Chapter 127: A Thousand Riders
The thick, suffocating stench of fresh arterial crimson completely masked the damp, foul exhalations of the ancient aqueduct. Rolo's massive body, swollen to match the geometric mass of a mature Mountain Demon, collapsed heavily forward into the mire, his thick, muscle-bound neck cleanly sliced open by the horn-ribbed Omen cleaver clutched within his own clawed fingers. Hot, smoking blood flowed endlessly from beneath the bronze contours of the leering mask, rapidly staining the Omenhunter's expanded torso and the wet flagstones within a dozen steps around his chassis a terrifying, dark red and black color.
"So... that freak simply executed a summary self-termination just like that?" Mohg stared down at the massive corpse anchoring the silt, his dark features contorting into an expression of raw, un-fused irritation.
His muscles had already prepared his frame to engage in a brutal, high-fatality melee. Rolo was undeniably a formidable opponent across the board. Even though his royal brother had operated under a structural disadvantage against the alchemist during their previous encounter because his own will had aggressively suppressed the Crucible's blood, the records sufficed to prove the terrifying personal strength commanded by this Chief Perfumer who had lost his mind to the aromatic.
Furthermore, evaluating this monster's hyper-mutated physical frame and the exceptionally violent aura radiating from his scaled hide across this watch, his cleaver must have compressed a far more devastating payload than the parameters he broadcasted across their initial duel, correct?
Mohg had even secretly harbored a few competitive thoughts of loudly demonstrating the absolute height of his own strength, desiring to test the limits to see who truly commanded the premier output between Lucia, Radahn, and himself when his vanguard went all out. After all, even if the high scions called each other brothers across the campfires, there still manifested a non-negotiable distinction separating who ruled as the elder prince and who occupied the lower slots of the lineage.
But entirely to the surprise of the aggregated demigods, the exact watch Lucia pronounced the absolute death sentence under his Empyrean authority, the supreme Omen Hunter didn't even broadcast the most microscopic desire to resist the blade. Following a brief, dense watch of total silence, his bloodshot eyes merely directed a freezing, bottomless glare of pure resentment to trace Lucia and Radahn's features, before his arm violently reversed the iron to extinguish his own vital readouts.
Lucia declined to hand-deliver an immediate answer to Mohg's complaint. Instead, he smoothly channeled a violent current of red Dragon Lightning around the edge of his starlight-forged blade, systematically driving the steel through Rolo's forehead, his heart cavity, and his swollen abdomen thrice across the dark. Having finalized the punctures, he casually spread his palms open toward the three astonished demigods fronting his line, his voice flat. "Simply to guarantee the safety parameters of the layout... what specific card handles the problem if this madman was merely staging a temporary biological dropout to fool our senses?"
He let out a low, heavy sigh, his silver hair catching the dim starlight mana as he added, "If our strategy did not require his flesh to serve as an active piece of physical evidence before the ministries, the safest protocol would dictate burning his remains to absolute ash using the high-intensity flames of the ancient dragons."
Morgott: "..."
Radahn: "..."
Strictly Mohg's eyes violently lit up with a predatory brilliance across the gloom, a sharp chuckle escaping his teeth. "That calculation balances beautifully; my own memory will permanently archive that methodology for future hunts!"
Having verified the absolute termination of Rolo's life readouts, Lucia retrieved the heavy Sovereign Order Seal granted straight to his fingers by Radagon's scepter. He scanned the shimmering golden runes tracing the rear face of the metal, before shifting his silver visor to monitor the progenitor of the Omenkillers rotting in the mud—an operator who had resolutely, un-blinkingly embraced his own destruction. Following a dense stretch of silence, he spoke. "Since his heartbeat has truly hit absolute zero, there manifests only a solitary rational explanation to balance the equation."
"This fanatical madman... until the absolute terminal microsecond before the blade cleared his throat, presumably simulated the delusion that every single atrocity his cleaver executed was performed explicitly to uphold the pristine purity of the Golden Order, correct?" Morgott remarked, his gravelly voice carrying a highly complicated, bittersweet resonance across the aqueduct.
