Chapter 269 — Those Without Talent
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 3
The assault of those monsters had been broken.
Yet the panic they had sown in people's hearts would take some time to fade.
With her sword at her hip, An Luo walked the walls of Winterwolf Fortress with a steady tread. She was inspecting the defensive line in the aftermath of battle, and the sights that met her eyes drew her brows into a tight frown.
Those blood-red giants, come from who knew where, had not set a single foot inside the fortress; the valiant Typhon soldiers had beaten those dreadful foes back from the walls. Yet the monsters' reckless, death-defying ferocity in the attack and the eerie, corrosive destructiveness of their "erosion" were still deeply unnerving. Great scars eaten into the ramparts by corrosive energy arrows could be seen everywhere. Soldiers struck directly by those arrows had either died wretchedly or been gravely wounded. Ordinary metal armor offered almost no protection against that bizarre attack; it seemed only enchanted plate or armor forged of arcane metal could effectively resist the monsters' blows—but how many men in the whole army could afford a complete suit of magical armament?
Standing at the edge of the wall, An Luo glanced down. The surface of the great stone rampart below was mottled with countless scars, and several huge corrosion marks ran all the way up to near the battlements. In the final phase of the fighting, a few exceptionally massive individuals of remarkable toughness had appeared among the blood-red giants. A full volley from the mages had failed to stop their advance; the monsters had shattered the mages' defenses with a strange kind of magical lightning, then climbed the walls through a hail of rolling logs, falling stones, and arrows. Though they were ultimately destroyed, they left several horrifying wounds in the wall.
An aide came up from the rear and handed a report to An Luo. "General An Luo, the casualty figures have been tallied. Please review them."
An Luo took the report with a heavy heart. The attack had come without warning, and the soldiers had never faced an enemy of this kind before, so the battle had not been won easily. To her eyes, the report was almost painful to read.
"Take it away. Follow the regulations—pensions for the families of the fallen, treatment for the wounded, and those unfit for further fighting sent home with a written commendation for valor, so that at least they won't go hungry. " An Luo handed the report back to the aide with some irritation, then turned to look at the plain now coated in a foul blood-red. "Tell me... where do these monsters come from?"
The plain before Winterwolf Fortress had once been covered in snow, a sheet of silver-white, but the giants had stained the whole land an ominous dark red. The slain monsters lay upon that ground, their flesh and organs melting and flowing like mud, corroding the earth even as they rose in billowing smoke, and soon nothing would remain but enormous skeletons, terrible to behold. An Luo had faced all manner of enemies, but this was the first time she had seen anything like it.
The aide had not expected the general to ask him such a question. He paused a moment before answering, none too confidently: "The first scouts reported the monsters came pouring from the pass in the Dark Mountains. That would be... the direction of Ansu."
"Ansu?" An Luo's expression slowly darkened. "That country..."
"But it isn't necessarily Ansu," the aide hastened to add his own thoughts. "General, the Dark Mountains border the Gondor Wasteland..."
"You suspect those monsters came out of the Gondor Wasteland?" An Luo raised an eyebrow and looked at the usually cautious aide with some surprise. "That is a bold notion."