I will be crowned king

March 1st, early morning.

Thick dark clouds covered the sky of Clovis City, and the howling wind mixed with gray snow galloped wildly over the city, announcing to everyone that this would be another bad weather as always.

Accompanied by various bloody conflicts, the riots that spread throughout the city of Clovis finally showed signs of calming down after continuing for several days.

But the impact on the entire city during this period was completely immeasurable - bloody tragedies almost broke out in streets large and small, bustling markets one after another were turned into ruins in the explosions and flames, and almost all public places The houses and shops all chose to close their doors tightly, and the area of ​​the nobles' residences was patrolled by armed troops 24 hours a day.

Under the gloomy dome, a ruined neighborhood was shrouded in thick black smoke in the unburned flames; the deserted streets contained only corpses lying on the ground, and only the charred remains of carriages and the remains of gas explosions were left. Debris and unpicked garbage, as well as hyenas and small figures looking for food in the garbage.

At the other end of the street, the battle flag of the bloody unicorn fluttered in the wind in the night bonfire. The Guards with live ammunition guarded the streets connecting the inner and outer city areas, using horse-drawn carriages and sandbags to form simple barricades.

Compared with the inner city where the Guards patrolled, private soldiers and security companies were responsible for maintaining law and order, the outer city was almost on the verge of being completely destroyed during the riots - factories of all sizes were destroyed by countless robbers and vagrants Occupied, warehouses were looted, and factories were set on fire.

A very small number of workers who were unwilling to resist were beaten to death together with the factory guards, while the vast majority immediately joined the rioters and hung the factory supervisors on burning bonfires.

In order to prevent these "completely crazy" thugs from spreading to the inner city, the Guards who quelled the riots in the inner city immediately sealed off the main entrances and exits of the inner and outer cities. Anyone who tried to approach would be fired at least twice. "Welcome along the way."

As for the chaos in the outer city, they don't care, and no one cares.

Not far from the barricade, heavily armed heavy carriages could be seen passing quickly, and the heavy wheels rolled over the mutilated corpses, making a "gada gada" sound.

The soldiers standing on the carriage vigilantly pointed their guns at the windows of the houses on both sides of the street. When the gunfire rang out, the heads hiding behind the windows quickly retracted.

Although the Guards have always had a bad reputation in the past few months, and are even considered to have a negative contribution to the public management of Clovis City, they are the king's private soldiers after all, and have accumulated rich experience in countless operations to suppress riots. experience.

Although the scale of this riot was large, even the Royal Bank, the church of the Church of Order, and even the Guards' own garrison and barracks were affected; but after the initial commotion, the chaotic situation soon became The guards gradually restored stability under the indiscriminate volleys of gunfire and blockade, without causing much vigilance.

Even many officers of the Guards were "fortunate" for this riot - the Privy Council's agenda for the "Public Administration Bill" had been passed, and the entire Guards would be dismembered and split up next; this sudden riot It undoubtedly interrupted the process and made the Privy Council afraid to act rashly.

Major Fabian is one of them.

As an intermediary officer who was born in a minor aristocracy and had no hope of promotion, the Guards were the only prerequisite for him to stay in the inner city of the royal capital; once the Guards were reorganized into a security force controlled by the Privy Council, with his poor network of poor buddies, Coupled with the upper-class connections of "I know people, but they don't know me", being kicked to the front line is a 100% thing.

So this sudden riot became Major Fabian's savior, allowing him to temporarily avoid the risk of unemployment.

Even the royal family and the Privy Council were worried that the Guards would be ineffective in suppressing the riots due to the passage of the Public Administration Act. Not only did they greatly increase the "temporary treatment" of the Guards, they also promised that the issue of reorganization "is not impossible to discuss." ", "Everything is negotiable."

But Major Fabian still sensed a hint of crisis in the joy of his colleagues - the Privy Council, which had long lost its patience with the Guards, was very likely to default on its debt afterwards.

So he took advantage of the opportunity of suppressing the riots in the past few days to actively contact his former friends in the Wang family's army to see if he could be transferred to some front lines that were "safer" and "not just without oil and water".

