Chapter 823: A Strange Wait
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 823: A Strange Wait
"Hiss... whew."
Muen stretched as he walked out of his room, greeting another lazy dusk.
The sun had already half-sunk below the horizon. Reflected and filtered through the clouds, the orange-yellow afterglow looked like the blushing cheeks of a shy young girl.
Muen couldn't help but feel as if a lifetime had passed. Thinking back, it seemed he hadn't seen the sun in its full glory for several days. It was always battles at night and sleep in the morning, waking only when the sun was already slanting toward the west. The best hours of the day slipped away in the blink of an eye.
However, he had seen plenty of actual blushing cheeks on real girls, so it wasn't a total loss.
"Sigh, no matter how much I try to recover, handling three people at once is still a bit taxing on the body."
Muen rubbed his aching lower back, feeling a mix of pain and pleasure. "If I weren't a bit of a beast myself, I really wouldn't have been able to hold out."
Liya’s Holy Light was one thing—Muen was long since used to that girl’s incredible endurance—but even Ariel had eventually been driven to a breaking point under their pincer attacks. In her mounting embarrassment and frustration, she had directly activated Ancient Magic to stimulate her potential, boosting her combat power by three whole tiers. Who could stand up to that?
Though, even after stimulating her potential, she was still reduced to a quivering mess in the end.
With the added offensive buff from his childhood sweetheart, Liya, Muen had managed to grasp a few more of Ariel’s weaknesses over these past few rounds of battle... for instance, the more ashamed she felt, the easier it was for her to reach her peak with a flushed little face. It was incredibly cute.
Reflecting on last night’s triangle, Muen decided that An was still the most well-behaved.
Of course, that wasn't to say An was a pushover.
She was simply more... unadorned.
She didn't have Liya’s divine and flashy Goddess power, nor did she have Ariel’s profound and mysterious Ancient Magic.
She was a pure Juice Extractor.
Unadorned juicing, emotionless juicing. Whether it was from above or below, every move she made relied solely on her purest extraction abilities, never borrowing strength from external sources.
But it was precisely because of this simple and direct approach that, by the end of the battle, she was usually the one who got her wish and ended up completely filled.
"Sigh, once in a while is fine, but I can't do this every day. Time is gold, time is gold."
Muen gave a rather melancholy sigh, emphasizing the necessity of treasuring time, before immediately slumping lazily into a chair. He watched the clouds drift by against the backdrop of the increasingly beautiful sunset.
The sculptures, fountains, and nameless works of art that his father loved so much were still scattered about in pieces, not yet repaired. But perhaps because the weather was so fine and the breeze so warm, even those fragments seemed much more pleasing to the eye.
He believed that with such a wonderful outcome, even his father wouldn't complain too much.
Muen smiled as he rested. At the far end of the garden, in a small pavilion, Ariel and Liya were huddled together, chattering away. From time to time, they would shoot a sharp, synchronized glare in his direction. It seemed that after "laying everything bare" last night, their relationship had returned to being the best of friends.
An, meanwhile, approached Muen silently, carrying tea.
"Young Master."
"Hmm?"
"Can I kill those two pests now?"
"No."
"Just one of them first."
"Not even one. Also, they aren't pests."
"Not now, then how about tomorrow?"
"Not tomorrow either."
Muen paused. "Never."
"...Tch."
An clicked her tongue in displeasure, but ultimately said nothing more. She set down the tea tray and moved behind Muen, gently massaging his temples.
Muen closed his eyes slightly, leaning back into An’s embrace—which, while not as vast as Liya’s, was still quite ample—enjoying this hard-won moment of leisure.
No Evil Gods, no Evil Believers.
No villains, no one causing trouble.
No incidents, no sudden crises.
Everything was so wonderful.
"It's so peaceful..." Muen couldn't help but remark, as if all his worries had been forgotten...
...
...
"It's so peaceful..."
The Empire.
The Notasia Defense Line.
