"That's... Your Majesty!!"
Atop the City wall, Grand Commander Bardess—who had already prepared to live or die together with the fortress—in the one-ten-thousandth of a second she made out that peerless streak of silver hair upon the war chariot, those clear, bright big eyes of hers abruptly widened to the very limit!
This female Commander, who suffered from severe obsessive-compulsiveness, had both arms—encased in fine-steel vambraces—trembling violently, and she even forgot to wipe the fresh blood off her famed longsword.
Two streams of warm tears instantly poured wantonly down her wheat-colored face, which was smeared all over with Black powder and stone dust.
And it was not only Bardess—those three thousand elite Mason infantry, slumped at the battlements, who moments ago had not even the strength to cinch their belts, in the instant they heard "Mason's supreme Queen is here," felt as if injected with the most violent sacred magic, and rose straight to their feet in perfect unison.
"Your Majesty has taken the field in person... Your Majesty has not abandoned us!!"
"The supreme Your Majesty Sophia has actually donned her armor and taken to the field in person, to come save us wretched souls on the western fringe!!"
Gazing at that young Queen amid the host of ten thousand soldiers—her face cold as frost, yet bringing the most supreme sense of security to the new Order—every one of the Black Rose big sisters atop the entire City wall had their eyes rimmed red.
That extreme emotional feedback of being cherished and doted upon by a god without the slightest reservation, in an instant transformed into an absolute mettle that towered above life and death!
Wanted to cry?
No—this heaven-vast divine grace would not soften their knees; it would only make their once-weary bodies harder than Cement, more frenzied than steel!
"Guards of the Black Rose!!"
Bardess abruptly leveled her longsword, and that neutral, pleasant-sounding female voice, from excessive excitement and fervor, took on a sky-piercing hoarseness:
"Your Majesty is watching us! Our comrades-in-arms at headquarters are watching us!! For the new Order—open fire!!"
"Pour every last one of the underground Black powder great explosive bombs down upon the heads of these southern rats! Kill———!!"
"Swear loyalty unto death to Your Majesty!! Slaughter every last southern wolf!!"
The small city of Severn, which had been on the losing side of the exchange, in this moment erupted with a counterassault many times more terrifying than before.
The twenty colossal-beast lever trebuchets atop the wall, as if tireless, ground their gears wildly, hurling skyfuls of glycerin and Black powder shells—utterly regular, without the slightest gap—down upon the very core of the southern army's formation.
And on the outer perimeter, General Delilah's eighty-thousand-strong heavy-armored phalanx, as easily as slicing tofu, naturally and forcefully tore a huge gap into the Empire's flank.
The battle in this instant became extraordinarily bloody and yet perfectly orderly.
The fine-steel dragon spear in Delilah's hand was like a silver dragon flicking its tongue; every sweeping step, every straight thrust carried a terrifying sky-soaring killing aura that could rip the very drill ground apart, smashing the several old-noble heavy-armored knights blocking her path—men and horses alike—into a skyful of blood mist.
"Hold the single-file column! Cross-load! Full volley fire!!"
Under Delilah's command, the Black Rose Musketeer squares displayed the terrifying fruit of headquarters' extraordinarily brutal, high-intensity emergency troop training.
Every one of them held their black muskets level, their footsteps as regular as if precisely measured with a ruler, and with every step forward came a clean, unison volley.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Pungent gunsmoke spread across the battlefield, and the dense iron pellets stormed forth like the God of Death's scythe, picking off the Empire's ordinary heavy infantry—who wore no fireproof leather and had long since been thrown into panic by the glycerin blazes from the wall—and felling them in swathe after swathe.
Saint Daphne raised high her Staff of Life, chanting an ethereal, melodious incantation.
In an instant, those soldiers who had been shot full of arrows or drained of strength rose to their feet at once.
The soldiers from the Imperial Capital could not help but gape—just what kind of people are you all?!
In the back-and-forth of the slaughter, the southern army finally came to know the meaning of despair.
The death-trap of being pincered front and back, before the Black Rose headquarters' impeccable strategic wisdom and absolute crushing superiority in armaments, became a dead-end road they had walked into of their own accord.
