The First Lesson of Eternal Night

In Shien's eyes, the twenty-five Holy Knights had not even broken their breathing.

Pure white Battle Aura swept across the battlefield like a tide. The Blood-Boiling Mud Locusts' vaunted shells were as fragile as paper before the Sacred Flame.

The moment they touched the edge of the Battle Aura, they evaporated into wisps of foul-smelling smoke.

In just two minutes, the chirping vanished completely.

Shien's heart gave a small jolt. So this was the Most Holy Church's true trump card for standing firm through the Long Night: crushing fear with sheer power.

But he did not linger on his shock.

The Holy Knights had made their move, which meant the curtain was about to fall. He had to get in front of the Bishop and make himself noticed before the stage lights went out.

He urged his horse forward with sword in hand, and the seventy knights behind him followed as one.

Every one of them was splattered with insect fluid. Their armor was damaged and their wounds throbbed, yet they still held a formation with almost no flaws to pick apart.

When the column stopped beneath the Bishop's platform, Shien dismounted. The night wind had left his silver hair slightly disheveled, and his face bore the exhaustion and fervor of someone who had held nothing back.

He knelt on one knee and said steadily, "I came too late with reinforcements, my lord. Please punish me."

Silence fell at once. Bishop Castian looked down at him, and the gloom in his eyes finally eased a little.

He descended the platform and personally helped Shien to his feet before everyone. "Young lord, your decisiveness and loyalty have shown us a new wall of Sacred Flame in the Long Night."

The knights Shien had brought raised their heads, their awe of him deepening.

To them, those words alone were enough to elevate Shien from an ordinary young lord to one who could hold his ground in Eternal Night.

Shien maintained just the right degree of humility, lowering his head as if overwhelmed by the praise.

To his ears, the words meant much the same thing: he had achieved the effect he wanted.

Yet the dull gray-white number above Bishop Castian's head only ticked up by +7.

Shien was not surprised in the least.

It was easy for someone above to bestow a favor on someone below. Getting someone above to feel grateful to someone below, on the other hand, was almost impossibly hard.

Even after seeing Shien race through blood and mud to bring reinforcements, someone as far above him as Castian would only acknowledge and reward him... Genuine gratitude would remain scarce.

Still, at least the number had risen. That was better than nothing. He had accomplished his main goal tonight: his name was now lodged in the Bishop's mind.

Shien looked up, letting just the right flash of boyish admiration pass through his eyes as he met the Bishop's gaze.

Castian patted his shoulder. "Return to your camp. Reassure your people and tally your losses. You've done enough tonight. Once this matter is settled, I'll reward you."

Then he turned. A cold glint crossed his eyes as he finally raised a hand and gave the order. "Holy Knight detachments, move out. Support the other lords' camps."

The hundred elite Holy Knights split up and scattered into the night like a white storm.

The Blood Moon rose, casting an eerie dark-red glow over the grass.

Eric was in his camp, swirling the red wine in his glass and holding a maid as he enjoyed a leisurely end to a day of travel.

Eric Moran was the second son of Viscount Moran of the Kingdom of Austeria.

In the imperial capital, he was often called the heir to the true spirit of nobility. His every move befitted a proper nobleman.

For instance, to let his knights sleep comfortably and their horses replenish their strength, Eric had pitched camp on a stretch of soft grassland that night.

The wine suddenly trembled in his glass. At first, Eric thought he had simply drunk too much.

But the next instant, the ground split open, and the first Blood-Boiling Mud Locust burst out from beneath his bed!

"Ah!!"

The maid did not even have time to scream before she was severed at the waist. Blood sprayed across Eric's silk nightgown.

Eric dodged on instinct and escaped injury. Then he all but crawled off the bed. His heart clenched, and a fear unlike anything he had ever known made his breathing unsteady.

He did not even have time to put on his armor properly before rushing out of the tent with his breastplate only half fastened.

Outside was an even worse nightmare. The entire stretch of soft grassland was boiling as hundreds of insect shapes kept bursting from the earth.

Knights fled in every direction. Warhorses screamed as they were devoured.

At the sight, Eric raised his voice and roared, "Form up! Fight back! Get into battle formation! Form up, now!!"

But against enemies emerging from beneath their feet, every standard formation became a cruel joke.

Many soldiers never even saw the enemy before bone sickles thrust up from underground and neatly severed their ankles.

Screams rose on every side. The ranks dissolved instantly: people trampled people, horses trampled people, and mud locusts bit into them all. The entire camp seemed to have been fed into a grinder beneath the earth.

Wild with terror, Eric shouted without thinking, "Convicts! Serfs! Go! All of you! Plug those holes! Plug them!"

The soldiers drove the Convicts, who could barely hold their weapons, toward the collapsing ground.

Like livestock thrown into a slaughterhouse, they took one step into the mud, and bone sickles swept up beneath their feet.

Blood splashed everywhere. Cries of pain and grief merged as people were cut down in rows like wheat, their bodies used to plug the holes.

The elite force Eric had painstakingly built was split apart and surrounded by the swarm in the mud. Within an hour, he had lost a quarter of it.

Half the Convicts and serfs forced to serve as human shields died on the spot.

The fallen could not even leave whole corpses behind. Severed limbs and mutilated bodies mingled with the mud, and the stench of rot overwhelmed the smell of burning torches.

Eric's orders had not merely failed. They had doubled the rate at which his camp was dying.

When he saw that the once-soft grassland had become a field of gaping mouths devouring his people, and how devastating his losses were...

Eric finally broke and let out a heartrending cry. "Help!!"

At that moment, a mud locust burst from the ground behind him, its bone sickle raised high enough to cleave through his spine.

But the shock had left him oblivious. He was about to be cut in two.

A beam of pure white Holy Flame Sword Qi slashed down through the mist, and the mud locust evaporated.

Then came a blazing white surge that swept across the entire battlefield. The Holy City Knights had arrived!

The mud locusts fell silent. They did not even have time to struggle before the Sacred Flame reduced them to wisps of smoke.

Eric stood stunned. The monsters that had driven him to despair were as fragile as ash before the Holy Knights.

The gap in power was overwhelming.

After the battle, Eric looked around, his throat tightening.

All that remained of the expeditionary force once hailed as the Kingdom's elite were broken wagon wheels, fallen warhorses, and severed limbs strewn across the ground.

His army had not even reached the Eternal Night Wall. In less than an hour, monsters from underground had chewed it down to scraps of bone.

He sat limp in the sticky green fluid, staring at the black holes scorched by the Sacred Flame, his mind blank.

A Holy Knight rode past, stepping over Eric as he lay sprawled on the ground like a corpse. The knight's indifferent gaze seemed to say, "Useless."