The newly erected sentry posts had turned into pillars clung to by insect corpses.
Familiar knights howled as they fell into the thick fog, dragged away by insect legs.
He even saw that enormous insect corpse, composed of dozens of bodies and writhing like a centipede, crushing its way down the mountain pass, covered with the faces of knights from his territory.
Pale-faced, Pal turned to flee, even kicking away the knights blocking him, shrieking:
"Quick! Prepare the horses! I must leave! To Red Tide Territory for help, imdiately! I have to personally... No, I am of the Calvin Clan’s bloodline, I cannot die here... Hold them off!!"
In the chaos, he discarded his armor, mounted a horse with a dozen personal guards, and charged through the side valley behind the camp, abandoning the soldiers and officials still resisting.
In that mont, he had no ti for "honor," "duty," or "command."
Only one thought remained: "Survive... I must survive... This calamity is beyond ."
Pal was forcibly escorted by his subordinates in a breakout, fleeing desperately.
His face covered in ash, cloak scorched, utterly disheveled.
Behind him, the camp was a sea of flas in complete defeat, while ahead lay the fog-enshrouded, insect-howling snowfield.
He dared not look back until a familiar figure leapt out of the firelight.
It was his Guardian Knight, who had protected him since childhood, now turned into an insect corpse, eyes vacant, face writhing with insect threads, lunging to bite a knight.
"Kill him! Kill—" Pal scread, frantically drawing his sword, only to throw it away seconds later, climbing onto the horse to escape.
After hours of fleeing, they took a brief respite in a temporary mountain cave behind them, preparing to break westward, only to et even greater despair.
The scouts brought back news: most breakout points have fallen.
Worse, a "familiar-looking" insect corpse army was closing in on the cave.
Pal looked into the distance and saw their faces clearly.
His captain of the guard, who once shielded him from arrows on a cold night, now wore tattered armor, with insects writhing in his eye sockets.
The steward sent by Seldon, who had taught him etiquette in his youth, now twisted with a torn mouth, moving forward in an eerie posture.
And his Knight Order he had boasted about countless tis, their emblems now stained with blood and filth.
Their faces twisted, seemingly still calling "Lord Pal," yet filled with false repetition and echoes.
Pal slumped to the ground, muttering, "No, impossible... They... They shouldn’t be like this..."
No matter how he thought, the reality was that he was soon surrounded.
He tried to flee but was pierced through the limbs by insect stingers, nailed to the stone wall of the fortress ruins.
He struggled desperately, bleeding profusely, face pale, yet he did not die imdiately.
In his final monts, he instead grinned madly, his eyes filled with madness and a curse:
"Louis... I’m waiting for you! See how long you can hold out?
I shouldn’t have co to the Northern Territory... shouldn’t have listened to them... damn old man, brother, and you, Louis... How could you be right about everything..."
His eyes before death were filled with resentnt.
But unfortunately, no one heard, no one saw.
Pal died in anger and despair, choking painfully on his final breath of blood.
His body was carried before the Nest, "rewoven": body deconstructed, spine hollowed, will erased, leaving only the instinct to fight.
Eventually, he beca one of the insect corpses in the insect army.
A knight clad in armor, yet with a mouth split to the ear and entrails crawling with fibers, a vanguard on the battlefield.
Pal’s territory fell within half a day, the surface devoured entirely by insect corpses, leaving only broken flags and decaying steam.
Soon the Nest seed to hear so "summoning," and imdiately wriggled southward.
Its size expanded again, its bones denser, its spore mist thicker, the swarm below surged like a tide, moving faster than before.
Its direction pointed directly at the next critical stronghold: Frost Halberd City.
......
Under the guidance of the "Desperate Witch," the Doomsday Nest finally tore open the Northern Territory’s blockade, leading a vast insect corpse legion southward with its twisted and massive body, heading straight for the Empire’s Northern Territory’s key stronghold—Frost Halberd City.
And it was not the only Nest, as twenty-three "first generation" and "second generation Nests" dormant beneath the Northern Territory erged along with the Doomsday Nest.
So resembled collapsing trees, others like hanging cocoons, carrying their specialized sub-nests, parasitic systems, and the swarm’s will, awakening en route, forming a destructive impact across the entire Northern Territory.
This was an undeclared war, a massacre akin to a natural disaster.
Wherever it passed, insect corpses surged into human strongholds like tidal waves, insect eggs, parasitic bodies, and contaminant tendrils spread rapidly like a plague.
Petroleum, poisoning, earth walls, arrow towers... thods that once stood against the Snow Swearers proved nearly ineffective in the face of this completely unfamiliar and overwhelming "group intelligence."
Only count-level major nobility fiefdoms, with ancestral accumulations, could briefly withstand.
While most dium and small nobility fiefdoms were extinguished in the insect tide like paper lighthouses.
So Lords didn’t even have ti to send out a plea for help, and entire territories, populations, manors, and watchtowers were eradicated within days.
In just a few days.
The map of the Northern Territory was left with nurous dark spots representing areas cut off, darkened, or lost.
The noble post system was severed, the original communication network collapsed gradually, and the concept of a "defense line" no longer existed in actual tactics.
All of this was just the prologue.
......
October 11th, before dawn.
In the main fortress’s highest war room, Duke Edmund wore a heavy cloak rimd with black and gold, holding a parchnt of intelligence.
The parchnt he unfolded was the fifth ergency report, the heaviest and most definitive so far.
The corners of the parchnt were stained with dark brown blood marks, the ink slightly blurred in the wind.
It was Count Grant’s handwriting, a Northern Territory figure renowned for stability, decisiveness, and significant military achievents.
Throughout the Northern Territory, if only discussing military power, Count Grant would absolutely rank in the top five, a left arm and a right arm.
The content of the letter generally reported that the insect swarm was moving south, the Nests were awakening, noble fiefdoms along the way were successively falling, the army annihilated, only a few survivors.
"What was ant to co, has co," he said quietly.
This calamity, he had long anticipated, but he didn’t expect it to arrive so soon, thinking there were still two or three years.
Moreover, it ca with such ferocity, so comprehensively.
Not just one Nest, but twenty-three first and second-generation Nests simultaneously appeared across the Northern Territory.
The insect tide simultaneously breached multiple fiefdoms, the Northern Territory lord’s defense lines fragnted layer by layer like fragile ice.
Each noble domain turned silent.
He frowned, but his face, carved with determination by years and battles, showed no panic, no fear.
It was a calmness forged by years of warfare.
It wasn’t his first ti facing a natural disaster, nor his first ti watching friends and subordinates perish on the snowfield.
In comparison, the panicked noble ssengers and the kneeling requests for reinforcents seed particularly harsh.
He didn’t send troops to aid.
Not because he wouldn’t, but because it already had no aning.
"All fiefdoms that can still resist will persist by themselves; those that can’t... have long since sunk."
After saying this, he rely extinguished the symbols on the tactical map one by one.
Then, he ordered: Frost Halberd City to close completely, with the Cold Iron Legion taking over the city gates.
This war fortress will seal itself, becoming the Northern Territory’s last shield.
At the sa ti, he ordered his trusted aide to take his seal and sealed docunts straight to the Imperial Capital, to send the Empire’s highest alert for assistance to the Emperor.
He knew this was no longer just a "disaster for the Northern Territory."
This was a threat to the entire Empire.
This fortress would seal itself, becoming the Northern Territory’s final shield.
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