The once tightly-knit Empire heavy-shield phalanx utterly collapsed; the hills and fields were covered with defeated soldiers shrieking heart-rendingly, surviving old-noble commanders scrambling and crawling in their desire to retreat into the deepest reaches of the Red Maple Forest.
Amid rolling thick smoke and lingering flames, the southern iron torrent began to rout along the entire line.
Seated commandingly upon the supreme war chariot, Sophia's pair of pale-golden Queen's eyes coldly swept across the enemy army collapsing like a toppling mountain.
However, as her gaze swept over a phalanx of elite infantry fleeing madly beside the Red Maple Forest path, that ever-unchanging poker-faced expression, ever so subtly, froze rigidly for one second.
Strange.
Far too strange.
Amid that mass of routed troops who wished they could throw away their warhorses and heavy armor on the spot and resented their parents for not giving them two extra legs, there were over a hundred soldiers clad in ordinary fine-bronze plate, its surface even smeared with mud spots and yellowish-brown clay.
Far from showing any sign of disorder, they had faintly formed an extremely regular, tightly-sealed circular defensive formation.
And at the very core of that formation was an "ordinary soldier," likewise wearing plain leather armor washed pale, his frame—from years spent in a high position—appearing not at all stooped, yet desperately striding to flee.
Had it been merely an ordinary commander, on such a chaotic, panic-stricken battlefield of utter rout, his personal guards would long since have fled for their own lives.
Yet these soldiers, even as the black muskets behind them picked them off and blew their heads apart, would absolutely not shift their bodies half an inch.
Even as they fled, every one of them, intentionally or not, used their own flesh to firmly shield that "ordinary soldier" from every blind spot coming from the City wall and the outer side.
Sophia's long lashes trembled slightly.
She, who had sat upon her white-fox-fur armchair studying the detailed maps of the Northern border and the Empire's intelligence, set fully into motion in this instant that Queen's eye in her mind that belonged to the supreme Queen.
This frame...
This treatment of being firmly protected, even in the moment before death, within the core hollow by every elite deathsworn...
That old emperor of the south—instead of sleeping deep in his secluded palace Bedchamber in the Imperial Capital, cradling his golden goblet in the dead of night—had actually come along with the vanguard battalion in person and crept right up to the foot of This Queen's small city of Severn?!
A rare sense of oddness churned up within Sophia's heart.
But this did not stop this iceberg Queen from making, in an instant, the coldest strategic decision most in accordance with regulation and most maximizing of profit.
Without a word, with utmost crispness she extended her jade-white arm and forcibly seized from the back of a Black Rose servicewoman beside her—who was holding her black musket level—a Mason famed heavy draw-bow assembled from top-grade red maple wood, weighing a full hundred catties.
"Your Majesty?!"
That guard big sister was slightly stunned.
Sophia's face was cold as frost, without the slightest trace of needless panic.
Her porcelain-fine legs took one utterly regular step to the edge of the war chariot, locking firmly onto that figure wriggling at the edge of the Red Maple Forest at the far end of the horizon.
Her pale fingertips rested upon the thick hempen string, and without any needless hesitation, she put strength into both arms, drawing the entire hard bow fully into a complete full moon.
"Whoosh—!!"
A sharp arrow, refracting the orange-red hue of the raging flames, split the void, tearing through the heavy night a piercing thunderclap of rent air, and shot straight and fierce toward the back of the heart of that heavily-protected "ordinary soldier"!
"Squelch—!!"
It was the crisp, sharp sound of a keen blade fully piercing through flesh, kicking up a great spray of ghastly blood mist.
That arrow, carrying the supreme might of Mason's supreme sovereign, precisely and unerringly avoided the fine-steel shield blind spots of the several deathsworn around him, and nailed that figure in the worn leather armor straight onto a withered tree trunk before the Red Maple Forest!
As that old man's body trembled with extreme violence for one second and then went utterly limp, those over a hundred top-ace scouts of the Empire and great-noble deathsworn, who had still been retreating in order, in this instant froze completely.
"Your Majesty—!!"
"The supreme Your Majesty has fallen!!"
Shrill, terrified wails, even carrying a trace of sky-collapsing, earth-shattering despair, instantly burst out from the edge of that Red Maple Forest path!
Hearing this extremely flustered yet uncommonly clear wailing, Sophia at the edge of the battlefield narrowed her pair of pale-golden Queen's eyes slightly and gave an inward snort, full of spirited pride.
