Chapter 439 — The Knight

Why had he accepted these people in the first place?

When had the nobles of this country all become creatures like this?

He wanted to ignore them, but Sir Marchi could not help stopping. He reined in his horse before a group of panicked southern knights and shouted: "Ladies and gentlemen—if you still have the slightest sense of honor as nobles and knights, then at least go and maintain order in the city! Boulder Fortress has not fallen yet!!"

Then, regardless of how many heard him, he turned his horse and rode on.

Enemy sabotage units had infiltrated the city and were hidden there; at any moment they might cause even greater losses.

With their commander gone from the field, order within the fortress could well collapse into far greater chaos.

The fortress's supreme commander should never leave the stronghold under circumstances like these.

All of this Sir Marchi understood perfectly well.

And yet someone had to stop those two ships, and the two terrible weapons they carried.

For common soldiers and lesser knights, riding out was simply to throw their lives away; only he, a high-ranking knight, charging forth under the cover of his knightly order, might hold out some slender hope—this was precisely the value and the use of mighty individual strength.

The gates swung open, and a stinging smell of scorching rushed in to meet them.

It was the peculiar odor produced when high-intensity arcane energy churned through the air, breaking down certain substances within it.

The knights raised their heads, gazing up at the two beams of light directly above them with shock and a thread of dread.

From this position and angle they seemed all the more terrible—pure arcane light pouring down upon the tottering magic barrier like two rivers cast from light, and like a majestic aurora slowly crushing Boulder Fortress into the dust.

Built by the Second Dynasty of Ansu at the cost of countless labor and resources, embodying the highest magical craft of the royal house in its day, Boulder Fortress had stood upon this land for a full century—and now, under the battering of the arcane torrent, it was creeping little by little toward its end.

This fortress had been raised to defend against the Cecil family, and yet across the past century the Cecil family had never once struck back.

Only at this moment did many suddenly realize it—this was merely the Cecil family's first assault since Boulder Fortress was founded.

"Don't look up—look ahead!" Sir Marchi raised his longsword high, then leveled it toward the Whitewater River. "Do not halt!"

The knights pulled down their visors and began to gather speed, slowly, in step with Sir Marchi's warhorse.

The great majority of them would not survive to finish this charge; indeed, even if they reached the Whitewater River alive, most of them would be of no use: the two ships lay at the center of the river, and knights, kings of the land, could do nothing against warships floating in the middle of the water.

But Sir Marchi, a high-ranking knight, could—high transcendents had a thousand ways to ignore that trifling "terrain nuisance" of the Whitewater River; get close enough, and a single high-ranking knight was enough to bring the magical devices aboard those two ships to a halt.

The knightly order began its charge.

.。m.