Winter Lord: Starting with Daily Intelligence

Chapter 401 A Tragedy of the Old Era
At the ambush point on the flank, Oser was frozen in place on his saddle.

He had already drawn his sword, ready to lead the Silver Fang Knights down the high ground and cut off their rear flank when the 17th Legion broke out of the quagmire.

But when he saw with his own eyes the hundred steam-powered chariots pushing through the fog side by side and firing at the same time, nearly a thousand Black Steel Knights were wiped out from the world on the spot.

His sword was raised in mid-air, but he hesitated to swing it.

"What...what the hell is this...?"

Oser's throat tightened; all his thirty years of experience had become useless.

The emergence of certain things is not a tactical advantage, but a disruption of the entire era.

He had never seen a weapon that could cause such destruction without the need for fighting spirit, chanting, or the command of a general.

That wasn't a siege weapon, and it didn't even seem like magic.

They were more like... a group of monsters that had come from a steel hell.

Just as he was stunned, a steady, cold hand slapped his shoulder armor.

Ferran's voice was like a heavy hammer in the dead of winter: "Oser, tuck your jaw in. If you don't step up now, Lambert will steal all the credit."

Oser jolted awake as if kicked from a dream, his face flushing red.

To cover up his earlier lapse in composure, he abruptly raised his sword high above his head, his voice hoarse yet thunderous: "Silver Fang Knights! For Lord Louis!! Charge!!"

On the high ground, thousands of knights with their silver-grey cloaks fluttered in the wind, cutting down the snowy ridge like a sharp blade.

On the other side, the Cold Iron Knights advanced steadily, like an iron curtain pressing down.

Nearly two thousand Frost Halberd Knights, led by Ferran and Oser, swooped down from both flanks, their blades aimed directly at the remnants of the Seventeenth Legion who had been scattered and fled by the steam-powered chariots.

Like a steel torrent converging from different directions, it cornered all the fleeing enemy troops, completely sealing off the last escape route for the Ackerman Knights.

…………

Ackerman was covered in mud, his armor was shattered as if it had been bitten by a giant beast, and his battle aura was in chaos around him, no longer able to form a complete shield.

The air was thick with the smell of blood and burnt flesh, and all around were mutilated corpses, flattened warhorses, and the rumbling of steaming steel tracks.

He stood there, staggering, like an old lion whose limbs had been cut off, yet still wanted to pounce on its enemies.

He had gone mad; his eyes were bloodshot, and his breathing was so heavy it sounded like a bellows struggling to breathe.

"Come out, Louis—!!"

His roar was filled with a desperate and furious rage that tore at his throat: "Is this your glory? With bombs? With these monsters? What kind of knights are you?!"

Just as he roared, a steam-powered war chariot in front of him stopped.

The tracks made a "click-clack" metallic sound as they snapped back together, as if a steel behemoth was looking down at this dying human lion.

Beside the chariot, a figure draped in a crimson cloak slowly emerged from the steam.

Lambert strolled as if in a quiet courtyard, a stark contrast to Ackerman's disheveled and filthy appearance.

Ackerman stared at him, his expression shifting from madness and pain to a strange kind of joy.

He chuckled softly, his laughter filled with desolation, "At least... a knight has come."

Although he had never met Lambert, the feeling of fighting spirit didn't lie; the other party was also an extraordinary knight, worthy of his fate.

As if grasping at a last straw, Ackerman roared and charged forward, his fighting spirit exploding on his broken sword like the final flame of his life.

"Come on!! Let me see! Can these young people still fight a fair and square battle?!"

Lambert simply raised an eyebrow.

He didn't even draw his sword.

He opened the leather pouch next to the saddle and took out three silver-white lightweight magic explosive bombs.

Ackerman's eyes widened as he finally realized...

Knights of this era no longer need to draw their swords.

"You—!" His roar turned into a ripping scream.

Lambert spoke calmly: "Times have changed, Lord Ackerman."

With a flick of his wrist, three bombs landed in a triangular pattern around Ackerman.

There was only enough time for Ackerman to open his eyes wide.

boom! ! ! boom! ! ! boom! ! !
The triple explosion created a visible vortex of air, ripping Ackerman off the ground.

His aura shield shattered like broken glass, and his armor was torn into curled corners by the shockwave.

He crashed hard into the armor of the steam-powered vehicle, creating a deep dent in the metal, and his body slid down like a flattened sack.

Blood flowed from the gaps in the armor, staining the snow and mud below red.

Lambert dismounted and walked to his fallen body.

Ackerman's consciousness teetered on the brink of unconsciousness, his lips trembling as if he wanted to say something.

But he could no longer speak, and the last thing he saw was Lambert's utterly indifferent gaze.

A spark of a new era looking down upon the embers of the old.

There was a flash of silver light.

