Chapter 190: Attitude, the Battle Situation Intensifies

"Report, Lord Rudolph. The first group of evacuees from the Church of the Nightfall has successfully departed the capital. The mercenaries hired by the noble investigative committee failed to intercept them."

This was the room where Black Burn’s subordinates reported to Rudolph, seeking his assistance in investigating the prayer communication network and matters concerning the faith of the Lady of the Night.

The man, whom Gilbert had intentionally allowed to escape so he could observe the evacuation convoy, stood before Rudolph, who remained hunched over the documents scattered across his desk.

"Let me guess. You want the next sentence to be the explanation, rather than just reporting such a pathetic failure to me?"

The calm tone sent a bead of cold sweat down the reporter’s face; he felt as though he had been completely seen through.

"Yes... yes. There were many reasons for this failure." The reporter’s voice faltered, his explanation lacking any shred of confidence.

"Get to the point. Just tell me about the involvement of the Blades of Night and the like. I don't need your excuses."

Rudolph’s words only increased the reporter’s anxiety. He had intended to use the unexpected appearance of the Blades of Night as his primary justification for the failure, but Rudolph’s foresight rendered that explanation largely meaningless.

Biting the bullet, he continued, "We were a beat slow in reacting to the carriage carrying the Church of the Nightfall. The intelligence arrived after the carriage had already left the city, and the city guards we had bribed to set up the checkpoint failed to act."

"Because when that carriage passed the exit inspection, it identified itself as an investigative team from the Blades of Night. Per regulations, the guards let them pass immediately."

The reporter nervously recounted the sequence of events, carefully controlling his tone and speed to deliver the information as quickly and efficiently as possible—a style Rudolph favored.

"Clever, yet effective. Without knowing beforehand that the Blades of Night would intervene, this was indeed difficult to avoid. Continue."

Rudolph offered a nonchalant assessment and gestured for him to proceed.

"The delayed intelligence eventually reached the mercenaries tasked with the ambush, but they failed. The Church of the Nightfall’s convoy had anticipated the interception. They were prepared for a counter-attack and exploited an intelligence gap, swiftly wiping out the ambushing mercenaries."

"It wasn't just the Church of the Nightfall that acted. Or rather, the only combatants from the Church who took part were the two bodyguards from the goblin firm that used to be in the city: the orc Eamon and the elven ranger Vena."

"There was an entire operational squad of the Blades of Night mixed in. They served as the primary force during the counter-attack. I couldn't identify everyone, but the leader appeared to be a squad captain named Gilbert."

"That is the gist of it. The main reason for the failure of the ambush was the intervention of the Blades of Night, which allowed the Church of the Nightfall to receive intelligence in advance."

The reporter felt uneasy, watching Rudolph with trepidation after finishing his report.

"Why are you looking at me? Are you afraid because of the failure? That’s hardly your fault. If anything, you did a decent job. Don't mistake me for one of those useless fools who enjoys punishing their subordinates; that serves no purpose for me. If you have time for that, you’d be better off doing some real work."

Rudolph glanced at the man, spoke dismissively, and pulled a sheet of paper from his custom-made desk. He signed it with a string of ciphers that represented his authority and handed it to the reporter.

"Take this to collect your next assignment and your payment. Do your job, and stop wasting time trying to guess what we are planning. Making things difficult for a small fry like you does me no good."

The reporter stood stunned. He had heard that Mr. Rudolph was a strange individual, and today he had seen it for himself. His inner thoughts had been completely laid bare, turning his fear into a sense of awkwardness.

"Yes!"

He responded quickly, took the paper, and hurried out of the room.

Rudolph was left alone. He folded his hands beneath his chin, lost in thought.

"Black Burn may be impulsive and rarely pays attention to details, but his intuition is truly the sharpest among those I know. So it is as I thought: once the Blades of Night possess the prayer communication network and break free from the shackles of the Mark of the Heavens' Gloom, they will truly begin to act without restraint."

After a brief reflection, Rudolph unclasped his hands and returned to the files on his desk.

"The Blades of Night could have handled this ambush better; they could have done it without ever showing their faces. This is a statement. They are telling the Royal Family that while some compromises were necessary in the past, there are things they are no longer willing to concede."

He whispered to himself, a faint smile playing on his lips, as if contemplating something amusing.

"Alastair, you are in a sorry state. To have an organization even older than the kingdom itself express such strong dissatisfaction toward the Royal Family—the very symbol of the nation."

