Winter Lord: Starting with Daily Intelligence

Chapter 400 A Trans-Era Crushing Power
Although the 17th Legion was in a sorry state, their armor covered in mud, the three thousand Black Steel Knights still maintained their terrifying charging momentum after breaking out of the mud.

The earth trembled, and the warhorses spewed white mist, as if they wanted to uproot this icy plain.

They were now less than a kilometer away from Frostspear City.

Ackerman grinned maliciously, his face contorted in the cold wind.

When he saw the seemingly sparse front row of Crimson Tide Knights, his arrogance completely erupted.

These people will be crushed to pieces by his Black Steel Waves in no time!

Just moments before the 17th Army Corps was about to crash into them...

The Crimson Tide Knights suddenly retreated rapidly to both sides like a tide, their movements so synchronized as to be almost eerie.

Ackerman's pupils contracted: "Hmph, trying to lure the enemy? Naive!"

But before he could finish speaking, the open space behind him, shrouded in mist, suddenly lit up.

The moment the white mist dissipated, Ackerman finally saw the second layer of city wall hidden in front of the city gate.

It wasn't a shield formation, but a whole row of steam-powered war chariots that exuded an oppressive aura, like behemoths from the abyss.

They were arranged horizontally to form a steel wall, each twice the height of a warhorse, with a wedge-shaped body and rivets densely covering the shell like full, cold iron scars, and the front alloy rams like the fangs of a predator.

The tracks rolled slowly, the heavy metal chains gripped the frozen ground tightly, and the copper smelting steam pipes bulged and vibrated continuously; high-pressure steam spewed out black smoke from the boiler.

"Boom...boom...boom..."

The low-frequency roar, a blend of piston rhythm and furnace vibration, was so deep it sounded like giants were pounding from the ground.

It was a tremor, a fear that spread from the very marrow of one's bones.

The wind distorted the ground, the frost on the ground peeled away layer by layer, and the snow near the city gate slid off with the vibrations of the vehicles, as if the whole world was bowing down to these steel monsters.

Ackerman paused for half a second, then burst into laughter, his laughter filled with contempt and arrogance.

"Hahahaha! Is this your trump card, Louis? Dozens of... iron coffins?!"

He threw his head back and laughed so hard his nostrils flared: "Trying to use these broken toys to block me? What a joke!"

He suddenly raised his longsword high, and his fighting spirit exploded into a dazzling white light on the blade.

His roar echoed across the battlefield: "Seventeenth Legion—crush them!!! Enter the city and slaughter for three days!!!"

The black torrent roared in its final fury. Warhorses neighed, armor trembled, and the remaining formation was reassembled by collective killing intent.

Three thousand heavy cavalrymen, like a giant black spear ignited by rage, fiercely stabbed towards the wall of steel chariots.

The earth trembled beneath the horses' hooves, the air heated by the steam, and the snowflakes in the sky were scattered and fell haphazardly.

The two torrents of war are about to collide head-on in the next second.

…………

On the north city wall, Count Abbott looked down at the hundreds of steam-powered war chariots lined up in neat rows below the city, and finally couldn't hold back any longer; his gray beard trembled uncontrollably.

“Absurd… utterly absurd!” he hissed. “No chevaux-de-frise, no infantry phalanx, no forest of spears… you’re going to use these lumps of iron to hold off cavalry? Louis, you’re gambling with the fate of the entire North!”

As soon as he finished speaking, the other nobles also turned pale.

Count Abbott wanted to say something more, but Louis had already raised his hand and gently waved it down.

…………

"boom--!!!"

A full hundred main cannons roared simultaneously.

The tremors were so strong that even the stone bricks on the city wall trembled slightly, and the water glasses on the table splashed up tiny water droplets.

The air seemed to be torn apart, and the snow was shaken into the air, turning into a pervasive white mist.

The next instant, a dense barrage of bullets erupted from the tank's cannon.

That wasn't a rain of arrows, nor a beam of magic.

It was a steel meat grinder, powerful enough to slice through the ranks of knights, tear through heavy armor, and shake the bones of warhorses.

The vanguard of the 17th Army Corps didn't even have time to utter a roar before being sliced ​​off by a hail of bullets.

It didn't just fall down, it completely disappeared.

The black steel plate armor was deformed and cracked by the impact, and the warhorse's neck was like a broken branch under the kinetic energy impact.

The knight was torn into a bloody mist by the hail of bullets.

In the blink of an eye, hundreds of heavily armored knights were wiped out from the battlefield.

Silence engulfed the entire city wall.

Ackerman's face contorted in shock, but he still forced a shout: "Keep going! If we get past them, we win! Retreat means death!"

