Free Web NovelBy the time dusk fell, Grey Rock Fortress had not been torn open by artillery fire.
Outside the city walls, the Red Tide Legion's chariot phalanxes had already completed their deployment.
The steel was lined up in a single row, engines idling at the lowest speed, a low roar rolling across the ground like thunder pressing against one's chest.
They did not advance rapidly; they simply turned on their searchlights all at once.
The cold white beams of light swept over the city walls, trenches, and watchtowers, finally coming to a steady rest on the towering castle. This deliberate stagnation was more torturous than any actual siege.
Grey Rock Fortress fell into a deathly silence. The defenders held their posts, but no one knew what they were waiting for.
The attack was long in coming, there was no sign of negotiations, and even death was being postponed.
Kyle Remont stood on the high tower terrace, his eyes bloodshot and his fingernails digging into his flesh.
The sound of the wind whistled in his ears, but it gradually changed its tune, sounding like a whisper pressed against the back of his head.
“Kyle.” The voice was gentle and calm, as if the speaker had been standing behind him for a long time. “I can see your every move.”
Kyle spun around abruptly, but the terrace was empty, save for the silhouette of the castle fragmented by the searchlights.
These auditory hallucinations had begun after the crushing defeat at Blackstone Canyon.
They would come at night, and they would come whenever he closed his eyes.
Kyle stumbled into the council chamber.
The heavy oak door closed behind him, letting out a dull echo.
That sound was drawn out long in the empty hall, like an ill-timed death knell.
The long table was full of people.
The nobles, commanders, and quartermasters of the Grey Rock Province were all present.
Candelabras were arranged in two rows, their flames swaying slightly, illuminating every face with a sallow and weary light.
Commander Baron stood near the head of the table, his forehead drenched in sweat and his hand resting on his sword hilt.
This was an instinctive reaction to tension, a precaution against the siege horn that could sound from outside the city at any moment. frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓
Some nobles were praying in low voices.
Some officers stared at the tabletop, as if silently calculating how much longer they could hold out and whether they could last until the Duke returned.
This was reality, but Kyle could no longer distinguish it.
In his perception, the world had become completely distorted.
The dim candlelight stretched everyone's shadows long and thin, crawling crookedly across the stone walls like a pack of monsters with bared fangs.
In his eyes, there were no colleagues and no subjects.
Every face was a spy planted by the Red Tide.
Every subtle movement was a signal to strike.
The way Commander Baron gripped his sword hilt was no longer a sign of tension in his eyes, but a posture ready to draw a blade.
The corner of that baron's mouth in the corner had clearly only twitched once, but to him, it became a sinister smile.
Those whispered prayers were no longer pleas to the gods, but secret codes used to confirm things with one another.
He heard it—not with his ears, but directly inside his head.
“Bind him...”
“Louis only wants his head...”
“Tonight... now...”
The voices layered one upon another, as if speaking simultaneously inside his skull.
Kyle's breathing began to spiral out of control, and a ring of fine black shadows flickered at the edges of his vision.
Traitors.
They were all traitors.
He stood in the center of a wolf pack.
Commander Baron was the first to notice something was wrong.
This veteran, who had followed Duke Remont in battle for thirty years, saw that Kyle's face was unnaturally pale, his gaze was wandering, and his pupils were contracting uncontrollably.
He hesitated for a split second before stepping forward.
“Young Lord.” His voice was deliberately lowered, carrying a hint of weary raspiness. “You don't look well. Perhaps we should...”
Before he could finish, the sentence took on a different meaning in Kyle's ears.
“You want to kill me?!” Kyle looked up sharply, letting out a scream that was almost inhuman. “In your dreams!!”
He didn't even think; his hand moved first.
His longsword cleared its scabbard, and gray Battle Qi carved a cold arc under the candlelight.
“Puchi.” The sound was not loud, yet it was heart-wrenchingly clear.
The blade pierced Commander Baron's chest and passed straight through.
The body of this veteran, who had stood tall his entire life, stiffened.
He looked down, glancing at the rapidly spreading blood on his chest, then slowly looked up at Kyle.
There was no anger in his eyes, only bewilderment.
“Young...” Blood foam surged from his mouth. “...Lord...”
Before he could finish, Commander Baron fell backward, crashing heavily onto the floor.
The council chamber erupted instantly.
Someone accidentally knocked over a chair, someone stumbled back and collided with a companion, and wine glasses shattered on the floor, the liquid flowing along the cracks in the stone.
Several nobles instinctively backed against the wall, not even daring to raise their heads, as if one more look would invite disaster.
But in Kyle's eyes, this scene had taken on a completely different appearance.
That backing away was not fear, but a coordinated dispersal.
Those overturned chairs were not accidents, but the clearing of attack routes.
Those intersecting figures were sealing off his path of retreat.
Kyle abruptly jerked back his blood-stained longsword, the tip dragging on the floor with a piercing scraping sound as the dark red blood was drawn out in a long trail.
“Don't come any closer!” he roared, his voice shrill and distorted, like a beast backed into a corner. “I see you all!”
