Chapter 695

“At least three days of continuous treatment are required.”

The healing priest of the Imera Church Order, whom I barely managed to find, cast a Healing Miracle over my wounds and spoke.

If it were Rana or Lacey, they would have healed such wounds in a single day… Unfortunately, Edricksa currently had no healing priests of that caliber.

There were healing priests belonging to the royal family, but they had gone missing in the collapse of the royal palace. Thanks to that, it took a full eight days after arriving in the capital before I could leave Edricksa.

In my heart, I wanted to fly to Ludwig’s main force immediately after defeating Ragnar… but my physical condition wouldn’t allow it, and doing so could have flipped the situation in the capital again.

Four days for Knut and Hrapun to fully secure Edricksa.

One day to find a healing priest.

Three days to complete the treatment.

After spending eight days like that, I was finally able to leave Edricksa and rush toward the eastern cities.

It truly felt like an unbearably long eight days.

‘Is everyone okay? I hope I’m not too late.’

[Don’t worry. Not only the Imperial Army but also the existing defense forces are present. Combined, they should be nearly twice the size of Ai-shan’s forces. As long as they don’t foolishly engage in open battle, they should hold out just fine.]

Hersela tried to comfort me… but her words didn’t exactly reassure me.

If they didn’t engage in open battle, they could hold out—but that also meant that if they did, they would have already been crushed.

======[Imperial Army]======

The morale of the Imperial Army, which had been barely holding back the Ka`har forces, somewhat recovered upon hearing the cries that reinforcements from Dane had arrived.

Unable to see the situation beyond the city walls, they could only know that reinforcements had arrived, unaware that those reinforcements were being trampled under the hooves of the Black Armies.

Thus, even as they were being pushed back helplessly, they managed to keep fighting.

Soldiers, trampled under the hooves of Ka`har horses, desperately tried to stab the horses’ legs and bellies with spears. Knights, disregarding their own lives, clung stubbornly to Ai-shan’s warriors.

Those with arrows embedded all over their bodies spat blood as they hurled oil jars and torches, setting enemy cavalry and surrounding buildings ablaze. Some even threw themselves onto the warriors’ blades to bring them down.

“Fight to the end! The Empire’s tomorrow rests in our hands!”

A grueling urban battle continued. The Imperial Army, though seemingly on the verge of collapse, barely held on, burning their blood and lives like candles.

At the forefront were the Empire’s masters.

—

“Damn it…”

Ai-bur, a Paladin of the Tribal Alliance, clenched the longsword that had pierced his heart, blood dripping from his gritted teeth.

His legs gave out, and his vision blurred. His life was draining away from his body, riddled with holes.

“To think I’d fall to a mere girl…”

Ai-bur glared at the woman who had stabbed his heart with a venomous expression.

Even in his fading vision, her violet eyes were strikingly clear. Her half-undone golden hair and the red-and-white knight’s uniform.

A girl who didn’t seem to be even twenty yet, breathing heavily, stood before him.

“Haa… haa… What are you saying? If you have something to say, say it in Imperial.”

Leonor kicked Ai-bur’s stomach and pulled out the longsword. The blood gushing from his pierced chest stained her uniform red.

Disgusted by the heat seeping into her chest, Leonor frowned and shook off her clothes. Blood splattered on the corpse that had fallen without even closing its eyes.

That made two.

The Empire’s masters were scattered across the city, either facing enemy Paladins or supporting areas that were being overwhelmed. Leonor, too, was running around, her breath at her throat, cutting down Ai-shan’s Paladins.

Perhaps it was because she had followed Ha-shal-leur through countless battles. Her skills had grown to the point where they were incomparable to when she had defeated Ernst.

She had suffered a few penetrating wounds, but she still had enough strength left after taking down two Paladins.

Of course, taking down two Paladins didn’t exactly turn the tide of the battle.

“…When is Ha-shal-leur going to get here?”

Leonor poured recovery potion into the wounds on her left arm and thigh, grumbling.

She had managed to take down two Paladins, but with her remaining strength, she could only take down one more at most.

Her limbs were already trembling, and even with the recovery potion, her wounds wouldn’t heal instantly.

