Lord of Winter: Beginning with Daily Intelligence - Chapter 453 - 287: Before the Final Battle (2)
Chapter 453: Chapter 287: Before the Final Battle (2)
The Personal Guard bowed deeply: “I understand, sir.”
He turned and left, the soles of his boots tapping on the stone slabs, one by one, growing fainter.
Once more, the corridor returned to silence, leaving Edmund alone, standing where shadows and firelight mingled.
He leaned against the cold stone pillar and slowly exhaled.
At that moment, he bore no armor, no helmet, just a middle-aged man, a father understanding his fate.
He murmured to himself, as if speaking only to his own ears: “This is my only selfish desire.”
This was his only selfish desire. For generations, the Edmund Clan had defended the Northern Territory for the Empire, and their bloodline had long since seeped into this icefield.
From grandfather to father, from eldest brother to firstborn son, one cold tombstone after another stood upon the snow-buried hills.
He was unwilling to let his children witness the finale of his family’s saga once more.
With loyalty as their sword, ultimately to be buried beneath the snow.
At that moment, his daughter’s smile appeared in his mind.
Emily, that stubborn, willful girl, more like him than anyone.
She was in the Red Tide Territory, not far from the front line, and had recently become pregnant.
Thinking of this, Edmund felt his chest tighten slightly: “I hope they will survive.”
But Edmund slowly raised his eyebrows, the corners of his lips curving into a smile that was almost self-deprecating.
Louis, that young man, seemed frail yet was decisively ruthless, possessing a rare steadiness and relentlessness.
Much calmer than he was in his youth, and far more ruthless.
Perhaps… he truly could protect Emily.
……
Night unfurled like a torn beast’s hide, draping over the broken fortress ruins, where blood mingled with mud, flowing into a rotting, stinking river.
A headless knight’s corpse hung upon a shattered catapult, his silver armor shattered, his chest cavity torn open by some enormous beast, with entrails swaying in the night breeze.
His lance was still thrust into the ground, its tip broken, yet the butt was tightly gripped in bare bone fingers.
He was the vanguard commander of the Imperial Sixth Legion, the Extraordinary Knight Ravento.
He once led hundreds of elite knights to break through beast hordes, holding North Arid Ridge for three days and nights.
Now his head hung from the flagpole, a coarse iron nail driven through his eye socket, pinned beneath a bloodstained battle flag.
Footsteps thundered to the ground.
The giant’s heavy hooves cracked the stone slabs, stepping one by one into the heart of the ruins.
It stood ten meters tall, its skin like cracked black ice, tendrils emerging from shoulders and elbows, entwining its limbs, dragging countless bloodstained limbs.
And upon its shoulder stood Tistu, the conqueror of the Northern Barbarians.
Yet now he was merely a vessel of fury.
Flames of anger blazed behind him, like a patch of inextinguishable red vines, roots sprouting from his spine, arm bones, eye sockets, writhing like worms, pulling his bones and muscles forward in a relentless march of slaughter.
His pupils were no more, leaving only two burning crimson points, scorching this world.
“Kill—” His throat issued a deep roar, like the breathing of some beast.
He gave no order, nor needed any.
The vines’ resonant fury had long connected him to all his warriors.
The next moment, the Nightmare Legion from the Northern Territory surged like a tide, pouring out from the hills and ravines.
Those things, not human, running and shrieking, each body enwrapped with vines, swollen and deformed, clutching broken swords, axes, shields taken from enemy corpses.
Some dragged unhealed broken legs, yet could still run, fueled by “sharing the fire,” some with chests hollowed, ribs exposed, yet still laughing as they charged.
“Ah! Kill! Kill, kill, kill!!”
The shouting rose like the howl of wild dogs, surging in the blood of the fallen.
The elite Imperial Knight Order endeavored to organize a defense line, six heavily armed riders charging down the long streets of ruins, lances slicing through the night like silver serpents.
But the furious Barbarian warriors cared naught for the threat of lances; they opened their arms, meeting the lances with their own bodies, overturning warhorses to the ground.
