Chapter 165

"So what are we doing right now?" My voice came out a little numb amid the noise of the battlefield.

Hard not to feel numb. Anyone who'd been commanding a battle for hours on end would feel the same way.

By my estimate, it had been many hours since the fighting started.

We couldn't break through the energy tower in a short time, and the Shadow couldn't break through the crystal soldiers' tight defensive line in a short time either.

The battle had gradually turned into a war of attrition.

"Refueling." That was the old servant's answer.

"Eating." That was the Youngest Princess's voice.

By now, we were completely surrounded by the Shadow army. In the middle of the fighting, the outer perimeter of the crystal soldiers surrounding the energy tower had shrunk by about a third.

As the army's numbers dropped, the lanterns that had been spread too thin before were now concentrated together, and the light actually grew denser.

The fog inside the castle had mostly cleared by now, while the Shadow army outside had spread far into the darkness of the night, stretching back who knows how far.

They looked like a small island of flickering lights in a dark ocean.

It looked like a desperate situation, but none of us three were even glancing at the distant battlefield.

Not much to see anyway. After staring at it for hours, we were long past tired of looking.

The three of us were huddled around the entrance of the energy tower, eating as fast as we could.

The noisy battlefield in the distance, the energy tower above us shaking every now and then, and three people with their heads down eating. It was a strange scene.

"What kind of meat is in this can? Why does it taste so awful?" the Youngest Princess mumbled with her mouth full. "Where did all this food even come from?"

"I just brought it back from the storage area," the old servant answered briefly.

"Don't be picky at a time like this." I kept a straight face and finished the meat in my can. Awful? Really? I couldn't really tell.

"Knight, how many floors have we cleared? How much longer until we reach the teleportation array?"

The Youngest Princess tried another bite. She didn't like it, but she scrunched up her face and swallowed anyway.

She wanted to get through what she had as fast as possible and find something else to eat.

"Almost there. About ten more floors or so." I estimated the height to the top of the tower and glanced back at the old servant.

I hesitated, then asked:

"Madam, the teleportation array... I mean, now that the magic circuits throughout the castle have all been corrupted, are you sure it's still working?"

"Don't worry, I've said this many times already," the old servant replied, slowly eating the food in her hand.

"I swear on my life, the teleportation array will be fine. And even if something is wrong, I can fix it. We just need to get there. I'll handle the rest."

"Alright..." With the old servant's assurance, I stopped dwelling on it.

The three of us finished eating as quickly as we could.

I stood up and looked around. The Shadow army had the crystal soldiers completely surrounded. In the time we'd spent eating, the crystal soldiers' defensive perimeter had shrunk a little more.

The siege explosives from before were all used up. The last wave had just gone up. From here on, the assault would have to rely purely on manpower pushing through by force.

I gathered and rallied the remaining elite crystal soldiers, pulling them together.

I turned to the other two and said, "We're going to push all the way up in one go. Any problems with that?"

The Youngest Princess and the old servant both nodded, their expressions firm.

"Good, then..."

"ROAR!"

Before I could finish, a familiar roar suddenly came from somewhere in the Shadow in the distance, cutting me off.

"That sound... that's strange," the Youngest Princess said, turning her head with a slight start.

"Could it be...?" The old servant seemed to have already guessed.

"The Calamity Dragon..."

I stared at the familiar black dragon flying toward us from a distance and called out its name in shock.

What was going on? Hadn't it already been killed by the ugly knight? Why was it here again?

A massive black dragon came flying through the air, moving in a crooked, unsteady path. Beneath it, faint black energy seemed to connect it to other Shadow creatures.

I focused my mind, and the distant black dragon in my field of vision quickly came into sharp clarity.

Its head and neck had been forcibly stitched back together with black threads running through them in every direction.

"The wound is healing?" I was stunned to see the gashes at the stitched joint on the dragon's neck slowly closing up.

As the dragon flew, it kept drawing black energy from the Shadow monsters below, pulling it all into itself.

The Shadow creatures were dropping in droves, and the dragon's wounds were healing faster and faster.

I had a vague feeling that the dragon was somehow getting stronger.

"All assault units, listen up!" I snapped back to attention and shouted. "Follow me into the energy tower!"

No time to keep grinding away at the Shadow in a war of attrition. We needed to deal with the Runic Array now.

A single black dragon wasn't enough to stand against the crystal soldiers' forces right now, but if we dragged this out, other things could go wrong. If a few more creatures showed up that were just as powerful — some kind of white dragon, a green dragon, whatever — the front line wouldn't hold.

"Move! We're taking this tower now!"

I waved the other two forward, and we rushed into the tower, with a large force of crystal assault soldiers right behind us.

There were a lot of them, but at this point, almost everyone entering the tower was a powerful individual fighter.

The pace was fast.

The old servant and I knew this tower better than anyone, so we led the way from the front.

One using magic, the other using brute force, we pushed upward floor by floor at a rapid pace.

The Youngest Princess and the large number of crystal soldiers followed close behind.

We quickly reached the floor where the last wave of self-destructing crystal soldiers had disappeared — a wide, open hall.

Crystal soldier bodies were scattered all across the floor.

In the center, the massive dog-shaped puppet had been hacked to pieces by countless crystal soldiers. Its huge body, smeared with black filth, lay still on the ground.

I stopped here briefly.

The assault team from below arrived in the hall shortly after. Once they were roughly assembled, I ordered them to push up to the next floor.

I sent wave after wave of crystal soldiers up, and when it felt right, I went up with one of the waves myself.

The traps were broken through quickly by sheer numbers, and the guards on the next floor were cut down in a flurry of blades.

Without the siege explosives to clear the way, it was slower, but with me there directing things up close, the progress wasn't much worse than before.

Trap after trap was smashed through by brute force. We were essentially paving the road with crystal soldier bodies.

With no way to know how the fighting outside was going, all we could do was push forward as fast as possible.

"After this battle is over, I doubt many of the crystal soldiers we brought will be left," the Youngest Princess said, her voice carrying a quiet weight.

I glanced at her and said nothing.

Maybe after this disaster, there would be no more crystal soldiers left in Salt Castle at all.