Free Web NovelThe morning mist weighed heavily outside White Stone Town, where The Holy See's defense line stood in chilling silence; the entire position resembled a swamp of corpses, a stillness that froze the heart.
At the top of the mill, there was an exhaust chimney that had long been forgotten.
It was a safety structure left over from the old era to prevent flour dust explosions, but it had long since lost its purpose.
The inner walls of the flue were caked in a thick layer of aged soot mixed with moldy flour residue, the color of putrid blood scabs.
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Old Hans was wedged inside this narrow flue.
This was a place The Holy See's search teams would never give a second glance.
First, there was the smell—the sourness of fermenting rotten grain, the stench of dead rats, and a nauseating mix of grease and soot that perfectly masked the scent of a living person.
Even the most keen-scented hounds would only turn their heads away in annoyance upon smelling such a stench.
To be safe, Hans had coated his entire body in soot and waste oil, leaving only his eyes exposed.
Through a nearly imperceptible crack in the chimney, he looked out at the wasteland outside the town; he wanted to see the town's end with his own eyes, no matter what... At this moment, Old Hans's body was trembling because he was witnessing hell.
On the muddy open ground north of the town, various thorn-based defenses formed a massive frontline of flesh and blood.
Over several hundred other children were planted neatly in the soil—some from their town, others from places unknown.
The spacing was deliberately controlled to a consistent stride, arranged with a near-pious precision.
Only their upper bodies were exposed, like crops waiting to be harvested, or like some carefully placed offerings.
Hans almost instinctively began to count them, but quickly gave up.
His gaze began to subconsciously search for familiar faces.
The blacksmith's young son, the baker's daughter, the grandson of Auntie Pang next door.
Names surfaced in his mind one by one—children he had watched grow up. Their past smiles were still fresh in his memory, yet now they were being used as traps, having long since lost their own consciousness.
In their arms, the children cradled black alchemy explosive packs.
The devices were far too large for them; some children had to use both arms to clutch them tightly.
Rough fuses extended from the explosives, buried by The Holy See's craftsmen into the soil behind them like ugly, cruel umbilical cords.
The Holy See was well aware of the characteristics of Louis and his army: tanks could crush Thorn Knights, ignore mobs, and answer all threats with cannon fire.
But they could not possibly fire upon a whole row of children.
If the explosives were buried directly in the ground, the Red Tide could find other ways to deal with them; if they were replaced by adult believers, the Red Tide would eliminate the targets without hesitation.
Only by placing the explosives in the arms of children and tying the fuses to their heartbeats could the battlefield be forcibly shifted from a military issue to a moral one.
The children did not cry or fuss; they did not even shiver in the cold wind.
Every pair of eyes was wide open, their pupils a cloudy grayish-gold, devoid of focus, staring blankly toward the north.
"Beasts..."
Hans bit down hard on the back of his hand, his teeth sinking into the flesh.
But he didn't dare make a sound, only letting tears flow silently, washing away the soot on his face and leaving light-colored tracks on his skin.
Beasts in human skin.
They were using children as shields, as landmines, as roadblocks to force the Red Tide's tanks to stop.
Suddenly, the earth began to vibrate.
On the northern horizon, a black line slowly appeared.
At first it was just a silhouette, then it gradually differentiated into massive steel behemoths.
It was the Red Tide's vanguard tank group.
The tracks crushed the earth, emitting a low, rhythmic roar like the heartbeat of an ancient titan—thump, thump.
Hans looked at those cold steel figures, a nearly tearing contradiction rising in his heart.
He had heard from bards coming from the north and from The Holy See's propaganda that these things were incredibly powerful and might be able to defeat these beasts of The Holy See; he hoped they would do so.
But once they opened fire, the children on this land would be turned into fragments of flesh and blood in an instant.
And if they didn't fire, as soon as they got close, the fuses would be lit, and the tanks would be blown into wreckage alive.
The Holy See was betting—betting that the Lord of the North named Louis still possessed a mortal's mercy.
Sure enough, °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° the Red Tide's army stopped, only a few hundred meters away from the children.
Hans closed his eyes, unable to bear watching any longer: "It's over... it's all over."
...Behind a tank, Vance, the Deputy Legion Commander of the Red Tide's Second Legion, felt his breathing unconsciously grow shallow.
