The Blazing Sun Rampart

Eisengard, Northern Thrace. The red dragon perched atop the iron fortress, his colossal bulk practically covering the entire structure. The iron plating that touched his crimson scales grew scorching red, sending up plumes of white vapor. Duoluo, the dragonblood hobgoblin and Imperial Marshal, knelt before the stronghold with his head bowed. In a heavy voice, he said, "Your Majesty, the Third Mixed Division of the Western Front Army was ambushed by the Holy Guard and completely annihilated. We... have brought shame upon you." The hobgoblin carefully observed the red dragon's expression. Seeing no explosion of fury, he continued his report: "Furthermore, the situation on the eastern front is far from optimistic. At Saint Michael, we encountered an ancient weapon of Holy Fadelan—the Blazing Sun Rampart. The Eastern Front Army has failed to breach it for days on end. Duchess Misha and Marquis Anthony have already rushed to reinforce them." Cassius unfurled his wings and looked down at Duoluo, his tone calm and detached. "War is a game of gains and losses. The Empire has simply met very few adversaries of equal standing—so few that continuous victories have blinded our vision. The Empire's officers grew too complacent, treating the Kingdom of Thrace like one of those frail, brittle realms in the Northlands. To push deep into enemy lines and casually divide their forces... foolish." "Yes, Your Majesty. I will urge them to rectify this immediately and make this disaster a cautionary example across the entire military," Duoluo solemnly promised. With the loss of over fifteen thousand men and several hundred thousand gold coins, the current Cinder Empire could easily bear the blow. Cassius would not fly into a rage over this, though soothing the imperial populace would require a bit of effort. In his eyes, if this setback could slightly curb the army's vainglorious, reckless momentum, paying a small price and learning this lesson was well worth it. Cassius exhaled a plume of sulfurous white smoke and turned toward the tiefling kneeling nearby. "Mezrolash, have you determined the origins of this so-called 'Holy Guard'? With the Sun God dormant for so many years, how could they possibly train such an army—one capable of swallowing an entire division of mine?" Mezrolash replied in a deep voice, "Reporting to Your Majesty, I dispatched Nocturne and the Imperial Intelligence Bureau to conduct an exhaustive investigation. To my knowledge, these crusaders first emerged three years ago. Their source of power does not stem from that slumbering Sun God at all, but rather... Baator." "Oh? Hell?" Cassius raised an eyebrow. A faint gleam flickered in his golden vertical pupils, and genuine interest finally showed on his face. Mezrolash produced a box containing a blackened substance. "Yes, Your Majesty. We took samples from Hill 103, where the mixed division was ambushed, and discovered the ashen residue of hellfire. Rather than calling that legion a holy guard, it is more accurate to say it is a hellish host draped in angel skins. If I had to guess, this is most likely Zariel's handiwork." Cassius asked, "Yet as far as I know, Hell has always prized equivalent exchange. What did Wilhelm offer to obtain such an army?" "Souls," Mezrolash replied without hesitation, promptly presenting a dossier prepared in advance. "According to statistics compiled by the imperial intelligence departments, the number of missing persons in the Kingdom of Thrace has grown each year for the past three years. Even the vagrants on the streets have vanished. The kingdom has deteriorated to the point where every citizen lives in constant fear." Mezrolash took out an imaging stone. One magical projection after another manifested in midair, depicting Thracian soldiers tossing battered, unconscious paupers into subterranean tunnels. The tunnel walls were covered with bizarre, twisted magic arrays that resembled contorted, howling faces. Mezrolash continued, "We have reason to suspect... that to consolidate his reign, that king has sacrificed more than a hundred thousand souls to Hell—perhaps even more." As a tiefling bearing devil blood, Mezrolash had no fondness for these distant cousins; in fact, he wished for nothing more than to slaughter them all. It was the existence of those devils that had brought centuries of agony and humiliation upon his kind. Cassius clicked his tongue in mockery. "Claiming to be scions of the Sun God, resplendent angels, yet offering the souls of their own people to devils—utterly laughable. It seems our claim that the Empire is liberating the people of Thrace holds true after all. At least we do not feed them to fiends." "Naturally, Your Majesty. Under your grand blueprint, all things under the sun shall attain true equity and freedom. That is the most tangible, potent justice." "Is it truly Wilhelm? He is the second son of Aragorn I, once revered as the 'King of Angels.' How