Chapter 112: Iron Bones Clash, Passion Ignites (11)
The great city shrouded in flames was enveloped by thick fog. Looking from afar in the night, only a faint silhouette remained, with black smoke rising through the mist. The darkened sky didn’t reveal a single star, and the heavy, oppressive atmosphere gripped my heart tight.
The city had fallen…
Buzz—
In the distant northern wilderness, a golden light burst upward, illuminating the silhouettes of knights below. Among the crowd, I could vaguely spot the most eye-catching, shiny bald head.
“They’re over there!”
I shouted back to the group of Safiros behind me, clenching my legs around the beast’s back. The iron hooves of my horned horse thundered down the slope like a graceful cheetah. The wind whistled past my ears, and ahead of me, a fire-wielding heretic was attempting to leap at me.
“Get lost!”
A weak voice yelled, and a faint blue glow erupted from his eyes. With a delicate wave of his pale hand, several cold, glowing ice spikes shot from above, instantly piercing through the heretic’s chest and abdomen. One even went straight through his right eye, nearly tearing half his face off.
Frost spread rapidly across his body, and in mere moments, the heretic was frozen into a bizarre ice sculpture, the infernal fire extinguished alongside him. As I zipped past, I shot an ice ball the size of a fist at him; with a “splash!” the ice sculpture shattered into pieces while the giant beast’s hooves kept pounding towards the direction of the elite cavalry.
After running down the slope for what felt like ages, the knights were coming closer. Within the solemn ranks, someone heard the commotion and turned to look at me. In the dim night, resolute and stern faces were illuminated.
“Isaac—”
I maneuvered around the right side of the line and charged up to a higher slope, calling out the bald head’s name. Isaac had already noticed my arrival but only gave a hurried glance before turning his attention back to the distant city. Beside him, the young bishop offered me a slight smile, though it wasn’t particularly pleasant.
Now was not the time for pleasantries. I stopped between the two and patted the horned horse’s neck, then turned urgently to Isaac and asked, “What’s the situation?”
“It doesn’t look good.”
The bald giant shook his head, his fierce face cloaked in shadow, creating an unspeakably heavy atmosphere. “Most of the heretics have breached the city. We haven’t seen any knights on the walls resisting. Alectine City has fallen, but to what extent is still unclear. There’s likely street fighting happening inside, but it can’t be anything but dire.”
“There are roughly three to four thousand heretics stationed at the outer walls. It’s too dark to give an accurate estimate. At least three heretics at the ‘bl**d Sacrifice’ stage are holding the walls. After several charges, the heretics have retreated below the city walls. It’s getting tougher for us.”
“The north city gate has been destroyed, and one section of the wall has collapsed. What we need to consider now is how to break through these two gaps to provide reliable support to the Third Knights Order, if they’re still standing… What about the Pope?”
“He’s behind us, should be here soon.”
Isaac’s words plunged my heart into despair. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
If things were as bad as he said, and the heretics had taken the walls, then the Third Knights Order… had clearly reached a dead end. Street fighting—even I, who knew nothing about warfare, could understand that this was the last stand of the defenders, who simply refused to surrender and retreated within the city to resist to the bitter end.
Once it reached this point, the command structure of the defenders was basically shattered. Surviving soldiers would defend crucial points and fight on pure willpower, clinging to the last shred of faith in their hearts. If the enemy couldn’t be stopped by the walls, how could they possibly win in the chaos of street fighting? In this age, it was essentially the end of a siege.
“I had planned to organize another charge, but the enemy released the fog… Preliminary judgment suggests that there’s someone at the Gate of Truth using the ‘Fog Order,’ and given the current scale of the mist, their affinity seems quite high; they released enough fog to cover half the city in moments. This is our biggest headache.”
“Obscured visibility means we can’t see the enemy’s actions, so we can’t react accordingly. We’re basically blind on the battlefield, while they can swiftly grasp our movements… At the very least, the person releasing the fog can see. Now there’s fog within the city—if Captain Williams is alive, his situation must be even more dire… We need to act quickly.”
Fog Order…
I looked up at the mist spreading in the distance, my mind spinning.
This rare power of order was as uncommon as my Frost Order, and it was the first time I had encountered it. The enemy seemed quite formidable, creating a large-scale fog. If the knights charged in, they would fall into a passive state or worse—a chaotic melee. The Faith Organization wouldn’t be able to effectively counter their fireballs… How could I find them and dispel this fog…
… If only Victoria were here, she could use strong winds to clear it away… I wonder if anyone in the Faith Organization has the Wind Order?