At the same time, he took the initiative to move himself to a place where absolutely no one wanted to come, sealing off the front lines in the outer city and avoiding everyone's sight, in order to cover up his inefficiency and serious absence from the attendance sheet.

After reluctantly digging into his pocket and waiting for several days, Fabian finally got an important piece of information from a poor friend with "very strong connections": The Royal Army was going to form an army in order to declare war on the Ysel elves. New Legion.

After confirming that the news was true, he immediately wrote a discharge application and only waited until the riot was over to join the expedition against the Ysel elves. In that new legion, there would be a certain levy corps leader or something with real power. The job of dividing the spoils.

"Major, someone is coming this way!"

The soldiers' shouts made Major Fabian, who had been guarding all night, stand up impatiently, rubbed his sleepy eyes and looked at the other end of the barricade: In the foggy black night, several single figures appeared. Walking staggeringly this way.

These rats are desperate... Major Fabian shook his head helplessly, took the trumpet from the soldier, and shouted to the crowd in the dark night:

"In the name of the Osteria family and the Kingdom of Clovis, I order you to stop, otherwise I will have the right to execute you on the spot!"

He shouted and waved behind him. A dozen soldiers on duty walked to the barricade with their guns raised, and skillfully pointed their guns at the crowd at the other end of the street. The corpses covering the street proved that this was not the first time. times.

“Everyone in position—shoot!”

The silver command knife fell forward, and the lead bullets screamed in the smoke spurting from the muzzle.

A few scattered figures fell to the ground one after another, but before Major Fabian could breathe a sigh of relief, a new figure emerged from the darkness shrouded in thick fog.

A dozen, dozens, hundreds... more and more figures walked out of the looming darkness, and behind them, there were still more vague figures, just like the waves on the beach in the early morning. Like a rising wave, it came towards the barricade of the "isolated island".

Under the dim gaslight and firelight, the soldiers looked at each other in inexplicable panic; Major Fabian, who vaguely guessed something, his face became ugly little by little.

Soon, more and more figures in the darkness gradually became clear. They were like rats emerging from the sewer. The crowded queue covered the entire street, with no end in sight.

"My ring of order..."

The wide-eyed Fabian looked pale and almost stopped breathing.

As soon as he turned his head, he saw that the faces were as pale as his own and they were staring at his soldiers; so the Guards Major quickly regained his composure and immediately shouted at his soldiers:

"Shoot, shoot! What are you waiting for?!"

"Do you still want me to teach you how to pull the trigger at this time?!"

"Or do you want to be torn to pieces by those thugs?!"

Fabian, who was trying to remain calm, covered up his fear with a hoarse roar. The scolded soldiers woke up from a dream, raised their rifles and formed two thin lines behind the barricade.

"Fire in sequence, the target is directly in front, everyone - fire!"

Scattered and uninterrupted gunshots exploded behind the barricades, and screams and falling figures were constantly heard from the surging crowds in the streets; the soldiers did not even need to aim, and the crowds of people let their flintlock rifles slide. With at least 200% of the combat effectiveness being exerted, one or even two or three figures would definitely fall down when the gunfire sounded.

But this did not stop the moving crowd, it just slowed them down a little. Even the "slowdown" was only temporary, and it did not even give the Guards room to breathe a sigh of relief. Silent The crowd quickened its pace again; crushing the corpses of its companions, trampling the dying ones vomiting blood under their feet, and kept moving forward.

The Guardsmen behind the barricades were still firing continuously, harvesting the lives of the advancers like wheat, but there was an endless stream of figures walking out of the darkness, and even here and there, figures holding torches and kerosene lamps joined the crowd. In the film wave.

"People on the other side, in the name of the king, I order you to stop, hand over your weapons and leaders, and wait for disposal!"

Standing behind the barricade in the cold wind, Major Fabian still held up his trumpet and shouted at the top of his lungs to the crowd in the darkness:

"Did you hear that? Stop! Those thugs who dare to continue to resist, the kingdom will not let you go!"

