Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
The connection was lost before Hao Ren realized it. Shaking his head in frustration, Hao Ren mumbled to himself, “Damn it, the wifi service is freaking unreliable. I wonder if Vivian heard me.”
The female knight, Lavinia stood still in front of him, feeling baffled. “Your Venerable Guardian, what happened to you?”
Hao Ren quickly looked up and pasted a smile on his face. “Ahh, nothing. I was thinking about the past. Probably my mind is still a little laggy after ‘waking up.’ What did we leave off?”
“The part about you finding your friend…” said Lavinia, who was still not convinced of Hao Ren’s reply. “Do you have any idea how to go about finding your friend? My family has little influence in the kingdom, but my brother has an extensive network of contacts and likes to befriend the hermits and scholars. Maybe he could help you.”
Hao Ren was stupefied. He was looking for a husky who was just flung over here a few days ago, asking a bunch of old scholars to help did not help. He might as well find some masters of making bone soup, cooking a few pots of pork-rib soup at the city gate, Lily would be able to sniff her way back even if she was hundreds of miles away. Hao Ren did not say as such aloud but only in his mind. And he gave a polite reply. “Oh thank you so much for your kindness. I appreciate that. I would owe you a favor.”
After a moment of polite formulas, Lavinia left for his colleagues, leaving Hao Ren scratching his jaw in deep thought.
The sound of stiff boots walking up to him jolted Hao Ren out of his thoughts. Hao Ren looked up and saw the heroic looking Veronica standing in front of him. The princess nodded at him lightly. “Your Venerable Guardian, it’s time. We should go.”
After a short break, the Knights not only mentally renewed but they had also regained their strength. When they set off, the soldiers were all energetic. Now there was more worry that could stop them. They followed the princess and headed straight at full speed back to Fort West.
However, Fort West was farther than it seemed. It took the professional soldiers, each as strong as a superhuman, half a day to reach the hill halfway between the Shadowy Forest and Fort West. But Hao Ren, having resumed contact with the outside world, was lighthearted. He deemed the long journey a sightseeing trip. Though the surroundings were still the distorted and dark realm of Chaos, the fortress shrouded in glorious light in the distance was still a stunning sight as he walked side by side with Veronica and Morian. While listening to them telling about the history of the fortress since the founding of the Kingdom of Toras 22 years ago, the mountains in the distance gradually drew closer.
But just as they were about to arrive at the foot of the fortress, Hao Ren had sensed something amiss. He stopped in his tracks and gazed in the direction of the fortress. At this distance, the white giant rock wall of the Fort West was in view. The ancient runic reinforcement and eagle reliefs on the wall were visible. At the top of the thirty-three magic towers on the front of the fortress, the Taros Eagle flags in gold outlines and blue background were flying in the wind.
Veronica who stopped behind Hao Ren had sensed what Hao Ren sensed. The royal-blood princess’s brows knit together as she felt the energy of the Chaos was nearby. This evil force in conflict with the Order ailed her blood. Her heart instantly missed a beat.
The princess raised her hand and signaled the knights behind, who immediately crouched. Under cover of nearby rocks, the team climbed to the top of a hill. Hao Ren was beside Veronica, looking out and down.
He saw a wilderness of gray and white gravels extending out under the hill all the way to the foot of the white stonewall of Fort West. A sea of gray-black mud was flowing in the direction of the city wall.
But that was not mud but monsters born in the Chaos.
It is a monster siege!
On this side of the Shadowy Forest, the Chaos no longer appeared in the form of fog but used the gray-white gravels that covered the earth as carriers. As black smoke spurted out from the barren land, it quickly spun and solidified into terrible monsters in seconds. Thousands of them rushed towards Fort West in a frenzy, as if tsunami rolling toward the shores. Their numbers were numerous, and they were close to each other, so when looking from a distance, they looked filthy mud on the ground. The scene reminded Hao Ren about the Black Tide coming out from the cage of Hercules not long ago. But this tide of monsters looked even more terrible than the Black Tide back then.
