Chapter 594 - 363: The Impregnable Fortress

Chapter 594: Chapter 363: The Impregnable Fortress

For days, the atmosphere within Delong Castle had been incredibly tense.

News of the Northern Alliance Army’s defeat had already arrived, and the commander-in-chief was missing.

The defeated soldiers who managed to escape to Delong Castle didn’t even arrive in squads. A group of three was considered a large number; they mostly trickled in one by one, having cast aside their helmets and armor, disheveled and filthy, no different from starving refugees.

Of the hundred-thousand-strong Alliance Army, only a few hundred deserters had made it to Delong Castle.

This struck the castle’s Lord, Count Medellin, as absurd. ’Even if it were a hundred thousand pigs,’ he thought, ’they wouldn’t have been slaughtered down to so few in just two weeks.’

The only reasonable explanation was that many of them had no intention of returning to Delong Castle to regroup.

They weren’t fighting anymore. They were going home.

What had caused the morale of the Alliance Army’s remnants to plummet so drastically?

Just what kind of devastating blow had they suffered outside Deepwater City?

Count Medellin was desperate to get some useful information from these returning men.

He needed it to make the defenses of Delong Castle more targeted and effective.

He had to hold this place. There was no other choice.

First, he was the Lord here. Delong Castle wasn’t just an isolated fortress on the plains, but a city of considerable size. He was responsible for the tens of thousands of residents within it.

Although rumors circulating online claimed the Northern Legion didn’t attack civilians.

But it was just propaganda. Who knew if it was true?

Besides, his son was studying in the Royal City. To put it nicely, he was "studying"—in reality, he was a hostage.

Therefore, for both public and private reasons, he could not abandon Delong Castle.

So, the question was, how to defend it?

He had sent several letters to the Royal City requesting aid, but the replies were all the same: hold fast, show the responsibility of a Lord, display the character of the nobility, and don’t be a coward who surrenders.

In short, it was a pile of empty words, with no mention of when reinforcements might arrive.

Logically, Count Medellin could actually understand. After all, the last Alliance Army had just suffered a crushing defeat. Re-gathering their forces would require a period of preparation.

But emotionally, it was hard to accept. For the time being, he could only rely on himself to hold on.

"How is the Mages’ research progressing?" Count Medellin asked his deputy.

"We already have some preliminary results," his deputy replied hurriedly. "Assuming the memories of those defeated soldiers aren’t mistaken."

"Even if they are mistaken, we have nothing else to go on. We can only take a gamble. Let’s go and see."

Unlike other cities of similar size, Delong Castle was a vital pass to the Central Plains and a key military location. As such, many Mages were permanently stationed here, mostly dispatched by the Royal Family, and their skill level was higher than the Continent’s average.

’That unlucky Sutton VII wasn’t entirely useless, then.’

Count Medellin led his deputy to the Mage Tower in the city.

This Mage Tower was a very traditional one—dark and cluttered inside, with all sorts of casting components and strange ingredients scattered everywhere.

And now, it also contained many people with vacant stares.

They were the defeated soldiers who had barely escaped the battlefield of Deepwater City. Their memories had been searched, leaving them in this catatonic state.

Count Medellin hadn’t wanted to do this to these poor soldiers, but he truly had no other way.

When questioned for useful information, they couldn’t give a coherent account; their stories didn’t even match.

The things on the Deepwater City battlefield had terrified them, leaving them in a state of mental confusion, unable to articulate any credible information.

One thing was certain, however: all of their accounts revolved around the Northern Domain possessing a particularly terrifying secret magic weapon.

To find out what this secret weapon was, Count Medellin had no choice but to order the Mages to directly excavate their memories and retrieve the raw images.

And so, these soldiers, who had been lucky enough to escape the battlefield, had their minds broken by their own side.

The final result, however, was somewhat laughable.

The Mages studied the memories of over a hundred defeated soldiers, only to discover, to their surprise, that only two had ever directly faced the secret weapon.

The rest had never even encountered it; they had started to flee before even reaching the battlefield.

The stories about the secret weapon had all been passed by word of mouth, repeatedly exaggerated and distorted, with each person adding their own imagination. It would have been a miracle if their accounts matched.

But in the memories of the survivors from the actual combat zone, they finally found valuable intelligence.

If it weren’t for the smoke released by the Alchemists, they could have seen it more clearly.

Unfortunately, there were no ’if’s. They could only make a judgment based on the blurry images in the smoke.

"We speculate that it’s still a type of Magic Firearm, but instead of firing randomly triggered Magic Arrays, it shoots a pure stream of magical Element."

On the top floor of the Mage Tower, a middle-aged Mage was explaining this to Count Medellin.

He was originally a Wild Mage with decent talent. When he joined the Mage Guild, he caught the eye of a Royal Mage and was accepted as a disciple.

After achieving some small success, he was dispatched to Delong Castle to build his resume. He had a bright future ahead of him, so he really, really did not want to die here.

For the past few days, he and his colleagues had barely slept, practically burning the candle at both ends to conduct their research.

"The fired Element is highly pure and doesn’t carry any special magical properties. The killing power actually comes from the extreme heat it carries. Therefore, we’ve targeted these two properties and designed a specialized Protective Array that can be directly integrated into the City Guard Array."

Important cities are usually equipped with a special Defense Array. Some ancient cities, for historical reasons, even have Defense Arrays with strong regional characteristics.

For instance, in the mountains to the west of the plains where Delong Castle is located, there are several quarries large enough to be ranked among the biggest on the entire Continent. They have been famous for their high-quality stone for three hundred years, since before the Sutton Kingdom even existed.