The 17th Legion lived up to its reputation as the elite force of the Empire's northern border; they gritted their teeth, suppressed their fear, and continued to charge forward.

But at that moment, behind the tank formation, a group of Red Tide Grenadiers simultaneously pulled the pins.

A hundred or so Frostbite Soul-Shattering Bullets, engraved with blue magic patterns, were thrown high into the air.

As they fell, they emitted a faint yet eerie "hum," like some ancient, withered god breathing softly in the depths.

The bomb rolled into the group of knights, without a flash of light, only concentric circles of eerie blue ripples spreading outwards, like icy tides crashing against one's soul.

The moment the blue light swept across, the fear that the 17th Legion knights had been suppressed by reason was amplified a hundredfold by the Soul-Shaking Bomb.

The bone-chilling cold that only appears in the last moments of a dying person's life was forcibly shoved back into their brains.

Their vision began to distort, colors were stripped away, leaving only darkness and dislocation.

In their eyes, steam-powered war machines were no longer cold machines, but behemoths with steel spikes on their backs and cracks in their bellies.

Each burst of steam felt like a demon licking the ear of its victim.

His companions' figures were elongated and distorted, the reflections of their armor gleaming like fangs. They were no longer his comrades, but strange shadows lunging at him with gaping, bloody maws.

Chaos erupted instantly.

Someone ripped off their helmet and let out a hoarse scream in a brief moment of emotional turmoil.

Someone swung their sword at the giant beast that was rushing towards them in the illusion, only to realize a second later that they had almost hit their companion.

Someone collapsed onto the saddle, panting heavily, their hands trembling as if something icy had climbed up their neck and onto their scalp.

Many more stumbled and fell from their warhorses, rolling several times in the mud and snow before managing to steady themselves, their faces deathly pale and their pupils constricted violently.

As an extraordinary knight, Ackerman forcibly activated his fighting spirit to resist, but quickly regained his composure with a powerful roar and red eyes.

His voice was hoarse, like a beast's roar: "Hold on!! Hold the line!! Everyone look at me!! Look at me!!!"

His roar slammed into the chaotic battle lines like a hammer, but the only response he received was screams of agony tearing at his throat from all directions.

"Don't come near me!! That thing...that thing is behind me!!"

"It's going to bite off my leg! Get away! Get away from me!!"

"That's not human!! It's not human!! Stay away from me!!"

"My horse... my horse is dead! I can't move! Help... help..." Several knights collided with each other, their armor sparking as they frantically swung their swords at the air. Some fell directly from their saddles, scratching themselves wildly in the mud and snow, as if haunted by invisible demons.

Of course, this chaos didn't last long. It only lasted a few seconds.

Even though their fighting spirit reignited within them and their will began to stabilize, the chaos of those few breaths had already left behind an irreparable crack.

Ackerman was certainly aware of this, but there was nothing he could do about it...

Although it only disrupted his formation for a few breaths, it was enough to prevent his lines from ever returning to their original state.

Before the knights could fully recover, a hundred steam-powered chariots had already shifted into first gear.

The steel tracks sank deep into the frozen ground, emitting a piercing shriek that seemed to shatter one's nerves.

The entire tank formation advanced slowly, the heavy force impacting at high speed was the crushing force of its own weight, like mountains sliding forward.

Before the knights in the first row, who were suddenly forced to stumble backward, could raise their shields, the V-shaped ram had already ruthlessly slammed into them!

"Snap!!"

The sound was like a thick piece of wood breaking, but accompanied by the dull thud of metal collapsing.

The full plate armor was crushed into a deformed arc by the ramming horn, the knight's chest cavity was forced inward, the bones and helmet shattered together, and blood spurted out from the cracks like a crushed wine sac.

The track then rolled over it.

"Crunch—crunch—snap!"

Metal was breaking, bones were shattering, and the warhorse's limbs snapped off one by one like wet tree branches.

Knights and warhorses were entangled together, shredded by the tracks, their flesh and blood crushed into a sticky red mud between the teeth, mixed with broken hooves, severed lances, and still twitching limbs.

"Ah—my legs!! My legs are gone!!"

"Help me...help me!! Don't leave me!!"

"Mother... mother..."

These sounds were stretched and torn apart by the roar of iron and fire, like a wet rag being continuously crushed in the gaps of iron gears.

Some people tried to get up, their fingertips scratching bloody marks in the mud and snow, but as soon as they raised their heads, their faces were crushed into a blurry mess by the tracks.

The helmet sank into the snow like a flattened iron can, and the facial bones collapsed along with the steel, making a strange "crunching" sound.

