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Chapter 318
Chapter 318
Chapter 318
Translator: yun
Anyone could see the cloth covering the eyes behind his soft brown hair. Dane pulled up the ends of his lips.
“To blame his own master, I have brought quite a mean servant along with me.”
“Who’s your servant?”
“Then are you my slave?”
When Dane gently retorted, Ray chose to rub his lips instead. A breeze blew through the window. All wind that blew on the battlefield smelled of iron and contained the fishy stench of blood.
Dane suddenly spoke as he felt the wind.
“The winds have changed.”
He slowly recalled the past.
“Hm? Did you sense something in the winds?”
Ray looked a little dumbstruck and startled.
“Be honest with me? Did you awaken without me knowing?”
Smiling, Dane shook his head slightly.
“It’s just a hunch.”
“What kind of hunch allows you to strike the enemy’s location so accurately even though we were technically shooting in the dark?”
“I merely convey what I see. What else is there to say?”
“My–I mean, Sir Dane, do you know that was the scariest thing I’ve ever heard you say?”
“You’re just exaggerating. Ray, leave us.”
Ray tilted his head before rubbing his stiff neck. He was Dane’s hands, feet and eyes.
“Where are you going?”
Dane headed towards the direction the wind was blowing from.
“I think we’ll have guests arriving either today or tomorrow.”
Then, he turned to where Atalante might probably be sitting.
“You heard him. We’re expecting guests.”
Atalante blinked her eyes nonchalantly.
“Who are they?”
“Who else but the people you’ve been waiting so long for?”
Atalante sprung to her feet. At his words, something crossed her mind.
‘Ah! Why didn’t I think of that? I must have lost my mind.’
She pointed to any aide she could find before commanding them.
“You there. Head to the west of the forest.”
“Huh? There… Isn’t that where the Artefact of the Wind God is located?”
“Correct. Hurry there and wait.”
A Head Templar of Zephyrus from a distant past had fallen in love with Diana’s forest and decided to erect one of their artefacts here. But it was useless now.
“It cannot be used anymore, can it?”
“You idiot! Do you not know who Her Majesty the Emperor is?”
“She’s a Templar of the Lord… Aha! I-I’ll be heading off now!”
Thanks to the blessing of the Lord of the Gods, the Heirs of the Lord can use all artefacts in the Empire without any restriction. However, since the late emperor had little power, the Templars of Diana had momentarily forgotten this fact.
“Y-Your Holiness!”
And Dane was right. At sunset, Atalante’s aide returned with a bewildered look on his face
“They’re here! The reinforcements have arrived!”
Trailing behind him was a group of 60-70 templars.
Soon after, key figures from both the Temple of Diana and reinforcements gathered together. Atalante’s eyes widened when she noticed that the commander of the reinforcements was a woman.
“Marissa?”
It was a friend she never thought she would get to see again.
“Long time no see. Lante.”
Just as she had in the past, she was holding a sword.
“What’s this? My vision is getting blurry… What’s a woman whose dress is barely covering her skin while smiling so cheekily doing all the way here?”
“Hmm, I see that your habit of spitting whatever comes to mind stayed the same. My friend.”
Her words might seem harsh but her eyes were glistening with welcome. In terms of age, Atalante was a little older but it had been such a long time since they met like this.
Marissa, who had been sending off her closest friends to the afterlife, was especially touched to see her.
“Let’s put aside this joyous occasion for a moment and invite them in. I have someone I’d like to introduce you to.”
Atalante pointed her head towards the largest barracks. Marissa laughed as well.
“I have someone to introduce too. I might have been given command because of my age but there’s another. Our commanding officer.”
In a moment’s time, Dane and Hernan were facing each other.
“My prince?”
Hernan’s indifferent face darkened.
“What are you doing here?”
He had to have been surprised. Because the missing prince he thought to have died off in a ditch was standing right in front of him.
“Huh? A prince? Who? Him?”
