Rumble-
The heavy black iron portcullis of Brintanhe Fortress slowly rose to the groaning of the winch.
A fierce wind surged inside.
Its howl seemed powerful enough to freeze a person's soul.
White snow spray struck the soldiers in the gateway head-on like countless tiny blades.
Several young knights in the front instinctively hunched their shoulders, their bodies tensing.
Yet the biting cold they expected never came.
The instant the icy wind touched them, an extremely faint, pale red glow flared across the surfaces of their silver-gray coats.
[Warm Sun Barrier]
Like spring sunshine, it released a gentle, steady warmth, keeping the extreme cold of minus forty degrees three centimeters away.
The soldiers discovered, to their surprise, that apart from a slight chill at their exposed nose tips, they felt no cold at all. They were even pleasantly warm.
"This is fucking miraculous..." a veteran muttered, reaching up to touch his chest.
"Stop gawking! Move!"
Alex's roar rang out through the wind and snow.
He sat astride a snow-white Iserama warhorse. The spirit steed from the Elf Forest had blood-red eyes after taking a Boiling Blood Potion. Two long plumes of white vapor streamed from its nostrils as its four hooves stamped restlessly in the snow, eager to gallop.
Beside him stood an enormous direwolf more than a meter and a half tall at the shoulder.
The savage beast from the frozen tundra of the Northern Lands was serving as a beast of burden. Harnessed to a specially made sled, it hauled three fully armed heavy infantrymen and more than a dozen crates of supplies.
"Third Regiment, follow! Keep your spacing!"
Five hundred knights and the direwolves hauling their supplies streamed out through the fortress gate.
No thunderous hoofbeats sounded, for the thick snow swallowed every noise.
Like