Through the lens, the front line was sliced into grayish-white puzzle pieces by the morning mist.
The Holy See had transformed the entire land into a living trap.
The mud was filled with barricades made of tangled dark red thorns.
Those thorns were not dead plants but were slowly writhing, their surfaces covered in barbs like blood vessels that had been forcibly straightened and hardened.
Wooden stakes soaked in alchemy fluids were embedded between the thorns; once crushed by a heavy weight, the vine thorns would tighten on their own, locking tracks and tripping warhorses.
Further back was a layer of grayish-white mist drifting close to the ground.
That was not naturally formed fog, but a low-altitude toxic mist mixed with hallucinogenic pollen and analgesics.
Even a fully armed knight, after inhaling a few breaths, would suffer from disorientation and loss of time perception, becoming a sitting duck.
The terrifying part was their mandatory path—rows of children with only their upper bodies exposed.
They were planted in the mud like stakes, cradling black alchemy explosives in their arms.
Rough fuses extended from the explosive casings, merging into the rear along the ground, connecting with the thorns, anti-explosion stakes, and the mist zone into a single entity—like a meticulously woven trap waiting for them to enter the net.
Vance's palms were covered in sweat; what he saw was not an enemy array, but an entire defense system built around children.
Those children's bodies were thin, their faces youthful yet gaunt.
Every pair of eyes was open, their grayish-gold pupils appearing exceptionally cloudy in the mist.
Occasionally someone would blink, but it was mechanical, like a broken gear spinning idly.
In this moment, Vance's teeth made a faint but piercing sound as he clenched them; he was beyond furious.
He had seen the most tragic mountains of corpses and seas of blood on the snowfields of the Northland, and he had personally ordered the shelling of enemy arrays, causing countless casualties.
But all of that happened within the rules of the battlefield, whereas the scene before him didn't even deserve to be called war.
It was a desecration, the most thorough trampling of humanity.
Vance's Adam's apple bobbed violently.
"Sir... let's bypass them." His voice was trembling, not from weakness, but from rage suppressed to the limit. "Distance is seven hundred meters. But if the tanks continue to advance..."
As he said this, his gaze never left the lens.
"Those are over several hundred children." Vance squeezed these words out from between his teeth. "In the eyes of the heretics, they aren't even human, but our knights..."
Before he could finish, the air around the command vehicle seemed to freeze.
The Red Tide knights stood between the armored vehicles and tanks; no one spoke, but everyone's thoughts were nearly identical.
The Red Tide knights could accept death, they could accept sacrifice, and they could even accept defeat.
But they could not accept someone using children as weapons.
Vance whispered the final sentence, his voice nearly hoarse: "These madmen... they don't treat those children as human at all."
Beside the command vehicle, Legion Commander Gray spoke calmly: "Lord Louis already expected something like this to happen."
Gray turned around, looked at the artillery position, and issued an order: "Special Shell No. 3, Frostleaf Shell, airburst fuse, height fifteen meters."
Vance was stunned for a moment, then his eyes lit up, and he snapped to attention: "Understood!"
Gray raised his hand: "Execute."
"Thump— thump— thump—" The position emitted muffled and restrained roars.
The shells left the barrels, tracing a shallow arc.
They did not fall onto the position but burst directly above the children's heads.
Deep blue cold mist suddenly bloomed in the air like a torn night sky, cluster after cluster, instantly blanketing the entire front.
The mist was so thick it wouldn't disperse, carrying the unique cold scent of the Northland; the smell of mint and wormwood rapidly diffused through the air.
"The effect is even faster than expected."
Vance lowered his binoculars, looking at the human bombs sprawled on the ground in deep sleep, his gaze complex.
This was not a new weapon; back in the early pioneering days of the Red Tide Territory, this blue sap extracted from the Frostleaf Vine was merely used as a simple sedative to suppress the primal rage of Fire-scaled Vipers.
But Lord Louis had keenly perceived its strategic potential for stabilizing magic and severing mental resonance.
Over the past ten years, Chief Alchemist Master Silco had grumbled plenty about this formula.
He would complain that "great alchemy shouldn't be used to make potent sleeping pills" while being forced to perform over a dozen technical iterations under the Lord's strict orders.
