Fanaticism

Neo issued a series of orders. First, all the Golden-Armored Dragon Turtles on the magic crystal cannon emplacements began roaring in unison. The cannons swiveled their barrels toward the front, making a show of preparing for another bombardment, though the gunners were strictly forbidden from loading any ammunition. The sole purpose of this maneuver was to intimidate the enemy and cover the battle formation as it pulled back—not to wage a real, prolonged battle. Even if the previous twelve volleys had amounted to little more than a fireworks display, that was Neo's doctrine: save where you should, spend where you must. The six cavalry battalions fanned out toward both flanks, each ranging from five hundred to a thousand riders, assuming a posture ready to charge onto the battlefield at any moment. Rear ranks swapped with front ranks as the formation began its withdrawal. Along the way, the enemy's harassing strikes neither slackened nor intensified. The Whip of Order Corps had no intention of seizing this position at the cost of catastrophic casualties, and the defending garrison lacked the resolve to throw away everything in mutual destruction just to inflict heavy damage on the attackers. A tacit understanding thus formed on the battlefield. After all, both sides firmly believed they had a brighter future ahead. Once the corps pulled out of the canyon's core area, tranquility returned to the gorge. The falcon knights circling overhead began sending back observation reports in rapid succession. A massive cloud of dust had risen across the canyon floor, signaling that the enemy had begun a fresh round of alterations to their tunnels the instant fighting ceased, seeking to invalidate the surface hatches Order had just cataloged. Had Neo not uncovered the fatal weakness in the enemy's formidable partnership, this reconnaissance feint would have been an utter failure—wasting supplies without securing a single gain of value. Karen spoke up. "Their commander is quite competent." Neo waved it off. "Just standard operational reflex." Karen lowered his head. "Kanna, we can head down now." "All right!" Little Kanna descended back to the campsite. Once Karen and Neo stepped down from her skeletal back, the bone dragon began vaporizing into dense plumes of mist. From the haze stepped Little Kanna, rubbing her arms, kneading her legs, and taking deep breaths. In the midst of a rapid growth spurt, she always felt somewhat disoriented whenever she shifted between her true form and human body. At night, she often woke with a start from leg cramps. Ordinary calcium tablets had no effect on her, so Karen had already forwarded the matter to the research institute in the rear to have them adjust the formula in their next batch of pills. Of course, if they could take this grand canyon sooner, Little Kanna could simply gnaw on the ore inside the tunnels to replenish her calcium. Neo stretched with a yawn. "I'm heading back to the war room to draw up the diagrams while I still remember the length, width, and force of those vines when they burst from the soil." The principle was simple: the closer to the root system, the thicker the vines and the greater their force. Calculating backward, they might narrow down the root's location to a specific zone. If they could delineate a rough boundary and send teams to conduct a targeted search, their efficiency and secrecy would improve dramatically. "As for you, Lord Corps Commander, you need to go work on that bald head of yours. After all, the people across from us belong to his mother church." "I know." Neo grinned. "If he refuses, then..." Neo made an unplugging motion and continued, "...pull his plug." *** Having dropped his gigantification, Ventura had reverted to the form of a young boy. Though he remained the youngest member within their inner circle, around outsiders he projected an aura of profound maturity. Coupled with the towering physique of his gigantification, it was enough to make anyone forget his real age. The main reason for this was that he held himself to strict standards, constantly striving to imitate Karen. Yet he had not quite grasped the essence of composure, picking up only the solemn, aged demeanor. At the moment, Ventura was checking on the condition of the shieldbearers under his command. There were few wounded in the ranks. Under standard battle formations, incoming attacks were weakened layer upon layer by blessings and arrays, and the meager remaining force was distributed evenly among every shieldbearer. There were no severe injuries, though casualties had occurred—whenever a breach appeared in the line, some shieldbearers had been dragged away by the vines. Their fate was almost certainly death. Although the corps had undergone training and consolidation, it still lacked practical combat experience. Some soldiers showed signs of emotional distress—not out of cowardice, but because these individual elites from small teams had suddenly been thrust into a vast battlefield, and the crushing sense of personal helplessness took a toll on body and mind. Ventura's reassuring words were quite effective. It was not because mimicking Karen's tone worked any particular magic, but simply because the soldiers felt that if a child this young could remain so composed, letting themselves be unsettled by trivial anxieties was thoroughly embarrassing. After completing his inspection and confirming the casualty list, Ventura paused and scratched his head, feeling as though he had forgotten something. He looked left and right, only then realizing that Daliwenluo, who usually stuck by his side, was nowhere to be seen. Recalling Daliwenluo's reaction right before the subterranean vines sprang their ambush, Ventura felt it necessary to report the matter to Karen. By rights, he should not have forgotten something so important, but he had only just mastered cognitive control following gigantification. In