Celicia stood at the highest point of the city wall, looking down, ignoring the attempts of her officers to stop her—some of whom had even threatened to kill themselves to keep her from such a dangerous vantage point.
Her words were flat and toneless, as if she were merely stating a very ordinary fact.
But deep within her eyes, which were cold enough to seem frozen, a flicker of doubt rippled like a disturbance on an icy lake.
"The killing outside the walls is in full swing, yet you say it's peaceful. Have you been at war so long that your brain has rotted?"
The noisy officers and attendants had long since been driven away. No one was supposed to enter this area except for Celicia, but as shadows swirled behind the wall, a girl in a black dress appeared.
She showed not a shred of the respect due to an Imperial Empress. Instead, her seductive eyes curved into a teasing smile.
"Or have you been the Emperor for so long that you no longer care about the lives of those below you?"
Celicia lowered her head slightly.
Outside the walls, the sounds of slaughter shook the heavens.
On the vast battlefield, the Imperial Army and the Kingdom Army were locked in combat.
These were the elites of both sides—armored cavalry. As night began to fall, both sides had coincidentally dispatched elite units with the intent of launching a sneak attack. As a result, the two cavalry units had run straight into each other, turning a stealth mission into a brutal, head-on collision.
From Celicia’s position, she could clearly see the two groups under different banners clash and then merge into one another. Shouts of rage, the thundering of hooves, the clashing of steel, the explosions of magic... countless instances of blood and fire erupted in the dark night, only to vanish into nothingness before the light truly faded.
"You're right. My brain is indeed rotted."
Celicia turned back expressionlessly. "If I were still sane, I would have thrown you into the vanguard on the first day, just so I wouldn't have to deal with you fluttering around in front of me and annoying me every day."
"Oh my, didn't you insist on bringing me along?"
Anna patted her chest with a look of mock grievance. "Otherwise, I’d be in Belland right now, having who knows how much fun."
"I don't want to know what you mean by 'fun,' but while you are here, you should show the respect due to an Imperial subject."
Celicia’s expression turned cold. "You should address me as Your Majesty."
"Is that so?"
Anna faced Celicia’s gaze without a hint of fear. "How about we each have our own way? I'll call you Your Majesty, and you call me... Elder Sister?"
Crackle...
A bone-chilling frost erupted instantly.
It seemed those two words had poked at some shameful memory of Celicia’s. Before Anna could even finish her sentence, a layer of ice had already frozen the ground beneath her feet.
However, it was blocked by flowing shadows and could not advance another inch.
Celicia’s eyes darkened. She stopped using her Divine Blessing and, accompanied by the booming vibration of the air, began to mobilize that magnificent...
"Wait."
Anna’s eyes flickered, and she immediately retreated with a pitiful expression.
"Why go so far, Your Majesty? I was just joking. There's no need to crush me with your Imperial Authority."
"Hmph. Since you know I am your Emperor, your Majesty, then you should know that I will always be on top of you."
Celicia tilted her head slightly, her words laced with double meaning.
"Fine, fine. I'll stop calling myself 'Sister' for now."
Anna broke into a wicked, little-devil grin again. "Anyway, there will always be a time when you..."
Clang—
A cold flash of steel stopped less than a centimeter from Anna’s neck.
Under the Empress’s increasingly stern glare, the little devil finally dropped her teasing act.
"Tell me then, Your Majesty. What exactly did you mean by that sentence just now?"
Anna sighed, appearing quite troubled by work that fell outside her usual responsibilities.
But regardless, one rank higher crushes a person. This woman was a Majesty, after all. In any place other than a bed, Anna technically had to obey her.
"Literally. The Kingdom’s side is too peaceful."
Celicia sheathed her sword. The blade at her waist was a very ordinary one, but at this moment, it represented the Sovereign's Sword of the entire Empire’s authority.
"Unnaturally peaceful."
"Peaceful?"
Anna craned her neck to look at the chaos outside the walls.
"You mean the fact that the Kingdom took advantage of the night to send five thousand elite cavalry and at least fifty accompanying mages to launch a sneak attack?"
