Chapter 272 — The Prologue of the Offensive

On the southern wall, along the eastern extension, a special squad of "wall defenders" was hauling crates of crystal bombs up to the tower platform where the catapults stood. Suojilin stood to one side, supervising these warriors at their work.

They were the sixteen Taifeng soldiers who were still, for the present, prisoners of war.

The Taifeng knight Balto bent down and set the last crystal bomb beside the catapult, then straightened up and turned to gaze back toward the town behind him.

From this high vantage, he could easily see most of the city—could even see the place where he had once been imprisoned.

Today was already the third day since leaving his cell, and as a Taifeng warrior he had spent these three days on this stretch of wall hauling stone and ammunition crates for the Ansus.

There was nothing particularly proud or glorious about it, but as a prisoner of war, Balto knew he had little right to choose. To be alive and breathing fresh air outside a cell was already the greatest fortune; and moreover, he had been told that his work here was to fight the monsters from the Gondor Wasteland, not to fight his own countrymen. That, at least, was not so bad.

And over these three days of hauling stone, Balto and his comrades had not forgotten to observe their surroundings, had not forgotten to seize every moment to learn about this mysterious frontier domain, about that mysterious ancient duke and his mysterious new-model army. And the more he learned, the more astonished he became.

He had thought Ansus a rotten, backward, savage country, mired deep in the swamp of decline—its nobles corrupt and depraved, its commoners hungry and cold, its borderlands desolate, its interior seething with hidden currents. So Taifeng propaganda had told the people, and so too had the true intelligence gathered by the soldiers of the Winter Wolf Legion at the border. Yet here, this Cecil Territory did not conform at all to Balto's understanding of Ansus.

He had not seen what Cecil Territory looked like in its ordinary, day-to-day state, but he had seen what this domain looked like once the alarm was sounded. He saw this domain running at astonishing efficiency; saw the army mobilizing in orderly fashion and actively preparing for war; saw every department coordinating closely, with no buck-passing and no delays; saw that administrative organ called the "Civil Administration Hall" issuing orderly directives like the brain of the whole domain, commanding everything with perfect precision. And within the city, those ignorant common folk who ought to have been chaotic, benighted, and numb were instead all like well-trained militia or worldly-wise city dwellers—not only did they show not the slightest sign of falling into disorder, they threw their full strength behind the city's defense and the maintenance of normal production and daily life. Apart from a half-day stoppage on the first day, when a state of emergency was declared and production targets were redistributed, the operation of the entire city was not affected in the least by the state of war!

Frankly speaking, Balto did not believe there was a single city in Taifeng capable of doing the same.

The more he observed, the more alarmed Balto and his comrades became. If the rest of Ansus had developed to such a degree as well, was it still wise for Taifeng to go to war with it?

Yet the knight's reflections could not continue, for a sudden sense of palpitation welled up in his heart.

Following the guidance of intuition, he turned his head toward the mountain barrier to the south of the wall. With the powerful eyesight that transcendent beings possessed, he saw an ominous black-red cloud of smoke rising from the boundary line where the mountains met the plains, and within it countless twisted, hideous figures were emerging.

He heard one of his comrades murmuring beside him: "What... what is that?!"

The most urgent alarm rang out upon the wall. The sentry in the watchtower struck the bell and shouted at the top of his voice:

"They're here!!"