Reckoning and Planning

The Blood Moon faded, and dawn light fell once more upon the ruins of Blackpine Fief. The Sacred Flame burned quietly, spreading warmth all around.

They were exhausted. The survivors of the night could not even muster the strength to undo their buckles. Still wearing armor stained with black blood, they collapsed onto the cold flagstones.

For those cast onto the Eternal Night Wall, simply closing their eyes under the Sacred Flame's protection was a rare moment of peace.

Shien stood at the edge of the high platform. A cold wind swept past, snapping his black cloak.

Two nights of pushing himself far beyond his limits had left his head feeling as though someone had chiseled it open from within, but it was not yet time to rest.

Heavy footsteps came from the stairs below. The army clerk, filthy with blood, hauled himself up the platform with one hand against the wall and held out a parchment roster to Shien.

"My lord... last night's tally..."

Shien took the roster. More than half the names that had once crowded its pages were now crossed out with heavy strokes of crude black charcoal.

Dead: one hundred and seventeen.

The vast majority of those one hundred and seventeen bodies, chewed apart by the Rat Tide, belonged to the heavy infantry and young knights who had held the front line.

For a battered force of barely six hundred, the loss cut straight to the bone. And that was with Victor lighting the Sacred Flame in time. A delay of a few seconds would likely have doubled the toll.

That was the Eternal Night Wall. Every victory they barely managed to hold rested on a bed of white bones.

He closed the roster and looked again at the people sprawled haphazardly below. A harsher truth came to mind.

The meat grinder that had nearly dragged the entire force into the abyss last night had not been the true Blood Moon Season at all.

It had been an accident: fresh meat like them had camped on the Eternal Night Wall without lighting the Sacred Flame, drawing hungry Demonic Beasts into a disastrous swarm.

The true Blood Moon Season would last sixty to seventy days. During that time, the laws of the world would tilt toward darkness.

Daylight would vanish, leaving the sky filled only with blood-red light from the Blood Moon.

The Sacred Flame's suppressive power would weaken. Vast numbers of low-tier Demonic Beasts would be fully roused, while higher-tier species would enter an almost frenzied hunting state.

And the Tier Three Mutant Giant Rat and elite Ghoul that had nearly wiped them out last night would be no more than elite monsters during Blood Moon Season.

Why had the previous garrison of the Graymist Defense Zone been destroyed? Because they had faced not scattered Demonic Beasts, but an entire Werewolf Tribe.

Werewolves were not beasts. Their tactical cunning was no less than a human's. They could flank, sever supply lines, and even drive low-tier Demonic Beasts into trenches and traps to fill them.

That defensive line had not collapsed by chance. The werewolves had torn it apart bit by bit with a complete set of hunting tactics.

Shien looked up at the enormous moon, faintly visible in the sky.

Only six months remained until the next true Blood Moon Season.

Wind swept across the platform. Not one of the sleeping soldiers below knew what they would face.

A battered force that had just suffered grievous losses. A territory that had only barely been stabilized.

If they did not change how they defended it, nothing but ruins would remain here when the Blood Moon truly rose.

Even the Sacred Flame could not save them, so they had to become stronger.

Shien lowered his eyes, sinking his awareness into his sea of consciousness. The Canon of Grace and Righteousness opened without a sound.

When he opened his eyes again, the sight before him eased even the migraine threatening to split his head for an instant.

Everywhere he looked, the Grace Values above people's heads had changed: the Church Knights who were usually arrogant and aloof, the unruly veteran soldiers, even the Convicts brought low as mud.

The gray-white was gone. The pale green had vanished. In their place stretched an unbroken expanse of pure, steady deep blue.

Last night's platinum Sacred Flame, which had pierced the heavens, had done more than burn through Blackpine Fief's Long Night.

It had burned away the last trace of hesitation those six hundred-odd people felt toward Shien, making them loyal to the death.

Shien looked over the deep-blue crowd, and the corners of his mouth lifted slightly.