"Consequently... the exact watch an Empyrean consecrated with the dual, non-negotiable authority of the Greater Will and the Lord Consort manually pronounces a binding decree of heresy against his name, his internal consciousness instantly loses every shred of civilizational value and spiritual motivation required to continue drawing breath across the realm. His mind becomes mathematically incapable of mustering the minor defiance necessary to draw his sword to contest the sentence."
Prince Radahn smoothly sheathed his massive Starscourge greatswords back onto their heavy shoulder harnesses, releasing a soft, weary sigh through his beard. "So... the parameters of pure, drug-crazed madness and absolute, un-bending institutional loyalty can seamlessly coexist within a single vessel, after all?"
Mohg curled his lip in deep disgust, spitting a dark glob of saliva straight into the crimson pool surrounding Rolo's skull. "By what metric does his status as a loyal hound of the law alter the calculus? A mad dog remains explicitly a mad dog across any script. What specific asset class can a worthless, defiled existence of that tier buy for the future? A thousand units of his classification would mathematically fail to balance the ledger for the sheer volume of our compatriots his knives have tortured and murdered across the gutters!"
Across this watch, zero tongues rose to refute the absolute validity of Mohg's statement. The memories of those tragic Children of the Omen who had perished beneath the Perfumer's cleaver across recent moons were still intensely fresh, heavy, and bleeding within the minds of the coalition. Regardless of how noble, persistent, or structured the systemic justifications deployed by Rolo and alternative fanatical defenders of the faith might score within their own journals, those high-sounding concepts could never hope to camouflage the un-counted thousands of heretical crimes their vanguards had executed against nature.
"Enough of the post-mortem analysis. Now that the layout across this sector has successfully reached its baseline, the hour has arrived for our vanguards to clear the culverts—we must systematically settle the dynastic accounts targeting the house of Duolis."
Lucia swept his silver eyes along the perimeter, checking the various scrying crystal spheres that had been forcefully stripped of their cloaking arrays to hang exposed across the limestone ceilings. Following the public disclosure of his divine verdict against Rolo, he had smoothly deployed the Carian talisman to forcefully de-activate the command tracks of every scrying circuit operating within a ten-kilometer radius. Now that his strategy had successfully caught the high ministries and the resident gaming nobles completely off-guard, the management of the remaining phases scored as an elementary task. Evaluating the timeline down the clock, Prince Miquella's outriders should be safely approaching their terminal deployment coordinates.
"Your Royal Highness... Commander Aegis... our heavy lances have successfully completed the absolute tactical encirclement of the Duke's capital manor, and every single drainage well valve linking this sector to alternative municipal districts via the underground aqueducts has been completely sealed beneath our iron bulkheads. The front-line detachments of the Ancient Dragon Knights are currently driving their heels toward the primary entrances of the Secret Vault."
"Your command has executed the logistics with immense precision, Knight Krad," Miquella spoke softly, offering a slow, graceful nod of acknowledgement to the veteran Golden Knight commander, an elite warlord whose frame had logged roughly forty winters across the imperial legions.
"Maintain a stationary posture; do not authorize your heavy lances to cross the threshold of the Duke's manor house for the current watch. Hyper-vigilantly monitor the spatial variables formatting the basement vaults, and await the explicit command tracks from the office of Princess Lucia."
"Understood, milord!"
Aegis, maintaining a silent, disciplined watch beside the prince's shoulder, monitored the rhythmic crunch of the commander's iron boots as the warrior retreated down the stone stairs, his internal thoughts secretly marveling at the immense, un-yielding decisiveness driving the movements of the golden god anchoring his flank.
Of the thousand heavy riders mobilized to orchestrate the high-stakes siege of the Duke's palace tonight, the registries verified there manifested two hundred Storm Knights of the cliffs and two hundred elite Ancient Dragon Knights drawing their pay directly under the sovereign jurisdiction of Farum Azula. The remaining six hundred operators comprised high-tier Golden Knights who had cleared their keeps explicitly under the combined, state-sanctioned authority wielded by Lucia and Miquella. However, the reality of the court remained absolute—Lucia possessed zero historical foundation or personal networks anchoring his name among the traditional military knight orders of Royal Capital Leyndell. Even assuming his Empyrean patent granted his hand the legal authority to mobilize imperial legions past midnight, where could his strategy locate a single company of truly trusted, vouched troops to rely upon if the friction hit a volatile zenith?