His gaze swept back and forth across the faces, rapid and chaotic, as if he were counting his enemies.
“You are all Red Tide people!”
In Kyle's perception, this was not a sudden onset of madness, but a truth that had finally been confirmed.
The failure at Human Flesh Canyon was no accident.
The granaries being precisely blown up, the detonation points being cut off in advance, and every one of his arrangements looking as if it had been read through beforehand—this was not something that could be explained by superior tactics.
And even earlier, the Red Tide had been wandering the edges of the Grey Rock Province like ghosts.
Yet they always managed to appear in the places they least should have been.
The supply convoys had clearly changed their routes, yet they were ambushed just moments before the rainstorm... all of their actions were counter-intuitive.
They didn't raid the nearest targets, they didn't pursue routing soldiers, and they didn't take advantage of victories to expand their gains; instead, they repeatedly avoided the most logical choices.
It was as if someone knew what he was thinking in advance.
As if someone were standing behind Kyle, watching him give orders and then taking a step in the opposite direction.
If it had only happened once, Kyle could have attributed it to luck.
But when such things happened repeatedly, when all coincidences pointed in the same direction...
Then only one explanation remained.
The castle had long since been riddled with holes by infiltrators.
Scouts, quartermasters, nobles, and even these veteran officials whose names he could call out—all of them could have sent the information out.
Otherwise, how could the Red Tide have known where he hid the grain?
How could they have calculated the rainstorm, the wind direction, and even exactly when he would give his orders?
Their current silence appeared to him not as terror but as a guilty conscience, and their retreat was not an escape but the opening of distance as they waited for their companions to strike.
Commander Baron's corpse lay on the floor, the blood spreading along the cracks in the stone.
Kyle did not spare it another glance.
That body, which had served the Remont Family for thirty years, had long since lost all meaning in his eyes.
“Whoever dares to take a step, I'll kill them first!” Kyle waved his longsword around wildly, forcing the crowd to retreat again and again. “I am a Remont!”
He roared loudly; as long as his status remained, as long as the fear remained, they would not dare to pounce immediately.
“None of you can even think of handing me over!!” He backed away step by step, his back hitting a cold stone pillar with a thud, leaving him nowhere else to retreat.
In Kyle's field of vision, the wolf pack was closing in.
But the people in the council chamber could only watch helplessly as their Young Lord, surrounded by enemies of his own imagining, completely broke down in the face of uncontrollable fear.
Just as the nobles were frozen in place by this bloody scene, Kyle became certain of one thing—they were afraid, and he had survived.
This was a narrow escape from death that had been dangerous to the extreme.
He gave no one else time to react, turning abruptly and crashing into the side door like a startled beast.
He forced the heavy wooden door open with his shoulder and stumbled out.
Everyone stood there in a daze, watching Kyle run out in a frenzy.
“Want to take my head to trade for a bounty? In your dreams.” He gasped for air, his voice broken and excited. “I still have one trump card.”
“The thing Father left behind—I'll destroy it before I give it to Louis.”
He propped himself against the wall and stood up, dragging his blood-stained longsword as he staggered toward the depths of the castle.
As the stairs began to lead downward, the air gradually became damp and thick, and a pungent smell of sulfur mixed with the scent of blood rose from deep underground.
That was the Remont Family's true trump card.
The gates to the lowest level of Grey Rock Fortress slowly opened before him.
Light suddenly flooded out.
The underground hall was even brighter than the surface, with neatly arranged alchemical lamps illuminating the entire space.
In the very center was a blood pool nearly twenty meters in diameter, the dark red liquid shimmering with an eerie silver light under the lamps.
Within the blood pool lay the remains of an ancient dragon, stretched out like a split mountain ridge.
The pale white vertebrae were exposed, and the broken skeletal wings were suspended by chains, occasionally dipping back into the blood.
The open chest cavity was filled with a dense network of alchemical pipes, and pumps thudded heavily beneath the dragon's chest, letting out a rhythmic and low roar as if breathing for the dead monster.
Around the hall were rows of blackened iron cages.
Hundreds of children were curled up inside the cages.
Small metal tubes were inserted into their bodies, with medicinal fluid flowing slowly along the lines.
Some were twitching and whimpering, some no longer moved, and others let out unformed, raspy groans from their throats.
They had no names, only numbers.
“Young Lord!” The Chief Alchemist came forward; he was still unaware of what had happened above the research room and, assuming it was a routine inquiry, began his report.
“The Suppression Field has already entered the red zone! The Perfected Forms have not yet finished being tamed, and the Prototypes are currently in a period of intense rejection! Releasing them now...”
Before his voice could finish, a sword light flashed past.
The Chief Alchemist's voice came to an abrupt halt, his body cut down by a single sword strike, blood splattering onto the Runic Array on the floor.
“Get out of the way.” Kyle's voice was unnaturally calm.
He stepped over the fallen corpse, ignoring the screams of the other Alchemists, and climbed onto the main control console beside the blood pool.
Countless indicator lights flashed crazily before his eyes, and the alarm runes had already lit up in a mass of crimson.
