Hearing this, Karl stopped walking and lowered the Monocular Telescope he had been holding aloft.
He looked up at the sky. The daylight was darkening at an almost imperceptible pace; another day was about to pass.
Before his eyes, the snow-covered earth stretched boundlessly. In the area where the fighting had just taken place, some Carnford Rangers were cautiously recovering the bodies of their fallen comrades, while taking the opportunity to finish off the severely wounded Sauron soldiers. Everything was orderly, ruthless, and efficient.
Ten li away, beyond the low hills and sparse woods, lay the most powerful enemy he had faced in his life—and the one he had to defeat.
So long as Harald and the last core force of the Sauron Army under his command were crushed, Carnford would completely establish its unshakable supremacy in the Northern Border, and the strategic gates to a broader world would burst wide open.
To contend for the crown of the realm would no longer be a hazy dream glimpsed in sleep, but a future blueprint that could be laid out in clear detail.
"Brendan," Karl suddenly said. His voice was calm, but the question he asked seemed to have little to do with the tense battle before them. "Tell me—if we had never founded Carnford, if we did not have this army... would the Sauron, one day, truly have been able to break through the passes and sweep across the realm?"
Brendan was somewhat taken aback. He turned to look at Karl, finding it abrupt that his lord would raise such an almost historical hypothetical question on the eve of the decisive battle.
He considered it seriously before answering with caution. "In my opinion... although the Sauron had repeatedly held the upper hand against the Kingdom's Border Army in the past,