“Oh dear. The 7th Prince?”
On the other hand, Dane, who figured out what was going on based on Hernan’s voice alone, smiled quietly.
“Oh, well, I don’t need to answer that.”
As Dane tilted his head, a piece of cloth brushed past his ear.
“The best reinforcements they could send have arrived.”
His smile might have been giddily beautiful but the tone of this voice was clear.
“Though I’m not that happy to see you.”
The red cloth that covered his eyes seemed to have replaced them. The fact that Dane was a prince turned the entire room upside down but they quickly regained their composure.
Not only was their situation dire, but it was also especially because Atalante had dismissed her templars’ murmurs with a word of reassurance.
“I heard things have gotten serious here.”
“Ah. Yes, very serious.”
The whole conference room smelled of fishy iron and poor leather. Still, it didn’t make for a very good conference room since the tents had been made for the Templars of Diana for their hunts.
“Let us know your situation first. Atalante.”
“Of course.”
She gave a short nod before gesturing at one of her aides.
“Our situation is dire. We have lost a third of our troops and quite a few of those who remain are injured.”
The Templar of Diana relayed the current situation of their troops, the number of remaining manpower they had and their conditions as well as what they knew about the enemy. The two sides took turns to exchange information.
When the number of troops was finally revealed, Marissa’s expression darkened.
“You managed to hold off the invasion with only 300 men?”
She wanted to ask if that was even possible but the answer was obvious. Wasn’t it clear what they managed to achieve by doing what was close to impossible?
Marissa found Dane in a new light.
‘The 7th Prince, Dane Lowell. The Wheel of Rome and the chief of the emperor’s secret agency. I knew he wasn’t normal but this far exceeded my expectations. Even though I shouldn’t be distracted, my eyes naturally are drawn towards him.’
“How is that possible?”
Hernan raised the question everyone who had just arrived wanted to ask.
“I heard that he was the one who devised all your strategies but the prince is currently blind.”
No matter how hard he tried, it would have been difficult to work after being crippled as such. However, Dane ignored his question almost grumpily.
“Is that important right now?”
“Well, how would you know the terrain so well without your eyes?”
Hernan was not questioning him without reason. He thought that since they were now fighting on the same side, they should be on the same page. Even without his sight, he could feel the entire room focusing on him as he gave a small smile.
“I memorised the map. Everything on it.”
Hernan’s eyebrows flinched.
“That was a long time ago. I only memorised it because I needed to at the time.”
He did not press him any further.
“Also, I only lost my sight, I can still feel changes in the air and the texture of the soil. Those senses are enough for me to tell if it will rain at night, where the horses had taken their dump and where the enemy plans to attack in the future.”
From those words alone, Hernan assumed that Dane must have memorised and studied a lot before he became blind.
Thinking Dane to be like any other prince living in the palace, Atalante lowered her head.
“This might not be the time to ask this but why did you memorise such useless things?”
Dane declined to answer.
The reason why he memorised all those maps was for the person he thought would have to escape the empire one day. But he didn’t feel any need or reason to tell her that.
No, unless he could tell her himself, it was useless to mention this to anyone else.
“Alright. Let’s continue the meeting. Any objections?”
Since then, the meeting progressed quickly given the urgency of the situation. It was around the time when they finished reorganising the reinforcements.
“Hernandez, how strong are you?”
Dane’s words injected adrenaline into their vines. Like dry wood had just caught fire.
“I will definitely bring us victory in this war but in order to do so, I’ll need to know the level of your strength. So, how strong is a Templar of Beasts?”
Atalante thought Dane’s question was much needed.
‘Come to think of it, in spite of his underhanded actions, Yusnan was known for his divinity as well.’
Marissa was once known for her swordsmanship as a templar. And based objectively on divinity and skills, Atalante was outstanding as well.
“How strong will Yusnan’s son be? I’m curious to know too.”
