Chapter 617 — The Blizzard of Boulder City

"The knights in the castle said nothing when they fled—they just abandoned the whole region's people," Gao Yang said. "Philip has already sent men to look for survivors nearby and set up quarantine zones, but the social order here has been badly broken. It'll be hard to restore for years, I'm afraid."

Amber pressed her lips together, but she knew that compared with the north, where things were worse, this place was already fortunate—the crystal-infected who had entered the Lunberg region were only stragglers wandering in, and the damage they had done was not yet enough to destroy the whole region. The fall of the towns and the great flood of refugees were mainly the fault of the castle knights' early flight, which had let the monsters entering the area stroll into the towns almost unopposed. But by the same token, no small number of civilians had escaped the towns, and the towns of eastern Lunberg had not suffered overmuch.

So long as the crystals were wiped out and the refugees gathered in, there was at least hope of rebuilding here.

After a moment's reflection, Amber said, "Blood tests and divine-art examination have turned up nearly a hundred carriers of the infection. They're still human in body, but they carry energy reactions of the Godscourge. In accordance with your orders, they've been sent to the quarantine camp in the Pompeii region."

"Have the people in charge there keep close watch, and look after them as well as possible while making sure the infection doesn't spread," Gao Yang instructed earnestly, then let out a faint breath. "So long as they haven't turned into monsters, we don't give up on treatment."

Amber glanced at Gao Cen. "Honestly, I was rather worried before that you'd order all the infected killed…"

Gao Yang shot the half-elf a look. "Do I seem like the sort to give that order?"

"Doesn't feel like it, no. But you've also said we should maximize value—from the standpoint of cost and security, killing all the infected ought to be the most 'cost-effective' thing, no…?"

"If we really did that, that's when we'd be miscalculating," Gao Yang said, shaking his head. "Even setting aside human lives and public sentiment, those infected who carry the Godscourge but haven't mutated are valuable samples. They can let our technicians figure out the methods of the Church of All Endings. Our hope of understanding this disaster and ending it may lie precisely with those infected. Pi Yun and Kamael have already reached Pompeii; it may not be long before they find the Church's secrets in those carriers."

Amber raised an eyebrow. "You really are better at calculating than I am."

Gao Rong smiled and said nothing more.

Facing a disaster like this, he did indeed have to calculate carefully—but he could not simply reckon human lives as numbers. He had to consider the development to come after the war, the maintenance of social order, the winning or losing of hearts, the pens of the historians; and at the same time he had to consider finding means to fight the disaster in the infected, and how to save more people. A cold-blooded commander might count only heads, but a ruler had more than that to reckon.

He lifted his head and gazed north through the crystal glass set into the car door.

……

Korod, the crystal giant, drew back his gaze from the south.

The troops that had entered the Lunberg region—mere stragglers gathered in haste, though they were—had been wiped out in so short a time.

Owing to the limits of distance, he could not clearly "see" what had befallen the bands sent to expand southward, but from the fragmentary signals he could still sense the searing heat that had erupted in an instant from hundreds upon hundreds of crystal giants, and waves of thunderous, phantomless roaring. This was perhaps some exceedingly powerful spell attack; in all likelihood multiple legendary mages had entered the battlefield…

Whatever the cause, it warranted heightened vigilance.

Recalling that not long before, another band dispatched to destroy the invaders had also met with an incomprehensible and violent blow, suffering grievous losses in a short time, Korod concluded that these Cecil folk wandering out of the Southern Frontier were not easy to deal with. They had, he feared, already prepared themselves for this war.

The legion was mighty, but it must also beware a strong enemy at its back.

After this operation was concluded, it would be necessary to return to Red Maple City and remind that honored prelate from the core of the Church.

For now, though, he should focus his energies on the battlefield before him.

Croder lifted his head, and the scene within Boulder City was reflected in his eyes, now transformed into crystal—the city of Xuanque had been all but destroyed by the legion, more than eighty percent of it reduced to rubble and ruin, yet an unbroken blizzard shrouded its last castle district, and the countless blade-like shards of ice and the deadly cold left the crystal giants unable to advance a single step.

Legate Heaton had ordered the legion to take its castle district within three days.

Croder actually felt a trace of contempt for that order—though he acknowledged the legate's absolute authority, he knew that His Eminence understood nothing of military strategy. He was merely a powerful dark druid; his spells might be formidable, but he had never fought a war in his life. Croder himself, by contrast, had once been one of the finest noble officers in the Eastern Legion.

Those days were gone, of course, but the experience accumulated in them was still of use.

As a man long accustomed to the battlefield, Croder knew that taking the Xuanque castle before them would require more than morale and soldiers. The last mountain legion and that formidable "Northern Queen" held the advantage of terrain, commanding the ley-line nodes of the castle district, and a legendary mage was by nature highly skilled at managing his own energies. In a stable casting environment, with an unending supply of external magical power to draw upon, that "Northern Queen," with the aid of a few auxiliary artifacts, could keep the blizzard around the castle raging for a full month—and the supplies stored within the castle were enough for her and her legion to hold out even longer than that.

But that was no matter; Croder had his own good methods.

A digging team had already set out and was tunneling along the blind spot to the west of the castle. The leader of that digging team... was none other than the former lord of Boulder City.

Of course, that lord had by now embraced evolution and become a member of the new era.

Led by the former lord, the digging team would attack the fortress protected by the blizzard from underground.

But they certainly could not simply storm into the castle's inner court that way, nor slay Victoria Wild within or wipe out that powerful mountain legion. In truth, they could not even approach the castle's inner wall—no legendary mage would fail to set up wards around his own casting grounds. The moment the tunnel reached Victoria's vicinity, the digging team would surely be exposed in an instant.

Their true mission... was to destroy the ley-line nodes beneath the castle's outer district, to break the integrity of the ley-line network and cut off the "Northern Queen's" magical power.

Only the lord of Boulder City himself knew the location of every ley-line node, for those ley-lines had been laid down by the lord himself, and Victoria Wild, for all her rank as regent duchess, would not necessarily know what details lay within the house of Boulder City's lord...

Croder gazed at the blizzard over the castle district that seemed never to cease, and slowly a faint smile spread across his face.

Through a blurred spiritual perception, he could sense that the digging team was still alive and still burrowing deeper.