“Tell your saint this.”
“The wolves have come. I’ve seen them.”
“But on this wasteland, who is the wolf and who is the sheep is not for her to decide.”
The ghostly blue flames in the undead messenger’s eye sockets jumped violently.
Something was wrong!
That “Grand Knight” from the intelligence reports absolutely did not have this kind of oppressive presence!
“As for protection…”
Caesar let out a low laugh. The sound was icy to the bone, dripping with mockery.
“Go back and tell her this. My city has no need for the ‘mercy’ of the dead.”
He raised a hand and pointed a finger at the undead messenger from afar.
“Now, take your bones and get out.”
“Otherwise, I don’t mind tearing you apart and using you as building material for the walls.”
The words were light and casual, yet more insulting than any roar.
The death energy around the undead messenger surged explosively. The venom of that humiliation was almost solid enough to touch.
Its hollow eye sockets fixed on Caesar, and its voice sounded like countless wronged spirits howling together.
“Mortal, you—”
“What a racket.”
Caesar gave a cold snort. Deep within his pupils, a flash of violet light vanished in an instant.
A corner of an Earth Knight’s Domain silently unfolded.
PUFF!
The frozen ground beneath the undead messenger’s feet instantly turned to quicksand, and both its bony legs sank straight in up to the knees.
Then, an invisible gravity as heavy as a mountain crushed down on it from all directions!
Crack… crack crack crack…
Every bone in the undead messenger’s body began to let out shrill, grinding cries!
The ghostfire in its eye sockets flickered wildly in terror, as though it might go out at any moment.
It had no doubt whatsoever that, with a single thought from the other side, its entire skeleton would be crushed on the spot into a heap of bone powder!
What kind of power was this?!
This was not a knight’s Battle Energy. This was direct interference with the laws of the world itself. This was the authority of a land king!
An Earth Knight!
That realization poured over it like a basin of icy water, from skull to heel, extinguishing all its rage and leaving behind only pure fear.
“One last time.”
“Get out.”
The undead messenger did not dare hesitate for even half a heartbeat.
It yanked its legs out of the ground with all its might, not even bothering to pick up the finger bones it dropped, then turned and fled. It looked like nothing so much as a wild dog being chased with its tail on fire by a lion, utterly pathetic in its panic.
The city wall fell deathly silent.
Every soldier of the Black Dragon Guard stared fixedly at their young lord as though he were a god made flesh.
A single sentence. A single look. And that eerie, death-reeking monster had fled in abject terror?
What kind of divine method was this?!
“My lord…”
Barrett’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed with difficulty. His single eye was filled with fanaticism.
“You… you…”
“A little progress.”
Caesar withdrew his gaze and answered flatly.
Then he turned his eyes eastward.
That steel torrent representing the Temple Knight Order was already close at hand.
“The real trouble has arrived.”
…
A quarter of an hour later.
A vanguard of two hundred Temple Knights, formed like a drawn blade, halted before the City of Miracles.
They were an entirely different species from the undisciplined soldiers under Caesar’s command.
Magnificent white warhorses, their bodies fully draped in chainmail.
The knights wore identical full Deathbird plate armor, polished to a mirror sheen. The enormous scales-and-sword emblem on their chests radiated a holy and merciless light.
A formation of two hundred men, silent as a mountain, yet with a presence even more terrifying than the thirteen hundred troops once led by Viscount Simon.
A pressure mixed with Holy Light and iron-blooded slaughter crashed against the city walls wave after wave, like a raging sea, making it difficult for the Black Dragon Guard atop the walls to breathe.
The knight at their head was exceptionally young, and the white plume atop his helmet stood out all the more sharply.
He wore no helmet, revealing a handsome face written through with arrogance. His short golden hair did not move in the cold wind.
Kellan, Centurion of the Blade of Purification, a twenty-five-year-old Grand Knight prodigy.
He lifted his head and looked over the crude black city with the gaze one reserved for trash.
A five-meter wall was practically a joke.
The wall itself had been piled together from unpolished black stone, and fresh mud could still be seen between the cracks.
The wooden watchtowers on the battlements leaned crookedly, as though a single gust of wind might topple them.
And the soldiers on the walls were even more laughable.
