Novel Full Chapter 1128: They Are Here
Chapter 1128: They Are Here
Ignis was already halfway to the door when three hands caught his arm at once.
“Must you go?” Nova’s voice trembled.
“The others can handle it!” Aveline added sharply, though her spear wavered slightly in her other hand, “Yeah… let them. It’s not like the whole stronghold depends on you alone.”
Mira’s eyes pleaded with him without offering a word, soft and warm, but also heavy with unspoken fear at the same time.
Ignis looked at the three of them and couldn’t help but laugh. A short, dry chuckle. “Wives, you’re far too shortsighted. If I don’t show up, what am I supposed to say later? ’Sorry, my wives cooked too tasty a dinner’? You’d make us turn into traitors.”
That earned him three grim faces in return.
Until Mira squared her shoulder. “Then if you go, we go too.”
Ignis’s mirth faded. He looked at them, all three, the women who had chosen to drop their blades for his sake. “Did you forget why you retired? My fire became too devastating, too large-scale. Fighting beside me doesn’t make us a team; it makes me a hazard to your safety.”
That only deepened the worry in their eyes. Nova bit her lip. Aveline cursed under her breath again. Mira’s fingers trembled just for a moment before she steadied them.
Seeing their reluctance to remain at home, Ignis sighed. His expression softened even as resolve hardened beneath it. “Please protect my back from afar. Watch over me from a distance as my guardian angels.”
The shift was immediate. Relief bloomed across their faces as they nodded quickly and each seized their weapons.
The four of them rushed out into the open courtyards of the stronghold. Defensive artifacts crackled and hummed to life all around them. It wasn’t a stronghold in name only; layer upon layer of wards, barriers, and runes stood with the sole role of repelling invaders.
But all of it felt pitifully small in the face of what Ignis saw beyond the walls.
His blood ran cold.
An army. Not a raiding party, not a skirmishing band. A full army with banners snapping in the wind and their steel gleaming under the sunlight. Rows upon rows of armored warriors, disciplined and unyielding. Each chestplate bore the unmistakable crest of the Fujimori clan.
The elite army of the Silverwind Duchy stood before them.
“How?!” Aveline’s voice broke as disbelief flooded her tone. “How did they even bring such a force this close without anyone noticing!?”
Ignis’s jaw tightened. His fiery eyes narrowed. “The reports weren’t wrong, then… their new leader, Kaede Fujimori, is said to be capable of opening dimensional tears with her katana. I didn’t want to believe it, but the Consortium has been very serious recently. They wouldn’t make such a rookie mistake as letting an army march up on us.”
The wives stiffened.
“!!”
Nova’s silver eyes widened. “Is she… like Devil-”
“Nova!” Mira snapped, cutting her off with a sharp look. “We swore to our husband we wouldn’t reveal the kid’s tricks. He trusted Husband with them.”
“Ah! Sorry!”
The Fujimori ranks parted suddenly.
From between the armored soldiers, a single figure stepped forward. She was young, incredibly so. But her posture was proud and regal, which made her look older than her facial features suggested.
Lush black hair flowed down her back, the strands of which were threaded with golden ornaments that shimmered beneath the sun. Her armor was the ornate style of Fujimori leadership, which meant blood-red plates trimmed with gold.
Nova’s staff quivered in her hands. “Is she…?”
Ignis shook his head, uncertainty written on his features. “I haven’t seen Kaede’s portrait yet.”
This prompted all his wives to return their attention to the oriental woman.
Her walk was calm. Each step carried weight, grace, and lethality. She moved as though she were not approaching a fortified bastion, but merely strolling through her garden.
The stronghold leaders weren’t fools who would be charmed by a young woman’s appearance. There was no white flag visible in her raised hands, or rather, her hands were not raised to begin with, which marked her as an enemy.
“Target her! Fire! Do not let her near the wards!” one of the leaders barked.
At once, the defensive artifacts came to life. Massive turrets lined along the walls spun, locking onto the lone figure. Arcs of light condensed into projectiles, each one powerful enough to tear through reinforced metal alloys.
The first volley exploded down toward her.
And in that instant, her movements changed.
The young woman’s feet slammed into the earth, and her form blurred forward. Speed. Inhuman speed. One moment, she was a woman; the next, she was nothing but a blur one might mistake for a fired ballista bolt.
Steel flashed as her katana left its sheath in a ringing blur. Her blade carved arcs through the air, each stroke precise enough to split the projectiles aimed for her throat, her chest, her legs. The ones she did not cut, she slipped past with hair’s-breadth sidesteps.
“What…” Mira gasped, watching the young woman’s regal armor glint between the flashes of destruction.
She closed the distance.
Both hands gripped her katana. Her lips formed words that were too quiet to hear in the chaos.
Her blade rose, then fell in a single overhead arc.
The air itself screamed.
The world split open, and a tear ripped across the defensive barrier. Sparks of magic flared violently as wards buckled, reality bending around the slash.
For a heartbeat, silence.
Then she leapt back with her katana raised toward the heavens.
Her voice cut through the battlefield, this time loud and crisp. “Fire!”
And the Fujimori obeyed.
Behind her, siege weaponry roared. Massive ballistae unleashed their bolts. Cannons belched flame and iron. Rows of archers loosed black-feathered arrows in coordinated waves.
The sky darkened with steel.
The projectiles poured into the tear like a river through a broken dam. Defensive wards flared desperately to compensate, layers of light snapping into place, but the impact rattled the stronghold to its bones. Stone cracked, walls shuddered, and fires erupted where the defenses faltered.
The Consortium stronghold was mighty, but so too was the might of Silverwind. The clash of power was not a skirmish. It was war made manifest, a storm of fire and steel colliding against the bastion’s defenses.
Unbeknownst to those present, a [Warp Gate] opened in the midst of this chaos, using the vision of Selene Coss, the redhead Pyromancer slave of Quinlan Elysiar as its anchor!