Winter Lord: Starting with Daily Intelligence

Chapter 216 The End of Pal
Two months before the Mother Nest appeared, Pal Calvin's frontier territory finally saw a turning point.

Of course, that was the result of a secret arrangement by his brother, Selton Calvin.

To save face for his half-brother in the North and prevent him from becoming a laughingstock, Selton secretly dispatched an elite force, bringing with them winter provisions, leather goods, and simple stone fortifications.

He also dispatched several veteran knights who were strict in their discipline and lower-ranking officials who had achieved many victories on the frontier as an "advisory group" to assist Pal in reorganizing the camp.

To outsiders, it seemed as if Pal had suddenly "turned on a lucky streak" and was finally on the right track.

Within two months, a watchtower was erected along the river, and a crude but practical observation platform was built between the mountain passes.
The camp, which was reclaimed from the wetlands, also began to resemble a castle in its center.

The fire pit and grain storage area were clearly separated, patrols began to be deployed at fixed points, and even a small "hunting competition" was held, which slightly boosted morale.

Parr sat on the makeshift wooden balcony of the main building, watching the smoke rise and fall from the chimneys of the territory, and finally showed a long-lost smile.

“I am not a loser,” he murmured to himself, holding a quill pen and unfolding the parchment scroll.

He planned to draft a "battle results report" and send it back to his father in the southeast.
"Though the extreme cold of the North is fierce, I, Pal, have never retreated. Now, our territory is on the verge of self-sufficiency, our watchtowers are secure, and expansion is in sight. Father, please rest assured, the blood of the Calvin family will not cool in the snowfields."

As he wrote, he fantasized about returning to his family one day, clad in golden armor, still covered in snow dust, and stepping into the Calvin family's banquet hall.

On both sides of the long table, the brothers all stood up, their eyes wide with surprise.

Even his usually taciturn father put down his wine glass, stared at him, and showed a rare expression of emotion in his eyes.

"You... you actually survived... and you even succeeded?" the father murmured, his voice low and hoarse.

He didn't answer, but instead spread the battle reports on the table, like scattering a handful of brilliant chips.

He saw Louis, his lucky half-brother, kneeling at his feet and whispering:
“I’m sorry, I’m not worthy to be the son-in-law of the Governor of the North… Please take over my wife and this North, Brother Pal.”

Emily stood to the side, shedding her haughtiness, dressed in plain clothes, bent down and hugged his legs, tears welling in her eyes:

"Please let me stay by your side... even if I'm just a maid... I once underestimated you, but now I realize that the true strongman... is you."

He imagined himself gently helping her up, a kingly smile on his lips: "You don't have to be a maid; I'll give you a better position."

Outside the city, millions of refugees chanted his name, songs spread throughout the North, and knights tattooed his name on their shoulder armor.

He even imagined his father raising a glass at the family banquet in winter and announcing: "From this day forward, Pal Calvin will be the heir to the Calvin family."

In this way, all the past failures, humiliations, and ridicule will be overturned and shattered, becoming stepping stones for his ascent to the top.

The recent success has led Pal to believe that this "Northern comeback" is only a matter of time, and that he is already on the verge of a reversal of fate.

However, he was unaware that before he had even taken his first step, a second-generation mother hive had quietly appeared in the northern part of his territory.

The black mist had spread from the forest, and the tentacles of the insect corpses pierced through the night, crawling toward the edge of his territory.

The more dazzling the fantasy, the more brutal the destruction in reality.

October 10th, Par Territory.

From dawn, the sky hung low and heavy with dark clouds, not a ray of sunshine in sight.

Unbeknownst to anyone, a new "second-generation mother nest" is slowly descending at the edge of the mountains.

Its body was covered with an insect shell and black metallic tissue, dragging its arthropod organs, like a giant shadow emerging from the apocalypse.

The vanguard of the insect corpses spread like a black tide, leaving only ruins and scorched earth in the villages they passed through.

Dead fish and rotting waterfowl floated to the surface of the river, and stray dogs along the banks began to frantically attack their own kind as they fled.

The mountain pass outpost has long been out of contact, and birds in the sky are fleeing south in panic.

In the dense forest, insects and mist quietly spread, as if the world was being covered by some indescribable "miasma".

Pal was still basking in the afterglow of his hard-won victory.

Until his mount suddenly neighed and raised its front hooves high.

A sentry stumbled forward, covered in blood, his chest caved in, his eyes rolled back, his body torn apart like a mangled corpse.

