Stepping through the dimensional gateway, Rosalyne immediately spotted Arlecchino, Candace, and their following detachment waiting in the clearing.
Their condition was impossible to overlook.
Both commanders and the vanguard soldiers accompanying them were caked in mud, their uniforms torn and frayed, looking very much like survivors who had barely crawled out of a catastrophe.
In truth, their journey had been little different from one.
Candace and Arlecchino carried visible mental exhaustion, their skin bearing numerous fresh cuts and abrasions.
Taking a direct overland shortcut had clearly cost them dearly.
Catching sight of Rosalyne stepping through the shimmering portal, Arlecchino gathered her remaining strength and rose quickly to her feet.
"How fares Her Majesty?"
Rosalyne tossed several flasks of alchemical draughts toward them, speaking in a brisk, quiet tone.
"Her Majesty is unharmed, but the operational situation is exceedingly urgent. Drink and recover your strength."
"Tonight brings the first Blood Moon. The garrison is fully mobilized on the ramparts. Mend your wounds and follow me through the gate immediately."
"Furthermore..."
Rosalyne hesitated, originally intending to mention the Tsaritsa's displeasure over their delay. Yet seeing Arlecchino's battle-worn, travel-stained state, she recognized that the march had been grueling.
She shook her head, choosing to let the thought drop.
Arlecchino offered a faint, bitter smile as she uncorked a potion and drank it down.
She knew the Cryo Archon was bound to carry some degree of grievance.
Their transit had dragged on far too long.
Her Sovereign's grand blueprint to integrate them into immediate colonization right after the Lantern Rite had been utterly derailed.
Valid as the logistical crises had been, arriving late was still a failure of duty. Her Majesty would likely demand an accounting later.
The magical restorative properties of the alchemical draught took effect in an instant. A wave of cool vitality swept through her limbs, stitching her flesh and clearing the heavy fog of exhaustion from her mind.
Steadying her posture, Arlecchino offered a brief explanation.
"By cutting through uncharted terrain, we encountered numerous wild monster swarms, particularly a territorial Primo Geovishap."
Rosalyne felt a strange pang of sympathy.
Arlecchino's fortune had been remarkably foul.
First, she had been harassed and pursued by Pierro's modified automata within Fontaine. After barely breaking out of the regional encirclement, she had anticipated a swift, orderly march along standard roads.
Then came the emergency summons from the Tsaritsa, demanding her presence within five days and forcing her to gamble on a direct overland flight.
While the main transit corridors across Sumeru and Liyue had been largely pacified by allied patrols, that applied only to regions inhabited by mortals.
The wilderness was vast, and neither nation had the manpower to sanitize uninhabited mountain ranges.
Monsters inhabiting those desolate wastes were exceptionally vicious, left wild by the courts to serve as live combat trials for junior soldiers.
Taking a straight bearing meant cutting through those untamed valleys, braving hostile skies and aggressive beasts.
How many battles they had fought along that path was impossible to tally.
"The critical point is that your ranks sustained no fatalities," Rosalyne said softly, seeing no purpose in reproaching her further.
"Lady Candace understands the fundamental laws of that realm. As for yourself, Arlecchino..."
Rosalyne pressed her lips together, her cadence sharpening.
"Candace has likely briefed you along the trail. Once we cross the threshold, do not let every minor anomaly startle you. The garrison is actively engaged in warfare, and no one has the leisure to provide tutorials."
"Survive tonight's Blood Moon first. Acclimation can wait until the dawn."
Looking toward the horizon, Rosalyne saw the purple dusk deepening over Teyvat as a pale crescent moon climbed above the mountains.
Her expression settled into rigid military discipline, turning back toward the swirling portal.
"We have no time left to deliberate. Move out. Once inside, follow every command issued by the line officers. Do not question. Do not hesitate."
Arlecchino gave a firm nod, turning to signal the vanguard detachment that had completed the march.
A fleeting sensation of weightlessness washed over them as they stepped across the threshold. When Arlecchino steady her footing, she found herself standing within an unfamiliar cosmos.
Before she could process the strange architecture around her, the ambient light in the air shifted into a deep, suffocating crimson.
She tilted her head upward, her crimson eyes widening in shock.
A colossal full moon hung in the sky, drenched in the color of fresh blood.
A dense, pulsing aura shrouded its edges, twisting like grotesque, reaching tentacles clawing across the heavens.
Along the nearby ramparts, a wave of sharp movement rippled through the battlements.
"Keep moving," Rosalyne urged.
Snapping out of her daze, Arlecchino pushed her questions deep down, following Rosalyne up the stone stairway toward the outer walls.
"Your Majesty..."
Arlecchino offered a deep, remorseful bow. The Tsaritsa turned, her brow furrowed with tension. Without uttering a word of reprimand, she tossed a loop of strung Totems of Undying into Arlecchino's hands.
"Keep these on your person at all times. Direct your soldiers down to the central plaza to draw tactical armaments and integrate into the defense grid under allied direction."
Beside them, Buer approached Candace, handing her an identical set of totems.
Arlecchino had braced herself for sharp rebukes, yet her sovereign had not voiced a single grievance.
The silence only tightened the knot in her chest.
A reprimand brought closure; absolute silence hinted at an impending storm.
Before Arlecchino could speak, a chorus of deafening, bloodcurdling shrieks erupted across the earth.
The cries echoed in unbroken, overlapping waves, carrying an innate malice that clawed at the sanity of all who heard it.
