Chapter 1

It had been three days since that sudden, fierce battle.

The towering walls of Blackcrow Fortress stood silently in the night sky. This solid fortress, built of black granite, had endured an unimaginably brutal fight. Even the fortress's general couldn't believe that the stronghold remained standing after the storm. The Chaos Storm and the monsters that came with it had almost completely destroyed all the advance guard towers and runes of order outside the fortress. The previously layered and orderly defenses outside Blackcrow Fortress were gone. The outer defenses, once dotted with watchtowers and lined with high walls and giant rocks, were now just a gray-black expanse of shattered gravel. Even the fortress's own walls were scarred, with large cracks and holes visible everywhere, making it look like it was riddled with holes.

Perhaps it wouldn't even take another storm. Even a wandering band of Chaos monsters would be enough to collapse the black fortress in an instant.

Philip tightened his cotton coat, turning to look at the towering upper fortress of Blackcrow Fortress. In the misty night sky, the ancient fortress resembled a spiraling, gradually converging volcano. Layer upon layer of granite walls and towers of various sizes formed the cliffs of this mountain, and the flickering flames between the walls and towers looked like lava flowing down the mountainside. At the very top of the fortress, the light of the Sacred Flame Tower shot straight into the sky like a white tower reaching the heavens, and a faint barrier poured down from the top of the "white tower," enveloping the entire fortress.

Although it still looked dazzling, the light of order from the Sacred Flame Tower was not as bright as it had been.

The Sacred Flame Tower was damaged in the previous Chaos Storm. The intense conflict of laws caused the tower's energy core to overload. Although the mages urgently repaired the most important equipment, they still couldn't fully restore the tower to its best condition. And for a fortress facing the Chaos frontier, the weakening of the light of order meant that everything was heading for the worst: Blackcrow Fortress's defenses were almost halved.

But these things were distant to Philip. As an ordinary squad leader, he was only slightly higher in status and knew slightly more than the few soldiers under his command. But he was essentially still a crude soldier from the kingdom's countryside who hadn't seen much of the world. He knew nothing about the mysteries of magic. All he knew was that the great battle three days ago was the most brutal he had ever experienced. Many people more capable than him had died on the battlefield outside the city. Soldiers guarding the city walls were also carried to the rear in batches. If he hadn't been lucky enough, he would probably have become a corpse in those cold tombs. If years of military service hadn't numbed this veteran to matters of life and death, he probably wouldn't have had the courage to come to this section of the wall again.

Philip tightened his cotton coat again, as if it could no longer protect him from the cold night wind. It was hard to imagine that just a few days ago, it was still the hot summer. Standing guard on the city walls would make you sweat, but now it was freezing inside and outside the fortress, as if it were already winter.

This was the power of Chaos: When the storm came, it almost immediately changed the climate of the area. The transition from summer to winter took only two or three hours. After that, the Blackcrow Fortress garrison experienced thunderstorms, hail, and blizzards. If this had happened in the first two or three years of the Chaos War, such crazy weather changes alone would have killed some unlucky people.

"Boss, it looks like it's almost dawn, right? Can we finish this shift here?"

The voice of one of his men reactivated Philip's almost frozen brain. He turned his head and saw one of his soldiers looking up at the horizon, where a faint glimmer of light could be seen.

"Don't daydream. It's not time yet," Philip scolded. "Don't think about slacking off. If the monsters really come at this time, you won't be able to explain it to your ancestors."

The soldier was reprimanded and quickly lowered his head, nodding in agreement. But Philip knew he couldn't be too harsh: the damned weather was unbearable, and a night of patrolling was exhausting.

But he knew that monsters attacked regardless of day or night. Those bastards that emerged from Chaos wouldn't give you a chance to slack off. So the old soldier braced himself and carefully watched for any movement outside the city walls.

The cold wind swirled across the plain in front of Blackcrow Fortress, picking up a few tattered flags and some dust. Philip recognized one of the flags as belonging to the Second Battalion of the Black Blade Legion. He knew that the battalion had been wiped out in the battle three days ago. To buy time for the other battalions to retreat, more than two thousand warriors stood in front of the tide of monsters. Philip watched from the city walls as they were swallowed up, their human limbs dissolving into the darkness like cream in hot soup.