But even if they did, their affinity might not be enough to disperse such a massive fog… Fire? Would heating the temperature steam away the moisture in the air? But that would be difficult to achieve. The city was burning like that, and the mist was still rising—using a normal fire wouldn’t work… Would I need to charge in there alone and secretly use the Sin Fire?
Wait… if I charge in…
I have the Frost Order.
I’ll cool it down!
With a flurry of thoughts, I formulated a plan and immediately told Isaac, “I’ll give it a try.”
Isaac frowned at my words, “How are you going to try?”
“Using cold air.”
When temperatures drop enough, moisture will precipitate from the air and condense, forming frost or rime… I forgot where I learned that from, but I was somewhat uncertain. Still, it was worth a shot; as long as their fog was indeed water mist, this method might work.
“I’ll be right back!”
Without waiting for Isaac’s response, I immediately turned the beast around and charged down the slope straight towards the burning city.
The night was dark as ink.
On the barren plains, clusters of red fire continued to blaze. The road beneath me was muddy and rugged. I rode my massive horned horse, galloping through the wilderness. In my sights, Alectine City shrouded in mist rapidly approached, the surging flames casting a hazy glow through the fog, and the stench of bl**d grew stronger in my nostrils.
Gradually, the ground beneath me became stained with bl**d, turning red. From the corner of my eye, I caught glimpses of horrific corpses: some with severed limbs, some with smashed heads, and even some that were nothing but a pulp of flesh, the bloody odor carried by the breeze silently narrating the brutality of this siege.
My heart sank.
Barry…
You have to be alive.
For a brief moment, I was seized by an impulse to recklessly dash straight into the city.
That thought quickly got forcibly suppressed.
The current situation in the city was uncertain, and the strength of the heretics was unclear. If I charged in recklessly…
Not to mention whether I could find anyone in the chaos, if Isaac and the others couldn’t break through this fog, they wouldn’t be able to lend me support. The knights could not risk entering the mist; I would be facing numerous heretics alone, including a few third-stage ones, and that clown…
I was confident I wouldn’t lose, but winning was another story. If they pulled any tricks on me, I wouldn’t just fail to rescue anyone, but I might land myself in trouble.
Urgently, Isaac and the knights at the back needed to breach the city to have a chance to rescue the Third Knights Order. No matter how powerful I was on my own, I could only guarantee my own safety. Even if I killed a bunch of heretics, it would be nothing compared to the madmen slaughtering civilians and warriors at their speed…
Before long, visibility around me began to diminish.
I quickly dismounted and dashed into the thick fog.
The mist was thicker than I imagined.
The nearer I got to the city, the more obscured everything became, and soon, even the ground just a meter away became indistinct. In such awful conditions, if the knights were to clash with the heretics, they’d lose almost all advantages…
I had no idea how far I was from the city wall; I just ran a little further, when my sharp hearing picked up the commotion ahead, sounds of voices and footsteps densely packed… Good, that’s enough for now.
I took a deep breath.
In the next moment, my eyes shone bright blue, and frost energy erupted from within me.
I activated the power of order, allowing the frost to spread rapidly around me—if it were just me, using the frost world would certainly be much quicker, but then the knights would get frostbite too—I strained to control the freezing air to a degree that wouldn’t harm people, at least for a short while, yet even that was already a significantly low temperature.
The frost on the ground expanded at a visible pace, the temperature plummeting rapidly, and I could already breathe out white mist. However, this wasn’t enough. I strained to increase the range of the frost. This was the first time I was using it this way, and I had no idea how effective it would be…
But soon after, it was clear that the surrounding fog began to thin out. The grass and leaves were wrapped in frost, and the ground beneath me turned nearly milky white. Not far away, a small tree had crystallized into rime, blooming like countless white flowers, sparkling and translucent. In the air, densely packed ice crystals floated, shimmering ten meters away.
I could see the scenery ahead.
…It worked!
Elated for a moment, I lightly exhaled white mist, ready to push harder to see if I could improve the effect. Just then, a dull sound echoed from the wall above. I paused for a second, then a howling wind whizzed above me.
Whoosh—
A massive, blazing fireball shot through the mist, hurtling directly toward me. Instantly, the temperature around me rose sharply as the fireball raced toward my line of sight, yet the one who unleashed it still hid within the murk; I couldn’t see where he was. With a quick motion of my right arm, a thick ice wall surged up, standing in front of me—
Boom!!!
The violent explosion whipped up a furious gust of fiery waves, crimson flames surged from behind the ice wall. I heard a sharp crack as the solid ice barrier suddenly splintered apart, the cracks glowing red-hot and rapidly melting.
What immense power of infernal fire…
This was on a whole different level than the guy from the Silent Fortress!
This was truly a third-stage opponent!
