With the night this dark, mistaking flowers or other things would have been understandable. But those were points of light. Bright points of light that could stab at your eyes.

Not to mention how obvious they had been.

For no clear reason, Achir suddenly thought again of that voice stone no one had answered earlier, and the few words that could vaguely be made out from inside it:

"...orders from above... ...as soon as possible..."

"Orders what? As soon as possible what? Was it really just another inspection from somebody higher up? But there’s a war on right now. All the important people are watching the front. Why would they come running over here for no reason?"

Achir kept feeling that something was off, yet he had no way to explain exactly what was off. Thinking as he went, he jumped down from the battlement. Maybe because he was too distracted, but when he landed, he felt a sudden chill against his backside, as if he had brushed against something.

"What the hell? Almost tore my pants off?"

Achir squinted. In the dim light, he did not make it out at first. Only when he reached back and touched it did that cold feel and strange shape make him realize what it was...

A grappling hook.

"Huh?"

Achir froze.

A grappling hook?

Why was there a grappling hook here?

Could it be...

Step by stiff step, Achir pressed himself against the wall and looked down.

The hook was attached to a sturdy rope, and on that rope...

...there was nothing.

"Oh, so I was overthinking it."

Achir let out a breath.

"A grappling hook stuck in the wall in the middle of the night. I thought somebody was trying to sneak in and attack."

But how could that happen?

As said before, this was deep in the Kingdom’s interior, one of the safest places in the entire realm.

Even if the warning barrier had been shut down. Even if the voice stone seemed to carry some urgent message from higher up. Even if it looked like someone had been signaling to someone inside the city...

"An attack is absolutely impossible... right?"

"Of course it—no, wait!"

Killing intent surged out in an instant.

From the shadow of the wall, a cold glint flashed like a skimming bird and drove silently toward Achir’s vitals.

The move was swift, precise, and utterly clean. The figure in the shadows had clearly been lying in wait for a long time, and had clearly been saving up this strike for a long time as well. The moment it was launched, it aimed only at one thing: a sure kill, a fast kill.

Clang!

And yet the target was not taken.

At some point Achir had already drawn the curved blade at his waist. Blade and sword tip collided, just barely intercepting the strike.

"You son of a bitch!"

He spun around at once. The usual laziness and decay had vanished from his face, replaced by a fierce, vicious edge. A man who could claw his way up to squad captain in a dump like this obviously could not be all show.

If he had not offended some noble lord years ago and been suppressed for it, then with his skills, he might well have been making a name for himself at the front by now.

Even so, when he got a clear look at the attacker’s face, Achir still could not help going blank for a moment.

What an absurdly young face it was.

The attacker had plainly only just come of age. His expression still carried traces of youth. His armor sat crooked and ill-fitted on him, though his helmet was straight enough. He was obviously just some raw recruit.

And yet this recruit’s eyes held a ferocity and ruthlessness that far surpassed Achir’s own. The instant their gazes met, Achir instinctively shrank back.

It was as if the body was still young and green, but the soul inside it had already been tempered in blood and fire.

"Y-you... who are you?"

Achir’s eyes flicked over the young attacker’s armor. It was clearly Imperial light armor. But the Imperial army ought to have been a thousand miles away, so why was it suddenly attacking here?

Achir could not understand it, and had no time to understand it, because the young attacker did not answer. He simply lowered himself and charged again.

"May our Empress protect us."

Achir heard that murmur.

And in the next instant, a ghostlike flash of sword-light.

The cold rushed in. Achir did not dare be careless. His curved blade slashed out with it.

He could feel that the other side had excellent swordsmanship, but not enough real combat experience behind it yet. Under normal circumstances, Achir should have been able to beat him through experience alone...

But Achir seemed to have been rattled by the other man’s ferocity. His response was a fraction too slow.

Clang!

The blades still met, but the attacker had already used that opening to slam straight into Achir’s chest and drive him to the ground.

At such close quarters, a long weapon was useless. Taking advantage of that, the attacker threw aside the longsword in his hand, drew the dagger strapped to his thigh, and stabbed straight down.

"You Imperial bastard!"

Achir’s sense of danger only grew stronger. Both hands shot up to seize the other man’s wrist while his knee drove again and again into the attacker’s lower belly, trying to kick him off.

But the attacker was like a man of iron. He paid no attention at all to the blows from Achir’s knee. He only kept forcing the dagger downward, straight toward Achir’s heart.

A faint smell of blood had already begun to spread through the air.

But Achir knew it was not his.

At the very same moment this attacker had struck, who knew how many others on this wall had done the same? Those sleeping soldiers would have been far easier to deal with than him. Most of them had probably died without even making a sound.

Achir wanted to shout. He wanted to warn the others, because there were more than just the soldiers on the wall inside this checkpoint. Most of them were camped farther inside.

