"My leg—! My leg—! AHH—!"
"Medic! We need a medic!"
"An order from Vice Commander Friedrich! Vanguard Brigade! Third and Fourth Squads, to the walls! Everyone else, take cover in the underground bunkers! Where is General Moritz?! Tell him to report to the command tent immediately!"
The fortress was in chaos on this blizzard-swept night.
Soldiers and followers with broken legs and grievous wounds screamed their lungs out. Some were helped into the underground bunkers by their comrades, while others simply awaited death in agony.
The sight of charred flesh and gory, severed limbs was terrifying. Fresh lives were being extinguished with every passing second. Even Reinhardt felt his scalp tingle in horror!
In the distance, the sky burned and boiled in a rain of fire, like a sea of magma.
Once those fiery meteorites landed, even Frostfire Fortress, forged from rock and steel, would be reduced to a pile of rubble in an instant by their absolute destructive force of light and heat!
Reinhardt had served at Frostfire Fortress for a year. The power and terror of the Abyss Legion, merely sketched out in snippets from others' mouths, was already horrifying enough.
But seeing it with his own eyes today, he finally understood just how pale a verbal description could be.
Under the iron curtain that shrouded this war of Extraordinary Power, it was like being caught in the inexorable advance of a meat grinder. The lives of Mortals were as insignificant as weeds. Even a Knight wielding Mighty Power seemed as small and helpless as any Mortal at this moment!
The soldiers in the bunker were about to close the heavy door, but they stopped when they saw Reinhardt sprinting for his life. They waved, roaring hoarsely.
"Reinhardt—! This way! This way!"
As he carried Eliza and charged into the fortified bunker, the heavy iron door slammed shut behind them.
The next second.
BOOM—!
Everything around Reinhardt trembled violently!
Dust and debris rained down from the ceiling.
The incandescent white light, visible even through the crack in the iron door, was still so blinding he couldn't open his eyes.
In these Northern Lands, where the temperature was typically below minus twenty degrees Celsius, the heat inside the bunker instantly became unbearable. Sweat poured down Reinhardt's back like a waterfall.
The dense bombardment of fiery rain continued.
A soldier beside him grabbed his shoulder and yelled frantically, but all he could hear was the deafening roar of explosions.
In that moment, Reinhardt's thoughts seemed to drift back to an afternoon ten years ago.
The cellar was damp and cold, never seeing the light of day. When the Mage performed the sacrificial ritual, the screams of the once-living townspeople echoed endlessly in his ears.
Shrill, agonized, hoarse...
But war gave him no time to reminisce.
The next instant, a blinding flash of light made Reinhardt's pupils contract violently!
The blast wave and intense heat mercilessly tore apart the bunker entrance. The iron door, weighing over a hundred pounds, shot toward Reinhardt like a cannonball!
It all happened too fast!
He had yet to awaken his Knight Power. Though his eyes and brain had already reacted, his body couldn't keep up with the speed of his thoughts.
In just half a second, he and Eliza would be slammed against the wall by the iron door and crushed into a pulp!
In that split second between life and death.
A figure appeared before him at a speed indiscernible to the naked eye. A dense golden light formed an energy phantom resembling a Mecha, which crossed its arms and forcibly stopped the flying iron door!
"What are you gawking at? Get her inside!"
Erich's brow was tightly furrowed. 'I'm going to kill Sedon,' he thought, cursing the man's name. If Lord Hearn's daughter had an accident on their watch, forget three mere Knight Order Vice Commanders—even if they brought in the entire high command of the Imperial Seventh Group Army, they couldn't afford to bear the responsibility for such a major diplomatic incident!
Having just brushed with death, the old soldier who had been trying to pull Reinhardt away was frozen in place, his face ashen with terror.
But Reinhardt's heart was unusually calm. After so many years, he had long grown accustomed to this kind of life. In this moment, the only thing that truly shook him was the Knight Power displayed by Vice Commander Erich!
It was so dazzlingly brilliant! Like a star hanging low in the sky, it made one yearn to grasp it firmly in their hands!
Guardian Barrier.
Elemental Domain.
Destruction Force Field.
Extraordinary Armament.
These were the things that every youth who aspired to Knight Power dreamed of!
The 'Power' spoken of in Knight Power referred to these four types of Extraordinary Power. It wasn't just an aura born from a powerful Physique, but an absolute manifestation of Spiritual Energy!
The attribute of Vice Commander Erich's 'Power' was Guardian Barrier. The godlike Mecha energy phantom was just like the solid and reliable impression he had always given.
Once the fortress entered a state of war, every second counted. Reinhardt didn't have time to explain why he had broken out of the confinement cell. He picked up Eliza and ran deeper into the bunker.
He handed her over to a field medic and left without a second glance.
The fire rain bombardment had ended. Even though Reinhardt had never actually commanded a battle, anyone who wasn't an idiot could figure out what came next: after the ranged bombardment, the Abyss Legion would surely press their advantage and launch a full-scale assault on the fortress!
Crisis and opportunity coexisted.
'Only the brave are worthy of awakening Knight Power!'
These Abyssal Demons invading the Human World were both a mortal threat and a stepping stone for him to awaken his own Knight Power!
But when Reinhardt ran out of the underground bunker, the sulfurous, hot air made him choke and gasp for breath. Of the soldiers and followers who hadn't managed to escape in time, not one had a complete corpse.
A rain of blood had splattered the ground. Broken bones were connected to charred fragments of flesh, wisps of white smoke rising from them.
Incomplete heads lay half-buried in the rubble and dirt, their expressions twisted in extreme agony, as if they had died in immense pain, their eyes unable to close in peace.
Even for Reinhardt, witnessing a true battlefield for the first time, his chest felt tight. The grim terror of death felt like a giant boulder pressing down on him, making it hard to breathe.
The wind howled across the land, carrying the roars and screams from beyond the fortress walls—a sound that could seize one's very soul!
Reinhardt clenched his fists tightly. He brushed past the soldiers regrouping to ascend the walls and fight, running all the way back to the followers' barracks.
The place where the young men used to train and rest had been reduced to a fiery ruin.
Fortunately, amidst a pile of rubble, Reinhardt found a cast-iron Chest Armor used for training and an unsharpened Iron Sword.
He pulled a piece of clothing from a dead body to wear for warmth. After getting himself sorted, he planned to sneak onto the wall with the Fortress Defenders. But as he passed a tent that had miraculously survived, he heard faint sobs coming from inside.
'Is someone trapped inside?'
Saving people was the priority at a time like this. Without a second thought, Reinhardt pushed aside the wood and stones weighing down the tent. In the dim, flickering firelight, a familiar figure was curled up at the foot of a bed, crying softly.
'Robbie Hiling?'
'Why is he hiding here instead of taking cover in the bunkers?'
But from the looks of it, he had clearly been scared witless by the cruelty and gore of the war.
Reinhardt even began to wonder what kind of person he had been competing with for the past three years.
Every second in a state of war was a race against the Death God. Reinhardt didn't want to waste time on this mama's boy.
Seeing he wasn't injured, Reinhardt decided to leave him be and ran toward the wall alone.