It seemed that This Queen, working overtime out here in the dead of night, had indeed stepped right onto the most surefire, can't-lose supreme regulation.
"Daphne."
Without even turning her head, her tone still cold yet carrying a trace of must-win supreme majesty, Sophia issued a military order, gentle yet unusually firm:
"Amplify my voice."
Saint Daphne came to as if from a dream, her beautiful eyes brimming with fervent worship for Your Majesty's flawless, god-like strategic gambits.
Without any needless hesitation, she hurriedly stepped forward, the Druid sacred magic within her erupting in full, wrapping the lustrous white light of the Staff of Life in her hand firmly around Sophia's dragon-might armor.
"Traitors of the south!!"
Sophia's voice—cold and haughty, yet under the magic's enhancement rumbling across more than ten li of wilderness like a divine oracle from the Ninth Heaven—instantly suppressed all the hoofbeats and din of slaughter on the battlefield:
"Your old emperor, who fancied himself the devourer of all, has tonight been wholly executed beneath This Queen's long red maple arrow!
The banner of the Black Rose has long since welded this western wilderness shut!
You traitors, now a dragon-horde without a head—any who still dare to stubbornly resist shall be left here in their entirety by This Queen to serve as the sacred foundation of the new City wall! Those who surrender shall not be slain!!"
These words, like the final straw of doom, came crashing down upon the already riddled psychological defenses of all the southern Empire soldiers.
The old emperor...
That old emperor, who had ruled the ancient southern Empire for the better part of his life and had mustered a fine-bronze, steel torrent of several hundred thousand to gnash its teeth in the deep of night—had, in less than three sichen since the battle began, been picked off with a single arrow to the head from a li away, with a mere twitch of the fingertips, by that cold-faced Queen seated upon her white-fox-fur armchair?!
This—this was simply not a contest of war that any mortal could achieve!
This was plainly a supreme Divine Punishment—a god, seated high in her Temporary Palace, having calculated to the very depths of the soul every step of their Empire's provisions, every dust-cloud of the army's vanguard, and even the emperor's disguise and micro-maneuvers!!
The tide was lost!
On the battlefield, in one-ten-thousandth of a second, a dead-like silence fell.
From whom, none knew—palms soaked with sour sweat, a heavy fine-bronze spear clattered, abruptly, onto the sand strewn with lingering flames.
Immediately after, like a contagious plague, waves of teeth-grating, densely packed clangs of metal joined together across the wilderness.
"We—we surrender...
Praise Your Majesty Sophia... we beg Your Majesty's divine grace..."
"Drop your weapons! Drop your weapons, quick!
Everyone who doesn't want to die beneath the Black powder, kneel down for me!!"
The tens of thousands of surviving Empire heavy infantry and deathsworn, faces ashen as dirt, knees buckling, dropped to their knees in clean swathes.
In the deepest reaches of the Red Maple Forest outside the small city of Severn, that whole expanse wholly swallowed by night, there now lay only suit after suit of battered iron armor and spears, slammed like corpses against the foot of the brand-new Cement wall foundation.
The war, beneath the supreme Queen's single arrow, was wholly declared settled.
"Ooooh!! Long live the new Order!!"
"Victory!! We've wiped out every last southern wolf! Praise Your Majesty Sophia!!"
Watching the tide of battle utterly transformed in under a single minute, the several thousand subjects within the city and the Black Rose soldiers atop the City wall erupted in a mountain-toppling, sea-overturning frenzy of cheers that seemed about to rip the very sky apart!
"Your Majesty——! Boo-hoo-hoo, Your Majesty!!"
Just as the entire battlefield settled into a rare tranquility and the soldiers were lining up by regulation to confiscate the prisoners' weapons, the heavy, orderly pure-iron city gate of the small city of Severn once again rumbled open.
There appeared a rather unkempt, dainty figure clutching the hem of her light pink dress smeared with stone dust and mud spots, swinging a pair of long pink twin-tails, hobbling and twisting yet exceedingly swift as she went sliding and bounding down the towering City wall steps.
Irene's flushed round little face was streaked all over with tears, her pair of sapphire-like big eyes glistening, crying now like a pink lop-eared rabbit that had suffered a monstrous grievance.
