Chapter 13 : Chapter 13
Chapter 13: Wall of Despair
Seven days.
Winter's frigid winds, carrying shards of ice, swept across every inch of the Wailing Wastes, howling like the wails of ghosts.
Along the perimeter Caesar had marked around the camp, with the Well of Life as its center, a massive ring-shaped trench with a three-hundred-meter radius had been gouged out of the frozen earth.
This was the foundation of the Wall of Despair.
The soil beneath the Blackspine Mountains was a clay layer mixed with volcanic ash and gravel, compressed to stone-like hardness by millennia of bitter cold.
When a pickaxe struck down, it often produced only a few sparks, the impact tearing open palms and leaving entire arms numb and aching.
This labor was harsher than what slaves in quarries endured.
Yet nearly a hundred men now worked bare-chested, their bronze skin steaming with rolling waves of heat under the pale daylight.
They were silent as a colony of worker ants building a dam with flesh and blood. Only two sounds filled the air—the tooth-grinding CLANG! CLANG! of pickaxes biting into frozen earth, and the violent panting like broken bellows that could not be suppressed no matter how hard they tried.
Sweat mixed with mud streamed freely down their deeply furrowed backs.
One refugee's vision went black as he raised his pickaxe, his last trace of strength exhausted, and he toppled backward stiffly.
The men beside him didn't even lift their eyelids, only drove their pickaxes more savagely into the earth before them, as if to bury their very lives along with the tools.
Immediately, support personnel rushed forward, deftly dragging the collapsed man aside and prying open his cracked lips with a wooden spoon, carefully pouring in a spoonful of warm wheat bran porridge.
No one complained. No one retreated. Because these people born as “trash” had long since lost any path of retreat—only by following Caesar would they glimpse hope once more.
At the other end of the camp, Finn Stonefist paced anxiously.
Like a protective groundhog guarding its young, he stared fixedly at the newly cultivated test field.
Those ugly tubers Caesar had named Earth Potatoes—after seven days, they had only produced a few wilted sprouts that looked ready to be devoured at any moment by this cursed land's last vestiges of vitality.
Everything seemed to be struggling toward normalcy.
Yet Caesar, sitting in his crude tent, burned with inner anxiety.
He closed his eyes, sensing that newborn thread of black-gold Battle Energy at his body's core.
Fine as a gossamer thread, it flowed slowly through his body. With each breathing cycle, the energy drawn from this barren wasteland was pitifully meager.
Too slow! Desperately slow!
This body, transformed by dragon's blood, should have been a genius at cultivation.
But the ether concentration of the Wailing Wastes was as thin as a desert—his daily progress was negligible.
At this glacial pace, cultivating his Battle Energy to form a stable energy vortex and reach late-stage Squire Knight would take at least a year.
Advancing to a formal Knight was even more impossibly distant.
He didn't have a year.
His father and elder brother back at the family estate—their patience had limits.
Once they discovered he hadn't died on the journey but had actually taken root in the wasteland, what came next wouldn't be the family's condolences, but deadlier blades.
Moreover, this wasteland itself was no benign place.
In the shadows of the Blackspine Mountains lurked countless hungry eyes that could be drawn at any moment by the smoke and firelight of these uninvited guests.
Without power, everything he was building now was merely a sandcastle on the beach—one wave could shatter it completely.
On the stone table before him lay the camp's remaining provisions—half a sack of black rye already beginning to mold and a few pieces of dried meat hard as wood.
Nearly two hundred mouths—the daily food consumption was staggering.
The Earth Potato harvest was indefinitely distant. Sitting idle and consuming resources, within ten days, without any enemy attack, the camp would collapse completely from famine.
As for the three thousand-plus gold coins in his storage space? In this land of despair that even caravans avoided, they were worth less than edible tree bark.
He needed power. He needed absolute power that could break through this deadlock in one stroke!
【DING!】
【Unique Talent “Hundredfold Amplification” cooldown complete.】
The system's cold notification rang out like a thunderclap in Caesar's mind.
His breathing stopped instantly.
A thought so insane it bordered on blasphemy gripped his heart like an invisible hand.
He could amplify gold coins. He could amplify food. He could amplify any tangible, quantifiable item.
Then… what about cultivation level, representing a Knight's rank?
This intangible yet truly existing thing—how would the system judge it?
This was a gamble without any precedent.
If he won, he would ascend in one step and gain precious breathing room.
If he lost… he might be torn apart into a bloody mist by uncontrollable rampaging energy, or the system might judge it a failure, wasting this once-every-seven-days opportunity—his only means of turning the tables.
Caesar's right index finger tapped unconsciously on the cold stone table, producing a rhythmic TAP, TAP like the pendulum of a death knell.