Stepping toward the parapet, Arlecchino looked down, her blood running cold.
Even when cornered by Pierro's modified automata in Fontaine, she had never felt such suffocating dread.
Below the walls lay an endless sea of undead.
They spawned from the darkened earth without pause, pouring out from the tree line like a burst dam.
Along this single northern sector, a casual glance revealed at least forty to fifty thousand monsters surging forward.
How many hundreds of thousands encircled the full perimeter of Redstone Tech City was impossible to fathom.
Such numbers were beyond the annals of history.
She had known a siege was underway, but witnessing the scale in person was overwhelming.
The Tsaritsa's earlier urgency was entirely justified.
Beneath the radiant glow of the Blood Moon, the zombies moved with terrifying velocity. Their eyes burned with scarlet light, arms outstretched as they charged the fortress walls like an unstoppable flood.
Both Arlecchino and Candace stood frozen on the stone parapet.
The sheer horror of the horde exceeded all mortal comprehension.
If two seasoned martial champions felt a chill along their spines, how would the freshly mobilized troops fare?
"Do not fear. You are not required to engage them in the open field; holding the fortress is our sole task," the Tsaritsa said, softening her tone to reassure the shaken commanders. "Deploy your men immediately."
Arlecchino drew in a steadying breath, saluting crisply before turning to lead her detachment down toward the staging area to link up with Dashi.
Ryen glanced toward Arlecchino's arrival, noting her presence before returning his gaze to the kill zones below.
A wry, strained smile touched his lips.
"Just as anticipated, the mutations have begun."
The creatures pressing against the walls were no longer the frail, mindless wanderers of the opening nights.
Within the churning sea of rotting flesh, large swathes of the horde were clad in armor and gripped cold iron.
Though many carried only mismatched pieces of gear, combined with their sheer numbers, the visual impact was terrifying.
Most wore leather, with significant contingents bearing iron and burnished gold.
Scattered among them were elite figures encased in deep blue diamond plate.
Worse still, a strange, vibrant purple luminescence rippled across many of those helmets and chestplates.
The equipment was heavily enchanted.
Supported by an endless, surging horde, the defensive pressure was astronomical.
"The evolutionary acceleration of the Blood Moon exceeds our projections," Ningguang murmured, studying the lines through her brass spyglass with a tight frown.
"A vast majority carry weapons, and at least half of those blades gleam with enchantments."
"Armed combatants are merely an inconvenience," Ryen replied, shaking his head as he pointed toward a specific cluster near the ditch.
"Those wielding pickaxes and shovels are the genuine crisis. Standard iron pickaxes cannot pierce reinforced obsidian, but those carrying shovels may attempt to tunnel directly beneath our foundations."
"The sole consolation is that their numbers remain relatively low."
Turning toward Zhongli, Ryen asked in a low voice, "What is the tactical directive? Do we hold our fire as before?"
"Out of the question," Zhongli answered, shaking his head with absolute gravity.
"Their volume is too dense, and we cannot predict how tool-bearing variants will interact with our perimeter."
"Deploy the sniper corps."
Activating the tactical relay, Zhongli's deep voice echoed across every bastion of the city.
"All sniper marksmen: prioritize small baby zombies, pickaxe variants, and shovel-wielding hostiles. Execute precision elimination."
"Engage redstone artillery for five sequential saturation volleys to thin the outer ranks."
The moment the command dropped, Redstone Tech City erupted into violent motion.
Rows of dark rifle barrels extended from the parapets. With every sharp crack of gunfire, a mutant hostile collapsed into the mud.
Even with imperfect aim, the density of the horde ensured that a stray round rarely met empty air.
High-altitude TNT duplicators clattered to life, releasing continuous cascades of primed explosives into the kill zones below.
With forty-two nights of warfare still ahead, opening up with massive redstone propellant artillery would incinerate their brass reserves too quickly.
Unlike long-range cannons, TNT duplicators could not fire outward, relying on gravity to carpet the immediate perimeter.
Yet their decisive advantage was zero material consumption.
Exploiting the native mechanics of the block world, the contraptions replicated primed blocks of TNT out of thin air.
Behind outer walls constructed entirely of solid obsidian, the defenders held zero fear of blast damage.
The absolute priority was preventing the horde from piling high enough to vault the parapets.
Should a single mutant breach the inner perimeter, the rear lines would collapse into chaos.
Moreover, pickaxes could theoretically chip away at obsidian.
While diamond pickaxes were required to cleanly harvest obsidian, continuous strikes from lesser tools could still shatter the block given enough time.
The allied military functioned like a massive, unified engine.
Long-range snipers called out targets, close-range TNT volleys shattered the vanguard, and subterranean squads harvested survivors trapped within the drop funnels.
Within seconds, the battlements were cloaked in smoke and fire, thunderous explosions drowning out the night sky.
Every soul threw themselves into the defense.
Crews rotated through the TNT duplicators, while alchemists hurled endless crates of splash potions down into the breaches.
Even the few hundred vanguard troops Arlecchino had brought were immediately assigned to man the subterranean drop pits.
Through overwhelming, coordinated firepower, the coalition temporarily halted the forward surge of the horde.
Yet no one celebrated.
Looking toward the horizon, the spawning of the undead showed no signs of abating under the crimson moonlight.
Fresh waves continued to crawl from the dark earth, charging forward in relentless, mechanical fury.
Tonight was destined to be an exhausting, bloody vigil.
~~----------------------
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