Imperial Knight Order Garrison Regulation: Training camp followers are prohibited from participating in frontline warfare unless absolutely necessary.
Every youth accepted into the training camp had the potential to awaken their Knight Power. They were the hope of the Knight Order and the dawn of the Empire's future.
Every second of war is a death grinder.
Such a high-risk task like filling the lines—a veritable suicide mission—was not for them. It would only be their turn to take the field after every last soldier of the Infantry Legions and all the Knights had fallen.
That was why Reinhardt had silently left the fortifications, sneaking back to the barracks.
Flames flickered, illuminating a fortress built into the Frostfire Mountain Range. It crouched like a great beast, dominating the only road from the Northern Icefield to the Human World.
The fortress walls were high and massive, stretching for a hundred meters. Even after ages of erosion, they still stood proud.
Inside the fortress, the roaring commands of officers echoed relentlessly. Wave after wave of soldiers surged onto the walls, locking in a desperate struggle with the Abyssal Demons that had breached their defenses.
The Steel Knight Order was organized into a ten-man Vanguard Brigade and five six-man squads. Every member was a true Official Knight, each capable of fighting a hundred men, for they wielded Mighty Power!
And what's more, the three Vice Commanders were all advanced Earth Knights!
The combat strength of the Steel Knight Order was such that a single squad could be dispatched to effortlessly crush the entire armed forces of a minor Lord!
Even in a place as vast as Frostfire Fortress, garrisoning a full Knight Order—forty-three Knights in total—still felt incredibly crowded.
However, even with the Knight Order possessing the terrifying combat power to flatten a small nation, the Vanguard Brigade and Squads Three and Four, who had ascended the walls, were still locked in a desperate struggle!
A mere two-hundred-meter stretch of wall, packed with thirty Knights and one Earth Knight, sounded impossibly crowded. But under the crushing pressure of the Abyss Legion, the resistance put up by those thirty-one Knights became as brutal and desperate as a last stand by an Infantry Legion, fighting to the death to plug a breach.
By the time Reinhardt reached the base of the wall, he saw that mangled Demon corpses were piled high everywhere, stacked in layers. A foul-smelling, dark red blood pooled into a stream and flowed down from the ramparts.
One after another, soldiers—some dead, some gravely wounded, all horrifically maimed—were carried down from the wall, their agonizing wails filling the air.
On the steps leading up to the wall, new recruits waited to fill the gaps. Their eyes were hollow, and they trembled with fear.
On this night of blizzard and storm, the fires in the camp were gradually dying out, reducing visibility to almost nothing. Reinhardt's ears were filled with a cacophony: the shrieks of Demons, the wails of the dying, and the roars of soldiers and Knights. The biting wind and snow lashed his face, making his skin ache with pain.
It was his first time seeing the legendary Abyssal Demons in person. The corpses piled in the pools of blood were each about the size of a wild dog. Their bodies were covered in fine scales, and the villus-like hair on their spines grew backward, stiff as steel needles. Even in death, their mouths and noses still smoldered with sulfur and flame. And there were so many of them.
Reinhardt tossed aside his training-issue Iron Sword and picked up a sharpened Hearn Territory Guard Standard Longsword from the ground. He had just put one foot on the stairs to the wall when a Knight seized him.
The Knight grabbed Reinhardt's arm and roared, "Lord Erich knew some of you wouldn't just obediently hide in the fortifications!
Reinhardt! We'll deal with you leaving the confinement cell without permission later. Now get back to the fortifications! Don't come here and make a mess of things!"
Reinhardt wasn't the only one. The Knight had already caught three other boys red-handed. When war came, how could hot-blooded youths like them possibly endure the cowardice of hiding in the fortifications, clinging to life?!
If they were truly cowards, the training camp would have long since kicked them out for lacking the required Spiritual Power!
The Knight's right hand was like an iron vise. He gripped Reinhardt's arm and, without another word, began dragging him toward the fortifications as if he were hauling a sack.
Reinhardt began to panic.
'I need this chance! Not just to rapidly build my Steel of the Heart and awaken my Knight Power—I need to personally slap that old bastard Sedon in the face! If I just let this go today, I'll never be able to live it down!'
"Lord Adrian! We've been in the training camp all this time for a day like today! Let me go!"
The Knight holding him, a close friend of Elias, had dazzling golden hair, fair skin, and was exceptionally handsome. If not for his impossibly burly physique, he could have passed for a young nobleman from the Imperial City.
Of course, Adrian knew exactly what the restless Reinhardt was thinking.
Vice Commander Erich's orders had been clear: patrol the area near the wall and catch any followers trying to climb it. He was not to let these boys throw their lives away for nothing.
'This isn't a routine patrol or a local operation to hunt down Raiders. The true horror of the Abyss Legion is far beyond their imagination. Otherwise, the Empire wouldn't have stationed three entire, fully-manned Knight Orders in the Hearn Territory! It's not just the relentless, tide-like assaults. The real nightmares are the High Tier Demons and Bloodline Mages from the Abyss!'
To this day, he could never forget the great battle in the autumn of 1438.
The Steel Knight Order had lost two-thirds of its members. Two Vice Commanders of the Earth Knight Level had been killed in action on the spot! He remembered the horrifying scene of Lord Bashk—an Earth Knight, Commander of the Knight Order, and recipient of three Golden Flower Medals—being crushed with a single hand like an ant after encountering a Bloodline Mage of Legion Commander Level. It was like a nightmare.
If Vice Commander Erich hadn't led the survivors to break through the encirclement and hold out for reinforcements, the Steel Knight Order would now exist only in history books.
To the boys in the training camp, joining the Steel Knight Order was the greatest honor of their lives. But only Adrian knew the real reason they were stationed here in the Northern Lands.
Within the Seventh Group Army, the Steel Knight Order was seen as nothing more than a band of defeated soldiers, a remnant that had barely managed to preserve its formal structure. The position of Commander remained vacant to this day, not only because no Earth Knight was willing to take on such a mess, but also because the high command of the Group was considering dismantling the order and absorbing its members into other Knight Orders.
That crushing defeat hadn't just erased the glory the Steel Knight Order had forged in blood and fire and shattered their courage; Commander Bashk's reckless advance had nearly jeopardized the entire war effort!
But then, the very thing Adrian feared most began to happen.
A sinister wind swept across the land. It was a cold far more piercing than the blizzards of the Northern Lands—a cold that seeped deep into the soul.
A voice, elegant and utterly out of place in the brutal war, drifted on the wind. It seemed to emanate from a sea of shadows—a sound that could bewitch the soul and make one's blood run cold.
"Ahhh—such delicious souls."
The very moment that voice was heard...
The soldiers on the walls who had been bravely resisting the Demon Army, the vibrant lives shedding blood to defend their home, began to collapse. Like stalks of wheat in autumn, they fell to the ground, row by row.
The color drained from their skin as their wailing souls streamed into a single, ghastly green lantern—the only source of light in the darkness.
Even Reinhardt's face drained of color at that moment.
In all of Frostfire Fortress, aside from the Lord Knights, perhaps no one was more familiar with Bloodline Mages than he was.