the past, he would lose his senses and turn impulsive after transforming; he no longer did, but he still could not avoid the lingering fog that clouded his mind afterward. As he walked past a young shieldbearer, Ventura noticed two girls standing beside him. Ventura recognized this soldier. His name seemed to be Andrew. On his very first day reporting to the district, he had rashly stormed the Ankara Hotel and ended up hung outside its entrance by the Regional Chief for three days and three nights. Because of that incident, although the Regional Chief had not stripped him of his enlistment eligibility, Andrew had been reassigned to the shieldbearer ranks instead of taking up a squad leader post in the cavalry. Given the choice, most soldiers in the corps—especially the youths—preferred the cavalry battalion. The thrill of charging across a battlefield atop an undead warhorse was intoxicating. "Andrew, are you all right?" Alyosha asked with concern. "Your clothes underneath are soaked through. Take them off and I'll wash them for you," Jenseni said, already reaching out to unbutton his tunic. The surrounding shieldbearers from the same squad looked on with envy. "Oh, Andrew, I'm suffering worse injuries right now than I did on the battlefield!" "Yeah, the world is unfair! Look at us, then look at you! Hey, brother, you've violated the principle that all are equal under Order!" "Ah, my clothes are drenched in sweat too! The agony! And I have to wash them myself!" Andrew chuckled. "Haha, why compare yourselves to me? If you have the guts, go compare yourselves to—" Andrew raised a hand to point upward. Yet before his two female companions could stop him, he quietly lowered his arm on his own. The first time he faced Karen, he had boldly vented his resentment. Now, having been thoroughly disciplined, he was genuinely terrified. Jenseni was a summoner and Alyosha an archer; neither had participated in the reconnaissance vanguard, so they had rushed over the moment the troops returned to check on Andrew. The dynamic between the three had nothing to do with romance. They had formed a team in the pioneer space, braving life and death together—an experience closer and more deeply forged than what most married couples in the secular world ever shared. Andrew pulled three packs of cigarettes from his pocket, slipped one between his lips, and handed the rest to Alyosha and Jenseni. The two girls took the hint and helped distribute them among his comrades. In military encampments, cigarettes were forever the primary currency. Even though every soldier, women included, received a monthly ration of cigarettes, supply rarely kept pace with demand. Alyosha offered a cigarette to Ventura. At first, she was slightly surprised by how short the soldier was—practically a child—before she quickly recognized his identity and snapped to attention. "Battalion Commander, sir!" Ventura nodded to her, gently waving away the offered smoke. Stepping in front of Andrew, he asked, "Are you injured?" "No, sir," Andrew replied with a perfunctory salute, speaking around the cigarette between his lips. Young men like him seemed driven by an incessant urge to prove they were different from everyone else. Ventura smiled. "You remind me of myself when I was young." Andrew: "..." Leaving it at that, Ventura walked toward the Corps Commander's tent. Before departing, he deliberately mirrored Karen's manner and patted Andrew on the shoulder. *** Deep within the canyon, inside a cavern where rock walls were riddled with puncturing tendrils, Bilien sat by a table drinking a crimson broth from a bowl. The broth was made primarily of dragon blood—not fresh, but prepared as a potion and dissolved in water to harness its surging vitality and replenish his life force. Nearby, Luke, the Church of Earth's local commander, pinched his nose in distaste. "Every time you drink that, it reminds me of my great-grandmother sipping sour vinegar for her health when I was little." Bilien smiled. "Same principle." "Yes, the same principle—life entering its twilight, grasping at bizarre concoctions in hope of prolonging it." "That only proves you don't understand the true essence of life." "No need to preach to me. My devotion to the God of the Earth cannot be shaken by anyone. Besides, you aren't that old, yet here you are looking like this." "I am merely experiencing a higher state of existence." "Fine. The Order corps has pulled back. I've already ordered our men to seal off the old tunnels and carve out new ones. Their attack was purely to scout our defenses." Bilien nodded. "Their lineup... is luxurious. In terms of both personnel and equipment, there isn't the faintest trace of a so-called militia regiment." "Their chief is the Whip-Wielder, after all. If the head of your Church of Life's Internal Affairs Department wanted to form a personal corps, every other department would pinch their noses and grant him that courtesy, no matter how reluctant they were." "I suspect pure defense won't hold for very long. If they truly attack regardless of cost, we won't outlast them." "For now, they seem to value their lives more than we do. I doubt that Corps Commander Karen dares to squander the Whip-Wielder's assets in this canyon." "Then we can only remain in a stalemate and see whose reinforcements arrive first." "I received a transmission from allied forces nearby today. They were hoping we could take the initiative to finish off our opponents here and go reinforce them." "Then we ought to drag them over here and let them experience the fury of a five-hundred-cannon barrage firsthand. With the way the other side is shelling us, you'd think we were facing the Knights of Order all on our own." "It's fortunate that our two corps are garrisoning this place together. Any other corps would have been shattered on the surface long ago under such horrific firepower." "Nothing can be done about it. Our allied forces