Chapter 695 — Brushing Past the Blade's Edge

A long time had passed since Longwind Keep's first反常 "reinforcement"; so then... had the Cecilans in fact already bought enough time? Having seen through one layer of their illusion... could what lay hidden behind it be yet another illusion?!

Often, a keen mind needs only one opening, and of itself it will string together many clues that were easily overlooked. Anluo felt she was overthinking, a little too tense—yet once she began to consider things in the direction of conspiracy, she found her thoughts simply would not stop.

Ever since the Cecilans took over Longwind Keep, matters had been steeped in strangeness. Across this vast stretch of contested ground, what happened had gradually outgrown the frame drawn by the traditional rules of war. She suddenly felt she must think one step further... After all, between Longwind Keep and Winter Wolf Fort, the knight's code had never counted for much!

A thunderclap suddenly burst in the sky, and a bright flash of lightning streaked across the heavens, lighting up the rocks and vegetation that rose and fell around her. Anluo suddenly recalled that dummy position discovered earlier—recalled a certain detail of it.

The Cecilans should have left only a very limited number of soldiers at each dummy position, to serve as observation posts and "actors." With so few men, deployed on the Palemel Heights far from Longwind Keep, facing a full knight order, they could not possibly have shown no panic at all—even if their will truly was as firm as steel, they would at least have had to consider their own safety, unless they had never meant to withdraw alive; but if that were so, they would not have left the position at all—they would have used the explosives in the position to perish together with the Typhon knights!

But in fact, those Cecilan soldiers had left the position unhurried only after launching three attacks on the Typhon knight order—by which time the order had already closed to within short-charge distance.

Such composure surely meant a line of retreat. That retreat could not be distant Longwind Keep, nor other defensive positions on the Palemel Heights—even if one or two of those positions were real, they could not withstand the impact of a whole Winter Wolf knight order.

Their line of retreat was a combat force whose fighting power approached Longwind Keep's, one able to guarantee the destruction of a whole Typhon knight order in a short time—and that combat force must be somewhere near the Palemel Heights!

Anluo's eyes flew wide in an instant, and she turned and gave her order: "Griffin riders—to the air!"

The adjutant beside her started in alarm. "General?"

"The Cecilans may have hidden a large force nearby capable of long-range attack... This rain has ruined our line of sight!"

The adjutant was cowed by Anluo's stare, and in the next moment grasped the gravity of the situation. With scarcely a moment's hesitation, he ordered the griffin riders in the best condition to take to the air at once.

In such foul weather the griffins instinctively refused the command to climb toward the clouds; the riders had to drive a hollow needle charged with a potion into the back of each griffin's neck, forcing the beasts up into the sky against the wind and rain by potion and special incantation. Anluo raised her head and stared fixedly as the huge raptors flew farther and farther into the dim sky, gradually becoming blurred, faint black specks—and she did not have long to wait before the griffin riders returned to the ground.

The poison-stricken griffin lurched and stumbled down onto the ground, and the knight in light armor sprang from its back: "General! To the northwest! There's something enormous, something grotesque! It looks like the 'trains' the Cecilians sold us, but huge, and monstrously strange!"

An Luo's heart sank. After she had the thing's position confirmed, her earlier foreboding turned completely into reality.

Leaving the main force to stand by in place, she took a portion of her elite troops to a safe observation point the griffin knight had indicated, and there she saw the war machine concealed among the trees and boulders.

The vast steel monster lay silent upon its rails, its whole body clad in dread-inspiring armor, armed with countless magical weapons great and small until it was terrifying to behold.

And most terrifying of all were the gigantic magitech cannons at its head and tail. An Luo had never seen the thing with her own eyes, but she had read of it in reports, had seen it in some precious magical images that intelligence agents had risked their lives to smuggle out, and she knew what it could be used for.

It could pry open the most impregnable fortress in the world.

And those weapons were now silently aimed toward the Longwind Defense Line. The Iron River Knight Order and the Black Banner Magus Order were advancing, all unknowing, straight into its range of fire!

An Luo would likely never know that this terrifying engine of war had arrived only half an hour early.

Counting the time lag before the Iron River Knight Order launched its attack and the time lag of the Iron Throne's bombardment preparations, she and that turning point which could decide the fate of Typhon and Cecil had missed each other by less than an hour.

"...General, this is a trap!" the adjutant whispered beside her. "We must destroy this thing..."

"It's already impossible, unless we had heavy siege engines or half a magus order..." An Luo clenched her teeth, then abruptly raised her head and looked toward the eastern plains.

The adjutant and several of her accompanying subordinates looked in the same direction, and every one of them understood the meaning of An Luo's gaze.

The troops behind them had to be stopped at once.

An Luo raised her hand, about to give the order to send up the signal.

But she stopped, because she realized that the moment the signal went up, it would mean her own unit was exposed before that silent war machine.

That war machine must know a Typhon force was nearby, but it and the men inside it did not yet know the trap had been exposed; it was still lying in wait, and the First Winter Wolf Knight Order still had a chance to withdraw.

Yet by the time the Winter Wolf Knight Order had withdrawn to a safe distance, the Iron River Knight Order would likely have already entered the attack range of the Cecilians' trap.

An Luo dared not wait until then to send the signal. She dared not gamble.

No one knew how far the war machine's attack range extended, but judging from its deployment position and the intelligence on Cecilian magitech weapons, she knew she had very little time left. The Iron River Knight Order marched fast and by now had likely already entered the Longwind Plains; she had to halt that unit and the magus order behind it within a few minutes.

So someone here had to break away from the main force to send the signal, while the rest of the knight order swiftly shifted position. The Palemel Heights covered a vast area, and visibility was dreadful at that moment; the war machine should be able to lock only onto the one sending the signal, not onto the main force once it had relocated.

This was the plan with the smallest cost.

In the brief moment of An Luo's hesitation, a soldier in a short mage's robe had already stepped forward from the ranks behind.

"General, I'll stay and send the signal. Please withdraw as quickly as you can."

An Luo stared at the soldier who had come forward, and he answered her calmly: "General, I am an auxiliary mage specially assigned to signal-sending. All I know is various magelight spells; sending signals is my duty."

After a moment of confrontation, An Luo spoke in a low voice: "...Soldier, what is your name?"

"Alec Yulea," the mage-soldier puffed out his chest, "from Enqi Hock County."

An Luo drew a deep breath, stepped forward, and pressed a hand firmly on the soldier's shoulder: "Alec, the Empire will treat your family well."