"Did you hear, I'm ordering you to stop!"

"Don't you even want to live?!"

He tried his best to roar, a bit hoarse, and his voice became more and more desperate.

The soldiers were in panic and continued to fire on the opposite side purely relying on the inertia of discipline and obedience.

"Major, send someone for help!" A noncommissioned officer who couldn't bear it rushed over and shouted at the pale-faced Major Fabian:

"If we keep waiting like this, we will definitely..."

"boom!"

Before the sergeant finished speaking, a fireball with golden light shot out from the crowd of people in the dark night and hit his head accurately.

In the violent explosion, the head covered in fire expanded and exploded in Major Fabian's sight, and liquid mixed with various colors sprayed all over him from top to bottom.

The surrounding soldiers were attracted by the sound and fire, stopped shooting and looked back.

Looking at those dull eyes, Major Fabian wiped the plasma from his face. He first glanced at the spell caster hiding in the crowd, and then looked at the soldiers calmly:

"Everyone, what Sergeant Price said is right, so I plan to follow his advice..."

"Let's retreat!"

Before he finished speaking, he threw down the trumpet, turned around and ran in the direction of the carriage; a group of Guardsmen froze on the spot for a few seconds, and then they were so embarrassed that they didn't even want to form a formation, and fled in the direction of the major.

Almost at the same time as they retreated in panic, the crowd in the darkness burst out with fierce shouts, like rushing waves, instantly smashing the small rocks in front of them into pieces.

A similar scene happened at almost every barricade used by the Guards to block off the outer city; facing a mob that was more than ten times or dozens of times their number, it was impossible for the Guards, who mostly only had half a platoon, to have the courage to persevere to the end. , let alone be able to really block their steps.

To completely block the passage between the outer city and the inner city, at least four thousand to five thousand troops, equipped with sufficient ammunition, stable barricades and fortifications, and a certain number of artillery, are needed.

The Guards certainly have this strength, but the problem is that the riots in the past few days have greatly dispersed their forces. Large and small company and platoon-level units are like pepper sprinkled on all the streets in the inner city to maintain law and order... In the end There were not even one-fifth of the troops used to blockade the outer city, and artillery and fortifications did not exist at all.

When the first blockade was breached by the rioters, the entire weak blockade collapsed one after another like dominoes; facing the mobs that surrounded and besieged them from two or even three sides at the same time, most of the Guards had only one option: retreat. .

What's more, they didn't even have a chance to escape. Surrounded on all sides, they desperately fired their last bullets, howled, raised their bayonets and pounced on the thugs to launch a countercharge; like waves in the sea, they disappeared silently. No trace.

It was 4:55 in the morning on March 1st; when Major Fabian, who ran away decisively for the first time, reported the situation to the first senior officer he met, the entire blockade had been lost.

Such bad news, for which no one could bear responsibility, reached the Ostria Palace from the front line with astonishing efficiency. Carlos II had just fallen asleep when he was woken up from his wife's pillow by a word from his attendant.

"How is this going?!"

In the depressing atmosphere of the Holy Grail Hall, the disheveled Carlos II roared at the sweaty and calm Guards Commander:

"Yesterday afternoon you told me that the Guards had completely taken control of the situation and everything was under control; but less than twenty-four hours later, you told me that tens of thousands of thugs had broken through the blockade and were acting like rats. Flooding into the whole city!"

"Who are they, how many weapons do they have, who ordered them, and what do they want to do - my loyal Commander of the Guards Bureau, you need to give me a reason immediately not to hand you over to the Privy Council and the judges!"

The king's anger made the commander in uniform lower his head. The shame of being scolded made him blush. He tried his best to organize the words in his heart, and slowly said:

"Dear Your Majesty, I have obtained some important information in the process of suppressing the riots in the past few days. This unprecedented riot is most likely a conspiracy of the old god sect in the city!"

"In addition, we have captured a fugitive who has been on the run for a long time. He claims to have a way to quell this riot, as long as His Majesty is willing to see him."

"His name is Draco Vertes!"