may look vast on paper, but every faction has its own agenda. Everyone hides their elite units and refuses to deploy them, and our logistical supplies are an utter mess. In the latest shipment we received, our Life Potions were swapped for the Church of Night's Stealth Potions. I truly suspect a pack of pigs is running logistics in the rear." Luke remarked pointedly, "Pigs aren't half as shrewd as they are. You know full well that your church's Life Potions fetch ten times the price of Stealth Potions on the black market." Bilien's gaze turned cold. "Even if war hasn't been formally declared, this is an active battlefield. How dare they go this far?" "What's so surprising about that? Any problem we have here is surely present on Order's side too. The corps facing us is the sole exception—thanks to the unique nature of their department, nobody dares touch their logistics." *** "Don't make a sound, or I'll kill you!" The female priest, a blade at her throat and a hand clamped over her mouth, nodded frantically. She was clutching a crate of medicinal supplies. Philomena let out a long breath, loosened her grip, and drew back the dagger. Yet at that exact instant, the priest shrieked at the top of her lungs: "The enemy has infiltrated! An enemy has infiltrated!!" She screamed with complete disregard for her own survival. But as she yelled, an unsettling realization began to creep over her. Not only were there no approaching footsteps in the tunnel to reinforce her, but the infiltrator was simply standing there, letting her shout without lifting a finger. She turned around to look at the assassin. It was a girl about her own age, though her right arm looked horrifying. Philomena sighed and snapped her fingers. *Dream's end!* The woman opened her eyes to find a blade pressed against her throat and a hand over her mouth. This time, there was no warning. The steel cleaved through her throat, and the eerie power within the edge tore her soul to shreds. Philomena stripped the priestly robe from the corpse, put it on, hid the body, and stepped back out into the open. She had not infiltrated the tunnels on purpose. Up on the surface, she had nearly been blasted to smithereens by her own side's magic crystal cannons. If her teacher back in Yorktown—that foul-tempered old woman—knew she had died like that, she would probably laugh so hard she would spit out her food, then remark: *Now that's a suitably bizarre way for someone from the Felscher family to die.* The cannon bombardment had done little damage to the defenders, but it had cratered the ground with countless deep pits. To evade round after round of shelling, Philomena had leapt into a crater and slipped through a fissure blasted open in the rock. Who could have imagined that she would stumble straight into the Church of Earth's subterranean tunnels? The passages were filled with Earth priests scurrying to provide reinforcements. She had dodged and hidden continuously, until the battle ended and she was forced to admit a harsh truth... she was lost and could not find her way back. Even with the girl of the Felscher family's severe emotional detachment, she was now consumed by a profound sense of self-reproach. As the nominal commander of the reconnaissance battalion, she had successfully turned herself into a total joke. "Ha... I really am stupid..." *** The Corps Commander's tent occupied the highest point in the center of the camp. As Daliwenluo walked over, he spotted Richard sitting there with a Demon Eye spyglass in hand. Richard was gazing in the direction of the camp gates. "Looking for your parents?" Daliwenluo asked. "Ah, yeah, that's right," Richard murmured. Daliwenluo produced his badge and pointed toward the command tent ahead. Richard nodded. "Go on in. The Commander is inside." Once Daliwenluo stepped inside, Richard raised the Demon Eye spyglass once more. The battlefield was a strange place. It could turn heartbreaking partings of life and death into things as ordinary as wind, rain, sunrise, and sunset. People grew numb, or forced themselves to be. Yet there were always those whose emotions remained more sensitive. "Little Jerry, why do you think she's so clumsy? Getting lost and still unable to find her way back..." *** Karen sat at his desk, watching Daliwenluo enter. He hadn't even sent anyone to summon him before the man had come on his own. This left Karen temporarily unsure how to broach the matter. Even though Daliwenluo was a Knight of Order under his command who had sworn allegiance to him—and whose very life had been bestowed by Karen—asking him to immediately turn into an attack dog and tear into his mother church was still demanding a great deal. Just as Karen would surely dismantle and digest the Church of Pamires in the future without putting Old Saman through handling it, awkwardness should be spared where possible, and feelings accommodated when feasible. Yet the key to breaking this deadlock genuinely depended on Daliwenluo's abilities. Abandoning the plan was out of the question; Karen was merely debating whether to use gentle persuasion or pressure to bring the bald man on board. "Young Master," Daliwenluo saluted. "Call me Commander here." "Understood, Commander. I have something to report." "Go ahead." "I believe you must have noticed, Commander, that those giant vines appearing on the battlefield today are a creation of my Church of Life. It is called Roots of the Great Tree, a large-scale collective defensive spell." "Yes, I noticed." "So..." Daliwenluo pursed his lips, hesitation flickering across his face. Karen frowned slightly, prompting, "So what?" "I can sense its roots—the position of the core caster presiding over the spell. As long as we take them out, the entire spell will be instantly crippled." At this point, Daliwenluo looked up, a ferocious, fanatical grin spreading across his face. "And then we can slaughter all those wicked heretics! Heh-heh!"