A Greater Threat

The frenzied cheers that followed the kill had long since scattered in the cold wind.

Inside the Inner Fortress's command tent, 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 yet precise defensive lines carved into the stone.

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

"Most Ghouls don't have the brain capacity or vocal organs for complex communication. Mapping terrain means nothing to them.

The existence of 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 deathly silent. Only the occasional soft crack of charcoal broke it.

Then the pointer struck the wooden frame of the Sand Table with a heavy knock.

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

"That was a Third Tier Ghoul the size of a siege engine. In an Inland kingdom, it could slaughter an entire major town. But in their ranks, it was only a scout."

Fabien's pupils contracted sharply. Ivan's breath caught for an instant.

Shien did not need to spell out the answer.

What lurked deep in the Graymist was no scattered pack of monsters, but an organized Ghoul army with tactics of its own. Its lowest ranks were absurdly powerful; even a monster of that caliber was merely one of its outermost eyes.

Shien tossed the pointer back onto the sand table and delivered his conclusion. "An army of this size won't stop at Blackpine Fief. It means to swallow the entire Graymist Defense Line.

Whether it eats through the line piece by piece or crushes it head-on, as long as our six hundred people stand in its path, there's no retreat."

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

"My lord! If we've confirmed they may be nearby, shouldn't we gather all our elite fighters at once? Before they surround us, we could strike into the Graymist and strangle the danger at its source!"

Shien looked at Ivan as if he were an idiot. Loyal as he was, he sometimes failed to use his head.

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

Forget the fantasies in those knightly novels. Against overwhelming numbers and sheer violence, no surprise attack will matter."

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

"Send word through the camp. Construction shifts to three shifts around the clock. Concentrate every available worker, every stone, and every piece of Refined Steel. Finish the first ring of the Blackpine Five-Ring, the Deceleration Ice Slope, and the Rending Fang Trench as fast 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. "Since they're using scouts to probe us, we'll put out every one of their eyes."

Fabien and Ivan straightened their backs together, listening closely.

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

Any low-tier Demonic Beast that approaches Blackpine Fief gets killed immediately. No reports, no probing. Report any higher-tier Demonic Beast to me at once."

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

"Before 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 shut behind them, cutting off the howl of the snowstorm and the clamor of construction outside.

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

The instant darkness fell, a dim blue grid spread through his mind once more.

The daytime slaughter, a feat of meticulous control, was dragged back into view and replayed frame by frame.

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

To Shien, it exposed a fatal weakness that could doom the entire army: delay.

His mind needed only milliseconds to work through a maneuver, but an order had to travel a long, sluggish path before it took effect: gesture, messenger, horn blast, sound waves spreading through wind and snow, the knights' ears, their nerves, then their muscles.

It took a full two seconds.

Against a Third Tier Ghoul that relied on defense and instinctive charges, he could use his calculations to anticipate its movements and make up those two seconds.

But against a Werewolf or a higher-tier Ghoul, the outcome would be certain.

His hand would barely have risen, the horn would not yet have sounded, and the front-rank knights' throats would already be torn open.

A method of command hailed as a miracle on a lower-tier battlefield would turn the horn into a funeral bell in a fight against higher-tier enemies.

And there was another fatal danger.

To achieve perfect synchronization within those two seconds, the knights in formation had to keep their nerves stretched to the point of snapping.

They could no longer breathe or ease their strength with the rhythm of battle. Instead, they had to hold the Resonance Realm Battle Aura inside their bodies at the brink of losing control for long stretches, all to wring out their full power the instant the horn sounded.

This high-frequency command, which treated people almost like tools, drained their mental strength and Battle Aura with brutal force.

That brief slaughter in daylight had left seventy elite fighters retching from exhaustion and collapsed on the ground.

If they maintained that intensity throughout a whole night of Blood Moon Season, they would not even last until the defensive line broke. Their Battle Aura would run dry and their minds would collapse, killing them at their posts.

He had to sever that physical chain.

Shien plunged his consciousness deep into his mind. Amid the surge of mental energy, the Canon of Grace and Righteousness silently turned its pages.

After his long efforts, nearly all the Grace Values in Blackpine Fief had stabilized at deep blue, signifying absolute loyalty.

But that deep blue was like a frozen sea. No matter how much he built on it, he could not push it a fraction higher. The higher the tier, the harder loyalty was to raise.

The rules of purple Grace included an ability called Soul Anchoring.

In simple terms, it allowed a direct connection between the minds of a lord and his subordinates.

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

Shien's eyes flew open. Firelight danced in his pupils, and beneath their chill burned a sudden heat.

With the delay 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 Blood Moon Season six months from now.

He had to harvest these people's Grace with greater precision and force their Grace Values up into the purple tier.

Just as Shien stared into his mind, considering how to raise the higher-tier knights' Grace,

a dense clatter of hooves suddenly rose outside the tent. Beneath it came the low rumble of iron-rimmed wagon wheels rolling over frozen earth, drawing closer until it drowned out the night wind.

The heavy flap was thrown open. A messenger rushed in with the cold clinging to him and dropped hard to one knee. "My lord! A large supply convoy has appeared outside the defensive line! It's flying Bishop Castian's banner!"

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

Beyond the halo of Sacred Flame, a convoy with no end in sight rolled slowly forward. Its wheels crushed the earth with dull, heavy rumbles.

Wagon after wagon, like a long snake, made its way bit by bit inside Blackpine Fief's defensive line.