After the Frost Leaf Shells were released, the brief silence lasted only a few breaths.
Then the ground began to vibrate, not from the front, but from all directions simultaneously.
From deep within the woods, behind ruins, from opened cellar entrances, and even from beneath the soil, heavy and dense movents could be heard.
Thorn Knights appeared from every direction; the iron-wall encirclent was complete.
Warhorses accelerated, and with every step, muddy water exploded as the distance of several hundred ters was quickly closed.
So knights even used vines to scale ruined walls, running along nearly vertical surfaces and turning in mid-air, their lances pointed at the Red Tide battle formation.
These monster-like knights were mostly at the level of high-tier Elite Knights; any one of them on a conventional battlefield would be enough to tear through a battle line.
Now they appeared in droves, their numbers quickly spreading across the field of vision, dark red figures moving simultaneously like an unnatural tide from all directions.
But there was no commotion in the Red Tide square formation; there wasn't even any unnecessary movent.
Second Legion Commander Gray stood by the armored vehicle, his gaze crossing the front lines to calmly scan the entire battlefield.
After confirming there were no new directions of assault, he raised his hand.
“Beep—!”
A short, clear whistle pierced through the noise of the battlefield.
The knight line began to adjust, with subtle lateral shifts of a few steps.
Boot soles stepped back into the mud, heels pressed down firmly, magma essence rifles were tightened, and pressure valves emitted a low hum.
The Thorn Knights continued to close in; in their judgnt, these were rely weak prey.
Two hundred ters.
Gray's hand dropped.
The first volley rang out, and a whole swath of air was torn apart simultaneously.
“Bang! Rip—!”
A leaping Thorn Knight was hit.
Over a dozen armor-piercing rounds struck him almost at once, drilling into the gaps of his armor from different angles.
When the first shot hit, the roots on the symbiotic armor imdiately retracted inward, barely covering the impact point.
But the second and third shots followed imdiately.
Roots were torn apart, armor was peeled away, and the impacts converged within his body.
That body lost its integrity in mid-air.
Limbs were scattered, flesh was sprayed outward, and shattered pieces of armor tumbled away, losing all form before even hitting the ground.
Next, the steam rotary machine guns on the war chariots began to whirl.
A flood of tal swept across the front lines, hugging the ground.
“Clatter—clatter—rat-tat-tat!”
The group of knights charging most fiercely slamd head-on into the fire coverage zone.
Their speed was abruptly cut short the mont they entered the firing range.
n and horses, bound together by vines, were shattered together, and a mist of blood spread across the charge line.
The expected lee collision did not occur, nor did the sound of blades clashing against armor.
It all happened too fast.
Those elite individuals, close to the level of Extraordinary Knights, were intercepted by steady and dense firepower before they could reach effective distance, crushed into the rolling dust two hundred ters away.
High up in the distant ruins, Old Hans opened his mouth wide but could make no sound.
After a good while, only a faint raspy sound escaped his throat: “It shouldn't be like this...”
He had expected a fierce struggle, the clashing of swords, and n rolling and screaming in the mud.
But everything before him was completely different from the battlefields in his mory, utterly incomprehensible.
In the gaps between the dust and firelight, a few Thorn Knights still managed to pass through the barrage.
They moved along the shadows of the ruins, no longer in an orderly charge but with a near-instinctive stubbornness.
Collapsed walls beca temporary cover, broken beams and pillars were used as springboards, and roots spread among the rubble, carving out several paths.
Dozens of dark red figures approached from different directions.
They no longer cared about the battle lines, nor did they attempt to regroup.
Only one target remained—those steel behemoths parked at the front.
One knight was the first to rush to the front side of a tank.
A low, distorted roar escaped his throat as he raised his lance high, then stabbed it fiercely toward the structural components outside the tracks.
At the mont of tal impact, sparks exploded.
The lance tip only scraped a shallow white mark on the armor, numbing the knight's arm, but failed to break through any layer of the structure.
Another knight leaped up at the sa ti, attempting to climb onto the hull.
Thorns grew wildly from the gaps in his armor, barbs digging into the steel plates in an attempt to entwine and lock them down.
Roots crawled up along the weld seams, as if searching for joints to gnaw on.
The secondary cannon on the side fired imdiately.
Short tongues of fire spat out along the hull, the close-range gunshots sounding unusually muffled.
The knight attempting to climb was hit in °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° mid-air and slamd heavily onto the ground.
Inside the driver's seat, the accelerator was floored.
