A Greater Threat

The feverish cheers of the hunt had long since vanished into the cold wind.

Inside the main tent of the Inner Fortress, Shien set the rough stone slab, still smeared with blood, beside the enormous tactical Sand Table.

Fabien and Ivan stood on either side, staring at the crooked but precise lines marking the defenses on the slab.

Shien picked up a wooden pointer and began to work through the evidence as though taking apart a delicate machine.

"The vast majority of Ghouls lack the brain capacity and vocal organs for complex communication. Mapping terrain means nothing to them.

"This slab tells us one thing: someone behind them can read intelligence and issue orders. Most likely, it's a higher-tier Ghoul."

The tent fell silent. Only the occasional crackle of charcoal broke the stillness.

Then the pointer struck the wooden frame of the Sand Table with a sharp crack.

"Let's reassess what we killed today." Shien looked up, his gaze cold as ice.

"That was a Third-Tier Ghoul as large as a siege engine. In the Inland Kingdom, it could slaughter an entire major town. But in their ranks, it's only a scout."

Fabien's pupils contracted. Ivan instinctively held his breath.

Shien did not need to spell out the answer.

What lurked deep in the Gray Fog was no scattered horde of monsters. It was an organized Ghoul Legion with tactics and absurdly powerful rank-and-file troops. Even a monster of that caliber was nothing more than one of its outermost eyes.

Shien tossed the pointer back onto the Sand Table and delivered his conclusion. "A Legion of that size won't stop at Blackpine Fief. It means to devour the entire Graymist Defense Line.

"Whether it eats away at the line piece by piece or crushes it head-on, as long as our six hundred people stand in its path, we have nowhere to retreat."

Faced with the knowledge that a terrifying, intelligent army had its sights on them, Ivan stepped forward and volunteered.

"My lord! If they may already be nearby, shouldn't we gather every elite fighter at once? Before they can surround us, we can strike into the Gray Fog and kill the threat at its source!"

Shien looked at Ivan as though he were an idiot. He was loyal enough, but sometimes his brain simply failed him.

"Search for a Ghoul army of unknown size deep in the fog of the Blood Moon Wasteland?" Shien crushed the passionate but naive idea without hesitation. "That's lining up to die, not striking first.

"Forget those fantasies from knightly novels. Against overwhelming numbers and brute force, no surprise attack will matter."

Shien planted both hands on the edge of the Sand Table. After a brief pause, he gave his orders.

"Send word throughout the camp. Construction moves to three shifts around the clock. Concentrate every worker, every stone, and every piece of Refined Steel on finishing Blackpine Five-Ring's first ring, the Deceleration Ice Slope, and the Rending Fang Trench as quickly as possible."

With the defensive baseline settled, Shien slowly turned his gaze to Fabien and Ivan.

"Walls alone won't be enough." A dangerous edge entered his eyes. "If they're using scouts to size us up, then we'll put out every last one of their eyes."

Fabien and Ivan straightened their backs and listened closely.

"From now on, deploy every Resonance Realm knight." Shien tapped the edge of the Sand Table. "Pairs of two. They'll leave the halo and conduct overlapping patrols along the perimeter.

"Any lower-tier monster approaching Blackpine Fief dies on sight. No report, no probing. If you encounter a higher-tier monster, report it to me immediately."

By the time he finished, Shien's gaze had turned utterly grim.

"Before the Blood Moon Season arrives, I won't allow a single scout to make it back alive."

Fabien and Ivan left with their orders. The heavy canvas flap fell behind them, shutting out the howling snow and the clamor of construction in the camp.

Shien leaned back in his rough wooden chair and slowly closed his icy blue eyes.

The instant darkness fell, the Deep Blue Grid spread across his mind once more.

The meticulously controlled slaughter from that day was dragged into replay, broken down and reenacted frame by frame.

To outsiders, killing a high-level Third-Tier Ghoul without a single casualty had been a miracle.

To him, it had exposed a fatal flaw that could doom his entire army: delay.

His mind needed only milliseconds to calculate a move, but each order had to travel a long, sluggish path before it took effect: hand signal, messenger, horn blast, sound waves spreading through the snowstorm and reaching the knights' ears, nerve impulses, muscle response.

Two full seconds.

Against a Third-Tier Ghoul that relied solely on defense and instinctive charges, he could use his processing power to predict its movements and bridge those two seconds.

But if the opponent were a Werewolf or a higher-tier Ghoul, the outcome would be beyond doubt.

Before his hand rose or the horn sounded, the front-rank knights would already have their throats torn open.

A command method hailed as miraculous on a lower-tier battlefield would turn the horn into a death knell in a fight against higher-tier foes.

And there was another deadly danger.

To achieve perfect coordination within those two seconds, the knights in formation had to keep their nerves taut to the breaking point.

They could no longer breathe and ease their strength in rhythm with the battle. Instead, they had to hold their Resonance Realm Battle Aura in an overloaded state, close to running wild, for extended periods, just to unleash everything the moment the horn sounded.

This high-frequency command, which treated people almost like tools, placed brutal demands on their minds and Battle Aura.

That brief slaughter in daylight had left seventy elite knights retching and collapsing from exhaustion on the spot.

If they had to sustain that intensity through an entire night of the Blood Moon Season, they would die at their posts from depleted Battle Aura and mental collapse before the defenses were even breached.

So he had to sever that physical chain.

Shien plunged his consciousness deep into his mind. The Canon of Grace and Righteousness turned its pages without a sound amid the surge of his thoughts.

After his long efforts, nearly everyone's Grace Value in Blackpine Fief had stabilized at deep blue. That represented absolute loyalty.

But that deep blue was like a frozen sea. No matter how much he built upon it, it would not rise any further. The higher the tier of loyalty, the harder it was to increase.

Among the abilities granted by purple Grace was one called Soul Anchoring.

Put simply, it allowed a lord and his subordinates to establish a direct connection between their minds.

It was not quite a meeting of minds, but he could deliver the simplest tactical commands—"retreat," "block," "thrust," "turn"—with zero delay, even forcibly imprinting them on the knights' brains.

Shien's eyes snapped open. Firelight danced in his pupils, and beneath their chill, a fierce heat flared.

Once the delay was erased, those seventy knights would no longer be separate individuals. Under his command, they would become a single monster driven by one will.

It would no longer be an army, but a killing machine in the truest sense.

Deep blue was nowhere near enough to survive the Blood Moon Season six months from now.

He had to draw Grace from these people with greater precision and force their Grace Values up into the purple tier.

As Shien gazed into his mind, considering how to raise the high-tier knights' Grace,

a sudden rush of hoofbeats sounded outside the tent, mingled with the low rumble of iron-rimmed wheels grinding over the Frozen Tundra. The noise swept closer and quickly drowned out the night wind.

The heavy curtain was yanked aside. A messenger stumbled in trailing cold air and dropped hard to one knee. "My lord! A massive supply convoy has appeared outside the defensive line! They're flying Bishop Castian's banner!"

Joy flashed in Shien's eyes. Without asking another question, he turned and lifted the curtain.

Beyond the halo of Sacred Flame, a line of wagons with no end in sight advanced slowly. Their wheels rolled over the soil with a dull rumble.

One wagon followed another like a long snake, inching its way inside Blackpine Fief's defenses.