Beneath the Red Dragon

So when Marino Duke Lorne stepped onto the towering city wall with his Personal Guard, a rare sliver of confidence finally rose within him.

The shadow of the Giant Dragons in the sky had long since vanished, the continuous raindrops had also ceased, and only the water still flowing through the drainage channels along the wall remained.

Many of the soldiers guarding the wall were huddled together in the embrasure towers, shrinking into themselves and squeezing close to one another for warmth.

Even unending drizzle should not have been this cold, but the Golden Empire possessed countless Giant Dragons, and among the Five-Color Dragons, the White Dragons in particular were overwhelmingly numerous.

These White Dragons, working in concert with the Blue Dragon Species that controlled storms, had forcibly rewritten the weather over the entire surrounding region; the summer rain was colder than winter downpours, and within a mere half month many Warriors of the Noble Corps had suffered frostbite.

The change in weather made these Legion Warriors’ demand for supplies all the greater, especially for cold-resistant cotton garments, which were in desperately short supply due to the lack of prior preparation.

Moreover, the weather’s erratic shifts—at times hot, at times cold—further tested these Warriors’ capacity to adapt.

Yet the Legion Warriors were still the fortunate ones; the most severely afflicted were the conscripted laborers and craftsmen who maintained the entire defensive line and carved mountain-fortress watchtowers.

The long-lasting chill and standing water forced many laborers and craftsmen to work ankle-deep in pools, their skin rotting away, with sores and maggots erupting over everything below the knee.

As for the slaves, three or four out of every ten had already perished.

It could be said that the entire defensive line of the Marino Duchy was built atop the corpses of these slaves and conscripted commoners.

Duke Lorne stood in the passage along the wall, surveying the defensive line he had crafted with his own hands. Overhead, Griffin Knights took turns on duty, patrolling day and night above the entire stretch of mountain defenses, probing every movement in the surrounding lands.

Standing upon the highest point of the eastern peaks and looking out, the scattered fires burning along the distant mountains eased his mind.

The Southern Nobles’ overarching tactical conception for the entire Marino Defense Line was to rely on solid fortifications and powerful defensive installations to shatter the enemy’s frontal assaults, all while searching for opportunities to launch counterattacks.

So long as Dorabi City held firm, then even if the line were pierced by the enemy’s blood and bodies, the fortifications flanking any breach could still seal off the Eight Kings’ Alliance Army’s line of retreat, and in coordination with the Reserve Legions stationed in the cities behind the line, the invaders from the Eight Kings’ Alliance Army could be isolated and annihilated one by one.

Therefore, in addition to the garrison forces stationed in the permanent fortifications and strongholds, the Marino Defense Line also had mobile units assigned in the rear of each defensive sector—such as the Rose Knight Order dispatched by the Rose Duchy, and various composite cavalry regiments contributed by other realms.

“Hah… I wonder where those bastards are now, and what kind of offensive preparations they’re making. Have those merchants and spies’ informants brought back any news of late?”

Marino Duke Lorne turned his head and asked one of his Personal Guards.

“My Lord Duke, the only recent information from our spies is that the Frost Giant Legion, as the last formation of the Eight Kings’ Alliance Army, has marched into the Divine Forsaken Mountain Range. Beyond that, no further messages have gotten through.”

One Personal Guard replied cautiously, “Almost the entire sky has been sealed off by the Eight Kings’ Alliance Army, and it’s extremely difficult for our spies to discover which direction those monsters are moving.”

“Moreover, many spies vanished without a trace after sending back their last reports. According to the merchants, when they left the Golden Empire they saw many people being hanged outside the city walls directly by the Judicial Court. Those merchants don’t dare pry into the Golden Empire’s movements at a time like this!”

Duke Lorne exhaled a breath of white vapor. As a powerhouse at the Holy Sanctuary Peak, bolstered by ancestral treasures passed down through his bloodline, he even dared contend with ordinary Legends—yet now he could not suppress the chill creeping through his heart.

In war, logistics and intelligence were matters of paramount importance, but at this moment the Nobility were almost utterly blind to the movements of the Northern Kings; even Divination Skills could not clearly discern the enemy’s intentions.

By contrast, the Northern Kings, leveraging an Aerial Legion so powerful it could not be matched, had all but mapped out every detail of the Marino Defense Line’s dispositions.

This hurled the faint confidence that had just arisen in Marino Duke Lorne straight back down into the depths of the Abyss.

Lorne could not help but stamp his foot hard on the dense stone beneath his expensive Beast Hide Boots, as though this might somehow lend him a measure of reassurance.

They were standing upon a solid observation platform, hewn directly from the surrounding mountains and built entirely from gray-brown granite blocks.

A Heavy Cannon sat there, its entire barrel etched with intricate Magic patterns, with massive Magic Crystals and Gemstones embedded as rapid-response power cores.

Besides the Magic-guided Cannon, many other Heavy Cannons—’Mordain’s Fury’—had been purchased from merchant guilds of the Central Continent and mounted upon the embrasures of the wall; these had been forged and cast by the Dwarves.

Moradin was the Dwarf Main God jointly revered by many Dwarven clans, and the power of a Heavy Cannon bearing the name ‘Mordain’s Fury’ naturally could not be underestimated.

Yet although the shells used by ‘Mordain’s Fury’ appeared similar in composition to the High-Energy Propellant used in the Golden Empire’s Artillery—sharing the same energetic components—they were not some piece of black technology developed by the Dwarves.

The shells of ‘Mordain’s Fury’ were in fact the fruit of a certain Magic Plant cultivated by the Dwarves in volcanic and heavy-metal regions, innately imbued with a dual explosive effect, both physical and Magical.

Because their yield was far from as abundant as artificially synthesized munitions, their price was correspondingly high; outfitting this batch of ‘Mordain’s Fury’ Heavy Cannons alone had cost the Southern Nobles several hundred thousand Gold Coins.