From the Prototype No. 1 that could only make a Berserk Rabbit daze for a few seconds, to later being able to isolate the mental pollution of a Broodmother, and now to this Deep Blue No. 5 that could instantly and forcibly cool the neural centers of a thousand people through the respiratory system.
This was not just a potion; it was the only solution Lord Louis had prescribed for this mad war.
Hiding in the mill chimney, Old Hans slowly opened his eyes.
He instinctively tensed his body, waiting for the expected explosions and screams.
But nothing happened.
After the sound of the cannons, the world had instead grown quiet.
The blue mist, like a giant blanket, slowly descended, covering the entire contaminated land.
Hans saw the red-robed priest, who had been clutching the detonation rope, suddenly freeze in his tracks.
His hand stiffened in mid-air as if all support had been drained from him.
In the next second, the priest's eyes rolled back, and he fell straight backward, crashing heavily into the mud.
And the children in front fell even faster, in great swathes.
Those human stakes, within seconds of contacting the blue mist, seemed to have their switches flipped.
Their originally rigid and upright bodies instantly lost strength, their heads drooping to their chests, their thin shoulders slumping forward.
The black explosive packs slipped from their arms and rolled into the muddy water.
Hans stared fixedly at the position, his fingers digging into the brick joints of the flue.
He saw the children's backs rising and falling faintly; they were not dead, only asleep.
The deep blue mist flowed quietly over the position, swallowing all sound; even the wind seemed to have stopped.
In that moment, it was as if the entire world had been paused.
Old Hans's chest swelled sharply and then collapsed; it was a feeling like surviving a disaster.
"The children survived..." He repeated these words in his heart over and over, as if confirming reality to himself.
The blue mist was like a layer of calm snow covering the madness; he even had a fleeting, absurd thought that perhaps everything would really end here.
But that thought lasted for less than a breath.
From deep within the mist, a muffled tremor suddenly came from the ground.
At first it was just a slight vibration, as if some gargantuan creature was turning over underground.
But just a few seconds later, this vibration turned into a continuous thunder.
It was the echo of thousands of iron boots striking the earth simultaneously.
Old Hans stared through the chimney crack, his pupils suddenly contracting.
That thick layer of deep blue cold mist was forcibly torn open.
Thorn Knights burst through the mist, surging from all directions.
Their numbers were despairingly large—hundreds, perhaps thousands?
They were arranged in dense phalanxes, like an advancing black tsunami.
Every knight's armor looked as though it had been resewn with living thorns; dark red roots crawled out from the gaps in the plates, writhing along necks and backs, piercing into the warhorses' flesh.
Those warhorses had no skin, only bright red muscle covered in vine thorns; what puffed from their nostrils was not white steam, but yellow smoke with the scent of damp rot.
This massive army maintained a deathly silence, broken only by the screeching of metal friction and the creaking of squeezing roots.
They surged from all directions, which naturally included that area of children-mines that had just been put to sleep.
Those children were still sleeping in the blue mist, their heads lolling in the mud, the explosive packs scattered beside them.
Hans had thought the knights would bypass them, or at least slow down.
But they didn't; the Thorn Knights in the front row didn't even lower their heads.
Their gazes were locked onto the distant Red Tide tanks.
To them, the children beneath their feet were not lives; they weren't even considered roadblocks.
"Squelch—"
It was a hair-raising, muffled sound.
Like a ripe watermelon being smashed by a sledgehammer.
Red and white matter splashed onto the knights' greaves, only to be rapidly absorbed by the writhing roots upon them, leaving not a single trace.
Then came the second, the third... "Crunch, crunch, squelch..."
The dense sound of shattering bones mixed into the roar of the march like a soundtrack from hell.
In just over ten seconds, they had trampled a mangled red carpet of flesh and blood.
Hans's stomach churned violently, and a metallic sweetness surged in his throat.
He bit his lip hard until it was pierced, blood flowing into his mouth.
The mist continued to flow, and the Thorn Knights stepped through that layer of flesh-and-blood slurry, their speed increasing, like a wall of despair covered in thorns pressing toward the Red Tide's position from all sides.
Old Hans curled up in the flue; he didn't want to pray anymore. Facing such things, God was useless. frёewebnoѵēl.com
He only wanted to see fire—the most violent fire that could burn all these sins to ashes.