Hernan smiled at the gazes pointed towards him. Generally, it was because he could feel the Templars of Diana’s distrust for him.
Then, the horn sounded.
“It seems like we’ve got ourselves visitors.”
Once, twice then three times. No one was unaware what this long horn sound meant. Enemies have appeared.
“I’ll just have to prove myself.”
Holding out his dangling sword, Hernan stepped outside. The Templars of Diana glanced at each other.
“W-What do we do? Do we stop him?”
“Leave him. They’re probably just patrols.”
“But…”
The number of enemies the horn had just signalled for seemed quite large.
“He can handle it by himself.”
Dane stopped the men who were about to chase after Hernan.
“But isn’t that ‘person’ going to appear soon?”
Atalante looked at Dane with slight concern.
“That ‘person’? Who are you referring to?”
Marissa, who had no idea what was going on, alternated her gaze between the two.
“Rather than us telling you about it, it would be better for you to see for yourself.”
After saying so, Atalante stared at Dane again.
“Look here, prince. The Templar of Beasts didn’t bring with him any artefacts. Are you sure he’d be able to handle them alone?”
Dane nodded.
At the end of his sentence, they climbed up a watchtower.
“You can spot it in a glance.”
They found Hernan in the midst of a dark cloud of dust. A total of five people–Marissa, Atalante, her aide, Ray and Dane stood atop the watchtower. Atalante described what was happening to the blind Dane.
“Oh, the enemies are approaching. They’re here. They’re pulling out their swords!”
All this while, they would use Diana’s artefact, Noctiluca, to defeat large groups of enemies. Noctiluca granted her the ability to shower sharp arrows in a designated area. The arrows were made out of divinity so they couldn’t be blocked by weapons, making the powerless Walternian army helpless against the attack.
Moreover, the more space they took up, the more effective the attack was, making it easy to dwindle their forces. While Noctiluca scattered the Walternian troops, the Templars of Diana who were hiding would attack the rear.
‘It was all thanks to the prince who could accurately predict the enemy’s movements.’
Their success could also be attributed to the fact that with the proper use of their strength, they could drive the Walternian army with just a few of their men and the fact that they could effectively use their terrain to use their full strength.
But recently, even doing that had gotten difficult.
‘Soon, they will understand why.’
Atalante stopped talking for a moment to stare at the Templar of Beasts. She wanted to witness with her own eyes the skills she had only heard about through rumours.
‘Is that about a hundred people?’
The number of invaders was increasing. This was proof that the Kingdom of Walter was sending reinforcements.
In the dark, Hernan’s expression was cold and unchanging. Once they got to be about ten steps away, Hernan finally lifted his sword.
Boom.
Cracks appeared on the ground like a spider web as rocks and other debris rolled away from the epicentre.
The ones who had lost their balance because of the vibrations could only swing their sword wildly.
As she watched the scene unfolding before her, she finally opened her mouth.
“No, wait. Is that even possible?”
Atalante muttered softly.
“T-They just disappeared all at once? What was that white arm?”
It only took an instant the moment Hernan drew his sword. Atalante saw how the beast moved. One by one, it didn’t take long for all of them to be defeated.
“Look at that, my prince. Isn’t he a national treasure?”
She said the same thing when she first met Dane.
No one was left standing before Hernan. As though, from the start, only the horizon had ever existed. The fallen enemies had only taken a moment out of the horizon’s spotlight.
“With him, we will be able to end the war in a timely manner.”
With that strength, it might be possible for him to return with the enemy commander’s head when fighting the enemies. And Marissa?
There were an infinite number of ways to use them. Outstanding templars could change the tide.
Moreover, they were more than outstanding. Even moreso, if squads like these could be wiped out as easily as breathing.
However, Atalante’s optimistic expression did not look too bright.
Ray, who was still listening, whispered.
“Will it be alright?”
Dane answered indifferently.
“He should know about it too. We wouldn’t be able to hide it for long.”