Boom!
Amid a rumbling tremor like rolling thunder, layers of turf trampled by hooves flew into the air.
What is that?
On the fortress walls, the barbarians who had just risen to draw their bows and hunt down the remaining enemy infantry felt the ground shake violently beneath their feet. Their eyes swept over the sand and pebbles jumping along the battlements, and they looked into the distance in horror.
"Victory! Victory! Victory!"
Amid the deafening cries, fully armored knights clamped their legs against their horses' flanks, raised arm shields in one hand, and tucked massive hardwood lances more than two meters long beneath the other arm, forming a steel torrent that seemed ready to crush everything in its path.
"Enforcement Knights! It's the Enforcement Knights!"
"And the Round Table! Those monsters are coming up!"
"Quick! Stop them from getting near the walls!"
As that line of silver-white surged into view like a rolling tide, the barbarians atop the fortress turned pale and screamed, like young girls about to be cornered and ravaged by a gang of burly men.
The arrows, javelins, and throwing axes the barbarians had originally aimed at the infantry all turned toward the charging armored cavalry. The barbarian shamans accompanying the army also shifted their targets one after another.
Not only that, but the catapults in the rear, along with the stones and rolling logs hauled up onto the walls, were also brought to bear against the Celtic elites.
Yet even under such a desperate assault, those tin cans wrapped in magic steel armor easily deflected the arrows, javelins, and throwing axes flying toward them.
Even the shamans' Magecraft shattered against their armor, instantly erased by the stacked defensive formulas engraved upon it.
As for the heavy stones and rolling logs, the barbarians had barely lifted them before whistling javelins pierced their bodies and nailed them to the walls. Not only did they fail to throw much down, the falling stones and logs instead crushed and injured many of their own allies on the ramparts.
What made the Anglo-Saxons' scalps prickle even more was that after that scattered wave of attacks, they were horrified to discover that the weapons meant to stop the enemy, stones, rolling logs, arrows, and the like, had already run out.
Likewise, the shamans who had been worn down in the earlier fighting had nearly exhausted their Mana.
Beyond that, as the knight order drew closer, the barbarians realized that the horse traps and other measures set up in front of the fortress walls to block cavalry had already been approached and dismantled by infantry under cover of the fog.
The appearance of this cavalry came at the exact critical moment when the barbarians' old momentum had been spent, and their new strength had yet to gather. The King of Knights' grasp of the battlefield's rhythm was perfect.
While they waited for supplies to be replenished and Mana to recover, the barbarians had effectively lost their last means of checking the cavalry's advance. They could only watch helplessly as that steel torrent...
Drove straight in, closer and closer.
The next instant, the knights, like a silver tide of rage, shone with layer upon layer of Magecraft light patterns and accelerated into the granite walls.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
In an instant, the earth shook. Under the terrified and despairing gazes of the barbarians on the walls, the thick stone barrier cracked apart from weak points such as the gates, then collapsed in whole sections.
Amid the spreading dust, the hollow, vulnerable interior of the fortress was fully exposed.
The armored knights who had slammed into the granite only shook their heads. Their deformed armor dimmed, the light patterns across it fading.
In the next moment, the knights pushed aside the debris covering them, staggered up from the rubble, threw away their broken hardwood lances, switched to more flexible longswords and battle axes, and poured into the city.
Immediately after, thousands of barbarians wearing beast pelts, carrying wooden shields, and waving all kinds of weapons had only just gathered before the shattered gate when they were sent flying by the charging knights.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
With piercing cracks of bone, one barbarian after another spat blood and fell from the air like sacks of meat, only to be trampled into pulp by the cavalry flooding in behind them.
The barbarians, proud of their own courage, rushed out of the camp houses and attacked the knights in a frenzy.
Yet whether sharp blades or blunt weapons, almost nothing could break through the defenses of those tin cans.
"We can't cut through! Damn it, we can't cut through!"
"You dog bastards! Where are that bastard Vortigern's reinforcements? Did he sell us out?"
The barbarians, eyes bloodshot with panic, shouted in every direction with voices nearly breaking into sobs, like rabbits driven into a corner by hunters.
But none of that shook the knights' cold resolve. Their sharp longswords rose without mercy, then fell.
Again, they rose, and fell.
One armored knight after another moved like an unstoppable land tank, leaving ruin wherever they passed, efficiently and rhythmically reaping the barbarians' lives. These foreign invaders watered with their own blood the fertile land they had once longed to seize.
Faced with this nearly unsolvable disparity, the barbarians, stripped of the fortress's outer shell, collapsed into chaos and fled toward the rear gate, crying and screaming.
"Roar... roar..."
Just as the Anglo-Saxon barbarians were about to collapse completely, deep roars came from the northern sky, and a freezing gale swept in.
Beneath the roiling clouds, black dots approached at high speed, growing larger and larger.
Wait... what are those?
Several sharp-eyed knights of the Round Table stopped what they were doing at once, their pupils shrinking.
But before anyone could react, massive creatures with scales like iron armor and claws like spears had already folded their wings and plunged down from the sky.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
As the distance closed, some of the monsters seized knights from horseback, hurled them down from high in the air, and smashed their organs to pieces. Others opened their enormous jaws, gathering Ether madly in their mouths before spitting scorching fireballs in every direction.
In only a short while, the streets into which the Enforcement Knights had poured became seas of fire. Human figures twisted and screamed as they burned, giving off waves of reeking, roasted flesh.
Dragonkind. It's Dragonkind!
The Enforcement Knights who came back to their senses hurriedly controlled their restless, whinnying warhorses and stared up at the ferocious silhouettes circling in the sky, the answer reflected clearly in their minds.
Seeing reinforcements arrive, the retreating barbarians were instantly emboldened and tried to cooperate with these Phantasmal Species to finish off the Enforcement Knights.
"Clang!"
Just as the circling Dragonkind dived again, a bell-like hum rang out from among the slightly shaken Enforcement Knights. A wheel of light engraved with Roman numerals, like the face of a clock, appeared upon the earth.
"Here I pray, O morning sun, shine upon me!"
The solemn, low chant echoed outward. A blazing force shot straight into the sky, tearing through the stormy gloom and revealing the golden radiance of the sun.
Then, at the center of that wheel of light, a handsome man with a strong build and tousled golden hair sat astride his warhorse. Raising the silver greatsword in his hand, he knitted his brow and chanted.
"This sword is the copied body of the sun, the purifying flame that burns away all impurity. Excalibur Galatine!"
Boom!
In an instant, as the Dragonkind gathered and drew close, that rising might condensed into a searing edge and swept across the air, flames roaring wherever it passed.
Low-ranking Dragonkind unable to withstand that heat had the membranes of their wings burned away, screaming as they fell toward the ground. The sky was cleared in an instant.
Hum!
But in the blink of an eye, the firelight that had burned the heavens from Gawain's hand was swallowed by sudden darkness.
"Roar!"
Amid a grim beast roar filled with dragon might, a vast shadow covered the ground.
Everyone looked up and saw, on the back of a hundred-meter-long Great Dragon, a dark figure gazing down coldly.
That armor had been stained pitch-black. Though it was clearly noon, the figure was covered in shadow.
It was a hole opened in the world.
Something inhuman that seemed to drink down molten iron and swallow it into its belly, giving off a chill that crawled into the bones.
The cold sensation, as if plunging into an ice cave, made the knights of the Round Table go rigid. With difficulty, they spoke the answer.
The Demon Dragon, Vortigern!
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