He pulled a document from the pile and scanned it, searching for the name the reporter had mentioned.

"Hmm, Gilbert. Isn't this the squad captain who was supposedly killed by severe mental corruption during the Royal Family's test in the capital? They already had the prayer communication network back then?"

"Tsk, tsk. That means some of the Royal Family's activities may have already been exposed. This is truly dire. As an intelligence officer, there is little I can do. I shall report all of this and let the Royal Family decide for themselves."

"I can barely watch this anymore. To be forced into such a posture by the Blades of Night—are you, sitting upon the throne, even worthy of that position? Your attitude toward the Blades of Night this time will determine many things."

"Forget it. I am merely an intelligence officer. Why dwell on this? Internal conflicts can be dealt with later. The priority now is to stabilize the front lines."

He synthesized the new information with his own analysis, stripped away the personal emotions he had unconsciously included, and bundled the data to be transmitted to the kingdom’s intelligence agency.

Quickly shifting his focus, he stopped concerning himself with the entanglement between the Blades of Night and the Royal Family, pulling fresh reports on the front-line war from beneath his desk to analyze.

...

The Sighing Gorge, which divided the two armies, was no longer merely the border between Alastair and Seuvintan. The front lines had become a tug-of-war. The Seuvintan army had crossed the gorge, occupying a large swath of Alastair’s territory and establishing it as a forward base.

Alastair, in turn, had chosen to abandon those decent positions, pulling back and deploying a massive force far from the Sighing Gorge.

Since that night’s surprise attack, Seuvintan had acted as if they had lost their minds, pushing forward with a frenzy. Their individual combat prowess was significantly higher than Alastair’s; in a direct confrontation, Alastair would undoubtedly suffer the greater losses.

As neighbors and long-time rivals, both nations had a clear understanding of one another. Seuvintan’s decision to relentlessly press the front line was born of confidence, while Alastair’s seemingly steady retreat was a calculated move.

The territories left behind for Seuvintan to occupy were former Alastair deployments.

In these areas, the Alastair army—boasting superior military mages and alchemists—had long ago planted numerous traps and obstacles to hinder the Seuvintan advance...

At this moment, on the front line, Seuvintan maintained its aggressive momentum, relying on the superior individual strength of its soldiers to press forward, relentlessly exerting pressure on the Alastair army.

In earlier conflicts, Alastair had used the flexibility of their mages to skirmish with the Seuvintan army, which had not yet fully committed to an all-out invasion, successfully holding them at bay.

But now, the Seuvintan army no longer played such games. No matter how the Alastair mage squads harassed them from the air, the Seuvintan formations simply pushed forward, leaving behind stone stelae with anti-magic properties on the occupied ground as defensive fortifications.

Here, Alastair’s weakness was exposed: their frontal combat capability was inferior to Seuvintan’s. Unlike the resource-rich Alastair, Seuvintan’s land was largely a frozen wasteland, fostering a martial culture far more intense than that of their neighbor.

Seuvintan’s army was filled with soldiers of greater strength, creating a significant gap in the quality of their primary forces—knights, infantry, and specialists.

Under direct collision, the Alastair army could only retreat, ceding ground.

However, such a retreat had its limits. Behind them lay the heart of Alastair’s towns. The lands previously ceded were mostly border wastelands.

Most were undeveloped regions, serving as buffer zones against other kingdoms; losing them was of little consequence.

But further back, they would enter territory containing actual towns. Ceding even a slightly larger area could bring catastrophic losses to the kingdom and cause morale to plummet.

The Seuvintan army could press forward so recklessly because of another advantage.

Although their kingdom in the frozen wastes was resource-poor and isolated, the Great Northern St. Anna Peaks served as a natural barrier.

Surrounding the kingdom on three sides, leaving only one open path for external trade, the environment ensured they did not have to fear opportunistic attacks from other kingdoms.

Alastair, however, was not so fortunate. While richer in resources and well-connected to other kingdoms, they were bordered by more than just Seuvintan.

In this war, surrounding kingdoms were naturally watching like predators, looking for any chance to tear a piece out of Alastair.

The borders guarded by the four Grand Dukes were the most vital guarantee of Alastair’s stability. Nearly half of the kingdom’s military strength was in their hands.

The kingdom’s trust in these four dukes was truly unconditional. They had traded their generations of border service for the kingdom’s peace.

This achievement meant that no one would ever question their loyalty to the kingdom; even the Royal Family would never harbor designs against the forces under the four dukes.

