Chapter 1320 — Urgency
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
Hearing Camilla's words, Morak could not help but fall into thought as well. The orc general, who bore the title of Champion Warrior, sighed softly: "A clever beast does not willingly step onto a path with no retreat—for too many years we have placed too much faith in the false 'sense of security' offered by grand walls and mountain barriers..."
"Indeed," Camilla tugged at the corner of her mouth. "But in truth, Wenna and Stull and the others already began reacting these past two years—the only pity is that our awakening came a little too late. The monsters in the wasteland will hardly cooperate with us while we reconstruct our defenses... ngh."
Morak tensed at once: "Do you need a physician?"
"No need. I'm not that fragile yet," Camilla waved a hand, then pushed herself up from the edge of the bed and rose to her feet. "Very well, enough time for fragile lamentations. I should go do what I ought to do. Morak, bring me my armor."
Seeing that Camilla looked ready to leave the tent that very instant, Morak was so startled that even the fine down on his head stood on end: "Great Chieftain? In your current condition, you truly cannot—"
"Am I supposed to lie in this bed until I'm fully recovered? We are at war, my general," Camilla glanced at the subordinate she trusted most. "The warriors need to see their leader, and I need to see the battlefield with my own eyes—sigh all we like, but lying in bed sighing over things already beyond remedy won't drive the monsters that invaded the mountains back into the wasteland."
The mountains of a winter night seemed especially cold. Having left the tent, Camilla shivered outright several times in the night wind. As a great cat, she suddenly found herself longing with peculiar intensity for the warm hearth and thick wool cushions of Red Jade City, but this fragile sentiment did not linger in her mind for more than a second. Soon she rallied her spirits in the wind and, accompanied by Morak, began inspecting the defenses along the ridge.
At the far end of the night, a hazy glow lit the dim horizon—yet that glow was not the rising sun, which would not appear for another hour or more, but the Grand Wall at the edge of the wasteland.
Compared with the way Camilla remembered it, the glow now rising from the end of the horizon was plainly dimmer by far more than a little, and it flickered intermittently—a state that was profoundly unsettling.
"There are still breaches in the Grand Wall..." Morak, too, raised his eyes toward where Camilla's gaze had gone, a grave expression surfacing on his face. "Before we withdrew from the mountain barrier, our scouts confirmed that the Sentinel Towers along the wasteland border were restarting, but those monsters have clearly damaged the integrity of the entire Grand Wall. We can no longer approach that barrier to confirm the details, but the naked eye alone is enough to tell... there are several great holes there, and monsters are pouring out of them in an endless stream."
Camilla said nothing. She merely drew back her gaze and stared in silence at the camps and towns still burning at the foot of the mountain. Every cluster of flame there represented a bloody, bitter battle and an attempt to use fire to delay the enemy—fire was effective, but faced with the enemy's overwhelming numbers and their own insufficiency of troops, the defense line had still fallen back again and again.
She turned her head toward Red Jade City. That distant orc capital was of course still beyond sight; even with her keen eyes, from here she could at best make out the "Sea of Red Jade," that vast forest standing between Red Jade City and Wolfsback Mountain.