Consequently, the exact watch his center resolved to launch an absolute execution sweep targeting Duolis's conspiracy, his pen had immediately established high-speed lines to link his layout with Miquella's assets. The Sovereign Order Seals clutched within the fingers of the two demigod titans merely provided a nominal, legal framework to authorize the troop movements before the ministries; in structural reality, these six hundred Golden Knights defined the hyper-elite, fiercely loyal personal vanguard of Miquella's private household army.
Following the finalization of tonight's operational blueprints and the alignment of every necessary logistical arrangement parallel to Lucia's subterranean transit, Miquella had acted with an exceptionally intense, law-breaking decisiveness—surrounding the ancestral residence of a sitting sovereign Duke of the realm without a single drop of hesitation. Even turning over the nearly fifty-winter history validating the establishment of the Golden Dynasty, a near-coup military conflict of this magnitude detonating within the absolute upper ring of the capital ring was entirely unprecedented across the chronicles.
The two figures currently occupied the top floor pavilion of a highly luxurious restaurant sector positioned adjacent to the Duke's estate, an establishment engineered to cater exclusively to the private comfort of the blood royal and the highest tier of the peerage. Miquella rested his slender, perfect hands lightly against the intricate, jade-carved balustrade fronting his station, allowing the rising midnight gales to dance through the brilliant gold tresses of his hair.
His un-blinking gaze remained locked onto the massive silhouette of the Duke's manor house below, which stood looming amidst the dark exactly like a colossal, sleeping stone beast. Massive snowflakes, as thick and heavy as goose feathers, came cascading down from the incandescent, blinding glow of the Erdtree boughs far above, rapidly turning the black, hard-wrought stone avenues fronting the mansion a pristine white, while draping the thousands of elite knights waiting silently across the snowy night within a chilling, iron-clad cloak of winter frost.
A deep, dull thud of heavy iron chains rolling wove from the center of the main street, and the monumental oak doors guarding the Duolis manor house swung violently open to both flanks. Hundreds of heavily armored family retainers came surging out across the snow in a menacing, defensive deployment. The warlord leading their vanguard, his aristocratic features completely contorted into a mask of pure fury, aggressively rode his warhorse straight up to the lines of a stationary Golden Knight, unleashing a scathing, hyper-violent torrent of bureaucratic accusations.
Minutes down the clock, runners hand-delivered the exact formatting of those words straight to the pavilion hosting Miquella and Aegis.
"Their administration is loudly questioning the legal purpose backing our mobilization, demanding the immediate withdrawal of our heavy lances from their toll zone?"
Miquella exhaled a slow, quiet wisp of white thermal breath into the freezing night air. "Systematically disarm their vanguard. Place every single operator under immediate, extrajudicial military detention on the spot—if their house stable dispatches alternative elements to clear the doors, arrest as many as come across the pavement."
"Captain Aegis, my scepter requests your muscle to personally command an independent detachment of our Storm Knights, driving your boots deep into the central aqueduct channels to verify that zero loopholes compromise the absolute blockade the Children of the Omen have wove around the parameters of the Secret Vault. Having stabilized that grid, cooperate directly parallel to His Highness's vanguard to penetrate the cellars and capture the target. Duke Caven Duolis does not define a small-minded fool who remains blind to the geopolitical trajectory of the board. Those family retainers protesting across the snow format merely a surface diversion engineered to distract our primary tracking lines. My strategic engine calculates that the specific entity Lucia is looking to liquidate... remains securely ensconced within the deep basements of the earth."
"The parameters are parsed; my command will execute the deployment this microsecond."
Aegis executed a highly respectful, flawless knightly salute across the tiles, his steel clicking. "Your Royal Highness, Lord Miquella... my hand leaves the security of this surface grid entirely beneath the governance of your scepter."
"Banish the anxiety from your chest, Captain," Miquella spoke softly, his perfect lips parting subtly to reveal a breathtaking, transcendent smile that possessed the absolute capacity to comfortably captivate the soul of any living entity drawing breath across the cosmos, "across this watch... our vanguard is mathematically guaranteed to secure the victory."