The roar of the engine suddenly intensified, the tracks began to turn, and without any hesitation, it crushed right over.
“Crack—squelch—”
The sound of breaking bones was crushed by the heavy steel.
Flesh lost its shape under the weight, and the not-yet-fully hardened roots were ground into the mud along with it.
Dozens of tons of mass continued to push forward without pause.
The steel rolled over that mass of red and white flesh mixed with dark red roots, the tracks re-engaging the ground without even a hint of deviation.
On the other side, a coaxial machine gun swept over the remaining figures.
Bullets swept along the ground, roots were severed, and armor was peeled away.
Bodies that had lost their support tumbled down and were imdiately swallowed by the advancing steel.
The tank advanced along its predetermined route.
It drove over a patch of mud that had been repeatedly flattened, where those figures that were once struggling could no longer be distinguished.
The surface of the tracks was clean and cold, without any fragnts clinging to them.
Behind it, the Red Tide Knights began their advance.
Their speed wasn't fast, but they consistently maintained their rhythm.
Scattered, remaining Thorn Knights were still twitching; so were being dragged by roots as they tried to crawl up, while others tried to prop themselves up with broken weapons.
The Red Tide Knights did not stop; their longswords pressed down, stabbing directly into neck sides and joint gaps.
Soon, the twitching on the ground stopped one by one.
After the figures of the Thorn Knights had perished one by one, the battlefield did not imdiately fall silent.
In front of the town entrance, that defensive line woven from roots, bones, and soil was still active.
A living wall of thorns stood across the end of the road, its height nearly matching that of a city wall.
Layers of dark red and dark brown rhizos pressed against each other, constantly rising and falling on the surface.
Those roots were not static; they wriggled slowly, like a mouth that had not yet closed.
The tank tracks stopped outside of a safe distance, not pushing forward further.
The thorn wall sensed the approaching weight, and the root system suddenly accelerated its movents.
Dense barbs flipped out from the surface, spraying outward accompanied by a low grinding sound.
Venom traced short arcs in the air, landing on the mud and imdiately corroding it into blackened marks.
Gray's command was brief: “Salamander, step forward.”
A fla tank slowly drove out of the queue.
Its hull was not large, possessing a low and heavy profile, with heat-resistant armor added to the front.
The fuel tanks on both sides swayed slightly as it moved, the alchemical fuel inside being continuously pressurized, emitting a faint but dangerous low hum.
The nozzle was raised, and flas spat out.
An orange-red stream of fire pulled a low, stable trajectory in the air, like a straightened fire serpent, lunging at the thorn wall along the ground.
It wasn't ordinary fire; it was composed of fire-scale viper oil. The fuel adhered to the surface of the roots the mont it made contact, spreading rapidly.
The flas were not shaken off or extinguished; instead, they spread along the rhizos, boring inward following the textures.
The thorn wall contracted violently.
Imdiately following, a shriek erupted from within the wall.
Sharp and sustained, it echoed at the town entrance, making one's nerves instinctively tense up.
The fire continued to advance; roots quickly carbonized under the high temperature, the outer layers bursting, and the moist internal tissues were instantly evaporated.
The burning extended down along the main roots, deep beneath the surface, igniting the buried flesh and nutrients along with them.
The thorn wall began to collapse, its once towering structure losing support within minutes, large patches of the outer layer peeling off and turning into rolling ash.
The sprayed venomous barbs were burned into curved charcoal in the fire, snapping before they even hit the ground.
The shrieks gradually beca intermittent and then disappeared completely.
Only the low hum of the burning fire remained.
The fla tank stopped its spray and retreated back to the line.
The heat wave slowly dissipated, leaving only a patch of still-burning wreckage in front of the town entrance, with ash drifting in the wind.
A steam excavator then ca forward.
The massive bucket was lowered, its edge pressing into the ground, the engine's roar intensified, and the steel structure pushed forward.
The burning wreckage was pushed aside nonchalantly.
Those roots and bones that had once devoured countless corpses and ford the core of the defensive line were treated as ordinary obstacles, shoveled up, moved, and piled on both sides of the road.
In just a mont, a road leading to the center of town was cleared.
The steel continued forward; what remained after the fire was extinguished was rely a reopened grand avenue.
The battle the town had prepared for half a month ended in ten-odd minutes.
The fires at the town entrance were still smoldering, and the charred thorn roots continued to collapse with a faint crackling sound.
Simultaneously, the logistics column began to move in.
Several square-shaped field kitchen vehicles trailing long chimneys drove along the newly cleared road into the ruins of the plaza.
