Ghoul Crisis

Daylight over the Eternal Night Great Wall cast the sky in a lifeless, ashen gray.

Inside Blackpine Fief, however, the air rang with noise and bustle.

Construction on the outer reaches of Blackpine Five-Ring pushed forward at full speed. Heavy iron pickaxes struck the earth with dull thuds.

Shien wore a dark coat. His military boots crushed the thin ice on the road as he inspected the defenses taking shape.

A Resonance Realm knight on outer patrol threaded through a line of Convicts carrying stone and came straight to Shien.

This elite knight had fought his way out of the mountain of corpses and sea of blood at Shattered Stone Fief. Now fine beads of cold sweat covered his brow, and even his breathing was unmistakably ragged.

Shien merely nodded at the knight's flustered interruption, signaling him to speak.

At the same time, he turned and led the way toward a newly completed stone tower on the perimeter.

"My lord, while I was on patrol, I spotted something in the Gray Fog outside," the knight said, keeping close behind him.

"The fog was too thick to see through, but just approaching its edge made the Third-Tier Battle Aura inside me turn sluggish... Whatever it is, it can't be below the Third Tier."

Shien nodded and climbed the rough stone steps.

The tower's top had not yet been finished and offered no shelter. A freezing wind slammed into him, stinging his skin.

Shien stopped at a gap between the battlements and lowered his eyes. Deep in his mind, [Lv.3 Macro Battlefield Command] activated.

The next instant, color seemed to be stripped from everything around him. Blackpine Fief and the wasteland beyond it took shape in his mind as a three-dimensional grid of ghostly blue.

The sweating craftsmen and soldiers below lost their forms, leaving only streams of data.

The lime-and-gravel structures just laid, along with the defenses' degree of hardening, were quantified in his vision.

Under that perception, stripped of all emotion, the Gray Fog at the edge of the Sacred Flame's aura could conceal nothing.

Shien extended his awareness outward, then abruptly drew it tight.

Found you.

Less than three hundred meters beyond the Sacred Flame, a blood-red life-sign lay motionless on the Frozen Tundra.

It was a massive Third-Tier High-Rank Ghoul.

Unlike other monsters affected by the Blood Moon, it showed none of the frenzied instinct born of hunger. It had not even made a tentative move against the Sacred Flame's aura.

Like an old wolf patrolling its territory, it paced patiently along the edge of the Platinum Aura.

In the ghostly blue grid of his mind, Shien fixed his gaze on its gray-white trail. His brows slowly drew together.

This Demonic Beast was not moving aimlessly.

It kept circling outside several gaps in the defenses where the ground spikes had yet to be buried, as though checking something again and again.

Most monsters of the Long Night were driven by hunger. They charged at light and went mad at the sight of blood.

But this Ghoul suppressed its instincts, skirted the Sacred Flame, and even deliberately avoided the strongest parts of its aura. That alone was unnatural.

Another pair of eyes was likely watching through it—something of a higher tier.

Shien could not be certain yet, but he could not let it leave.

If those eyes made it back into the Gray Fog with a complete picture, then when night fell, Blood Moon Frenzy would drive them to bring a Beast Tide crashing precisely into those unfinished weak points.

With the defenses still incomplete, Blackpine Fief might not withstand their assault even under the Sacred Flame's protection.

Anyone who had survived a few years at the Great Wall would have had the same first instinct: pull back.

Fill the gaps, add sentries, draw the troops to the inner line, and gamble that it would strike somewhere else tonight. If that gamble failed, they would plug the breach with their lives.

But Shien gave that path no thought. He watched the trail without a hint of retreat in his eyes, only a glint of icy killing intent.

In daylight, near the Sacred Flame, the suppression of the Dark Races was at its most reliable.

Without Blood Moon Frenzy or Blood Moon Regeneration, however strong this Third-Tier Ghoul was, it was only a moving target that could take a great deal of punishment.

Taking apart a monster deprived of the night's power was no reckless gamble.

He cut off the Macro Sand Table in his mind, and his vision returned to the ashen daylight.