Though Leonor had grown stronger to the point of being unrecognizable compared to before, she still didn’t have the power to change the course of the battle.

‘This is dangerous…’

Glancing toward the inner fortress where loud noises echoed, Leonor bit her lip in anxiety.

Ha-shal-leur, who should have arrived by now, was nowhere to be seen. It was proof that Ludwig’s gamble had failed.

Joshua, Frederick, and Heinrich wouldn’t be able to handle her absence.

‘Even though reinforcements have arrived… the fact that they haven’t entered the city means we can’t expect much from them.’

While the frontline knights and soldiers might have felt the arrival of reinforcements was like rain in a drought, Leonor held no expectations for Dane’s reinforcements.

Unless tens of thousands of troops had arrived, she didn’t think they could turn the tide.

‘…Let’s move.’

Leonor shook her head roughly to dispel her negative thoughts and dashed off again, toward the battlefield where the screams of the Imperial Army were particularly loud.

Now wasn’t the time for contemplation. If she had time to think, she needed to kill at least one more enemy.

—

“Fight without retreating! For the pride of Landenburg!”

Unlike Leonor, who focused on assassinating Paladins, Nigel led Landenburg’s knights in holding the enemy at bay head-on.

Against Ai-shan’s warriors, who galloped through every alley, seizing everything with their spear tips and trampling it.

“Gyaaaaah!”

Every time her divine artifact, Eberond’s Holy Spear, unleashed lightning, armored cavalry screamed and fell in droves.

The power of lightning, impossible to block with armor or shields. Combined with the full force of a master’s thrown spear, her weapon had become a destructive bolt that even Paladins dared not face.

“Now! Strike while she’s thrown her spear!”

Ka`har warriors tried to exploit the brief moment when Nigel’s spear returned to her hand, but even that was a futile struggle.

Close combat in narrow alleys was Nigel’s specialty.

“Come at me all you want! The tenth sword of Landenburg is here!”

Nigel danced through the air, using the alley walls as springboards. She wielded a dagger in her left hand and a soldier’s spear in her right.

Leaping off walls, rooftops, and enemy bodies, Nigel performed acrobatics as she fought.

The Ka`har warriors, facing such a dazzling combat style for the first time, were bewildered and promptly had their throats slit or hearts pierced.

“Not yet!”

After slaughtering the warriors, Nigel retrieved her thrown spear and launched it again, piercing through the enemy ranks.

Over ten cavalrymen were impaled, spraying blood, and even more were struck by the lightning that spread around them.

An overwhelming display. The alley she was defending was, at that moment, an impregnable fortress.

Of course, even she couldn’t do more than defend one section of the city. That was the limit of Nigel, a mere master.

And on the plains outside the city, where Dane’s defense forces clashed with Ka`har’s reserve troops…

—

“Bølberg, have you forsaken us…?”

The commander of Dane’s defense forces, the Holy Warrior Burgund, collapsed with a sigh.

Burgund had fought desperately, erasing Ibamai’s Frozen Hell with the Rune of Fire, but there was a gap between them that couldn’t be bridged by rune power and will alone.

His warhorse had long since frozen to death, and his right arm had been severed by an axe. The ice spear embedded in his abdomen sent shivers through his body.

Only Bølberg’s miracle kept him standing, but his body was as good as dead.

“You lasted longer than most westerners… but this is the end.”

Ibamai was confident of victory. While he fought the Dane before him, the battle around them was overwhelmingly in Ai-shan’s favor.

The Black Armies, having halted their charge and entered the fray, were literally butchering Dane’s infantry. Targien’s Enemy Army, keeping their distance, was raining arrows and annihilating the pursuing Dane cavalry.

Though the Black Armies and Enemy Army had suffered significant losses due to an inexplicably large number of sorcerers… in the end, it was Ai-shan who emerged victorious.

“Now, face your death!”

Ibamai smiled, his face covered in blood, as he raised his axe high.

His beloved weapon was chipped and cracked, on the verge of breaking, but even a damaged axe could easily split a human skull.

The axe blade, imbued with the War Chief’s Life Force Technique, descended like a guillotine.