Once the vehicles were parked, the side panels were lowered, and the tal structures unfolded outward, revealing neatly arranged stears and high-pressure cookers inside.
“Pshhh—” White steam burst out.
A rich, authentic aroma of food exploded in the air like an unreasonable wind, instantly dispersing the sll of blood and that lingering, cloying, strange scent.
On the other side, the dical and hygiene battalion deployed simultaneously.
Temporary tents were quickly erected, and cordons were set up.
Soldiers set up a simple spray disinfection gate at the edge of the plaza.
The townspeople sleeping on the battlefield were carried over.
The nozzles were turned on, and warm water mixed with dicine fell from above, washing away the dirt, blood, and residual Golden Soup from their bodies.
Then ca injections, bandaging, and keeping them warm, all following the procedures of the Red Tide Health Bureau without any redundant ceremony.
anwhile, the rescue in the muddy fields north of the town was underway.
To avoid the shovels hurting the children, the soldiers threw all their tools aside and knelt directly into the cold muddy water.
Hands wearing tactical gloves dug frantically into the soil.
“There's still breath here!”
“dic! quick!”
“Life Potion!”
The Frost Leaf Shells had indeed put them into a deep sleep without detonating.
But the Church, in order to set up the defensive line, had buried these thinly-clothed children in the frozen soil for too long.
Vice Legion Commander Vance personally pulled a little girl nad Amy out of the mud.
Her lips were purple, her limbs were cold, and her body was as stiff as if she weren't alive, with only a faint and rapid heartbeat proving she was still breathing.
The dic took over imdiately, wrapped her in a thermal blanket, and carried her away.
Vance did not stop; he turned and continued digging.
When he touched the boy next to her, his movents slowed down.
The boy still maintained the posture of holding the explosives, his body completely stiff; he was stuck to the frozen soil as if he had been cast into the ground.
Vance turned to dig the next one; he didn't need to check anymore.
The tallying continued as children were pulled out of the pits one by one.
One alive, three dead, one alive, two dead... out of nearly a thousand pits, less than half were still breathing in the end.
Old Hans crawled out of the mill's flue, and as soon as he hit the ground, he was pinned against the wall by a squad of Red Tide Knights who were clearing out remaining enemies.
“Don't move! Hands up!” A muzzle was pressed against his forehead.
Knight Ron roughly pried open his eyelids, letting the sunlight shine directly into his pupils.
For those who had drunk Golden Soup, their pupils would be a dilated grey-gold and would not react to strong light.
But the mont the light hit Hans, he let out a short cry of pain, instinctively squeezed his eyes shut as tears flooded out uncontrollably, and his body shook violently from fear and cold.
Ron gave the mangled flesh on his arm a hard pinch.
“It hurts! It hurts!” Hans scread, curling into a ball, “Don't kill ! Don't kill !”
Ron was stunned for a mont.
He lowered his gun and took off his helt, revealing a young face filled with surprise.
“Damn...” he whispered, “Captain! There's a living person here. I an... a real human.”
The nearby knights all gathered around.
They looked at Hans as if it were a rare sight to see soone in the depths of the fallen regions who hadn't been hollowed out yet.
“Old-tir,” Ron asked curiously, “how did you survive?”
Hans was still shaking, but he straightened his back, an instinct left over from when he was an Apprentice Knight long ago.
He pulled a small handful of raw wheat grains from his bosom and spread out his soot-covered palm.
Ron didn't ask further; he reached into his marching bag, took out his ration pack, and tore open the oil paper.
A piece of soft white bread was revealed.
“Take it.” He stuffed the bread into Hans's hands.
Hans held the piece of bread; the fine flour was not mixed with anything else.
He took a bite, and the long-lost aroma of wheat exploded in his mouth.
“Waaaah...”
Holding the bread, he wailed without any regard for his image in front of the group of young knights.
He cried while desperately stuffing it into his mouth, his eyes rolling back as he choked, yet he refused to stop, as if afraid the bread would disappear the next second.
On the other side of the plaza, the chimney of the kitchen vehicle emitted white smoke.
Rows of people who had woken up were wrapped in thick military blankets, holding stainless steel lunch boxes and chanically drinking hot vegetable and at soup.
Hans sat on the stone steps of the ruins.
He wiped his face, glanced at the remaining half piece of bread in his hand, and then looked up at the flag rising in the center of the plaza.
The Emblem of the Sun slowly unfurled in the smoke, while the shattered Holy Seal of the Church beneath his feet was trampled into the mud.
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