Their equipment was a mishmash. Their formation was ragged and loose. Every one of them looked so tense they seemed like country bumpkins who had never seen the world before.
And this was supposed to be called the “City of Miracles”?
How ugly.
A trace of disdain curled at Kellan’s lips.
“By order of Cardinal Inquisitor Augustus!”
Kellan amplified his voice with Battle Energy, and it exploded over the walls like thunder.
“The lord of this place is to open the gates immediately and submit to inspection by the Church!”
That tone did not sound like conversation. It sounded like a master commanding his servants.
A stir ran across the city walls.
Barrett’s single eye went wide with fury, and he was just about to erupt into curses when Roland silenced him with a single glare.
Caesar stood at the very center of the wall, hands clasped behind his back, looking down expressionlessly.
He did not speak. He only watched in silence.
Second by second, time passed.
The atmosphere below the walls began to turn dangerous.
Kellan’s expression darkened bit by bit.
Wherever he went, those nobles treated him like a father descended from heaven. Yet today, some backwater lord dared ignore him like this?
“I’ll say it one more time!”
Anger entered Kellan’s voice.
“Open the gates! My patience is limited! Anyone who obstructs the Church’s ‘purification’ will be treated as an accomplice of heretics!”
Clatter!
The Temple Knights behind him raised their lances in perfect unison. Golden sacred flames burst three feet high from their spearheads, and a terrifying killing intent pointed straight at the city walls.
Quite a few new recruits of the Black Dragon Guard went pale with fright, their weapons nearly slipping from their hands.
At that moment, Caesar finally spoke.
His voice was calm, yet like a great bell, it struck clearly against every heart.
“This is the City of Miracles.”
“I am the lawful lord of this city and of the hundred-mile territory beyond it, Caesar Valerius.”
“I hold an official Pioneer Order personally issued by the Emperor of the Empire.”
He paused, and his deep violet eyes, like two bottomless ancient wells, rested calmly on Kellan.
“So tell me, sir.”
“You are a knight of the Church. On what grounds do you command an imperial noble to open his gates for you?”
Caesar’s words were like an invisible slap across Kellan’s face!
Kellan’s complexion instantly turned the color of pig’s liver!
He had never imagined that this backwater lord would not only fail to wet himself in terror, but would actually throw imperial law back in his face!
“How dare you!”
One of Kellan’s guard knights barked furiously.
“Before the radiance of the Father God, all secular law is as worthless as waste paper! We suspect your territory is sheltering heretics and demand entry to search the city! This is the Church’s sacred authority!”
“A search?”
Caesar smiled, and the curve of his lips was full of icy ridicule.
“Imperial Code, Volume Three, Article Seventy-Three: Any armed force entering a noble’s territory without the lord’s permission is equivalent to a declaration of war.”
He looked down at Kellan, calm and steady.
“So tell me, sir. Are you truly certain you wish to represent the Church of Light in declaring war on an imperial noble—on the entire Valerius family?”
“Sharp-tongued.”
Kellan gave a cold snort, forcibly suppressing his anger as he shifted tactics.
“Lord Valerius, you misunderstand. We do not mean to offend.”
“But Viscount Simon’s thousand-man army was recently wiped out by the undead in this region.”
He stared hard into Caesar’s eyes.
“The undead catastrophe is close at hand. We have been ordered to purify this place.”
“Your city lies at the center of the plague zone. For the sake of your people, it is necessary for us to confirm whether this place has already been infiltrated.”
“This is for your own good.”
The words were dressed in righteousness, soft on the surface and hard underneath.
Yet Caesar merely cast him a flat glance.
“The undead are not your concern.”
“Their messenger was just here.”
“What?!”
Kellan was visibly startled.
“It proposed an interesting idea.”
A faintly amused curve touched Caesar’s lips.
“It suggested that I swear loyalty to its ‘saint’ in exchange for the protection of the Death Legion, so that I could resist a group of neighbors who are… hm, even less reasonable than they are.”
Caesar’s gaze passed meaningfully over Kellan and the knights behind him.
“And then?”
Kellan asked before he could stop himself.
“And then…”
“I told it to get out.”
“And I informed it that this land already has a master.”
The instant those words fell—
A terrifying invisible pressure, so immense it seemed capable of crushing the soul itself, descended with Caesar at its center!