could he..." Standing to the side, Olivia knitted her brows, her eyes shimmering with astonishment on her fair face. Over the past few years, the silver dragon had journeyed between the Melvold clan and the Empire, striving to maintain harmony between the Cinder Empire and the metallic dragon race. Yet Olivia felt helpless regarding the Empire's campaigns of conquest. While she could understand Cassius's "grand blueprint," she could not help but pity the living souls perishing in the flames of war. She had vehemently opposed the Empire declaring war on Thrace, even attempting to draft an opposition bill in the Imperial Parliament. Regrettably, the war was already a foregone conclusion. Olivia's appeals had been drowned out by the frenzied roars of the Empire shouting, "Down with Thrace!" and "Seize Auguste!" Yet now, beholding tangible proof of Thrace's collusion with Hell, she found it difficult to believe. That was the Kingdom of Thrace! As one of the successors to Holy Fadelan, it held an exalted status in the hearts of countless lawful good creatures. Cassius sneered and said, "That is merely what they want you to see. Much like that so-called Holy Guard—glamorous on the outside, but once you tear away that hypocritical veneer, its filthy true face is laid bare." Olivia stared at the magical projections and spoke earnestly, "The Empire should expose their true colors to the whole world! Only then—" "Do you truly think those sanctimonious hypocrites haven't noticed?" Cassius let out a cold chuckle. "If so, then why...?" Olivia looked up at the red dragon, bewilderment clouding her face. "They are merely feigning ignorance. In their eyes, the lives of Thrace's commoners are completely inconsequential—nowhere near as important as their own interests. They would rather exhaust every resource to oppose the Cinder Empire, which repelled the Abyssal invasion, than lift a finger against the Kingdom of Thrace as it colludes with Hell and slaughters mortals." The red dragon lowered his head, enunciating every word: "Have you still not seen through it? When all is said and done, what ideals? What convictions? It has always been a tangle of self-interest." "..." Olivia stood frozen in place, her expression profoundly conflicted. Trump clapped his hands repeatedly, lavishing praise: "Master speaks with peerless wisdom! Piercing right through to the heart of the matter! Only under the Empire's grand blueprint can the world truly achieve peace and prosperity!" Cassius turned his head and instructed the ogre, "Trump, keep posting quests and raise the bounties. Rally the Starfallen across the Empire to march on Thrace." "Yes, Master!" Trump gladly accepted the command. "Angelic godbloods, crusaders, ancient weapons... It seems the Kingdom of Thrace has truly played every hand in its deck. The final arbiter of this war will still be the City of Sunrise—Auguste." The red dragon raised his head toward the south. Fire stirred within his pale golden pupils, and the iron fortress beneath him groaned with a deep, muffled rumble. *** Kingdom of Thrace, Saint Michael. Named after the archangel, the city was widely known as the "City of Angels." It possessed an ancient history filled with the relics and shrines of the ancient Sun God sects. Saint Michael's geographical position was equally vital: it served as the military stronghold of eastern Thrace, guarded the pass of the Radiant Mountains, and stood as the mandatory gateway to Auguste. At this moment, the city was besieged by the armies of the Cinder Empire. The sky was blanketed by massive airship armadas alongside flocks of wyverns and flame drakes clustered as dense as thunderclouds. On the ground, mountainous steam tanks and armored transports crawled across the terrain, accompanied by countless heavy cannons pointing their barrels skyward. Adding nearly a hundred thousand infantry to the mix, the Imperial Army formed a mottled, surging tide north of Saint Michael. Both earth and sky outside Saint Michael were claimed by imperial forces. It was a torrential deluge of military might; any ordinary mortal facing such an onslaught would have surrendered long ago. Yet even after withstanding days of relentless imperial bombardment, the city remained standing. The imperial herald waved the battle standard and bellowed, "All units heed the command—fire!" Boom! Boom! Boom! Thunderous detonations shook the heavens. Over a thousand heavy artillery barrels erupted with blinding fire in unison. Hundreds of steam tanks leveled their main cannons at Saint Michael's ramparts, discharging armor-piercing shells in rapid sequence. The shrieks of ripped air tore through the sky as shell trajectories interlaced into a blazing net, intending to reduce Saint Michael to dust. Yet a hemispherical dome of light enveloped the entire city. Even armor-piercing shells could not shatter it, leaving nothing more than ripples of radiant energy across its surface. This