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Without someone like Hercules to restrain this tide of monsters that were born out of the Chaos, they were even more ferocious, ruthless, and seemingly coming in an endless number.
The glowing protective runes on the white wall of Fort West, energized by the Light of Order, had formed a translucent energy shield on the wall. The monster of Chaos monsters lunged at the wall like a moth to a flame, ripping with their claws, biting with their fangs, striking with their primitive and violent dark magic before crashing into the energy shield on the wall and exploded in a dark fireball. The dark fireballs rose in every section of the wall, the shockwave from the explosions was shaking the physical wall, causing debris and dust to fall off the wall as if the out wall was spewing smoke when looking from afar.
The scene was the most horrible event in the world of Collow as evil forces crouching in Chaos were pounding and shaking the wall of the World of Order.
In the past seven years, and during every tide of Chaos in the past 100 centuries in Collow, battles of this kind had been repeating countless times. The Light of Order might have stopped the Chaos every time, but the Chaos had its unique way of attack. The monsters born from the law of the distortion were the cannon fodders and vanguards of war. They marched and attacked the World of Order violently. If they brought down a barrier, then the land of Order would recede to their next line of defense and the space the mortals lived would shrink again.
As far as Veronica knew, in Ansu continent alone, humans and elves had lost more than 40% of their land—the once fertile wilderness, peaceful Shadowy Forest, grassy Dark Morass, and the beautiful Gray Sea. With the extinguishing of the Furnace Tower, the Spire of Flames, and even the Sunscorch Tower, barriers began to fall, and defenses started to retreat; the mortal race traded space for time. These originally serene and peaceful lands had become a death zone of the Chaos. The scene before their eyes was the cause of all these.
The Chaos had struck.
Veronica gripped the sword in her hand and made a gesture with the other to signal the knights to prepare for battle.
On the front line where the Chaos was attacking, the power of the Order would weaken. The dark side of the Sea of Carnos would become active to the point where it could form into physical form at any time. Even if the knights hid outside the battlefield, the evil forces would soon sniff them out. Therefore, fighting was inevitable.
Cowardice and runaway were meaningless. Whether one dared to draw a sword, the battle was the only way.
As the knights unsheathed their swords, the power of magic began to stir the surrounding air. On the royal armor, the runes glowed and illuminated the brave faces of the young soldiers.
In Collow, the advance of the tide of Chaos meant the retreating and dying of the mortal race. The dark side of Carnos spurted out from all corners of the continent, and then swallowed everything along the way. But the human race kept fighting. Looking at the wasteland in the surroundings, Hao Ren already knew the outcome. The power of the Order was weakening, and the mortal race was only using their bodies as a wall to resist the advance of the Chaos. But all they did was delaying the inevitable.
They would fight and retreat, hoping the Chaos would dissipate, and the Sea of Carnos would calm down.
No one ever felt this was wrong as their ancestors had been through it this way. If there was any complaint, it would probably be just complaints about why they were born during the surge of the Chaos, and not as lucky as those living in the peaceful era.
“Are you going down there with only this number of people?” Hao Ren turned his head and glanced at Veronica.
The knight princess pointed down to the battlefield with her sword. “Take the ramp on the left and flank the monsters. If you could use your magic explosives to delay the energy of Chaos from transforming into physical bodies, we would be able to open a breach. I will first send a signal to the fortress, as long as the fortress defense troops have the most basic military literacy, we would be able to pull this off. I will enter the safe zone and disrupt the direction of the flow of the chaotic power.”
Hao Ren had no idea what Veronica meant by ‘the direction of flow of the chaotic power,’ he believed that Veronica was an expert in this field, so he agreed to the plan. “Are you not afraid?” he asked curiously.
“Almost all cowards have died in the past seven years,” Veronica said with a smile and raised her sword. “The wall will eventually fall, but not today!”
The knights roared in unison, “The wall will eventually fall, but not today!”