Chapter 208: The Prince Marches Out, Leaving Nothing Alive
Currently, the Knights of the Round Table's temporary camp is located about 30 kilometers in a straight line from the Silver Fortress, with numerous sentry posts and guards along the way, as well as a four-shift rotation system.
This distance, combined with sufficient response mechanisms, was enough to prevent Prince Allen of the Silver Fortress from launching a second night raid, or a direct cavalry charge without a night raid.
In fact, given the overwhelming victory during the day, a pursuit might have been a better option. However, the army had too many militiamen. These untrained commoners might have been able to charge with the momentum of victory to a very close proximity of the Silver Fortress, but once there, their morale would likely deflate, making them easy targets for the enemy to push back using the fortress's defenses.
This would be a severe blow to morale, so Arthur preferred to let the soldiers maintain their morale and rest for a night, allowing as many people as possible to recuperate and eat.
Even if this choice meant potentially facing enemy night raids or cavalry charges, he still made the decision.
Eating was truly more important than imagined; soldiers fighting on an empty stomach would have their combat effectiveness severely diminished.
Moreover, with so many warhorses having died, there was no reason not to supplement their meals.
Arthur even meticulously arranged meals for Cheng Tian's mount and summoned creatures. Although he initially didn't know how to deploy troops or arrange a camp, by tackling problems as they arose, Arthur was absorbing experience at an astonishing rate and making it his own.
This was exactly what Merlin had hoped to see.
So, even though Cheng Tian, who had slain the Dual Blade Knight, was temporarily basking in glory, it wouldn't actually affect Arthur's true leadership. In the Knights of the Round Table, the difference between Cheng Tian and Arthur was the difference between a capable general and a leader.
Here, special thanks were due to the cavalry of the Silver Legion; the amount of horse meat and offal they contributed was so great that every militiaman could receive a fist-sized portion of meat.
However, just as his task distribution finally came to an end, and as he was about to smash his incredibly hard black bread with the pommel of the Sword in the Stone, preparing to slurp down the horse meat, tomato, and chickpea soup that his servants had repeatedly reheated, all while Lancelot watched with a hesitant gaze, some players arrived.
Oh, right, if 14th and 15th-century armor could travel through time and magic existed, there was no need to dwell on whether tomatoes should exist.
Arthur glanced at the approaching players and immediately noticed that there were no foreign mercenaries related to the Orange Knight among them.
Arthur was well aware of the situation where the foreign mercenaries had split into two small factions. After a not-so-long but sufficiently complex experience as a legion leader, Arthur knew that it was absolutely impossible for the internal structure to be completely unified. In fact, he believed it was best not to let them truly become unified.
The most advantageous situation for a leader was to have multiple small factions under his command that could counterbalance each other, but who must follow his lead in the overall direction.
Therefore, he had known about and tacitly approved of the foreign mercenaries splitting into two small factions for a long time.
Upon hearing the lead player say they intended to retaliate with a night raid on the Silver Fortress, Arthur first exchanged glances with Lancelot (Percival was elsewhere), then agreed without much hesitation. He even issued a corresponding side quest and lent warhorses for the number of participants.
The five players' faces immediately lit up with joy, which was precisely why they chose to report rather than act on their own. By gaining the faction's approval, their actions could be converted into legitimate side quests, just like the opposing faction's night raid yesterday.
However, the side quest Arthur issued, named "Burn Down the Silver Fortress," was quickly relayed to Cheng Tian and his group via messenger, as it was issued to "foreign mercenaries" in general, not just those five individuals. Arthur also wanted to see Cheng Tian's reaction to it.
Cheng Tian's reaction was to decline, because there was no need.
In Cheng Tian's view, the most valuable things inside the fortress should be the treasures collected by Prince Allen, but to get those treasures, he would inevitably have to face Allen himself.
The death of the Dual Blade Knight could be summarized as "unexpected," coupled with his own "frailty" as a carbon-based lifeform, making his death somewhat sudden. But Prince Allen of the Silver Fortress was different; that guy was almost equivalent to a medieval version of an Astartes!
Although he didn't know if the background setting would change to pure physical strength or magical power, facing such an overpowered, oversized hunk of metal, Cheng Tian not only couldn't think of a reliable strategy for the time being, but also had no confidence in being able to kill him before other soldiers arrived as reinforcements.
Therefore, attacking head-on with the Knights of the Round Table, eliminating all the miscellaneous soldiers in the fortress, and finally ganging up on Allen, was what Cheng Tian currently considered the most reliable strategy.
Of course, Cheng Tian also didn't know what abilities these players who accepted the quest possessed. Perhaps they truly had a skill combination that allowed them to burn down the fortress while also forcefully killing Allen.
The Elf-Dwarf... or rather, Dwarf-Elf duo, who also received the side quest, hesitated for a moment before choosing to accept it, but they did so by lagging a distance behind the leading players, trailing far behind.
After the battle during the day, they both felt somewhat like heroes with no place to display their abilities, and they also wanted to try to increase their settlement score for the dungeon.
30 kilometers, neither long nor short. It would take some time for infantry or a forced march, but with the aid of warhorses, it was very quick, which was also the main reason for setting up camp so far away.
Perhaps due to their defeat, the players did not find any opposing faction's sentry posts along the way. They might have been swept back into the fortress during the retreat, directly joining the fortress's defense system.
So, it was a smooth journey all the way to the outside of the fortress.
But when they approached the outer perimeter of the Silver Fortress, something was clearly amiss.
Because the arrangements here were not at all what the players had imagined—a full-scale defense, preparing to rely on the fortress's inherent defensive capabilities to engage in a defensive war of attrition with the Knights of the Round Table. Instead, a large number of soldiers had already begun to gather at the city gates, looking as if they were ready to depart at any moment.
Just as the players reached the optimal observation distance, the fortress gates opened again, and Prince Allen, clad in silver-white heavy armor and riding a large black warhorse that had clearly been magically enhanced and modified, entered the players' field of vision.
But at that very moment, Prince Allen, who had just stepped out of the fortress gate by a dozen meters, suddenly sensed something. The silver meteor hammer in his hand, almost the size of a normal adult, pointed to one side, and he roared,
"Who goes there!?"
Following the Prince's roar, a beam of light, like a stage spotlight, suddenly appeared at the location of the night-raid players, about a kilometer away, illuminating and enveloping them. Then, this beam of light descending from the sky quickly turned into a mysterious purple—
The exact same color as the purification beam of the Sun God, Kukulkan!