The Army Descends, a Cold-Blooded Contest

Blood Moon Season, Day 28.

A cold wind blew by, diluting the usual heavy smell of blood.

After the vanguard regiment was wiped out, Blackpine Fief became quiet, but this quiet was not the end, but rather the harbinger of an impending storm.

Over the past few days, the entire territory has been almost constantly in motion.

The corpses, Sourceblood, and spoils that could still be dismantled dragged back from the front lines were all consumed by the Blackpine Fief Territory's war machine, Wolf, and transformed into new combat power.

Even with Victor leading Yarrow and the craftsmen working day and night, they managed to forge three new heavy Rune Steam Repeating Crossbow.

The Five-Ring Defense Line was also thoroughly reviewed.

The Frozen Tundra trench was dug deeper, and the density of the pre-buried Brittle-Shell Poison Jar was increased to three times the original. A highly concealed diversion Lamp Oil was also laid at the bottom of the trench.

Soldiers on the front lines were also promoted based on their merits, and those who performed outstandingly were promoted to junior sergeants on the spot.

All these preparations were made, just to wait for that hand in the Gray Fog to press down on us.

On the towering command tower of the Inner Fortress, Shien's eyes were slightly closed.

Deep within his consciousness, the [Lv.3 Macro Battlefield Command] system suddenly sounded a sharp alarm.

He suddenly opened his eyes. Deep within the Gray Fog, countless high-energy living reactions formed a crimson wall, organized and disciplined, with all berserk instincts firmly suppressed by a higher-level will.

Shien slowly exhaled a puff of white steam. "They've come after all."

And it happened faster than he expected, and the enemy was stronger than he imagined.

Shien's heart sank lower and lower.

Given their size and unknown strength, even he dared not easily predict whether Blackpine Fief could withstand this round of attacks.

Shien turned around, his voice devoid of any panic. "Send the order to sound the highest level alarm."

The messenger standing nearby turned pale and immediately accepted the order.

Then Shien gave another order, "Draft an urgent letter of aid and send it to Bishop Castian."

The clerk standing to the side was startled and quickly spread out the parchment scroll.

The content only mentions three things: first, the main enemy force has arrived; second, its scale far exceeds expectations; and third, Blackpine Fief requests the assistance of Mobile Holy Knight.

The clerk gritted his teeth and wrote it down, his fingers trembling.

Shien tapped the table. "Use the Alchemical Message Bird to send this message. Divide it into five parts, and after it takes off, send it along five separate routes. Even if only one of them survives and flies out alive, I want the bishop to see this letter."

"Yes!"

Beneath the tower, the highest level of alarm bells quickly pierced the darkness.

"Knock knock knock!"

Three heavy chimes echoed through the air above Blackpine Fief.

The tactical lights at the top of the command tower then turned scarlet.

The moment the bell tolled and the red light faded, the entire Blackpine Fief came to life.

Soldiers immediately rushed to their designated positions.

Fabien led his Third-Tier Heavy Cavalry Corps to silently mount their horses in the Inner Fortress, dozens of armor-piercing lances raised in unison.

In the muddy trenches at the very bottom of the front line, the newly appointed captain Todd, shouted at the top of his lungs to form ranks.

Inside the high Dark Bunker, the crossbow winches were pulled to full speed, and the steam boilers began to whistle.

With a formidable enemy at hand, fear and panic naturally arose, but everyone suppressed them deep within their hearts.

People and machinery meshed together, and the entire fortress began to function again.

The churning Gray Fog finally began to slowly split open to both sides.

The first sound to shatter the dead silence of the trenches was not the roar of beasts, but a chilling cry of humans.

Hundreds of wounded and battered survivors stumbled out of the thick fog.

They were driven along by rows of Second Tier Ghoul behind them, like livestock.

The fleeing soldier at the forefront stepped into the First Ring trench of Blackpine Fief, but the sharp Pig Iron spikes pierced his soles without any resistance.

The fleeing soldier screamed and collapsed to the ground, but the tide of refugees behind him, driven by the Ghoul spears, couldn't stop. The crowd trampled over his back and head.

The dull thuds of bones breaking echoed one after another, and in the blink of an eye, the body was trampled into a puddle of mud spread over the poisonous thorns.

A man driven mad stood frozen in place, turning his head to beg the Ghoul behind him for survival.

A Ghoul elite behind him grinned, its bony claws reaching out to snap his neck cleanly. It then casually kicked the still-warm corpse into the trap zone ahead like a broken sack.

Todd stared intently ahead, his teeth clenched so tightly they ached, and the veins on the back of his hands bulged.

He understood: these beasts were using living people to pave the way, using the corpses of their fellow countrymen to flatten the outermost killing zone inch by inch.

What's even more chilling is that these Ghouls would actually do such a thing.

They suppressed their instinct to bite live flesh, suppressed their frenzied rage after seeing blood, and treated people as tools to push forward, forcibly using them to dismantle defenses.

Not just Todd, but the soldiers throughout the trench had bloodshot eyes, their throats filled with heavy breathing and curses.

Everyone wanted to rush out and chop those Ghouls to pieces.

But no one moved. They all knew that if the front row made a single mistake, these people who had been brought up would truly become the knives that tore open the Blackpine Fief.

"Help me! Help me out!"

A young apprentice with a broken leg dragged his blood-stained body to the edge of the First Ring trench, his right hand, covered in mud and blood, desperately reaching into the trench.

Beside Todd, a young Auxiliary Soldier who had just joined the unit suddenly lost his mind, leaned half his body out of the trench, and reached out to grab the apprentice.

Todd's eyes twitched, and he grabbed the back of the man's neck armor, forcefully pulling him back.

"Don't move!" His voice even made his own throat hurt from the shout.