More screams were abruptly cut off, turning into desperate whimpers like those before blood clots in the throat.

"Ugh! Cough...cough...no...I don't want to die..."

The sound abruptly broke off, like a string that had been twisted off a musical instrument.

The front ranks had become a mountain of flesh and broken armor, almost as high as the horses' bellies, but the chariot formation did not stop and continued to advance.

As the tracks rolled over it, they pressed the horrific scene even deeper, producing a wet, sticky, and terrifying "plop-crack-crunch-" sound.

Even with mountains of obstacles ahead, they still advance like judges summoned by the night, mechanically and coldly, without a trace of emotion or pity.

A heavily armored magical warhorse struggled to its feet from the mud and snow. Just as a soul-rending neigh escaped its mouth, the tracks crushed its spine.

With a loud bang, its massive body collapsed as if it had been emptied out, and the crisp sound of its spine breaking made the surrounding soldiers turn pale.

Blood spurted from the gaps in the armor, forming a scalding dark red mist that splattered onto the faces of knights several meters away, leaving them with a warm, sweet-smelling bloody scent.

"No! Don't push me! Please—I don't want to die!"

A Black Steel Knight, pushed to the front of the tracks, roared, but his voice was completely swallowed up by the sound of metal cracking the next second.

Ackerman's Blacksteel Knights were cut up, crushed, torn apart, and buried by the advance of steam-powered chariots...

Flesh and steel were kneaded into a reddish-brown slurry under the tracks.

Right in the center of this inferno, Ackerman roared and unleashed his battle aura, his entire body like a black lightning bolt, bursting out madly from the gap in the chaotic remnants of the army.

His warhorse had just charged to the side of the chariot when it was knocked to its knees. He then leaped up with brute force, raised his heavy sword which was surging with fighting spirit, and slashed fiercely at the front of one of the steam chariots.

"Stop right there—!!!"

Bang!
The blade struck the cold iron shell, and sparks exploded like scattered white flames.

The blow was so powerful that it created a huge dent in the tank's outer shell, bending the metal plates and producing a painful, metallic clang.

But the chariots did not stop.

It trembled slightly, like a giant beast being patted on the shoulder.

The next instant, the tracks accelerated sharply, grinding forward as if in response to a provocation.

Ackerman's expression changed drastically; he had no time to dodge.

The chariot's heavy ram slammed into his chest, sending him flying.

"Boom-!!"

He tumbled through the air like a rag doll with its strings cut, crashing through the broken armor and corpses of two layers of knights, finally smashing into the snow and creating a crater half a person deep. Blood gushed out from the cracks in his armor, staining the surrounding snow red.

But the chariot didn't even glance at him, nor did it stop or slow down.

It was as if they didn't take him, the commander of the extraordinary class, seriously at all.

Ackerman lay on the snow, panting heavily. The sound of his sternum breaking was clearly audible. He looked up at the approaching torrent of steel death, and for the first time, genuine fear appeared in his pupils.

His Black Steel Knights... had already been crushed under the tracks into unrecognizable blood and shattered metal fragments, utterly annihilated in the cold, merciless fury of the industrial age.

When the 17th Army Corps was decimated by the tank assault and its formation was completely broken.

The reaping power of the Red Tide burst forth from between the tanks!

Lambert personally led the Crimson Tide Royal Guard, his red cloak billowing in the snowstorm, creating a blinding wave of crimson.

All members of this unit are elite knights or above, and they move with the speed of a whirlwind, their teamwork is so perfect it's almost terrifying.

Like highly mobile predators, they moved nimbly among the bunkers formed by steam-powered vehicles.

Any enemy force attempting to regroup will face only one outcome once they've been targeted...

"Explode."

The magic bombs fell like sparks into a haystack, first blasting the dense enemy ranks into pieces.

The Crimson Tide Knights, who followed closely behind, drew their swords and charged into the smoke, reaping each wounded soldier who was still alive with skillful and ruthless movements.

The knights of the 17th Legion were completely dumbfounded.

Their prized parrying skills, their proud shield wall, and their heavy, thick black steel plate armor were all meaningless in the face of the ten-meter radius of the magic explosive bombs and the Red Tide's highly mobile infiltration tactics.

Before the brief chaos caused by the Frostbite Soul-Shaking Bullet had completely dissipated, the battlefield was soon filled with small-scale explosions.

Each explosion meant the complete collapse of a squad's combat effectiveness.

The crushing of tanks, the reaping of red tide knights, and the exploding of magic bombs occurred simultaneously on the same battlefield.

This is not a battle; it is the execution of the old-era knights by the knights of the new era.

(End of this chapter)