Chapter 610 — Breakout and Siege

Large numbers of soldiers, on the verge of collapse, fell into chaos. Beginning in the areas that had come under attack, the city's defending troops began to show clear signs of wavering and falling back.

The supervising knights stepped forward at once, using morale-boosting combat skills to forcibly hold the line. The soldiers affected by the transcendent power, driven by hormones and nervous excitement, returned to the walls—but their eyes were already bloodshot, their bearing utterly unsteady, and their inner consciousness racing toward collapse. How many more times they could operate the catapults was anyone's guess.

More terrifying still, even the knights supervising those soldiers from behind... had already begun to show wavering expressions on their faces.

These were already the elite troops of the kingdom; on the battlefield they could fight the mighty Eastern Marches knights head-on for a full day. But that was war against "men." Now they faced monsters.

This was beyond the limits of human willpower.

Another knight adjutant ran up onto the wall, his face terrified, his voice full of wavering: "My lord, it's confirmed—many of the monsters carry fragments of clothing and armor from the Third, Fifth, and Sixth Knight Orders and the royal army soldiers. They... they were transformed from our own soldiers!!"

The noble officer's eyes went wide: "How many people know about this?!"

"The entire defending force has seen it..."

It was over.

The knight orders and conscripted battalions stationed along the north-south line at the Giantwood Crossing were all finished; Xuanyue City would surely be finished soon as well.

But before the noble officer could heave a sigh, a nightmarish shout suddenly came from the distance:

"Count Solin is dead!!"

After a brief moment of stupefaction, the noble officer's eyes flew wide—he wanted to find which utterly foolish herald had shouted such a thing before the lines—but soon enough he realized the voice came from below the walls, from among the monsters.

A mangled corpse was hurled into the sky by the monsters, and the head of Count Solin, his eyes still open in death, came squarely into the view of the defending soldiers.

In the end, the count had not managed to retake his domain and castle.

The defensive line atop the walls began collapsing at a rate visible to the naked eye, began falling back, began showing great gaps and empty stretches; the defending troops fell into an irreversible rout, and the supervising knights could no longer reorganize the line.

For even the knights' morale had collapsed.

Dozens of enormous arcane lightning arcs struck the walls at once, accompanied by ceaseless explosions, and the mighty stone wall shook violently, as though it would crumble the very next second.

Xuanyue City could no longer be held.

The instant he realized this fact, the noble officer and his adjutants heard sharp, shrieking whistles coming from the high sky, and with those whistles the entire sky was swiftly covered by vast swathes of shadow—

Countless ice spikes and howling gales swept across the whole battlefield, as though the winter just ended had returned to the world once more. In this suddenly descending ice storm, a new barrier of frost swiftly rose before the city walls, and hundreds upon hundreds of monsters were nailed to the icy cliffs by the ice spikes.

Yet the next second, this line of defense formed of solid ice came under relentless attack, and about half the monsters pinned to the ice began to struggle: wounds that would be fatal to ordinary men could not kill them outright.

With a crack-crack-crack sound, the entire ice wall split rapidly.

A commanding female voice came from the high sky, ringing across the whole battlefield: "The Mountain Corps will hold the rear with me! The Royal Knight Order and the Household Guard, take the civilians and break out to the northwest!"

It was the voice of Duchess Victoria Wild.

The knight adjutant beside him prompted: "My lord, it's the order to retreat."

The noble officer glanced at the defensive line, now all but completely collapsed, and drew a deep breath.

"Retreat!!"

On the 12th of the Month of Revival, Year 738 of the Ansu calendar, the kingdom army's greatest fortress on the Holy Spirit Plain, Giantstone City, fell.

A vast legion formed of crystal-cluster giants began spreading toward the direction of Sacred Frost Perch City.

...

Several days later, Suojilin and the Steel Rangers he led—having just crossed the Pompei region and now advancing north along the eastern bank of the Dolgun River—encountered a wholly unfamiliar enemy.

A kind of exceptionally tall human, as though infected by some crystal parasite.

The earth scorched by individual burner fire reeked of dense char; masses of fully carbonized corpses and scattered crystal clusters lay piled across the firing range. Fully armed combat team members kept watch on the perimeter, while Suojilin and several Steel Ranger warriors inspected those strange remains on the battlefield.

The high-ranking ranger's brows were tightly knit.

What had happened in the north?

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