Crest of the Strongest Knight

Chapter 140 - The Other Tower

"Hah! Looks like we both got here at the same time!"

"Didn't you say this was a race?" Viviane asked, looking down at her hand that was still firmly joined with Medrauta's.

"I did, but you wouldn't let go of my hand." Medrauta grinned teasingly as she gently led her lady along, the two girls making their way across the walkway of the border wall.

"And whose fault is that?" Viviane asked, giggling sweetly before giving Medrauta a quick peck on the cheek. It'd been a while since the two shared a relatively peaceful, intimate moment like this with their recent days being filled with nothing but fighting and action. The excitement was welcome, but the noblewoman felt like they could use a little break.

Granted, being surrounded by slumbering witchspawn that were just a few hundred meters away while also looking for a special mana core didn't exactly fit Viviane's idea of a relaxing date, but she was willing to take whatever she could get at this point.

As the two of them stood atop the massive walls and looked toward the vast, moonlit expanse, a strange sense of peace settled upon them. Hand in hand, Viviane and Medrauta stared not into the distance, but up into the sky above. The stars twinkled with an almost tentative light against the dark tapestry as if they were preparing to fall, but the sea of luminous clusters and multicolored nebulae produced a beauty unrivaled even if they must one day plummet to the earth.

Medrauta's grip around Viviane's hand tightened gently, causing the noblewoman to squeeze her knight's hand in turn. It had been a long while since the pair was granted such a moment to themselves, no matter how fleeting. Far away from the constant bloodshed of battlefields, the incessant mountains of papers, and the duty-bound obligations, Viviane and Medrauta allowed themselves a brief reprieve from the endless trials they had been put through and were still going through.

"...Hey, Medrauta."

"Hm?"

"When all of this is over... Should we settle down in the countryside?"

Medrauta laughed. "Wish we could... It'd be a lot simpler than what we've got lined up."

Viviane grinned sheepishly. "Yeah... I suppose so. You'll be there, right? At the end of it all?"

"Damn right I will, 'duchess.'"

"Oh, please. I'm hoping to put off inheriting the duchy for a long while."

The pair shared a round of laughter as they returned their attention to the scene before them. Though their moment had been brief, it had been enough for them to continue pressing on, knowing that there would be many more moments to come after the trials ahead. Below them on the once-green prairies of the empire laid droves upon droves of slumbering witchspawn, yet the thought of such accursed hordes waking upon daylight no longer struck fear within the two.

Together, their keen vision pierced through the shroud of their night, cutting through the darkness and forcing it to divulge the secrets it held. A massive carpet of creatures blanketed the entirety of the empire as far as they could see, the beasts collapsed in what appeared to be awkward and painful positions—if they even felt pain—as they fell dormant immediately upon moonrise. The unchanging blanket of black cascaded throughout the whole of the empire, overwriting the greenery beneath with its terrifying visage.

Like an unstoppable mist of nightmares, Amelia sought to have her army of witchspawn sweep across the empire while its knights and soldiers were occupied by Kaslavna or turned against the empire as a result of her allies, but never did she think that this terrible sight would be her accursed army's own undoing. Indeed, it was the very homogeneous nature of this horde that gave away its most vulnerable positions.