Episode 140: Storming the Capital

On the eastern city wall, waves of chaos were spreading.

“W-What the hell!? What’s going on here!?”

Jarkan had led his troops down from the wall to intercept the Serodonian prisoners, but he had left a certain number of soldiers stationed above.

Those soldiers were now shouting in confusion.

“Captain Jarkan’s been defeated, and… the Eastern Army is closing in from outside!?”

Inside the city wall, the Serodonian prisoners who had overcome Jarkan were working to open the gate.

Meanwhile, beyond the wall—over the hill—the massive forces of the Eastern Army came into view.

“What’s happening!? Wasn’t the Eastern Army supposed to be attacking the western wall!? Why are they coming from the east!?”

“Don’t ask me, I don’t know!”

“This is bad! At this rate, the Eastern Army will breach the wall…!”

The moment the soldiers’ desperate cries echoed atop the wall,

it finally happened—the city gate was opened by the hands of the Serodonian prisoners.

In response, a knight with crimson hair raised her sword and shouted with commanding force.

“Charge into the capital, Kirchherion! Follow me!”

Beatrice Nightray surged forward, breaking through the gate. Following her lead, knights poured into Kirchherion one after another.

“N-No…!”

“It’s over… this place is done for…!”

“We have to escape! We need to report to Lord Zefard—quickly!”

Despair-filled cries reverberated atop the wall.

Faced with the unfolding chaos below, the soldiers were powerless to act.

If there was anything they could do, it was to flee the scene and deliver urgent news to Zefard on the western side.

Thus, the knights of the Eastern Army, flooding in through the eastern first gate, began opening each of the gates along the eastern wall one by one.

Following them, the infantry also succeeded in infiltrating the city.

“Alright! Arm the Serodonian soldiers!”

At Leon’s command, his infantry battalion began distributing spare weapons to the Serodonian soldiers.

With this, they finally gained proper equipment.

As the soldiers hurriedly donned their gear, Leon approached one man and called out to him.

“Yo, it’s been a while… Though, you probably don’t remember me, huh?”

“I remember you. The infantry captain under Count Kreving… if I recall, your name is Lord Leon.”

The black-haired knight, Ricardo, responded quietly.

“Huh… you even remember my name?”

Leon had only met Ricardo once or twice when the latter was a prisoner of the Eastern Army.

The fact that Ricardo remembered his name was surprising to Leon.

“Either way, I’m grateful, Ricardo. Having you on our side makes things a hell of a lot easier.”

“I feel the same. I’m honored to fight alongside you. However… just days ago, we were crossing swords as enemies, and now we stand side by side in Kirchherion. It’s an ironic twist of fate, isn’t it? Or perhaps… this was all part of Count Kreving’s plan from the start.”

“Ha… who knows? Either way, we’ve both had our fates toyed with by one hell of a guy. But now that we’re here, there’s no turning back. We’ll see this through to the end.”

 

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The capital city of Kirchherion was divided into three concentric layers centered around the royal palace.

Namely, the outer layer where commoners lived, the middle layer housing wealthy merchants and knights, and the inner layer lined with the estates of nobles and royalty.

Knights were now charging from the middle layer toward the outer layer.

“To think they’d use prisoners to break the gate from the inside…! We’ve been had!”

Among the knights clad in gleaming armor, one man, dressed in particularly ornate armor, muttered to himself.

Despite his words, a confident smile played on his lips.

This was the Royal Aegis Commander, Karlheinz.

“In this situation, our numerical advantage means almost nothing.”

The man running beside him responded in a calm, measured tone.

This was the Vice-Commander of the Knight Order, Klaus.

Though older, Klaus was far outranked by Karlheinz, a member of one of the five great noble families.

Naturally, Klaus’s tone carried a hint of deference.

“Indeed. We can’t afford to send all our soldiers to intercept them…!”

Karlheinz replied.

This time, Luverios had gathered a total force of sixty thousand in the capital.

Of those, five thousand were stationed at each of the eastern, southern, and northern walls.

At the western gate, where Siegfried’s Eastern Army was launching an offensive with magical catapults, fifteen thousand troops were concentrated.

Additionally, ten thousand soldiers were deployed as guards within the city’s various districts, with the remaining twenty thousand held in reserve.

This was because the siege was expected to be a prolonged battle.

The plan was to rotate fatigued soldiers with the reserves, allowing them to endure the siege—that was Luverios’s strategy.

However, the prisoners’ unexpected tactic of opening the gate shattered that plan in an instant.

Could they then send their entire force to intercept the Eastern Army invading from the eastern wall? No, they could not.

They had to keep a certain number of troops in the city and at the other walls to prepare for any potential secondary or tertiary strategies Siegfried might have.

As a result, the only forces immediately available to intercept were the twenty thousand reserve troops.

What should have been a four-to-one advantage—sixty thousand against fifteen thousand—had been reduced to a near-even matchup of twenty thousand against fifteen thousand.

No, with the Serodonian prisoners joining the Eastern Army, it was actually twenty thousand against eighteen thousand.

“Truly, Count Kreving has pulled off an impressive feat to bring things to this point…!”

Without losing his smile, Karlheinz genuinely praised Siegfried’s skill.

To turn a hopeless situation—facing a four-to-one troop disadvantage and the formidable magical wall, Magia Valm—into a near-even battle was nothing short of masterful.

“But… that’s also the limit of Count Kreving’s abilities. They’ll get no further than this!”

“Exactly. If the forces are equal, there’s no reason we should fall behind.”

After all, the reserve forces they led were the core of the kingdom’s military—the elite of the Royal Knight Order and the Royal Guard.

And leading them were the kingdom’s pinnacle of martial prowess—the three great knights.

“Now, let’s show them! The difference in our caliber…!”