Ackerman's head rolled off and landed on the snow, still bearing the resentment, confusion, and fear of the transition between the old and new eras.

Lambert reached out and grabbed the still-warm head, casually lifting it: "Hang his head in front of the chariot and present it to Lord Louis."

The steam roared once more, and the chariot moved forward slowly.

Ackerman's head was held atop a spear, his once ambitious eyes finally losing all their light, leaving only the sigh of an era.

…………

On the other side of the high ground, the observation point of the 14th Army and the 7th Army.

The usually steady and unyielding Thor, and the notoriously mad Balth, were both frozen in place on their horses.

They watched through their telescopes as Ackerman's three thousand Blacksteel Knights were crushed into mincemeat by his chariots.

Then I saw Ackerman himself being rammed by a tank like a rag doll, and finally blasted into half a body by three light explosive rounds.

This is not a battle, this is a crushing defeat.

Barth's Adam's apple bobbed twice, his face paler than snow: "Something's wrong, something's wrong, this is..."

The next second, the man, who was known as "Mad Dog," suddenly tightened the reins and turned around and ran wildly as if he had been whipped!
He ran while yelling, "Retreat! Retreat! Retreat! I, Barth, haven't seen anything today! Who is Ackerman? I don't know him!! This is a training exercise!! A training exercise!! Run—!!"

The 7th Army's guard company didn't even have time to react before rushing to catch up, and the scene was as chaotic as a herd of startled deer.

Thor stood there, stunned.

He watched as Barth fled for his life like a mad dog, and for a moment he was at a loss.

"That bastard... he ran away without even raising the flag?!"

The next second—BOOM!!
Another volley of tank fire turned the opposite side of the battlefield into a storm of screams and shattered armor.

The heatwave even caused Thor's cloak to flutter wildly.

Nearly a hundred Black Steel Knights were reduced to a pile of iron-red mud, their corpses barely identifiable.

Thor felt as if he had been punched in the chest; he finally understood why Barth had run away.

His throat tightened, his lips trembled, and his voice cracked as he cursed:
"That idiot Ackerman... he's screwed us over!! This isn't a war! This is suicide!!! Who... who the hell can fight this monster?! Holy crap—!!"

Then he finally couldn't hold back any longer, and suddenly pulled the reins tight, causing his mount's front hooves to lift off the ground.

"14th Legion, retreat! Retreat immediately!! If you're slow, you'll be nothing but bones! Run! Back to Graystone Fortress!! If anyone asks us what we're here for today, answer patrol!! Tell them we're on patrol!!"

“Run—!!!”

At his roar, the knights of the 14th Legion retreated like they had been dragged from a nightmare, their armor clanging and clattering, showing no trace of the majesty of the Imperial heavy cavalry.

The two cavalry forces that should have been the greatest threat to Frostspear City thus fled in despair and fear, splitting apart on either side of the high ground.

Like a pack of beasts scorched by flames, they had only one thought: to escape as far as possible.

The roar of the battlefield gradually subsided, leaving only the hissing sound of pressure release from the exhaust pipes of the steam tanks, lingering in the cold wind.

The sound was not like that of a machine, but rather like the slow breath of some enormous beast.

On the north city wall, all was silent, with only the snow falling softly in the wind.

Count Abbott remained standing straight and motionless, like an old pine tree frozen on a cliff.

But he gripped his cane tightly in his hand.

The expensive, sturdy wood made a faint, almost inaudible "crack...crack..." sound in his palm, like some kind of dying struggle.

His gaze slowly swept across the city below.

That was a slaughterhouse, the 17th Legion, which the Empire was so proud of, now lay like a nightmare on the snow.

Black steel armor crushed beyond recognition by the tracks; warhorses with broken spines and twisted limbs from the impact.

Wounded soldiers screaming for help in the muddy, snowy ground mixed with blood.

Many more knights, who didn't even have time to scream, had their bodies crushed into flat, dark red mud.

Abbott recalled that when he was young, he would stab eight hundred times in the blizzard before sunrise every day.

Day after day, year after year, without stopping for ten years.

That was the knight's glory, the power he understood.

However, just now, these knights, who had trained hard for decades and were proficient in battle aura, did not even have the qualifications to approach those hundred "iron boxes".

They didn't lose because of their skills, their courage, or even their fighting spirit.

They lost because of the times.

A gust of cold wind blew across the city wall, making his cloak flutter loudly.

Abbott's Adam's apple bobbed, and he finally acknowledged a fact he had never considered:
"This is not a denial of our fighting methods, but a burial of the meaning of our existence."

Behind them, a young nobleman, his face pale with fright, trembled uncontrollably: "Your Excellency... is this... is this magic? Is it some kind of forbidden spell? How... how did they do that?"

Abette slowly turned her head.