He collapsed in front of Parma, then suddenly convulsed and rose to his feet, his long, tongue-like legs emerging from his mouth as he lunged at Parma!

"Protect the lord—!!"

The guards swiftly beheaded the man and chopped him into mincemeat.

Although he was not injured, Pal was ashen-faced and almost fell off his horse.

"That's...that's...what's going on...what is this?!"

He stammered, his eyes filled with fear. The guards present exchanged glances, all sensing that something ominous was approaching them.

Just minutes later, the crisis unfolded in full force.

Pal hastily ordered the mobilization of all his troops. Three hundred heavily armored soldiers left behind by Selton and dozens of aura knights lined up around the camp, intending to block the enemy.

But they couldn't even hold out for a few minutes.

The giant insect corpses came like a mountain, leaping out of the mist and tearing apart the breastplates of the front-line soldiers.

Several giant insect corpses occupied the defensive line, sweeping across it like knocking down a straw man.

Streams of viscous liquid were thrown from the air, igniting the soldiers' bodies, and the battle aura barrier crumbled like paper.

Pal stood in horror at the back, watching helplessly as the camp turned into a living hell.

Those "castles" he designed himself collapsed amidst flames and thick smoke.

Those newly erected sentry posts became pillars for the insect corpses to cling to.

The familiar knight wailed as he fell into the thick fog, dragged away by the insect's legs.

He even saw the giant insect corpse, pieced together from dozens of bodies and writhing like a centipede, crushing down from the mountain pass, covered with the faces of the knights of his territory.

Pal turned pale, turned and ran, even kicking away the knights who tried to stop him, and screamed:
"Quickly! Prepare the horses! I'm leaving! I need to go to Red Tide Territory for reinforcements, immediately! I have to go myself... No, I am of Calvin blood, I can't die here... You hold them off!!"

In the chaos, he lost his armor and, with a dozen or so guards, rode out of the valley behind the camp, abandoning the soldiers and officers who were still resisting.

At that moment, he had no time to think about "honor," "responsibility," or "command."

He had only one thought in his mind: "Live... I must live... This calamity is beyond my ability to handle."

Par was forcibly escorted by his subordinates to break through the encirclement and fled all the way.

His face was covered in ash, his cloak was charred black, and he looked extremely disheveled.

Behind them lay a raging inferno of a completely destroyed camp, while ahead stretched a snowfield shrouded in thick fog and filled with the constant chirping of insects.

He dared not turn around until a familiar figure rushed out from the firelight.

That was his guardian knight, the knight who had protected him since he was a child. Now he had turned into an insect corpse, his eyes were empty, his face was covered with insect silk and he opened his mouth to bite a knight.

"Kill him! Kill him—" Pal screamed, frantically drawing his sword, but throwing it away a few seconds later and climbing onto his horse to escape.

After fleeing for several hours, they briefly rested in a makeshift cave behind them, preparing to break through to the west, only to be met with even more utter despair.

Scouts brought back news: most breakout points have been lost.

Worse still, a familiar-looking army of insectoid corpses was approaching the cave. Pal looked into the distance and recognized their faces.

His captain of the guard, the loyal subject who had shielded him from arrows in the cold night, now wore tattered armor, and worms crawled in his eye sockets.

The butler sent by Selton, who had taught him manners when he was a boy, now walks forward with a grotesque, twisted mouth.

And his knightly order, which he had boasted about countless times, now had its emblems covered in blood.

Their faces were contorted, and they seemed to be calling out "Lord Pal," but it was all false repetition and echo.

Par slumped to the ground, muttering, "No, it can't be... They... They shouldn't have done this..."

Regardless of his thoughts, the reality was that he was quickly surrounded.

He tried to escape, but was impaled by insect stings that pierced his limbs, pinning him to the stone wall of the fortress ruins.

He struggled desperately, bleeding profusely, his face pale, but he did not die immediately.

But on his deathbed, he grinned, his eyes filled with madness and curses:
"Louis... I'm waiting for you! Let's see how long you can last?"
I shouldn't have come to the North... I shouldn't have listened to them... Damn old man, brother, and you, Louis... How could you, how could you be right about everything..."

His eyes were filled with resentment before he died.

Unfortunately, no one heard it, and no one saw it.

Pal died in anger and despair, swallowing his last mouthful of blood in agony.

His body was carried to the front of the mother nest and re-woven: the body was dismantled, the spine hollowed out, and the will erased, leaving only the fighting instinct.

In the end, he became a corpse among the insect army.

A knight clad in armor, yet a battlefield vanguard with a gaping mouth that stretched to his ears and entrails crawling with spores.