He could now spend Reward Value whenever he wished to extract and replicate the core combat abilities within this force.

Fabien's Sanctum Swordsmanship, the killing methods the veterans had honed in mud and heaps of corpses, Victor's knowledge of alchemical constructs.

All of it lay open to him. If his body could withstand it, his personal combat strength would surge in a very short time.

Beyond the Grace Value he had gained, the rats had also left substantial spoils.

Two fist-sized dark-red crystals lay quietly on a lead box.

They were the spoils carved from the Tier Three Mutant Giant Rat and the Ghoul Elite: Third Tier Original Sin Blood.

Fine, blood-vessel-like lines covered the crystals. In the ashen morning light, thick blood moved slowly inside them, making each look like a crystallized heart.

On the Eternal Night Wall, this had always been the most reliable currency.

Unlike the gentle, pure Sacred Flame, Original Sin Blood was, by nature, a form of violently unstable dark energy.

Used as a core in an alchemical array to power its activation, or embedded in the drive base of a Permanent Sacred Flame Platform, this dense energy could even send the Sacred Flame into a brief overdrive.

"My lord, there's also this," Ivan said in a low voice, pointing to several bulging burlap sacks in the corner.

Their mouths hung open, revealing coarse low-tier Magic Crystals. Each was only the size of a grain of rice, but there were so many they nearly burst the sacks' seams. And these were only a small fraction of what lay across the battlefield.

Each held pitifully little energy, not even enough to fuel the Sacred Flame, and their impurities would clog the energy conduits. But their numbers were staggering.

Shien bent and scooped up a handful of Magic Crystals. Their cold, rough edges scraped against his palm.

His mind swiftly pushed aside its lingering exhaustion and began working out how to turn these resources to use.

Blackpine Fief's defenses were little more than a rotten plank that could be torn apart at any moment.

The one hundred and seventeen lives lost last night had proved one thing: plugging breaches against Blood Moon Demonic Beasts with flesh and blood was the most wasteful way to fight.

Alchemical measures had to take over the defensive positions. Two portions of Tier Three Original Sin Blood would suffice as the energy cores for miniature power furnaces.

Combined with the mad Wasteland Constructcraft in Victor's head, they could build an entire physical defense system for Blackpine Fief that did not depend on manpower.

Of course, all of this required further support and more people. Castian had promised that church supplies would be directed to Blackpine Fief first.

But how much of that promise he would make good on depended entirely on the value Shien demonstrated.

Shien turned and dropped the Magic Crystals back into the sack. They struck one another with a faint clatter. "Prepare parchment and ink," he said.

The army clerk standing nearby froze for an instant, then quickly nodded and withdrew.

Shien needed to secure more supplies as soon as possible for what lay ahead, so he decided to write two letters.

The first would go to the Greywood Lineage in the Royal Capital.

In it, he would lay bare Blackpine Fief's precarious situation and the appalling casualty rate.

If the territory collapsed soon, he, the illegitimate son, would be swallowed by the Long Night. But the church's wrath would follow the bloodline straight to Count Greywood's mansion.

Supplies, master craftsmen, the Lineage's private troops: Count Greywood would have to pay with tangible resources to eliminate the risk of the church striking the Greywood Lineage from its rolls.

The second letter would go to Bishop Castian. Its wording would be far more polished.

The scale of the rat swarm, his victory over the Tier Three Mutant Giant Rat and elite Ghoul, the amount of Original Sin Blood seized, and the materials needed to rebuild the defensive line.

He would use it to prove his ability—and plead poverty.

The clerk soon hurried back with a roll of parchment and a brass ink bottle.

Shien had only just taken the quill from him. Its tip had not yet touched the ink.

Suddenly, a messenger from the outer perimeter stumbled onto the platform. Dust and cold sweat covered his face, and his chest heaved.

"My lord! A group of riders... they're forcing their way through the Gray Fog! They're racing straight toward Blackpine Fief!"