Chapter 977 — Detonation Point
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 5
Fire, gunsmoke, the smell of blood; the air scorched and decomposed by arcane energy; rock and steel rending apart.
Border Camp Twenty-Two had been razed to the ground.
The black-armored knights stood like statues in the devastated ruins, silent, while the bodies of both sides lay crisscrossed across the battlefield; when the sun rose, a howling cold wind swept the plains, carrying the stench of blood and gunsmoke far into the distance.
Among those black-armored knights still able to stand, some had armor torn open, revealing bodies beneath that were just as ragged—flesh and blood ripped by searing blades or rays trembled in the cold wind, their edges writhing with unnatural granulations and viscous, grotesque growths. For an ordinary human this would have been a sight of pure horror, yet the knights seemed utterly unaware, merely waiting in place in silence for orders.
The order's leader, Count Mogelrock, stood on a rock at the edge of the battlefield, silently surveying the fruits of the victory he had just won—in his turbid, restless mind, with its fragmented memories, he faintly sensed that he had done something truly terrible, but that thought was quickly replaced by a far more fanatical current of ideas.
He began brewing his next battle plan, pondering how to expand upon the gains at hand; and amid this, he was somewhat surprised—surprised at the casualties this camp had inflicted on the Iron River Knights, far beyond expectation. He had never imagined that the incomparably mighty Iron River Knights would suffer nearly a quarter of their strength in losses merely to storm a single border outpost; that was almost equivalent to the losses of a frontal assault on a castle garrisoned by an extraordinary being—and yet the enemy stationed here... was nothing more than a pack of ordinary people.
The outpost had only a single ring of walls.
This stirred a strange feeling in Count Mogelrock's heart—even in a state where his mind roared ceaselessly and poured forth all manner of indescribable shrieks and whispers, he could still taste something in that feeling... vigilance. He seemed to know where that vigilance came from: it came from the human part of him that "owed allegiance to Typhon"—he saw a threat in those formidable ordinary people, a threat to his own homeland.
Yet soon even that shred of lucid thought vanished; a certain irritability rooted deep in his soul was goading him on, and he felt he still had a mission to fulfill, an object of allegiance that took priority over homeland and sovereign, an object that demanded he produce even greater results...
Or else lead the force under his command into a more exalted annihilation.
Count Mogelrock raised his head and saw the Paramell Heights enter his view. He knew that upon those heights stood an astronomical facility of great importance to the Cecilians; intelligence showed it had only recently been completed, and though troops were stationed nearby, they should be unable to withstand the Iron River Knights' remaining strength—and within that facility there seemed to be nothing but a pack of frail researchers, and two or three old mages who, though powerful, were already advanced in years...
That should be enough to provoke the Cecilians further—and besides, assaulting an academic facility was plainly far easier than assaulting Changfeng Fortress.
He raised a hand, and the knights resting nearby who still retained ample fighting strength immediately rose as if receiving a psychic summons and gathered around him.
After a brief reorganization, the knights of the Iron River Knights re-formed their ranks and departed from Border Camp Twenty-Two, which had lost all value. They came to a gentle slope, and there Count Mogelrock cleared his throat (he was always wanting to clear his throat, for he felt as though something was forever moving about in it), preparing to issue the next attack order.