In his deep purple pupils, reason and madness waged their final battle.
Coming here, he had already gambled everything.
What harm in wagering one more life?
Finally, all hesitation and struggle in his eyes crystallized into bone-deep resolve.
He had no room left to retreat.
“System.”
His voice echoed in the empty tent, calm without a ripple.
“Lock amplification target—my current Knight cultivation level.”
【…Analyzing target…】
【Target confirmed as: abstract concept “cultivation level.”】
【Warning: Amplifying abstract concepts carries extremely high risk and may cause unpredictable consequences including energy loss of control, physical collapse, soul annihilation, etc.】
【Continue?】
“Heh.”
Caesar let out an extremely soft scoff, tinged with self-mockery.
Risk? His life, from the moment of birth, had consisted of nothing but risk.
“Continue.”
【Target locked: Host's current cultivation level (Squire Knight - Early Stage).】
【Talent Hundredfold Amplification activated!】
【…Performing random multiplier determination…】
Caesar's consciousness focused with unprecedented intensity. He could feel his mental energy being frantically drained.
The wheel of fate spun madly in his ears with a grating RATTLE RATTLE RATTLE sound.
Time stretched infinitely in this moment.
Finally, a number wreathed in black-gold flames burst forth at the center of the system interface!
【Determination successful! This amplification multiplier: 66x!】
Not the maximum of 100x, but enough!
Before Caesar could even breathe a sigh of relief, an indescribably terrifying energy torrent erupted without warning at his body's core!
BOOM—!!!
If gathering his first thread of Battle Energy ten-some days ago had been like opening a spring—
Then this moment was like the entire northern sea's glaciers melting instantly, transforming into a towering tsunami that flooded his narrow channels!
“GHHAA—!”
Caesar's body arched backward violently like a shrimp thrown on shore, a beast-like suppressed roar tearing from his throat.
He felt as if he'd been force-fed not just thrown into a furnace, but a bellyful of boiling molten iron!
Violent! Pure! Savage!
Sixty-six times the cultivation insights, sixty-six times the energy accumulation—in less than one second, the system forced it all into his limbs, bones, every cell, in the most unreasonable way possible!
CRACK… CRACK…
The energy channels in his body that carried Battle Energy flow were madly scoured, widened, torn apart by this tsunami-like Battle Energy!
Agony like a tide submerged his consciousness.
But immediately after, the draconic vitality contained in that energy acted like the most skillful craftsman, instantly repairing and reinforcing the shattered channels, making them several times more resilient than before!
This was a painful cycle of destruction and reconstruction!
His bones groaned. His muscles spasmed. Beneath his skin, countless snake-like forms writhed madly.
More importantly, the cultivation bottlenecks and barriers belonging to the Squire Knight stage crumbled like rotten wood before this overwhelming force!
Early stage peak… broken through!
Mid-stage… mid-stage peak… broken through!
His total Battle Energy surged at a pace that defied natural law!
That thread of black-gold Battle Energy transformed in an instant into a stream, then from stream to river, finally forming at his body's core a slowly rotating black-gold energy vortex dozens of times more robust than before!
At the vortex's center, there were faint signs of solidification, emanating a heavy yet sharp aura.
Squire Knight - Late Stage!
Only one final step away from condensing a Battle Energy seed and stepping into formal Knighthood!
The energy tide gradually receded. Caesar gasped like a fish out of water, his entire body soaked through with sweat and the foul impurities expelled from within.
Supporting himself on the table, he shakily stood and slowly clenched his fist.
BANG!
A muffled explosion of air erupted from his palm.
An unprecedented power roared and surged through his body.
Just then, outside the tent, a Battle Energy as vast as a mountain suddenly erupted, followed immediately by Roland's thunder-like roar.
“Enemy attack! All personnel on alert! Protect the lord!”
The tent flap was yanked open. Roland's towering figure blocked the entrance like a mobile iron tower, gripping his two-handed greatsword, face full of vigilance, as if facing mortal danger.
When he saw Caesar inside the tent—disheveled but unharmed—his words cut off mid-sentence.
His hawk-like eyes locked onto Caesar, pupils contracting sharply, his resolute face written with undisguisable shock and… the confusion of a worldview collapsing once again.
Is this what an awakened Valerius bloodline is like? Roland marveled inwardly, recalling ancient records he'd once seen—thousands of years ago, the Valerius surname hadn't been attached to mere barons.
But to Grand Dukes!
“I'm fine, Roland.”
Caesar's voice was somewhat hoarse. He looked calmly at Roland, then shifted his gaze beyond the tent toward those depths of the Blackspine Mountains that seemed particularly imposing in the morning light.
“It was just the commotion I made.”