Bustling impetuously, she stepped over the gravel strewn across the ground and dove straight to the front of the supreme war chariot, firmly throwing her arms around the slender waist of Sophia, who had just removed her fine-steel dragon helm.
"Boo-hoo-hoo... Your Majesty! This Inventor was scared to death! I really thought I was going to die.
You came rushing all this way from so far—is it because you couldn't bear to part with me too... boo-hoo-hoo..."
The pink-haired girl rubbed her fuzzy little head most improperly and hard against the cold, neat breastplate of Sophia's armor, sobbing her little tsundere pride and little excitement into a blubbering mess in an instant.
On Sophia's poker-faced little visage, the corner of her mouth twitched, ever so faintly and covertly.
With a touch of distaste she extended her slender pale fingers, pressing against Irene's flushed round face, and most regularly pushed this clingy pink twin-tailed Inventor away a bit, her cold yet warm voice slowly sounding:
"Good girl, stop crying. Cry any more and I'll pack you off to scrub the toilets."
"Yah! Your Majesty, you're scaring people again!!"
Irene sniffled her stinging nose, turned her flushed face away, muttering with a touch of bashfulness, yet her hand still gripped the corner of Sophia's garment tightly, refusing to let go.
At this point, Grand Commander Bardess too, hand on her famed longsword, her chainmail letting out a sharp, crisp, ringing clatter, came striding over with Willow and a host of headquarters' core backbone members.
Bardess's clear, bright big eyes were still brimming with irrepressible deifying worship. She stepped forward, voice crisp:
"This humble minister Bardess has, by fortune, not failed her charge!! I have firmly defended Your Majesty's westernmost Black Rose gate!!"
Willow, meanwhile, gently rubbed her hand, numb from the recoil of the black musket, tucked the long hair draped over her shoulder behind her ear, and stared at Sophia with glistening beautiful eyes, unable to help asking softly, with utmost curiosity and utmost anticipation:
"Your Majesty... while this humble minister was tallying the military supplies in the rear, there has been one heaven-vast doubt in my heart that I wish to beg the Lord to point me a clear path on.
That old emperor of the south is so deeply scheming; since he dared tonight to personally follow the vanguard battalion's deathsworn in a surprise attack on Severn, his disguise and leather armor must surely have passed the Empire's military department's most rigorous restoration and precise calculation.
Even General Delilah's scouts could not catch his fox's tail in an instant.
Your Majesty, seated at the very core of that war chariot—just what kind of supreme foresight transcending the mundane did you employ, that you could, within a single second, across a li of rolling thick smoke, precisely pick off and blow apart the head of that villain ringleader who wore no fireproof clothing?"
Hearing Willow's question, Bardess seated to the side, and Irene—whose long twin-tails were practically leaping with eagerness—both fixed their gazes in perfect unison.
However, facing her retainers' supreme blind worship, almost as if regarding the chief priest at a god's side, the supreme Queen Sophia, face cold as frost, merely, rather unkemptly and most improperly, propped her chin on the armrest of the war chariot.
Her pale-golden Queen's eyes gazed coldly at that corpse pinned to the tree trunk like a dead pig at the edge of the Red Maple Forest, and in that familiar voice—cold, yet threaded with a wisp of supreme indulgence—she said, gently yet unusually bluntly:
"That old emperor disguised himself well—even, so as not to alert the snake by beating the grass, he deliberately patted sand and mud spots onto his clothing, and his frame, thanks to specially-made leather armor, did not appear stooped at all.
But... those southern deathsworn were too stupid; they were utterly unworthy of stepping into headquarters' regulations."
Saying this, Sophia pointed at the southern routed troops ahead who were obediently dropping their weapons, and analyzed indifferently:
"In the dead of night, amid this brutal fire of war where armor and helmets are cast away, everyone bursts forth with speed to save their own lives.
But that one cluster of freaks in mud-caked clothing—as they passed every regular gap in the hidden shrubbery and rubble heaps beside the Red Maple Forest—were, out of deeply ingrained habit, accommodating that one person's pace.
When he sped up, the entire formation accelerated in full.
When he slowed, those heavy infantry who fancied themselves invisible men—even with black muskets pointed at their backsides—would, most eerily, hold their guard fast.
