The Truth Behind the Insect Plague

The camps along the road were unrecognizable. Amid the wreckage, only a few wisps of acrid black smoke still crawled upward.

Shien rode at the head of the party. Behind him came Ivan, looming like an iron tower, and a dozen or so church guards led by Fabien.

Their breastplates had been polished to a shine, and their formation was so precise that even their horses' hooves struck the ground in unison.

The steady hoofbeats drew the eyes of the survivors by the roadside.

At first, those eyes held only numbness and emptiness. Then their gazes slowly sank, leaving nothing but tightly suppressed fear.

In the midst of such chaos, coming through without a scratch was enough to send a chill down anyone's spine.

The outline of the main camp slowly emerged through the thin mist.

Bishop Castian's anger still hung in the air, weighing heavily on everyone.

Several high-ranking Holy Knights stood guard outside the camp, their Holy Silver Spears held straight as they blocked the passage like cold, hard statues.

Shien dismounted, tossed his reins to an attendant, and walked straight into the suffocating clearing.

The other newly appointed Long Night Lords had already arrived.

Kevin leaned against a thick wooden post, dark shadows beneath his eyes and undisguised exhaustion on his face.

At the sound of boots striking the ground, he looked up. His gaze lingered for half a moment on Shien's face, which showed little sign of fatigue.

A clear flash of wariness crossed those calculating eyes, but an aristocratic smile quickly concealed it.

"Good morning, Lord Shien." Kevin inclined his head slightly.

Shien stopped and met his gaze calmly. "Good morning, Lord Kevin."

As for Eric and Thomas, they had changed into clean everyday clothes, but their trembling hands and lips betrayed last night's ordeal.

They sat slumped on cold logs, their eyes as empty as two dried-up wells.

Last night's one-sided slaughter had ground their noble pride to dust. They were still alive, but most of their spirit had been scattered.

At Kevin's greeting, Eric slowly turned his head.

When his gaze fell on Shien's icy-blue eyes, then swept across the iron-straight line of guards behind him, those lifeless eyes finally stirred.

Shock, disbelief, and a trace of jealousy buried deep.

Why?

Why had he barely survived by shoving his serfs forward, his camp crushed into mud, while this castoff without even an inheritance could stand there spotless and look at them?

Before Eric could swallow the jealousy lodged in his throat, a heavy, rough scrape of dragging metal suddenly broke the dead silence.

Two Holy Knights came out from behind the tent, their powerful arms dragging a body that barely looked human.

The Long Night Lords in the clearing all drew sharp breaths. Even Kevin, who had maintained his aristocratic composure, found his smile frozen.

It was Roland Augustine, the unlucky man who was supposed to have died heroically amid last night's swarm and sea of fire.

His expensive silk finery had been torn to rags, and bloody mud from the night before was still embedded in his torn flesh.

To keep the Bodyguard Realm knight from breaking free or taking his own life, the Holy Knights had smashed every joint in his arms and legs with a Holy Silver Warhammer the moment they caught him.

Now Roland looked like a torn sack with all its bones pulled out.

He lay limp on the muddy ground as they dragged him forward, leaving a dark-red trail of blood along the mire leading to the raised platform.

The heavy curtain of the main tent was pulled aside.

Bishop Castian emerged without expression and drove his Holy Silver Scepter down onto the stone slabs.

Clang—!

The sharp sound seemed to crush every other noise in the camp.

Even the moans of the wounded were drowned out.

An oppressive force, so heavy it felt solid, spread from the bishop and engulfed the entire clearing.

The escorting Holy City Army knights stopped and tossed several pieces of black Electrocrystal into the muddy water beside Roland.

Weblike cracks covered their surfaces. In the morning light, a thick, ghostly glow slowly seeped from them.

Standing at the edge of the crowd, Shien's icy-blue pupils contracted almost imperceptibly.

He recognized what lay on the ground—Origin-Blood Catalyst.

It was residual blood extracted from deep within the bloodlines of the Dark Races and refined into a dangerous fuel. It could feed the Sacred Flame or serve as a tonic for Demonic Beasts.

Catalyzed by Blood Moon radiation, it could drive even the most docile Rot Grubs into an instant frenzy, turning them into machines that knew nothing but how to bite and tear.

A Proclaimer in a solemn gray-white robe strode out from behind Bishop Castian.

His chest swelled as he channeled fighting energy into his throat. His voice rang like a bronze bell struck by a warhammer, crashing into the blood-scented camp.

"Roland Augustine has betrayed his oath to the Sacred Flame!"

The Proclaimer coldly laid bare the truth behind last night's disaster.

Last night had not been an uprising of Demonic Beasts at all, but a massacre carefully arranged to cover one man's escape.

On the eve of their departure from the Osteria Royal Capital, Roland had used the underground channels his Lineage had cultivated for years to buy this batch of Origin-Blood Catalyst in secret.

After reaching the encampment, he had paid heavily to bribe several other lords' equally terrified subordinates into burying the substance by night in the loose soil around their own lords' camps.

At this, the fingers hanging at Shien's side twitched slightly.

No wonder there had been so few insects around his camp last night.

That night, to establish his authority, he had publicly beheaded Captain Hans and several others whose hatred of him had blazed red.

Thinking back now, some of those headless corpses might well have been Roland's planted accomplices.

By sheer chance, he had cut the fuse of this disaster before it could ignite.

The Proclaimer continued reading.

Roland's scheme had been meticulously planned: use the chaos stirred up by the Blood-Boiling Mud Locusts as cover, burn several carriages bearing his Lineage crest, then throw in a few charred corpses dressed in his armor.

If the performance was convincing enough, his trusted men could escort him back inland under cover of chaos and darkness.

Even if he had to give up his surname and live like a rat in a secret room belonging to his Lineage, he would accept it. Anything was better than dying beyond the Eternal Night Wall.

But the former lord, so pleased with his own cleverness, had underestimated the church's methods and efficiency.

He had barely made it ten miles into the wilderness beyond the sealed defensive line before he ran into the spearpoints of the Holy City Army.

The air around them turned cold enough to congeal.

Eric and Thomas stared fixedly at Roland in the mud, bloodshot veins rapidly filling their eyes.

The path they had carved through death last night had been nothing but cover for this coward?

If the Holy Knights' spears had not still barred the way, they would have rushed forward and torn that lump of rotten flesh apart.

Roland could no longer sense their hatred.

The once-respectable young noble now lay like a torn sack full of shattered bones. Under the bishop's oppressive force, his mind had collapsed completely.

He jerked his mud-caked face off the ground, the veins in his neck bulging, and let out an inhuman howl toward the platform.

"The Wall is an abyss! What did I do wrong?"

Bloody foam mixed with muddy water sprayed from his split lips.

He thrashed his limp body wildly, tears washing the grime from his face and leaving pitiful streaks across the ground.

"I just wanted to live! Who wants to go off and die? You don't understand... You don't understand!"

The howl tore apart the morning's deathly silence. No one stepped forward to stop his mouth.

Roland's face, twisted by terror, was like a mirror reflecting everyone's despair back at them.

Eric's trembling lips slowly went still, and Thomas's gaze turned hollow once more.

Even Kevin, still clinging to his aristocratic bearing, felt the fingers hidden inside his sleeve begin to twitch.

Roland's howl had struck the deepest fear in their hearts.