Pal's territory fell in just half a day, the surface was devoured by insect corpses, leaving only broken flags and decaying steam.

Soon, as if it had heard some kind of "call," the mother nest began to wriggle southward.

Its size increased dramatically again, its skeleton became denser, its spore mist became thicker, and the swarms of insects beneath it surged like a tide, even faster than before.

Its direction points directly to the next key stronghold: Frostspear City.

…………

Guided by the "Witch of Despair," the Endh Nest finally broke through the blockade of the North, leading a massive army of insectoid corpses with its twisted and enormous body, and roared south from the depths of the ice plains, its target being Frostspear City, a key city in the northern border of the Empire.

Moreover, he wasn't the only Mother Nest; along with the End Mother Nest appeared twenty-three "First Generation" and "Second Generation" Mother Nests slumbering beneath the North.

They awoke one after another along their path, like collapsed trees or upside-down cocoons, each carrying its own specialized nest, parasitic system, and swarm will, forming a devastating impact that spanned the entire northern region.

This was an undeclared war, a massacre akin to a natural disaster.

Wherever they passed, the insect corpses surged into human settlements like a tidal wave, and the insect eggs, parasites, and contaminated tentacles spread rapidly like a plague.

Oil, poison, earthen walls, arrow towers... methods that had proven effective in the battles against the Snowsworn were almost ineffective against this completely unfamiliar and overwhelming "collective intelligence".

Only the fiefdoms of great nobles, at the rank of earl or higher, were able to put up a brief resistance thanks to the accumulated wealth of their ancestors.

Most of the fiefdoms of minor and medium-sized nobles were extinguished in the swarm of insects, like paper lighthouses.

Many lords didn't even have time to send out a letter asking for help before their entire territories, all their people, manors, and watchtowers were wiped out within days.

Just a few days.

The map of the North was left with dark spots, marked by loss of contact, darkness, and defense.

The nobles' postal system was cut off, and the original communication network collapsed piece by piece. The concept of the "border line" no longer existed in actual tactics.

All of this is just the prologue.

…………

October 11th, before dawn.

In the highest command room of the main castle, Duke Edmund, wearing a heavy cloak with black and gold trim, held an intelligence parchment scroll in his hand.

What he was unfolding in his hands was the fifth urgent intelligence report, and so far, the most serious and clear one.

The edges of the parchment scroll were stained with dark brown bloodstains, and the ink writing on it blurred slightly in the wind.

That was the handwriting of Earl Grant, a powerful figure in the North known for his composure, decisiveness, and numerous military exploits.

In the entire North, if we only consider military strength, Earl Grant would definitely rank among the top five, and he could be considered one of his right-hand men.

The letter roughly stated that the insect swarm was moving south, the mother hive had awakened, noble fiefdoms along the way were falling one after another, the entire army was wiped out, and only a few escapees survived.

"What was bound to happen has finally happened," he said softly.

He had anticipated this calamity, but he didn't expect it to happen so soon; he thought it would take at least two or three years.

And it came so fiercely and so comprehensively.

It wasn't just one mother hive, but twenty-three first- and second-generation mother hives appearing simultaneously across the North.

The insect swarm breached multiple fiefdoms simultaneously, and the Northern Lords' defenses crumbled like fragile ice.

One by one, the noble territories fell into silence.

He frowned, but there was no panic or fear on his resolute face, etched by time and war.

It was the calmness honed by years of military service.

This was not the first time he had faced a natural disaster, nor the first time he had watched his friends and subordinates perish in the snow.

In contrast, the panicked noble messengers and the lords' delegations kneeling and begging for reinforcements sounded particularly jarring.

He did not send reinforcements.

It's not that we don't want to save them, but it's pointless to do so.

“All the fiefdoms that can still resist will hold on on their own; while those that cannot… have already sunk.”

After saying that, he simply turned off the markers on the tactical map one by one.

He then ordered: Frostspear City to be completely sealed off, and the Cold Iron Legion to take over the city gates.

War Fortress mode activated, the entire city switched to war preparedness, granaries locked, and weapons unsealed...

This war fortress will seal itself off, becoming the last shield for the North.

At the same time, he ordered his trusted knight commander to take his seal and sealed documents and head straight for the capital—to send the emperor a signal for the empire's highest level of assistance.

He knew this was no longer just a "disaster in the North".

This is a conspiracy targeting the entire empire, and even the entirety of human civilization...

Frostspear City will become the final chain, firmly locking the Mother Nest in the North.

(End of this chapter)