Half an hour later, when Hammerbone led the goblin army, panting, into the Evernight Domain, all that remained before them was an empty ancient castle and a battlefield strewn with wreckage.
The magical creature legion had already withdrawn entirely, leaving nothing behind, stripping the castle clean—not a single thing left.
Hammerbone looked around, surprisingly showing little visible anger.
He trudged to the edge of a tall cliff beside the castle, squinted, and stared eastward.
Under that permanently dim skyline, a string of flickering fires could be seen, snaking across to the distant horizon.
That was the Graystone Bulwark.
The cunning magical creatures had retreated but had not left the bulwark.
They planned to temporarily abandon the Evernight Domain and rely on the Graystone Bulwark for defense.
A goblin shaman cautiously stepped forward and asked in a low voice, “Lord Hammerbone, shall we still pursue them?”
“Do you want to go and get yourself killed?”
“Retreat!” Hammerbone waved his large hand and issued a clear command, “All fall back to the planar rift. Do not stay here!”
He wasn’t stupid, just not bright.
With the Graystone Bulwark now occupied by those slimes, if they stayed in the Evernight Domain and got ambushed, there wouldn’t even be anywhere to hide.
This broken place—those slimes didn’t dare claim it, and he certainly wouldn’t.
“Yes! Yes!” The goblin shaman nodded frantically, then hurried off to relay the order.
Soon, the once imposing goblin army came and went like a brief gust of wind, leaving nothing behind.
The Evernight Domain, once the center of vampire luxury and power, had completely lost its last breath of life and fallen into absolute silence.
This once-opulent noble paradise had repeated the decline of the ancient civilization that built the Graystone Bulwark, falling into ruin and leaving only broken walls to tell of former glory.
In sharp contrast, the newly established fortress built on the site of the Outpost Ruins was a scene of bustling activity.
Even though it was still drizzling today, the interior of the fortress buzzed with noise. Captives worked shirtless and hard everywhere, hauling stone, reinforcing walls, clearing debris—working more energetically than they had while adventuring in the Dark Realm.
The reason was simple: if you worked, these slimes actually paid.
Clinking gold and silver coins felt far better than licking blood off a blade.
However, the recent number of prisoners ferried back from the Dark Realm was so large that jobs inside the fortress had become fiercely sought after;
often several people would fight over a single stone-hauling task.
Maybe the grubby giant standing next to you carrying a timber had once been the leader of a mercenary guild.
Or that tall thin man straining to stir mortar could once have been a top-ranking professional in the Dark Realm.
With the situation in the Dark Realm still unclear, they were likely to spend a long stretch of “reform labor” inside this Slime Fortress.
Inside the fortress, some mercenaries who had not yet been assigned to work clustered in twos and threes, squatting under makeshift awnings, anxiously chatting.
“How long will this war last?” a scar-faced mercenary sighed. “It can’t be forever. Am I going to be stuck here for years?”
A more optimistic mercenary teased, “Who knows? The Blacktooth mercenary company has its footprints all over the Dark Realm. Even if those magical creatures are strong, they can’t possibly—”
He stopped mid-sentence as a patrol of Metal Slimes marched by in neat formation, spears raised, bouncing past the awning with serious expressions.
The mercenaries who had been loudly chatting shut up at once.
A group of burly, hulking men sat obediently in place, taller than the bouncing slimes, yet they dared not make a sound until the patrol disappeared around the corner.
Only then did someone cautiously venture, “I don’t think it’ll be so slow. Didn’t you see? A few days ago, even that Graystone Bulwark was breached.”
“Tsk… our fortress has drawn a lot of notable people lately, and now they’re all working quietly.”
“That’ll still take months. By the time it’s over, Winter Year will be here,” another mercenary said glumly.
“What’s the point of all these gold coins if they can’t weave cloth or shear sheep? We’ll freeze to death.”
Their discussion grew more heated, full of speculation and worry.
But soon, the heavy sound of rolling chains interrupted them.
The fortress’s heavy gate was slowly opening!
To prevent prisoner escape, the gate remained tightly shut most days;
only when a new batch of captives was returned from the Dark Realm was it briefly opened.
As for how the magical creatures entered and left the fortress—of course, they flew.
