[Vol. 8] Chapter 274: The Sign of the Myth Appears
When she reached the important part, Fienne did not dare to waste time and continued speaking seriously.
“Those monsters from another world came out from a hole that suddenly appeared in the air. The hole was right next to the army camp outside the city. I had just gone out of the city when I ran into them. The two army groups stationed there, Valiant Riders and Holy Wrath, quickly formed battle lines to stop the creatures, and for the moment they were able to hold them back.”
“I fought with our troops, but the monsters from that strange hole just kept coming. The pressure on our defense kept growing. Later, stronger monsters appeared, ones with battle intelligence. They used strange powers to block the battlefield so our troops could not send a smoke signal to the city for help.”
“I had no choice. I fought my way out, covered in blood, to bring the message. There’s no time, Your Holiness, send reinforcements now! Otherwise, both knight armies will be worn down and destroyed!”
“Something like this… really happened…?”
The commanders in the tent looked at each other. Maybe because this attack was too sudden, they seemed unsure of what to do. Only Frederica stayed calm and quickly seemed to understand many things.
“So, Fienne, you left the camp in a hurry this morning because you felt this might happen? But how did you know in advance? And why didn’t you tell Arlin and the other vice-commanders first?”
Fienne, the leader of the [Hand of Judgment] Holy Knight Army, looked like a woman of about twenty-seven or twenty-eight, with purple hair, a striking face, and a mature air. But according to what Frederica had discussed earlier with Arlin, this woman’s record went back over a hundred years. She was not an ordinary human, she was a half-dragon.
That’s right, she carried dragon blood.
This gave her far greater strength and a much longer life than normal humans. But her dragon blood was not very strong, so she looked almost the same as a normal person, with almost no dragon traits. The only clear sign was her slightly intimidating slit-shaped pupils. With her body covered in blood now, she looked strangely dangerous.
“This… I still don’t fully understand myself…”
The dragon-blooded holy knight shook her head, real confusion showing on her refined face.
“After I left Your Holiness earlier today, I planned to pass on the Pope’s order and start preparing tasks. But then… a voice suddenly spoke in my ear.”
“The voice would not go away. I couldn’t hear many details clearly, but it kept urging me to drop everything and go to a certain place right away, or something unimaginably terrible would happen.”
“I don’t know what it was, but the power behind that voice was far beyond my own. It was like I was being pulled by force to leave the camp. When I came to my senses, I was already near the city gates.”
“I had no choice but to rush out of the city and follow the voice’s directions to the army camp outside. That’s how I was the first to discover the new otherworldly portal and raise the alarm. Even later, when I broke through the enemy’s blockade to come back for help, I think I was aided by some unknown power. Otherwise…”
Everyone exchanged looks.
“This sounds way too strange.”
“Yeah… could it be that Commander Fienne was blessed with the goddess’s guidance?”
The high-ranking commanders in the tent began to talk, but Fienne, after a moment of hesitation, shook her head.
“No… I don’t think this was the goddess’s guidance.”
“While following the voice to the camp, I think I heard her name. If I didn’t hear wrong, the owner of that voice called herself… Cielru White.”
………………………………………
Purple Mist City – Far Outside the City
It was already night. The tall, grand shape of the city stood in the darkness, casting a deep shadow. High in the sky, under the stars and three moons, Violet floated alone with her white wings spread wide. She quietly looked down at the fierce battle raging below, a faint light glimmering in her beautiful eyes.
"So my feeling back then wasn’t wrong… This is getting interesting~"
Violet smiled slightly, as if waiting for something.
After receiving the desperate message that Fienne had risked her life to deliver, Frederica didn’t waste time. Even though some details were still unclear, this was no time to delay. She immediately set aside her original plans and ordered Arlin to gather the main force of the [Hand of Judgment] Holy Knight Army. Together with many special units, nearly 20,000 soldiers in total, they marched out of the city overnight to support the friendly troops in the army camp, more than ten kilometers away.
The attack had appeared in a strange and sudden way, and the matter was extremely important. The Holy Saint herself chose to personally lead the army. A few others, including a certain Sword Saint who had just arrived, also joined the march, not the kind of people to sit idle. Naturally, they came along to watch and help.
Of course, Violet slipped away halfway. She had her own different tasks to handle and couldn’t just stay in the crowd all the time.
It had to be said, the Holy Empire’s army was truly powerful. Even though the Valiant Riders and Holy Wrath Holy Knight Armies were not as strong as the [Hand of Judgment] , which was directly under the Holy Capital. They still managed to block the endless waves of [Flesh Eaters] pouring in. This was despite being caught in a surprise attack, with no preparation and no backup, and they held on until reinforcements arrived from the city.
Purple Mist City, being one of the most important border fortresses, had three Holy Knight Armies as its main defense, plus the Holy Healing Group, the Holy Choir, the Inquisitors, and other support units. With Saintess Frederica personally commanding, they were able to stabilize the situation for now.
But… there was still one very important problem to solve.
Violet looked into the distance, her gaze falling on the black wormhole in the center of the battlefield. It was guarded by countless twisted flesh monsters, and even now, more Flesh Eaters were pouring out of it. Her beautiful eyes narrowed slightly.
Without a doubt, this was the source of the invasion.
Maybe others couldn’t tell what it was, but Violet, as a priestess with the Divinity of [Reincarnation], recognized it instantly. It was clearly a part of the giant door she had once seen at the top of that massive flesh sphere, when she used a piece of flesh as a medium to briefly connect her divine sense to another world.
These flesh monsters were not transformed from living beings of this world. They came from a world that had already been completely taken over by the Demon Lord of Corruption. The title Otherworld Invaders was well deserved.