From the bluestone steps below the tower came a sudden clamor of heavy metal striking metal.

Shien walked to the edge of the battlements and looked down.

Under Fabien's command, more than seventy Third-Tier Resonance Realm Heavy Cavalry Knights had formed ranks in the open ground.

The routed soldiers of Shattered Stone Fief who had only recently joined them, eager to wash away their shame with battlefield merit, were fully armed as well, their greatswords drawn.

The entire formation stood silent.

More than seventy surges of violent Third-Tier Battle Aura rose and intertwined in the cold air, creating an almost invisible field of palpable pressure.

"Waiting for darkness is a choice for the weak. Under the Sacred Flame's protection, we'll kill it."

Shien drew the command sword at his waist. Its blade sliced through the air and pointed straight into the depths of the Gray Fog.

"First wave, advance with me!" Bard's roar tore from his throat.

As the former deputy captain of Shattered Stone Fief's guard, he felt the brand on his neck ache in the bitter cold.

The pain reminded him at every moment that he was now a Convict.

If he wanted to stand beneath the Sacred Flame again, there was no path but to throw his life into this wasteland.

The lord had given him this chance to hunt in daylight. It was his last chance at redemption.

So when Shien lowered his sword, Bard charged out at the head of the formation.

Third-Tier Resonance Realm Battle Aura erupted inside him and flooded his limbs like a tide.

Spurred by it, his warhorse shattered the Frozen Tundra beneath its forehooves and surged forward so low it almost skimmed the earth.

The violent rush of the charge ripped open the Gray Fog, carving a narrow corridor of visibility ahead.

The Demonic Beast stood fully exposed to the knights in formation.

Its massive body, nearly three meters tall, slowly rose from behind a boulder.

Its gray-white bone armor was anything but natural. Fragments of shattered heavy armor had fused with its own mutated bones beneath a thick layer of dead skin, forming a double defense.

Dark green, corrosive saliva dripped from its crooked fangs, burning wisps of white smoke from the Frozen Tundra with an ear-piercing hiss.

It had passed beyond anything that could be called a living creature. It was more like an instrument of slaughter that kept strengthening itself.

Bard, at the front of the charge, felt his breath catch.

Though both were Third Tier, this Ghoul stood at the very peak of that tier.

Not all Third-Tier fighters were on the same level.

Some had barely crossed the threshold. Others were already nearing the Fourth Tier.

Years of Blood Moon radiation had driven its strength and explosive power far beyond those of human knights.

There was only one reliable way to deal with a monster covered in heavy bone armor: use walls and deep trenches for cover, then pin it down bit by bit with heavy ballistae firing into a fixed killing zone.

But now they stood in an open plain with no cover.

If it broke free and fled into the Gray Fog, or let out a summoning howl that drew a tide of corpses, the battle would immediately plunge into a bottomless war of attrition.

If they wanted to take its head by force in daylight, there was no room for tricks.

The only answer was overwhelming numbers. They had to tear through it by force.

Seventy Resonance Realm knights would press in at once, battering it with an unbroken barrage of Battle Aura until its defenses gave way.

But in Bard's experience, a frontal assault against something of this caliber always cost the lives of several elite fighters.

Only by dragging it to the brink of exhaustion with flesh and blood could they force out the slightest opening.

But the thought flashed through his mind and was gone.

"Hoo—!"

A short, harsh blast from a beast-horn sounded atop the stone tower behind them.

The sound struck Bard's heart like a hammer, shattering the instinctive tremor in his bones at the sight of a High-Tier Demonic Beast.

He bit down hard on the tip of his tongue. The taste of blood burst through his mouth, crushing his last trace of hesitation.

"Lances forward!" Bard roared.

He clamped his legs around the chainmail-covered belly of his warhorse. The reins pulled taut in his palms with a shrill rasp.

The ten vanguard knights behind him moved in the same instant. Heavy Refined Steel lances leveled and pointed forward as one, forming a cold, deadly array.

Every one of them belonged to the routed force branded with the mark of guilt.