—"

Count Uriel roared in alarm, but a shrill, piercing whistle had already come from afar...

Crow Terrace was engulfed in an earth-shattering explosion; flashes of light came without cease, and clouds of smoke and dust billowed skyward.

Wilse stood on the walls of Saint Sunir; Pingxi watched it all, and only after a long while did he say softly, "He truly is decisive."

And all the others—those standing on the walls who knew what was on Crow Terrace, the noble scions who supported the king, the defending soldiers, and the rest whom Wilse had kept behind for various reasons—all of them watched that terrifying spectacle in the distance with shock and dread.

The crowd cried out in alarm, and chaos swept the walls; some rushed headlong toward the king's direction, hoping to request further orders, but Wilse raised the longsword in his hand, and his voice, infused with magic, resounded across the walls: "Quiet—inner-court nobles, the garrison guard, follow me out of the city to receive the Duke of Cecil."

"Your Majesty!" an inner-court noble cried out in shock. "Absolutely not! They have just bombarded Crow Terrace—they have just killed..."

"Do they know there is a noble knightly order on Crow Terrace?" Wilse Pingxi asked. "Do they know the orders I gave within Silverhold?"

"Your Majesty, this..."

"This may be a terrible misunderstanding, and all the more reason to clarify it face to face," Wilse said in a tone brooking no doubt. "Whatever is said, the Cecil people saved the royal capital and cleared the monsters from the plains. Their legion is just outside the city—we must go meet them."

The king's final sentence obliquely awakened everyone present; those inner-court nobles mired in shock and dread realized in whose hands the true initiative now lay—and the cleverer among them, from Wilse's anomalous attitude, suddenly caught faint intimations of certain facts, sniffing out a dreadful, bloody truth unfolding there in the sunlight; after a brief daze, they found they had no further choices.

Whatever the truth behind the bombardment on Crow Terrace, they must now obey the king's command and go out of the city to receive the Cecil legion.

...

"The meeting place is Mill Town—it's already a ruin," Victoria said, having ended her magical communication with Duke Baiyu and turned to look at Gao Dai. "Wilse and the inner-court nobles have already set out."

Gao Yan nodded. "Then we set out as well."

His calm demeanor stirred even Victoria to an indescribable dread; she could not help saying, "Aren't you worried it's a trap?"

"I am—which is why I'll bring a tank battalion along. But I doubt it will be needed. Wilse is a clever man, and Baiyu Franklin even more so."

Victoria was taken aback for a moment, then her gaze swept over the Dark Crow standing not far away.

This dreadful affair, unfolding there in the sunlight, had been accomplished through a single letter delivered by this royal shadow guard; at first Victoria had wondered why Baiyu had not contacted her directly by magical communication—after all, she had already reached the Saint Sunir region, within range of magical communication—but she had quickly understood: that Guardian of the Western Marches knew her well; Baiyu knew she would never consent to this bold, extreme "conspiracy," and that contacting her in advance would only let her act to stop it all from happening.

Duke Baiyu, who held Ansu's commerce in his grasp—perhaps his code of conduct was that of a merchant as well... precisely calculating the greatest benefit for this nation, then stopping at nothing to realize it... this was something Victoria, forever confined within Ansu's stale aristocratic fences, could probably never imitate.

Gao Yang had already strode out of the command post, and Victoria quickly composed herself and followed, but before getting into the vehicle, this Northern Duchess suddenly noticed that someone was missing from the scene: "Where has that Miss Amber gone?"

Gao Yang walked toward the magic-drive vehicle parked in the camp and said offhandedly, "She went to investigate a few things."

Deep within the camp, in a barracks tightly guarded by soldiers, a magic-web terminal hummed as it ran, and the printing device connected to it kept spitting out sheet after sheet of white paper, covered in vast quantities of text along with black-and-white images and meticulously hand-drawn insignia.

Amber sat beside the magic-web terminal, flipping through the printed sheets, a strange smile surfacing on her face—three parts satisfaction, seven parts mockery.

"There really are so many... and it's truly a marvel that Wilse could hold the city to this day with a pack like this dragging him down..."

...

The Cecil legion detached a guard unit and set out for the ruins of Mill Town outside Saint Frost Rest at the agreed time and place, and before they arrived, Wilse had already reached the spot.

This ruin, with little left but broken walls and rubble, was no longer worth seizing or repairing; the crystal-cluster giants' legion had trampled it flat, tearing down nearly all its buildings and walls, and it seemed the only proper way to deal with it was to raze it completely and rebuild.

The royal knightly order dispatched here had cleared the scattered monsters wandering near the ruins almost effortlessly, then planted the Ansu banner upon a heap of broken bricks and tiles.

When the rumble of cannon fire came from the direction of Crow Terrace, the knightly order encamped silently where it stood; they had already received their orders—no matter what happened, they must not leave this place—and if nothing happened at Crow Terrace...

...their task was to ambush and kill the returning nobles here.

The Ansu banner fluttered beside the town reduced to ruins; broken bricks and collapsed walls gave off an air of desolation in the sunlight, and a silent knightly order guarded this expanse of rubble, while Wilse Morm led the surviving nobles and soldiers loyal to him and stood outside the town, watching those ferocious, grotesque steel war machines roll into the open ground.