This forced Alastair to divert a portion of their strength to the borders, further weakening their power on the main front, leading to the current situation where Seuvintan was pushing them back step by step.

At this moment, the battle on the front line continued. They could no longer retreat; any further loss would exceed the cost of a direct confrontation.

"Advance! Do not let the royal banner fall! For the Empire!" The Seuvintan commander, amidst the ranks, roared with desperate intensity, urging his troops to press forward.

The vanguard of the Seuvintan army consisted of heavy-armored soldiers. These men possessed immense pushing power, all of them at least mid-tier squires. Their heavy armor was not only defensively formidable but infused with anti-magic metals, allowing them to withstand standard spells.

As the formation pressed forward, the heavy infantry moved slowly but with terrifying stability and pressure. Their greatswords required little finesse; maintaining a set distance from their comrades, they simply hacked away at everything in front of them.

Bracing themselves, gathering strength, and sweeping forward, the heavy blades carved arcs, slamming into the shields of the Alastair infantry. The collision of metal rang out with a deafening crash.

"Hmph!" The Alastair shield-bearers grunted, unable to withstand the impact, and were forced back several steps. The Seuvintan heavy infantry, however, showed no signs of being pushed back.

The armor they wore was both a burden that slowed their speed and the guarantee that they could ignore the impact and press forward without yielding an inch.

To conserve stamina, they would rest their greatswords on the ground for a moment, waiting for their muscles to recover slightly from the fatigue before swinging again, forcing the Alastair infantry to retreat and thus securing their own advance.

"Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!" A violent roar tore through the heavens, and the dim, twilight sky began to glow with a bruised, crimson hue under the glare of incoming fire. From the direction of the Alestler army, several massive fireballs plummeted toward the Sewentan lines.

The magical fluctuations within them were unnaturally intense; cloaked in a mantle of fire, each meteor possessed a core of solid earth, descending from the heights like the wrath of gods.

It was impossible to gauge the exact tier of the spell, but the sheer, suffocating pressure suggested a coordinated casting of at least the fourth circle or higher.

"Form ranks! Obsidian shields!" The commander’s voice cut through the din, ringing out across the battlefield as the flaming meteors screamed toward the earth.

The Sewentan army lacked finesse in the arcane arts, often suffering grievous losses whenever they faced the large-scale bombardment of an Alestler force.

Yet, this long, grueling war had forced them to evolve a specialized countermeasure: the anti-magic infantry.

Heavy-armored soldiers drew massive black shields—forged from obsidian, far less effective than mithril but infinitely more affordable—and angled them forward against the falling fire.

The reaction of the heavy infantry was swift; a forest of spiked, obsidian shields rose in unison, interlocking to form a wall of grim, impenetrable shadow.

"Boom!" The meteors, each over three meters in diameter, slammed into the ground one after another, colliding with the obsidian barricade.

Upon impact, the fire elementals erupted, unleashing a violent spray of flame, while the immense weight of the earthen cores, accelerated by gravity, proved impossible to withstand.

Where the meteors struck the wall head-on, the soldiers beneath were crushed instantly, their bodies and armor mangled into a singular, grotesque ruin.

A great number of men were reduced to charred, broken meat in a heartbeat, yet for the Sewentan forces—who usually withered under such grand sorcery—the casualties remained within an acceptable margin.

The obsidian wall had stifled the worst of the explosive fire, and beyond those who took the direct impact, the remaining soldiers stood largely unscathed.

Compared to their previous disarray, the Sewentan army now surged forward with the momentum of a rising tide.

As the shields retracted, the soldiers marched over the burning earth, stepping past the pulverized remains of their comrades to resume their relentless, unstoppable advance.

The destruction of the meteors had been indiscriminate; though the Alestler infantry had retreated in anticipation, the shockwave had left their ranks momentarily fractured. Into this instability charged the Sewentan shock troops, emerging suddenly from behind the heavy infantry.

Wielding twin axes and clad only in light armor to protect their vitals, these ferocious warriors roared as they tore into the enemy, exploiting the momentary chaos to catch the Alestler lines off guard.

Axes bit into flesh, tearing through muscle and bone, while blood sprayed across the scorched ground, hissing as it turned to steam. Amidst the stench of gore, the air filled with savage bellows, desperate screams, the clash of steel, and the thunder of iron boots—the intensity of the front line spiraling into a fever pitch of slaughter.