Those countless Poison-stinger Wasps obscured the sky;
their dark, menacing forms were far more terrifying than these seemingly harmless slimes.
When they flew over the fortress, the low buzzing and pressure they brought always made the mercenaries unconsciously bow their heads, unwilling to look up.
In contrast, whenever the fortress gates opened and those who had once lorded it over the Dark Realm were stripped of their gear and brought in like livestock, the captives who had grown used to this life always showed schadenfreude.
It had become a rare amusement in their dreary prisoner existence.
Seeing those once high-and-mighty people now sharing their fate eased some of their resentment...
Strangely, this time the number of prisoners being escorted in seemed unusually large—the line stretched endlessly out of sight.
A sharp-eyed adventurer squinted and scanned the dejected crowd. When he recognized two specially guarded figures, he couldn’t help but exclaim in surprise:
“It’s Nicklaus Avery, the Formation Company commander of the Blacktooth mercenary company! How is he here?!”
“What?! You sure you’re not mistaken?!”
The mercenaries around him shuddered and squinted toward that direction.
When they clearly made out the man’s face, they were struck dumb.
By God! It really was Nicklaus Avery.
The Blacktooth mercenary company’s notorious penny-pincher who often skimmed bounties.
In the Dark Realm, where the top vampire nobility rarely interfered, Blacktooth was almost run by him.
Blacktooth monopolized most of the Dark Realm’s intelligence and bounty business, doing the Adventurer’s Guild’s work.
Thus, Nicklaus’s position was practically that of the guild leader in the Dark Realm.
Even when mercenaries knew he secretly clipped part of the bounty, they held their noses and swallowed it, afraid to offend him.
Otherwise they’d find Blacktooth’s gates closed to them the next day.
If you wanted to survive in the Dark Realm, you had to put up with that humiliation.
But now… things were different.
Even stingy Nicklaus had become a prisoner;
could it mean…
“Has the frontline war already ended?!”
“How could it be so fast?!”
The adventurers and mercenaries who had been taking amusement now felt like the joke was on them.
This is bad—this is a real changing of times...
The rotten Dark Realm, after so long in silence, had undergone its first, most complete transformation—its ruler had been replaced.
And the new ruler was a bunch of slimes crawling out of the swamp!
This sight shifted many of the adventurers’ and mercenaries’ mindsets. They felt strange, a bit dizzy.
The conquest of the Dark Realm by the magical creature legion didn’t only affect this outpost fortress.
Even the Border Garrison that guarded the White Horse Kingdom’s border received urgent intelligence the next noon.
The next day at midday, the sky still hung in an endless gray, as if it would never clear.
Storm Fortress, built at a perilous mountain pass like a crouching iron beast, looked even more grim beneath the clouds.
Its massive walls of blue-gray stone bore the scars of time and war.
Arrow towers dotted the walls;
the inside of the fortress was a maze of roads with barracks, warehouses, and workshops orderly arranged.
Because of the dampness, even at noon droplets clung to the needles of the cold-resistant spruces planted inside, trembling in the breeze.
At that moment a figure strode across the fortress square like a cutting wind, stirring the spruce branches and shaking loose the lingering droplets.
Her fitted knight uniform outlined an athletic form;
her brown hair was neatly tied in a ponytail that swung slightly with her stride.
It was Alice Arevalo.
“Good noon, Lady Alice.” A soldier carrying a large stack of intelligence files stopped, straightened his back, and saluted respectfully.
“Hm.” Alice nodded slightly. Her purposeful stride didn’t halt as she entered the fortress and walked down the dim stone corridor.
Count Bran, disguised as a decorative feather on her uniform and connected through gel, peered curiously and asked, “A midday meeting? Is the Magical Tides coming?”
Alice gave a small shake of her head. “Not sure yet, but my father has already gone ahead.”
“For three Extraordinary lords to convene, this is no small matter,” Count Bran muttered. “Could those creatures have discovered our moves and be planning a preemptive strike?”
Alice only shook her head again without speaking.
Inside, she held the same worry.
Whether it was Lide stationed at Shield River City, or the two Extraordinary knights at Storm Fortress—Dominic Elvin, the “Sword of Radiance,” and Simo Barnes, the “Heavy Steel”—they were all powers the demon forces had fostered.