The young Auxiliary Soldier was in tears, his eyes fixed on the person in front of him, his whole body trembling.

Todd felt as if a huge rock was pressing on his chest, making it difficult for him to breathe.

But he still didn't let go, and neither did the others in the trench. They gripped their weapons tightly, rooted to the spot, watching helplessly as the cries were pushed little by little toward their own poisoned spikes and traps.

From atop the tower, Shien coldly surveyed the chaos below, his eyes devoid of any sympathy.

In places like the Eternal Night Wall, what's most likely to kill someone is that little bit of compassion in their heart.

If the defensive line falls apart because of a few cries, it won't just be these captured prisoners who are overtaken who die; everyone still alive in Blackpine Fief will be buried with them.

Several commands were given, and the bronze bell crashed down from the top of the tower.

"The entire front is in position. Anyone who dares to leave the trenches without authorization will be executed on the spot as a defector."

The crimson lights above the Dark Bunker also lit up at the same time.

The repeating crossbow team received an even colder, death order: ignore the prisoners, cover them out directly, and absolutely do not allow the Ghoul to get close to the foundation.

The heavy, solid steel muzzles rose sharply with the clanking of gears, sweeping across the brutally murdered hostages below.

Amidst heavy breathing, the armored soldiers of Blackpine Fief swallowed the nausea that welled up within them and the fleeting tenderness they shouldn't have felt, and bit back into their positions.

This round of psychological warfare was successfully countered by Blackpine Fief.

The frontline positions have been stabilized.

The captured corpses piled up layer by layer, and the barbs on the outer edge of the First Ring were quickly filled with flesh and blood, even the mouth of the trench was covered with a layer of wet, blackened corpse pads.

Behind that layer of corpse cushion, the Corrosive Acid Corpse finally began to wriggle forward.

They huddled behind a row of Elite Corpse Soldier holding rusty heavy shields, their bodies treading on the rotting flesh and bones of humans and ghouls mixed together, like poison sacs about to burst.

Its abdomen was swollen and shiny, and the skin was so taut that the churning, pale green acid inside was almost visible.

As long as this batch of materials gets close to the edge of the trench and spills all the Ghoul Strong Acid inside, the foundation and outer fortifications of the First Ring will be corroded through on the spot.

Inside the high Dark Bunker on both sides, rows of conventional Semi-Automatic Rune Steam Repeating Crossbow roared once again.

Hundreds of Refined Steel arrows, trailing dark arcs, soared into the air, passing over the groaning prisoners and piles of corpses in the front ranks, before crashing down upon the ranks of corpses behind them.

The arrows rained down swiftly and accurately.

The rusty heavy shield blocking its path shattered almost instantly upon contact, and the Corrosive Acid Corpse behind it was brutally pierced through, its belly, swollen to its limit, bursting open on the spot.

In the depths of the area, dozens of steps away from the First Ring, clumps of pale green acid exploded one after another, each clump being swept up by the next.

The intense acid poured down on the path the Ghoul had paved with the corpses of living people, and also splashed into the dense ranks of lower-level ghouls following behind.

A plume of yellowish-green toxic smoke shot up, and screams erupted throughout the formation.

The blood and flesh pad beneath the Ghoul's feet were burned through first, and even the pile of corpses in the First Ring trench was corroded away.

The Magic Creature rushing in from the back didn't have time to stop, and when they stepped in, they all sank into the bubbling, churning mud.

The acid gnawed upwards from the calves and abdomen, causing pieces of black flesh and bone fragments to fall down, quickly turning the entire advancing array into chaos.

Faced with the piles of corpses in the outer moat, the Blackpine Fief had already prepared a backup plan.

Shien's voice was cold and completely flat. "First Flow Channel, ignition."

The Pig Iron wrench was pulled down hard by the sapper.

The potent Alchemical Fire Oil, pre-buried in the shallow layer of Frozen Tundra, gushed out through the crisscrossing Flow Channel.

A spark bomb fell into the ravine, and an entire wall of fire instantly erupted along the outer edge of the First Ring.

"Boom--!"

The flames vanished instantly.

The piled-up corpses, the flowing acid, and the low-ranking ghouls screaming and rolling in the mud were all swallowed up in the blink of an eye.

The passageway, which had just been paved with the corpses of living people, also quickly collapsed into charred ash in the alchemical Poisonfire.

When the fire was brought under control, only scorched marks remained along the outer edge of the First Ring, still sizzling.

At the top of the tower, the array of lights has switched back to its standby yellow light.

The logistics engineers and bricklayers who had been crouching in the trench immediately rushed forward, like a swarm of worker ants that had been waiting nearby.

The barbed hooks dragged away the charred body parts, broken wood, and half-molten iron slag piece by piece, and the large buckets of Quicklime mixed with Purified Water were poured into the ditch, and a series of ear-piercing "hissing" sounds immediately rang out from the muddy ground.

The exothermic reaction washed away the remaining acid layer by layer, and the sappers, while the smoke had not yet dissipated, hammered the pre-made spare Pig Iron spikes and fine Refined Steel tripwires back into the breach.

The entire sequence of movements was incredibly fast.

In just a few minutes, the First Ring of defense at Blackpine Fief was rebuilt amidst mud, ash, and smoke.

The windows that the Ghoul army had smashed open with piles of corpses and cannon fodder were sealed off by this fortress, leaving not even a crack.

Deep in the Gray Fog in the far distance, the Silver Sword Commander, riding Bone Warbeast, watched the wall of fire rise and then extinguish.

The eerie green soul flame in its empty eye sockets flickered slightly, as if revealing a momentary lapse.

The ruthlessness of the human commander on the city wall, the unwavering execution of the soldiers at the bottom, and the seemingly crude defensive facilities were all a hundred times more troublesome than it had originally predicted.