One man, no matter how tightly he cinches his belt, cannot at such a moment change the class-bound rules ingrained in the very bones of dozens of elite deathsworn.
In the regulations of the art of war, such an illogical flaw and irregularity...
who else could it be, but that old wolf seated in the deepest depths of the southern Empire, who most feared the war's flames reaching him?"
Hearing this precise, unerring supreme directive that had calculated the enemy's psychology, armaments, and micro-level regulations with airtight perfection, the three—Grand Commander Bardess, Chief Inventor Irene, and Willow—standing in place, in one-ten-thousandth of a second, went abruptly and utterly blank in their minds.
So brilliant... this was the true supreme divinity that towered above all living beings!!
Who would have thought—Your Majesty had, amid the slaughter of a hundred-thousand-strong host, the inhumanly horrific rolling smoke and ear-piercing roar, used that pair of Queen's eyes, within a single second, to perform the highest-density macro-regulation calculation of every minute glance of every southern deathsworn on the battlefield, of every overlapping footfall after the grass and trees were broken!!
Those rats thought they had deceived the heavens and crossed the sea, but in the eyes of the supreme Your Majesty Sophia, their every step of provision consumption, their every breathing rate, were nothing but utterly-lost dead-game chess pieces before the white-fox-fur armchair and the long desk!!
"This humble minister... understands completely now!
Praise Your Majesty!!"
Bardess rubbed her moist eye corners, slammed her longsword back into its sheath, her voice filled with an almost faith-like resolve.
As the Empire's routed troops covering the hills and fields all disarmed and surrendered, beneath the towering gray wall-foot of the small city of Severn, the once deafening battle cries and Black powder roars at last fully subsided.
In the early-autumn dawn, the cold wind howled, sweeping away the last wisp of pungent gunsmoke from the battlefield.
The twenty towering wooden trebuchets ceased their grinding, and the eighty-thousand-strong heavy-armored phalanx too, most regularly, stretched out a defensive line spanning several li across the wilderness.
This brutal great battle, which had nearly torn the western defensive line utterly apart, at this moment finally arrived at its most complete conclusion.
As nerves strained to the extreme slackened in an instant, the sand before the entire small city of Severn suddenly fell into an eerie, yet moving, dead silence.
"Clang—"
Some Severn servicewoman—who, none knew—her face all yellowish-brown mud and bloodstains, suddenly let the black musket she had been gripping tightly slip from her hand and fall to the ground.
She looked at those once-arrogant Empire prisoners now kneeling across the wilderness like dead dogs, then raised her head to look at that gray rampart behind her, which had not cracked the slightest seam amid the war's flames.
"We... survived?"
"Your Majesty brought troops to save us... we won!!"
An extremely faint murmur rose among the crowd, and then, like floodwaters breaching a dike, those border guards—who had fought nearly to the death, their very fingers nearly worn to bare bone—slumped down onto the thick sand like soft mud.
They did not cheer, nor did they feel the pride of vanquishing the enemy; from those bloodshot eyes, in one-ten-thousandth of a second, rolling hot tears surged forth in unison.
One, two, ten, a hundred...
In the end, across the entire square and at the foot of the City wall, countless guard big sisters and impoverished subjects who had staked their lives to hold the line and to fight, all heedless of appearances, embraced one another tightly and broke into utterly uncontrollable wailing.
It was a bitter weeping at having seen sacred divine grace amid despair—a fervent joy at having reclaimed life under the protection of that young silver-haired Queen!
The supreme fortress's high ministers, standing not far from the war chariot's wreckage, watching these soldiers slumped all over the ground and weeping as one, felt their hearts—once blown hard as iron by the cold wind—in this instant utterly steeped in the gentlest of spring waters.
Irene at this moment was sniffling and tugging at a corner of Sophia's armor.
In her pair of sapphire-like big eyes, the tenderness and heartache that belonged to a young girl could no longer be hidden at all.
Watching those subjects weeping with their heads in their hands, Irene scrubbed hard at the tears in the corners of her eyes with her fair little hands, and even the pair of disheveled pink twin-tails atop her head drooped listlessly onto her slender shoulders as she, too, broke into sobs with a loud wail.
Daphne, holding the Staff of Life, gazed quietly with her pure, beautiful eyes at those wounded soldiers who had escaped death by the skin of their teeth.
