Someone Attempted to Assassinate the Prophet (13)

"Enemies ahead!"

At the same moment Teres spotted the enemy, the drones observed them as well. On a distant stretch of plain, clusters of light gathered, coalescing within a few breaths into more than seventy fully armed armored knights.

The moment they appeared, they charged at full speed toward the transport vehicles without pause, each one like an arrow loosed from a bow, setting the air trembling and raising piercing shrieks.

If they had been real heavy cavalry, their momentum and sense of weight would surely have been far greater than those phantom knights'. But they could never have been this fast.

"It's Viscount Avak's Wildcry Knight Order!"

Teres's deputy identified the attackers at once from the style of their armor and mounts. The armed transport vehicle at the front rotated its turret and fired toward the phantom knight order.

Amid dazzling sparks of lightning, two supersonic shells roared away.

Five rows of machine-gun firing platforms immediately emerged from the sides of the vehicles. The Inspecting Knights skillfully operated the heavy machine guns, creating a dense barrage of fire.

On Earth, cavalry had not disappeared after the advent of gunpowder weapons. It had only been rendered obsolete after the emergence of the more powerful modern machine guns—though even so, cavalry charges could still occasionally be seen in certain modern-era battles.

And on Terra, all kinds of machine guns and artillery had long since appeared. Even absurd things like armored vehicles and mobile fortresses already existed, yet cavalry had never been eliminated.

The reason was simple.

—Whoosh.

The leader at the head of the knight order raised his lance. A silvery-white, semi-transparent phantom spear blade flickered through the air, disintegrating the incoming supersonic shell almost instantly—then he extended his other hand, caught the second shell directly, and crushed it.

The alchemical