They had exchanged their souls for the power to step into the Extraordinary, and smoothly took over the Border Garrison’s authority.
If the Arevalo family had not discovered some odd clues in Arthur’s suspicious death over a decade ago and quietly kept watch, the entire family might already have been utterly fallen, puppets of the demons.
Her family had previously refrained from telling her the full details of Arthur’s death, perhaps as a form of protection.
Even if the Arevalos later were dragged into the vortex, she might have had an easier time escaping.
But she refused to be a caged canary kept safe.
Her brother Arthur, who had once shone so brightly, had died. From the day the news reached the family, she had resolved to uncover the truth.
Even if the enemy she faced exceeded her imagination.
She instinctively tightened her fingers around the silver pendant at her neck, inhaled deeply, forced down the surging emotions, and continued forward.
Soon Alice stopped before an oak gate carved with the Border Garrison’s emblem.
Two soldiers at the gate confirmed her identity and carefully pushed the door open halfway, trying not to make much noise so as not to disturb the ongoing meeting, then respectfully invited her in.
“Sorry to trouble you.” Alice said softly, her iron boots leaving dull echoes on the red carpet inside.
When she entered the solemn, spacious meeting hall, she saw many people already seated at the long conference table—mostly prominent knights and commanders of the corps.
If one looked closely, the knights could be roughly divided into three factions.
Knights wearing the emblem of the silver wolf crossed with twin swords mostly sat on the right side of the table.
Behind them hung the White Horse Kingdom’s galloping white horse banner and the Border Garrison’s crossed shield-and-sword flag, and beneath the banners stood three steady knights.
Led by her father, Raven Arevalo, the “Frostwind,” these knights were from the Arevalo family. They were the famous Frost Wolf Knights of the corps, known for wielding cold power and fierce bravery.
On the main seat and the left side of the table sat the two other families garrisoning Storm Fortress—the Elvin family and the Barnes family.
Seated at the main position was Dominic Elvin, the Elvin family’s “Sword of Radiance.”
The Elvin family had deep ties to the Sun Church;
their knights all had some command of holy-light skills.
Though they wouldn’t call themselves divine, they held the reputation of being the “Holy Light family” in the corps—undeniable mainstays when resisting the Magical Tides in past years.
On the left sat the Barnes family’s knights.
Their blood carried a thin trace of dwarf lineage, making them generally stocky and a head shorter than the other two families’ knights.
Though not as skilled at forging as true dwarves, they excelled at wielding warhammers and wearing heavy armor, their personalities bold and straightforward like dwarves—popular among the fortress’s common soldiers.
Now the three Extraordinary knights—Raven Arevalo, “Sword of Radiance” Dominic Elvin, and “Heavy Steel” Simo Barnes—were like three invisible vortex centers. Their emanating auras tested and tangled with one another in the hall, forcing other knights present into silence.
Alice’s arrival slightly broke that suffocating hush in the meeting hall.
“You’re here. Sit.” Raven Arevalo lifted his eyelids and nodded to his daughter, motioning to the empty seat behind him.
“Hm.” Alice held herself steady and walked to the space behind her father, but did not sit immediately. Like the family knights standing by, she chose to remain standing.
Dominic Elvin of the Holy Light family glanced at her with inscrutable eyes.
He cleared his throat and took the initiative to speak, breaking the unbearable silence.
“Everyone, I believe you’ve all received the latest intelligence from the Dark Realm.”
His gaze swept the room. “Previously, Princess Louisa had been secretly meddling, obstructing the formation plan for the swamp extermination and monster-clearing legion, allowing the swamp monsters to breed and expand unchecked.”
“So much so that they produced a massive magical creature army capable of breaching the Graystone Bulwark—an operation the vampires had maintained for centuries—and in a matter of days occupied the entire Dark Realm!”
“Since Princess Louisa’s treason has been confirmed with solid evidence, we can no longer delay forming the Extermination Legion.”
“We must immediately organize a force strong enough to strike proactively before those creatures entrench themselves, and completely uproot this malignant threat to the kingdom’s border security.”
“Occupy the entire Dark Realm?!” Alice kept a composed expression, masking the storm raging inside.
In only a few days, the war between the Slime Kingdom and the vampires had already reached a result?
This speed was far beyond anything she had imagined.