was the sole reason Saint Michael had held out for days. Before the pristine white battlements adorned with angel reliefs stood a magnificent bastion that pierced the clouds—the defensive relic left behind by Holy Fadelan: the Blazing Sun Rampart. Legend held that this war machine was forged by the ancient Sun God sect by melting fragments of a fallen sun, and it had once vaporized an entire vampire army during the ancient Blood Moon War. The defenders who operated it had to be sun priests who had passed the Trial of Light—their pupils permanently branded with the solar crest, granting them the power of transient light-elemental form. Its main body was a curved tower shield of gold and white quartz, carved with reliefs of the Sun God steering his war chariot across the celestial dome. Suspended within the center of the shield was the Eye of the Solar Core, beneath which sat the Sacred Solar Urn forged of adamantine. Twelve foldable, curved optical prisms extended from both sides of the shield. When deployed, they formed a fan of radiant wings, resembling an angel spreading its plumage. Through levitation arrays, the twelve prisms freely adjusted their angles to assemble a coordinated optical array capable of refracting core energy into different modes: focused mode condensed into wall-piercing rays; scattered mode released a fiery rain over the entire battlefield; reflective mode generated a protective canopy of light over the city. At present, the Blazing Sun Rampart was in reflective mode. Twelve prisms faced outward, projecting a hemispherical dome of light three hundred meters in diameter above the walls, effortlessly intercepting both magical and physical attacks. Furthermore, any undead or fiends touching the barrier would spontaneously combust, while ordinary enemy soldiers exposed to its continuous brilliance would suffer blindness, severe burns, and agonizing dehydration. "For Thrace!" "Long live Holy Fadelan! Saint Michael shall never fall!" Behind the Blazing Sun Rampart, several angelic godbloods flapped their wings and hovered midair. Raising their flaming broadswords, they channeled solar divine power from their bodies into the Eye of the Solar Core. An imperial officer roared, "Charge! Crush their turtle shell! For the Empire!" Rumble— The earth convulsed violently as tank treads gouged deep ruts into the dirt. Dozens of steam tanks surged forward at full speed, their main guns barking continuously. Like a frenzied pack of mechanical beasts, they roared as they spearheaded the assault toward Saint Michael. "The dragon's lackeys are coming! Quick, prepare the Sunburst Judgment!" A horn blared. Six sun priests scattered gold dust laced with divine power into the Sacred Solar Urn at the center. The liquid solar energy inside boiled furiously, and ancient divine runes of the solar crest surfaced across the reflective mirrors. When the horn sounded a third time, the twelve optical prisms shifted. The blinding torrent of white light erupting from the urn was refracted through the layers of mirrors, converging a hundred meters high into a brilliant solar flare potent enough to melt gold and shatter stone. "For the Empire!" Under cover of cannon fire and rifle volleys, a dragonblood goblin shoved his control lever forward, driving a steam tank toward the rampart, its colossal metal ram acting as a battering ram. Behind him, the imperial infantry advanced in swift coordination, pressing the charge alongside the vanguard armor. Right at that instant, the defending paladins pulled off their helms and dropped into a crouch—not in surrender, but to shield their vision from the blinding flare about to erupt. "Praise the Sun! Praise the God of Blazing Gold, the Eternal Lord of Radiance!" The high sun priest slashed his wrist, pouring golden-red blood into the holy urn. The next second, beams of solar radiance surged like roaring light dragons across the battlefield. Boom! The steam tank thirty paces from the gate took the brunt of the strike, erupting directly into a massive fireball. Its steel plating melted into incandescent slag that sank into the scorched earth. "Cassius above!" "It's that divine spell again! Spell defense team, move!" The antimagic shields raised by the ogres shattered with a brittle crunch like breaking glass the moment the torrent of light swept past. The bones of the shield-bearers shone with an eerie, translucent crimson glare. When the beam finally dissipated, nothing remained outside the walls except radiating trenches of vitrified earth, where even drifting black smoke vaporized into golden haze amid the lingering heat. "Curse those Thracians!" Far back at the imperial lines, Dror peered through his binoculars at the rampart that seemed impossible to topple. He slammed his fist heavily onto the table, letting out an enraged snarl. For the first time, the hitherto invincible, all-conquering Imperial Army had encountered a true peer on the battlefield.