Because of that, they were more evolved, stronger abilities, better coordination. Compared to the scattered forces still fighting in the Theo Province, the army now attacking Purple Mist City was a fully organized military force under the control of a higher being.
Violet didn’t yet know what the enemy’s goal was, but perhaps because the World Barrier was still only partially broken, the wormhole here was far smaller than the giant gate she had seen before, one that could even allow the massive flesh sphere to pass through. Many of the stronger creatures had not come here yet. This was still far from a full-scale invasion.
Even so, if the wormhole couldn’t be closed, then no matter how elite the Holy Empire’s troops were, they would eventually be worn down. After all, the enemy came from an entire world, while Purple Mist City’s main force was only a little over 40,000 soldiers.
Violet didn’t need to warn Frederica, the experienced commander would see the danger herself. In fact, Violet could already see, in one part of the battlefield below, Miss Eilush standing in the middle of a protective circle of Holy Knights, working together with her partner, the Hero of Wisdom, to assemble some kind of strange giant cannon.
It was obvious that this was one of the methods meant to deal with the wormhole.
Using the power of the artifact [Ring of Insight], Ayla was secretly creating various parts in mid-air, pretending it was just telekinesis. She quickly attached them to the already fancy cannon body, then pulled out one high-level light-element magic crystal after another, the ones Violet had given her earlier, and loaded them into the cannon without hesitation.
The quantity and quality of the crystals were so high that even the one who had made them, Violet herself, felt a bit shocked.
Hmm… it wasn’t that she thought the attack could hurt her. Violet was just worried about whether the cannon could survive having so much light-element power poured into it at once. What if it exploded right there?
If it blew up, the Holy Empire’s formation might literally have a hole in the middle.
Still, this wasn’t her problem to solve. After all, as long as there were chosen heroes around, Violet could slack off openly, especially since the tireless Sword Saint was watching over things down there.
Well then… it was time to take care of her own business.
She shifted her gaze away from the battlefield and turned her beautiful black-haired head toward a certain empty space beside her.
“Not planning to show yourself? Or do you think I’m so dull that I wouldn’t notice such obvious mental energy?”
She spoke suddenly, her voice very soft, as if casually chatting with a close friend right next to her. The sound flowed away and vanished into the dark night, like a small stone falling quietly into the sea, without making even a single ripple.
But a moment later, in the direction the girl was looking, a pale white figure really did appear like a ghost, silently floating into view. She stared at the black-haired girl in a white robe with surprise in her eyes.
“Who are you?”
Violet calmly asked back, “And who are you?”
“……”
The newcomer had a beauty that could topple a nation, but her figure was a little blurry, as if she was only a temporary projection. She wore an elegant white dress, her long snow-white hair smooth like fine jade, flowing down naturally. From both sides of her head, a pair of beautiful platinum-colored dragon horns extended outward.
Even though this was not her real body, an invisible holy majesty spread out from her, the kind that came naturally from someone born to rule. Without anger, she still commanded respect. Confident and calm, she was clearly a true ruler.
Realizing that her racial pressure had no effect on the target in front of her, the white-haired girl’s golden pupils narrowed slightly. She didn’t try to argue with the priest any further. Instead, she politely nodded as a greeting and began introducing herself:
“I am Cielru White, leader of the Holy White Dragon Clan, acting Dragon Emperor. I mean no harm to your country or to this city. I only wish to stop the disaster from causing more suffering, and to help as much as I can.
“But I didn’t expect that in just three hundred years, a mortal nation would have someone like you, someone almost equal in strength to a true Dragon God. It seems my coming here may have been unnecessary. Perhaps I’ve fallen behind the times.”
“You’re the leader of the White Dragon Clan?” Violet raised an eyebrow.
In this world, there were seven dragon clans, and each clan’s leader was called a Dragon King. Among the mythical races, they were beings at the very peak of power, true demi-god level. Some especially strong Dragon Kings were even said to be able to use powers that went beyond the limits of the world itself, touching the realm of true gods.
These were things Violet had learned from various sources, such as the Dragonborn. And now, it seemed those claims were not just exaggerations.
If the girl before her was truly the White Dragon King, then even this ability to create a spiritual projection was already a power touching the divine realm. Although Cielru’s control over the projection seemed a bit inexperienced and its strength was limited, it was still far beyond what certain “Let Me Show Off” man or even the Sword Saint could do right now.
Violet thought quietly for a moment, then asked,
“That Holy Knight Captain, Miss Fienne, was it you who lured her outside the city? Does she have some special importance? Also, as far as I know, your dragon race has sealed itself inside some ancient ruins, and can’t come to the outside world yet, right?”
“Holy Knight Captain?” Cielru looked slightly surprised at the question.
“This form of mine can’t do much in the real world. Earlier, I only used a method of bloodline resonance to send a ‘call’ toward the city, to warn the people there about the coming disaster. I didn’t actually know who that woman was, nor did I choose her on purpose.
“It’s just… maybe dragons really have been away from the world for too long. Our remaining bloodlines are so few now, that in such a large city, she was the only one who could sense my call.”
She shook her head with some helplessness. It was clear she wasn’t trying to hide anything, she answered every question openly.
“As for what you said about my people, you’re right. Most of the dragon race is still cut off from the outside world, unable to leave for now. But the sealing stone of our prison is breaking faster and faster, so the link between our space and this one is getting stronger. That’s why I can barely send a projection here to deliver some information.”
After patiently explaining everything, Cielru looked at Violet a few more times, then smiled in a friendly way and said,
“By the way, I still haven’t asked your name.”
“Violet. Just an ordinary priest.”
“Uh… ordinary?”