But he did not dare shout. He was afraid of losing the breath locked in his gut, because that dagger was getting closer and closer to his heart. He could already feel the cold of the point, and the sharp pain of flesh being cut open.

Maybe it was because he had not truly fought anyone in too many years. Or maybe these years had simply left him soft.

In this pure contest of strength, he was gradually losing to this young attacker.

"No..."

The smell of blood began to well up from inside and fill his nose. Achir knew that this time, it was his.

And for the first time, panic finally set in.

"Don’t... brother... don’t..."

"Hm?"

The young attacker riding on top of him tilted his head, as if he could not understand what Achir meant.

"Brother... don’t..."

Achir’s lips trembled. All the savagery from moments ago was gone. He pleaded like a pitiful worm.

"Don’t do this... we’re all just trying to eat... why risk your life over it... let me go... I-I’ll introduce you to Miss Sandy... and the widow at the village entrance too... you haven’t had that kind of experience yet, have you... they’re incredible..."

"..."

The young attacker still did not answer. His expression only turned suddenly colder, as if he had suffered some kind of humiliation. Even the force in his hands increased by several degrees.

Bit by bit he pressed down harder. Bit by bit he leaned closer, until their foreheads were nearly touching.

He stared straight into Achir’s eyes and said, word by word,

"Who the hell is just trying to eat... like you? Idiot. Do you even know what I’m carrying on me right now?"

Shhk.

A tiny sound, like fascia tearing apart.

At last the dagger passed through skin, through flesh, and into...

Achir’s heart.

Achir’s eyes flew wide. Bright red blood poured madly from the corners of his mouth.

Life began to drain from him. Consciousness began to recede.

In the final moment, he finally heard the alarm sounding through the checkpoint. But it was obviously already too late. With attackers outside and traitors or infiltrators within working together, the rear gate—never heavily guarded to begin with—had been thrown open at once, and elite cavalry were already pouring in, beginning a slaughter with no suspense to it at all.

"Carrying... what?"

As the light in his pupils dimmed, Achir murmured the question. Even at the final moment before death, he seemed unable to understand what the attacker had meant.

"An old soldier’s whole life."

Once he was sure the heartbeat had stopped, the attacker slowly rose, tore off the armband marking Achir’s status as captain, and stuck it onto his own armor.

The armor itself had become battered and misshapen from battle after battle. But those armbands were layered in orderly stacks, neat upon neat. Glory and merit gleamed from them, just like the heart inside him—one that would never waver and never retreat.

"Did you see that, One-Eye...?"

The breeze passed over that young, bloodstained face. Beck turned and looked into the distance.

"I’m an old soldier now too."

Boom!

A massive roar rolled through the night sky. More and more old soldiers poured into the city, like a dagger driven straight into the Kingdom’s heart.

...

The night was lit by fire.

Standing at the highest point, Celicia looked at the bloated corpse nearby with its head already severed from its body. Even on her cool, clear face, a trace of distaste showed.

"This was the highest-ranking person in all of Osek?"

"Probably."

Anna stepped out from the shadows with a shrug.

"In the entire checkpoint, he was the only one sleeping with a woman in his bed. His status couldn’t have been too low."

"He may not have had a low status, but taking this city was even easier than I expected."

Celicia lowered her eyes.

Below her feet, the cries of the Kingdom’s soldiers were gradually dying away. The terrain here was dangerous, the city strong, and the defensive formations powerful...

But the formations had never been activated from beginning to end, and the gates had been opened with absurd ease. No matter how strong the terrain was, the result had never had any real chance of turning out differently.

Smooth. Far too smooth.

So smooth that even Celicia found herself wondering whether it might be some sort of trap.

And yet when she looked at this fat pig of a noble, who had gone right on snoring in his mistress’s bed even with a blade already at his throat, the whole outcome somehow also felt perfectly reasonable.

It almost made all the preparations she had made for a bloody, brutal battle feel wasted.

Because by all logic, even with a surprise attack from the rear, twenty thousand cavalry taking a fortress-city like this, defended by only two thousand men, ought to have paid a heavy price...

And yet in this entire desperate raid, this was the place where they had paid the least.

It honestly felt as though intercepting grain along the supply route had been far more dangerous. At least those Kingdom soldiers had truly been willing to risk their lives to protect the food in their own bowls.

"Now there’s nothing left in the way, is there?"

Celicia murmured.

She knew that Duke Campbell’s army had already borrowed the Abyss route and launched its assault from the Kingdom’s western side. She also knew that, after the Kingdom had drawn away most of its forces and left the west almost completely undefended, no ordinary checkpoint along the way could possibly stop the Empire’s finest army—the same army that had once fought the Abyssal demonfolk in bloody war for years.