Down her once-holy, frost-cold face, two streams of clear tears slid pervasively along her pale cheeks; her hands clasped tightly before her, and a faint, lingering pang of sourness welled up within her.
Willow at her side silently turned away; beneath her armor, her pair of jade hands resting on her longsword trembled slightly, as she most covertly used a silk handkerchief to keep dabbing at her reddened eyes.
And it was not only them—even those two Mason great generals, who on ordinary days held discipline to the strictest on the drill ground and were the most tough and rigidly by-the-book in temperament, were at this moment somewhat overcome.
"These new recruits, crying without an ounce of headquarters' discipline—truly improper."
General Delilah cursed under her breath most coarsely and turned her head away.
The thick, heavy fine-steel dragon spear in her hand she planted firmly into the sand, and from her excessive force, even the fine-steel vambraces on her arms gave a deep, crisp creak.
Yet, lit by the firelight, this First General raised her arm most roughly—yet appearing very timid all the while—and with the back of her coarse hand, caked all over with Black powder, scrubbed hard at the reddened corners of her own eyes.
And atop the City wall battlements, Grand Commander Bardess—who held an almost rigid, exacting standard for battle-line defense—had her pair of clear, bright big eyes swollen up just like peaches.
This obsessive-compulsive Grand Commander pulled a hempen rope hanging over the wall's edge—which looked somewhat irregular—perfectly straight, trying to use this mechanical motion to mask the heaven-overturning howl and choked sobs in the depths of her heart.
But those faint sobs, in the end, naturally carried out upon the cold early-autumn wind.
Watching these retainers and subjects who had toiled bitterly half their lives in wind, sand, and war's flames, and now wept like little children, Your Majesty Sophia, standing at the very core of the silver war chariot, at last let a never-before-seen warm ripple slowly well up in her pair of pale-golden Queen's eyes.
That layer of cold detachment and haughtiness belonging to the supreme sovereign was, in this instant, set down.
Her sword of royal authority, refracting a cold gleam in the firelight, was most regularly sheathed, and her jade-white arm slowly extended, most rarely and most graciously, to gently ruffle Irene's fuzzy little pink head.
Then, that crisp, ringing, cold yet most covertly indulgent and doting warm voice spread ever so gently across the night sky:
"Go ahead and cry."
Sophia looked at this wilderness on the western fringe, looked at those Severn commonfolk who had fiercely defended the new City wall, and spoke indifferently:
"When you've finished crying... This Queen will take you all home."
Hearing this word "home," Grand Commander Bardess and General Delilah standing at her side once again, irrepressibly, surged with a mountain-toppling, sea-overturning wave of astonishment within their hearts.
"Boo-hoo-hoo... mm!!"
Hearing these words, the sweet-and-sour spring within Irene's heart utterly breached its dike.
The pink-haired girl, using her fair arm like a handkerchief to scrub hard at her tears, raised her flushed round little face up from within Sophia's armor.
Her pair of taut, straight pink twin-tails swung most merrily in the wind with her vigorous nodding.
Her big sapphire eyes were full of a little smug tsundere pride and sweetness, and tugging at that crisp voice still carrying a trace of hoarseness and a sobbing lilt, she reckoned aloud:
"Mm! Your Majesty! Let's go home! This Inventor has it all figured out—going by headquarters' supreme regulations and schedule...
By this time, those marvelous Black Rose wheat in the Royal City—this autumn, they're surely all grown golden-golden and fully ripe!
The common folk won't go hungry anymore.
Once we're back, Your Majesty, you are absolutely not allowed to keep sitting on your white-fox-fur armchair every day docking This Lady's caramel Pudding anymore!!"
The setting sun sank wholly below the horizon, and atop the towering gray colossal-beast City wall of the small city of Severn, the jet-black banner of the Black Rose snapped and rustled in the night wind.
Beneath that supreme night sky exuding wisps of chill, several thousand great marching cauldrons were once again briskly lit with dry firewood by the laborers.
The rich, sweet fragrance of bean soup intertwined with the spirited, settled laughter of the subjects, and together with that whole expanse of Red Maple Forest being wholly swallowed by the night, all were steeped in the supreme sweet residual warmth that belonged to the new Order.
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