That retreat saved most of the Black Blade Legion's main force, preventing the fortress's combat power from being reduced too much at once, but it also led to the Chaos monsters crashing into Blackcrow Fortress's Barrier of Order ahead of schedule, creating a hidden danger for the Sacred Flame Tower's overload.

"Boss, I heard those mages say that a few days ago it was a Chaos Storm. They say the storm blew in from the edge of the continent, rising from under the Sea of Kalnos and pouring into our world. The southern forests seem to be completely destroyed, turned into Chaos Lands."

"I wouldn't know?" Philip glanced at his subordinate and said coldly. He didn't like the other party bringing up this topic, because even now, recalling the scene three days ago made him shudder. Darkness and storm swept in from the southern sky, like a black giant wave thousands of meters high and boundless on both sides, pressing down on them with a roar. In the blink of an eye, the sky and earth darkened, the wind howled, alarms sounded throughout the fortress, and countless hideous monsters emerged from the air, pouncing on the city walls... and that battle lasted a full day and night.

The mages called it the "vanguard of the storm," meaning that more Chaos would come, perhaps not as fierce and desperate as the first day, but definitely taking more lives.

Philip didn't want to talk much, but his veteran soldiers couldn't stay idle, and soon they started chatting about other topics.

"Hey, did you hear? Didn't they say a group of magical beasts suddenly appeared in the southern forest a while ago? A particularly large group."

"Ah, I heard about it too. What about it?"

"It is said that the group of magical beasts is not ordinary. There are all kinds of races in it, a mighty force, and they are coming towards us."

"All kinds of races? Wouldn't they be fighting each other?"

"That's why it's strange. The group of magical beasts seems to be organized. It is said that there is a particularly powerful... magical beast boss called Head Wolf who has unified them."

"Heh, sounds powerful. Could it be a big wolf as high as a small mountain?"

"It is said to be a three thousand five hundred year old forest magic wolf with three heads. One tooth is half a meter long, and one paw can collapse a house..."

"Hey, what's the use of talking about this? Look to the south—Chaos is here. No matter how powerful Head Wolf is, it's just a magical beast. It doesn't have any Sacred Artifacts of Order. At this time, those magical beasts have probably been wiped out by Chaos, right?"

Philip didn't stop his men from chatting at this moment, because he had already seen the sunlight on the horizon about to leap out of the ground. The night's duty was about to end soon. At this time, it was excusable for the soldiers to relax a little, as long as no one left their post.

He didn't know that the "magical beast boss" with "three thousand five hundred years," "three heads," and "half-meter-long teeth" that the soldiers were talking about was now leading an army that could be described as a beast tide towards the border of civilization. He didn't even know that in the next moment, the new round of attacks from the Chaos Storm was about to begin.

The first to notice the abnormality was a sentinel looking towards the Black Forest. When a huge black shadow appeared in the sentinel's line of sight, he rubbed his eyes first, and then realized that the shadow was not an illusion brought about by a sleepless night—it had actually appeared, like a thick smoke rising from the forest. The plume of smoke swirled out of the forest, approaching Blackcrow Fortress at an unnatural speed. On the plume of smoke, countless shadowy monsters could be seen rapidly taking shape.

The sentinel opened his mouth, and after two seconds he reacted: "...Chaos is attacking!!!"

The deafening alarm instantly resounded throughout the fortress. Every bell tower in Blackcrow Fortress began to ring frantically. The protective runes on the surface of the city walls and sentry towers were lit up one by one. The shouts of knights and the orders of commanders came from all corners, followed by the sound of heavy footsteps and the clashing of armor. The heavy iron gates of the upper fortress also came down. Gryphon knights, whose formations were still largely intact, flew out of the iron gates one after another, circling the dark fortress for vigilance. Then the wizard towers began to operate, arcs of light shooting from the wizard towers to the battlements. The magic crystal cannons received power, and the focusing crystals began to bloom with bright white light on the city walls.

Outside Blackcrow Fortress, the black smoke was gathering more and more.

Black smoke and dust—this was the manifestation of Chaos power in the southern border of the kingdom.

When the first bird-shaped monster condensed out of the black smoke, screeching and pouncing towards the city walls, Philip spat and cursed every vulgar word he could think of, then drew his weapon and rushed forward.