"Yes. That is very peaceful."
Celicia nodded. "Five thousand cavalry is nowhere near enough."
"I see..."
Anna stroked her smooth chin. "I didn't expect our Empress to be such a warmonger."
"..."
Celicia gave Anna a cold look, knowing she was being intentionally provocative. She didn't take the bait and continued:
"This 'peace' is relative to their objective."
"Objective?"
Anna thought for a moment. "To break through our defense line and invade the heart of the Empire?"
"Exactly. For the Kingdom, the most urgent matter is to break our line. Only by breaking through here and crushing us border guards can the Kingdom’s army enter the flat plains of the Empire’s northern interior. Only then can they truly expand their gains and turn them into something tangible. Otherwise, the few passes they took before are meaningless in the grand scheme of things."
Celicia’s fingers tapped lightly on the mottled city wall, her gaze following the battlefield below and extending into the distant darkness.
In a war between great powers, the possibility of "winning by surprise" was actually very slim. Take tonight’s sneak attack, for example—both sides were wary of the night, and both had top-tier experts on high alert in the shadows. How could a mere five thousand cavalry break through a wall personally guarded by the Imperial Empress?
Did they take her for a child?
Of course not. The Kingdom wasn't stupid.
Therefore, in the end, this war was a contest of logistics, national strength, and hidden reserves.
Previously, in order to deal with the full-scale demon invasion at their rear, the Empire had to divert a massive amount of resources and troops. Fighting on two fronts, the Empire naturally couldn't withstand the Kingdom, which had come prepared and aggressive.
Thus, even with Celicia personally at the front and even with the Sword Bearer of the Silence Bureau deployed... the Empire had no choice but to shrink its defense lines and hold on for dear life to avoid having its main force wiped out by the Kingdom’s momentum.
The result was that the Imperial Army had already abandoned six passes and retreated more than two hundred miles from the border... If the war ended here, Celicia would likely go down in history as a famous failure of a ruler. Since the war five hundred years ago that established the Empire’s prestige, the Empire had never been so humiliated by the Kingdom.
But the war would not end here. Celicia knew it, Anna knew it, the officers knew it, and even the soldiers who were swallowing their pride knew it. Their current retreat was only to better clench their fist.
They could afford to stall and endure. Time was on their side.
For the Kingdom, however, it was the exact opposite.
They had come with the strength of their entire nation. The daily logistical consumption of a million-man army was an astronomical figure. Not to mention, the Kingdom itself knew that if the Empire regained its footing, they would be the ones at a disadvantage.
So, for the time-pressed Kingdom, a sneak attack like this—which had happened countless times before—seemed far too trivial.
"Does the Kingdom know about the changes in the Abyss?" Celicia suddenly asked.
"You mean the sudden disappearance of the demons?"
"Yes."
Celicia’s eyes flickered.
Before she left Belland, she had promised Muen that she would end this war within six months and turn her forces to support the Abyssal Defense Line.
But she hadn't expected that the side to achieve total victory first would be the Abyssal front, which had seemed far more difficult.
Then again, thinking about a certain blonde bastard over there, it wasn't entirely unbelievable.
"The Church’s official response is that they are investigating and will provide a detailed explanation. The high-level leaders of various factions are also sending people to the Abyss."
Anna thought for a moment. "But since the Abyss is naturally isolated, it will take some time before the general public finds out."
"In other words, the Kingdom’s high command definitely knows."
Celicia lowered her eyes.
In reality, her question was mostly rhetorical.
Since she knew about the change with the demons, the Kingdom—which had only dared to start this war because they were collaborating with the demons—would naturally know sooner than anyone.
But...
Dust swirled, and hooves thundered like drums. After a chaotic encounter, neither side's cavalry could claim victory. They retreated, leaving behind a field of corpses that no one had time to tend to.
Celicia watched the retreating Kingdom army and murmured softly:
"I am waiting for the Empire’s divided strength to reintegrate so I can achieve a victory even greater than I previously anticipated. But you... what are you waiting for?"