Even as entrails splattered the earth, their hands still clutched at the knights’ throats, relentless and unyielding.
Tistu stood on the giant’s shoulder, quietly overseeing the land he had scorched.
He felt no joy, no pain, nor any sense of victory.
Only a deeper void.
Beasts without consciousness would not cheer for victory.
He was merely an instrument driven by fury.
The king seed of the Burning Pain Vine Court had completely seized his will. His soul, like the bones of the dead, was being consumed by the crimson roots inch by inch, utterly submerged in this endless slaughter.
And this was only the beginning of the “fury” tide.
……
The afternoon wind of the Southeast Valley carried with it the scent of forests and blood, sweeping past the battle flags of the Red Tide Legion and the allied noble knights, fluttering.
The battle-clearing had lasted for three hours, with the last group of Barbarian stragglers in the valley utterly routed by the Knight Order’s assault.
They still bore the marks of the fury ritual, blood-red yet unorganized and without support, like fish stranded after a receding tide, struggling, howling in the dust before falling silent.
Under Louis’s proposal and pressure, the various lords of the Southeast had long since assembled their capable Knight Orders into a temporarily efficient “Southeast United Knight Order,” with the Red Tide Personal Guard leading the line.
Initially, the nobility harbored caution toward this young lord.
Yet after several purging battles, be it in strategic coordination or battlefield tempo, they had to admit, this Lord of the Red Tide was the most reliable military and political core in the North East of the Northern Territory.
Now the Knight Orders no longer acted independently, and none sought to seize command.
Everyone knew: in the collapse of the situation and the breakdown of the vassal system, only this young man’s uncannily precise judgment could pull them out of calamity.
Now the entire Southeast had tacitly acknowledged: the Red Tide Lord was the master of the North East.
Louis sat astride his horse on a rocky hill, his battle robe stained with fresh blood, yet his eyes were calm as snow.
He gazed toward the rising smoke in the distance, speechless for a long while.
Sif rode close on a white horse, her gaze already lingering on Louis’s face: “What’s wrong with you today?”
Unable to hold her patience, she had come over, though Louis had merely allowed her to join in the aftermath.
Louis remained silent for a while before speaking: “Just didn’t sleep well last night.”
Sif squinted at him, not believing the perfunctory excuse, but asked no more.
Louis pondered a moment longer, then raised a hand to summon Lambert.
“Tell Hillco,” Louis’s tone was low and firm, irrefutable, “apart from the three pairs of Soul-devouring Lizard Beasts needed for breeding, slaughter the rest to make Frost Devourer Resonance Bombs.”
“And,” he continued, “gather half of the elite and above knights, and follow me north.”
“Yes.” Lambert asked no questions, bowed, and left,
Leaving only Louis alone on the rocky hill, the wind lifting his cloak like a blazing red banner.
He was prompted to do this by the intelligence he received this morning from the Daily Intelligence System.
The short forewarning contained only a few words, yet was cold enough to pierce to the bone: [In ten days, the Northern Alliance Army will be defeated, Duke Edmund will die, and the Burning Pain Vine Court will sweep the entire Northern Territory, leaving not one in a thousand alive.]
Louis knew that, like all previous intelligence, this one would come true; if he chose to stand by, the outcome would be irrevocable.
He was no saint, but if the entire Northern Territory fell, the Red Tide Territory would be equally doomed, and everything he had created and protected would be destroyed.
“If there’s even a sliver of a chance, I must gamble on it myself.”
He had the “Daily Intelligence System,” which was his trump card.
Others couldn’t foresee the future, but he could glimpse fragments of it; others could only wait for fate, but he could set plans in motion ahead of time.
If he could obtain pivotal tactical intelligence at a critical juncture,
perhaps the ending might not be as the harsh prophecy foretold.
He thought of Edmund, the elderly man who had supported him when he first arrived in the Northern Territory and had given him his daughter’s hand in marriage.
He thought of Emily, thought of the unborn child in her womb.
If they failed, he’d retreat to the Red Tide Territory, taking Emily, Sif, and the unborn child, fleeing south.
But if they won, the Northern Territory could still be saved.