The only place that might have bought the Kingdom a little breathing room and a little chance for change was this city beneath her feet—Odense.

As the "western gate," it was in some ways even stronger than Notasia Fortress. If the royal capital had simply sent twenty or thirty thousand Palace Guards to reinforce it, then with the terrain here, it would have had no trouble holding the Imperial army back for a time while waiting for the armies at the front to return.

But now...

It had fallen utterly, and in a way so ridiculous it bordered on comedy.

"The Kingdom looks prosperous and powerful on the outside, but it’s been rotten inside for a long time."

"And if you hadn’t gone hard in the paint back then, the Empire wouldn’t have been much different."

"That’s true." Celicia gave a faint nod.

Just as, under normal circumstances, surprise attacks between true great powers rarely decided much and wars usually came down to the strength of the state itself...

So too was it hard for a real great power to be destroyed by outside force alone.

What truly brought it down, always, was the inside. Always itself.

"But no matter what, the whole situation has turned completely around now."

Celicia lifted her head, as if gazing through the endless night toward that ancient royal city.

"Now we’ll see how that one responds."

...

...

"Trash! Trash! Trash! All of you are trash!"

A scepter worth a fortune was smashed viciously against the floor. The famous gemstone set into it—so valuable that selling it alone would have been enough to supply an army for half a month—cracked open on impact and became an ordinary worthless stone.

But Saint Peron V did not care in the slightest.

Compared to what he had just lost, a single gemstone was worth nothing at all.

"Odense... a fortress-city built at endless cost, equipped with the newest and strongest defensive formations. Even with only two thousand men, it should have been able to hold for a while!"

The other side had not had many troops either.

And all of them had been cavalry, not troops suited for siege warfare.

Even if Odense had been defended by two thousand pigs, with the barrier formations in place it should not have been hard to hold out for two or three days.

And if it had done that, rescue would still have been possible. Things would not yet have become truly irreversible.

"But why... why did it fall overnight?"

Why had it fallen so utterly?

So shamefully?

Saint Peron V burned with rage, but the clouded eyes in that furious face gradually began to go blank.

He kept demanding answers, again and again, but no one answered him.

Because aside from a few palace maids trembling in fear, the great hall was already empty.

Last night, after learning that the Imperial army had attacked from the west, he had made a whole series of arrangements in order to recover the situation.

Internally, he had purged petty men like Jared, whose selfishness had obstructed the flow of his orders.

Externally, he had ordered men like Marquis Nick, Count Haller, and Count Carter to speed up their work, stand firm in their duties, stabilize morale, and he had already ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) sent instructions for the armies at the front to reverse course and return in support.

As long as they carried out his orders.

As long as everything went smoothly.

Then matters would still not be so bad.

But...

Odense had fallen so quickly that it had struck him off guard once again.

He was a great king.

He had led the Kingdom to the height of its present strength.

He possessed political instincts and kingly arts far beyond those of that little girl ruling the Empire...

And yet in the end, was he really to be dragged down to this point by those incompetent vermin?

"There must still be a way. There has to be..."

Saint Peron V clutched his head. Even as it felt like it was splitting apart, he kept thinking without pause.

He was a great king, the greatest king in the Kingdom’s history. He absolutely could not—

"It seems, Your Majesty, that you are very troubled..."

The gentle voice was like a spring breeze. The faint fragrance seemed capable of purifying the soul itself. Two soft arms reached out from behind Saint Peron V and wrapped lightly around him, and in the blink of an eye all his pain seemed to melt away.

At some unknown moment, that scented wood had begun burning again. Within the curling smoke, a gentle woman appeared and drew the suffering king into her arms.

"Olive?"

Saint Peron V took a deep breath of that intoxicating fragrance and asked,

"Weren’t you at the front?"

"I am at the front. But when my dear king is troubled, is it not perfectly natural for me to send one of my bodies to ease his worries?"

The Witch of Repentance tilted her head and rubbed lightly against his withered face.

"Your Majesty, you’ve grown thinner again. Have you been taking the medicine I gave you?" 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

"The medicine? Of course I’ve been taking it. But this is no time to talk about that."

Saint Peron V grabbed the woman’s wrist in one sharp motion, as if catching hold of a lifeline.

"You have a way?"

"Of course I have a way." The Witch of Repentance smiled. "A way to solve every one of Your Majesty’s worries."

"What way?"

"No need to worry, and no need to hurry, my dear king. I have already prepared everything for you—whether at the front or in the royal capital..."

The Witch of Repentance looked into Saint Peron V’s eyes and breathed out fragrant air, as though blowing away all his troubles at once.

"Leave everything to me. To us. We will handle it all. And as for Your Majesty... you will remain the unparalleled great king you have always been."