His face showed no anger, no emotion, only a deep, irreversible emptiness.

He loosened his grip on the cane, which was almost broken, and said in a hoarse but unusually clear voice, "It's not magic."

He pointed to a formation of tanks in the distance that was slowly coming to a stop, steam billowing from between the pipes.

"From this day forward, the age of knights... comes to an end."

After saying this, the old man, who had been unyielding all his life and had never retreated a single step in front of the enemy, visibly aged ten years.

His back seemed to have hunched slightly as well.

The air seemed to freeze for a few seconds.

Then everyone's gaze naturally turned to the other side of the city wall—Louis Calvin.

He was sitting on a makeshift wooden chair, draped in a cloak, lazily blowing away the foam from the surface of his black tea.

There was no excitement, no tension, not a trace of victor's elation.

It's like admiring the snow, like listening to a piece of leisurely courtyard music.

Abette's pupils contracted slightly.

At that moment, Louis in his eyes was no longer a young lord, a newly rich man, or a junior who won by special skills.

And like the first humans in ancient times who raised a torch...

Fear, awe, and submission—these complex and indescribable emotions surged up all at once, making Abette sway unsteadily, yet she dared not close her eyes.

The reactions of the other nobles were even worse; more than a dozen minor nobles were nearly scared out of their wits, their faces even more grim than corpses.

Amidst this tremor, Louis gently set down his teacup.

The wind and snow seemed to pause for a moment.

He spoke casually, as if discussing the weather: "It should be over."

The moment those words fell, everyone knew that he wasn't saying the battle was over, but that the old era was over.

Da da da……

In the midst of this deathly silence, a series of steady footsteps came from below the stone steps.

Lambert appeared.

He slowly stepped onto the city wall, his red cloak stained with blood, his armor covered with a thin layer of frost, but his face was as calm as if he had just returned from training in the morning, showing no trace of having experienced a bloodbath.

He was holding something in his left hand, and drops of blood dripped down his iron glove, forming a string of tiny scabs on the ground.

It was a head.

Ackerman Greer's head.

That once arrogant face was now twisted and contorted with rage, its eyes wide open and pupils dilated, as if it were trying to shout something in its last moments before death, but it was forever frozen in a silent, mournful image.

In that instant, the entire city wall felt as if an invisible giant hand had gripped its throat.

The nobles instinctively made way for them, and some even collapsed to their knees.

Lambert walked up to Louis, knelt on one knee, and raised his head with both hands:

"Your Lordship, the chief culprit of the rebels, Ackerman Grell, has been beheaded. The remnants of the Seventeenth Legion have all surrendered and are awaiting your judgment."

Louis put down his teacup, his gaze sweeping over the heads as if appraising a piece of inferior goods: "Very good, Lambert. I'll have logistics give each of you some drinks to warm you up later."

That's it.

They killed an Imperial Legion Commander, who claimed he was worth only a few barrels of wine.

The nobles gasped inwardly, finally realizing that Louis's way of viewing the powerful and the generals was on a completely different level from their own.

Louis stood up, walked to the railing, looked at the head, and suddenly sighed.
His tone carried a hint of regret: "Ackerman was originally a loyal guardian of the Empire, but unfortunately... he was power-hungry and went mad. He cruelly murdered Baron Morcan and then coerced the Seventeenth Legion into plotting a rebellion, attacking the Northern Territories."

The people around him stiffened.

Everyone understands that it doesn't matter whether Ackerman or Lewis is truly insane.

The important thing is that Louis has openly and unequivocally pinned the charge of treason on Ackerman.

Louis raised his voice, his tone steady: "Fortunately, with my colleagues in the North as witnesses, I successfully assisted the Empire in quelling this rebellion."

He slowly turned his head to look at Count Abbott and smiled: "Your Excellency, you saw it with your own eyes, that's the truth, isn't it?"

Abette put down her cane, placed her hands on her knees, and slowly bent over deeply, placing her hands on her chest.

This was the highest form of respect from the old nobility.

"You are the guardian of the North. You saved us and upheld the glory of the Empire."

In short, it's like a ritual announcing the end of some era.

There was silence on the city wall for three seconds, and then, like waves of wheat swaying in the wind, hundreds of nobles bowed in unison.

"The North owes you a debt of gratitude."

“We are all witnesses to what happened today.”

"It's a suppression of a rebellion...it's definitely a suppression of a rebellion."

Louis waved his hand dismissively: "Hang this head on the tallest flagpole in Frostspear. Let everyone remember that anyone who tries to run wild in the North will end up like this."

Lambert bowed and accepted the order: "Yes, sir."

Ackerman Greer's head was held high, swaying in the wind and snow, drops of blood cracking on the cold city bricks.

A new order in the North was established at this moment.

(End of this chapter)