His hands gripped the red lever that symbolized the final authority.
“Come out.” His mouth curled into a near-manic grin. “Children, go and kill all those bad people up there.”
The lever was slammed down, and a piercing alarm instantly echoed throughout the underground.
The iron cages popped open row by row.
The first to rush out were sixty Perfected Forms.
They were over two meters tall, their bodies covered in grayish-black scales, their limbs twisted in reverse joints, and their vertical pupils cold and devoid of any emotion.
Following them were hundreds of Prototype Dragon-blooded Youths.
Their mutations were not yet complete, and their bodies were caught in a cycle of tearing and reshaping, leaving them in pain and a state of frenzy as they roared and pounced toward the light.
Kyle stood on high, spreading his arms and laughing out loud.
This was his army, his final trump card, and they obeyed only Remont.
Just then, a Perfected Form numbered 3373 leaped onto the control console.
It landed soundlessly, its vertical pupils contracting as it watched Kyle without any fluctuation.
There was no response to his commands, and no posture of submission.
Kyle's laughter froze on his face.
In the next instant, the monster moved.
The sound of breaking air exploded at close range as No. 3373's figure turned into a gray shadow, its claws going straight for his throat.
“Get back!” Kyle roared, the Battle Qi in his body being forcibly activated.
Gray Battle Qi exploded from all around him, wrapping his body like a rough shell.
He swung his sword upward, the blade and the claws clashing head-on.
“Clang—!”
A piercing sound of metal scraping echoed through the hall.
No. 3373 was sliced open by this single sword strike; from its shoulder to its abdomen, scales and flesh were torn apart together as its body was sent flying, crashing heavily into the edge of the blood pool.
Kyle stumbled and regained his footing, his chest heaving violently.
“Do you see clearly now?!” he rasped and roared, his eyes full of bloodshot veins. “I am your master!”
No. 3373 lay on the ground, its body twitching once, but it did not die.
Its mangled body writhed in the pool of blood, its vertical pupils still deathly locked onto Kyle.
What Kyle did not see was that even more figures were already closing in.
Perfected Forms leaped up from all around, while Prototype Dragon-blooded Youths swarmed out of their cages in a frenzy.
They did not care about the corpses of their companions, nor did they care about colliding with one another; they only followed that most primitive command.
Kill.
Tear apart.
The first youth pounced and had its neck severed by Kyle's sword.
The second grabbed his cloak and was sent flying by his Battle Qi.
The third, the fourth... individual strength lost its meaning in the face of such numbers.
Sharp claws tore through his armor, and teeth bit into his shoulders and arms.
Kyle's Battle Qi rapidly dissipated under the continuous impacts, and his footsteps began to retreat.
“I am a Remont!” he roared, his voice already distorted. “I am...”
His voice was drowned out.
No. 3373 moved once more, its broken body springing up in a way that defied common logic, its arms tightly hugging Kyle as it dragged him into the tide of monsters.
Claws, fangs, and twisted limbs all pressed down on him simultaneously.
The sounds of flesh being torn apart rose and fell one after another.
Kyle's figure soon disappeared beneath the surging black shadows, leaving behind only intermittent roars and the dull thuds of bones breaking.
When the monsters dispersed again, only a blurred mass of flesh remained in front of the control console.
Kyle Remont had died at the hands of the monsters his father had personally created.
But death did not cause this chaos to stop; on the contrary, it was like a broken floodgate.
After a brief pause, the monsters' gazes shifted from that mass of flesh and began to search for new targets.
And these targets were not in the upward passage.
The nearest sounds and the nearest scents were right here in the hall.
The researchers wearing alchemical robes, who had just been operating valves and recording data, finally realized what was happening.
They backed away, turned, and fled; some fell beside the blood pool, and some tried to hide beneath the control console.
They were too slow.
The first Alchemist was pounced upon and pinned to the ground by a Prototype youth.
Claws tore through the robe and plunged directly into the abdominal cavity. The youth lowered its head, using its teeth to tear at the still-twitching internal organs, letting out a satisfied and raspy low growl.
On the other side, two researchers were pinned down simultaneously by a Perfected Form.
Reverse-jointed limbs pinned their arms and legs, scales scraping against the floor.
In the next instant, their neck bones were snapped, the sound as crisp as breaking a thin piece of wood.
There was no hatred here, nor was there any hesitation.
These monsters did not ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) distinguish between master, command, or status.
In their fragmented and simple perception, there was only one standard for judgment: whether something stood in their way.
The screams of the Alchemists were soon drowned out by the roars.
Blood flowed along the Runic Array and into the blood pool, staining the surface with ripples of dark red.
The Dragon-blooded Youths stepped over their bodies as they moved forward, as if crossing over obstacles.
When the last researcher fell, only the heavy and rhythmic breathing of the pumps remained in the hall.
The underground monsters roared, surging upward along the passage.
Gray Rock City and its residents faced their true doomsday.
There will be another chapter posted tonight; I had some things to deal with yesterday and didn't write.
