When the Saintess Arrives, No King Exist

Chapter 1362: Chapter 1280: Encountering the Enemy Main Force

Imperial Calendar, January 25, 1463. The red-roofed wooden cabins of Horn’s town were covered in white snow.

The vast land had a uniform layer of pure white snow blanketing it, occasionally, a few green leaf grass tips protruded.

Horn’s town is located west of White Church town, at the boundary between Menon County and Wolfbridge County, and has always been a bustling commercial hub connecting the two counties.

However, following last year’s massacres by vampires and disorderly soldiers, the population has dwindled to less than a third.

Even the remaining population is as thin as skeletons, peering from behind door panels with only half a shutter left.

Standing on the cobbled road, large collapsed houses, shattered debris, and frozen corpses laid on the roadside are visible.

Hanske occasionally passes by some frozen corpses, and he can’t help but poke at them with his knife sheath to see if they are still alive.

Unfortunately, most of the time he only encounters a frozen chunk of meat.

"Holy Father bless..." Hanske murmured, if Delawan hadn’t picked him up, he reckoned his fate would’ve been the same as these frozen dead.

Looking around, surrounded by ruins, occasionally with wooden skeletons remaining, but still bearing signs of fire burns.

Perhaps due to similar experiences, Hanske couldn’t help but become more sentimental.

"Do you really have to parade that bit of piety?" A red-haired youth across from him couldn’t help but speak up seeing Hanske always praying, "Will you eat it or not? If you don’t, I’ll eat it, it will get cold soon."

Hanske quickly used a fork to pick up the beef cooking over the bonfire and placed it into his mess tin to eat it with pepper potato root mash and wheat bread.

Only the sound of chewing remained in the silent snowy sky.

The soldiers under the thatched shed, all new recruits of the Holy Alliance.

They wore winter uniforms of the Holy Alliance army, knee-length coats with horn buttons, cuffs with rolled edges, backpacks made of leather with bedding rolls.

In the snowy weather, sitting in front of a mud stove, having a bite of hot beef and bread dipped in hot soup was truly an enjoyment.

In a town so lacking in supplies, finding even a cow wasn’t easy.

The Vanguard Corps, which Hanske was part of in Xia Lvcheng’s First Battle Corps, actually hadn’t found anyone willing to sell cattle, so they were eating canned beef.

Logically speaking, Thorn Garden is not as rich as the core Golden Plains, but it shouldn’t be unable to gather decent luggage.

The situation like that in the Vanguard Corps was mainly due to Lakunio’s scorched earth policy.

Since discovering that the Holy Alliance started deploying troops toward the Thorn Garden, Lakunio hesitated not a bit and switched from an offensive posture to a defensive stance.

On several feasible advancing routes, he wantonly destroyed towns and villages, migrated and massacred populations, destroyed houses, and burned farmland.

The main purpose was to increase the logistics intensity on the Holy Alliance.

And he knew, within the populace, the power of the Holy Sect was pervasive, any villager could be a Holy Sect spy.

However, what exceeded Lakunio’s expectations was that the Holy Alliance’s march was hardly affected at all.

The snow made no impact, the roads made no impact, even the supply environment over miles of uninhabited lands barely caused any significant impact.

The first two factors are explainable, Horn had no indulgence in papal luxury for ceremonies, he was most willing to spend money in warfare.

Winter clothing, boots, bread, and other basic guarantees were fully provided, while coffee, sugar, tobacco, and other goods were abundantly supplied.

Lakunio thought burning villages would increase the logistics pressure on the Holy Alliance.

But the truth was, the Holy Alliance had canned goods and bicycles.

Though not widespread among every soldier, each corps could receive a portion of the supply.

This has already greatly enhanced the army’s progress speed.

The prices of these items in the Holy Alliance are still expensive, but fortunately, first because the army’s procurement was nearly at cost, adding some postage, and secondly the Saint’s Grandson was indeed willing to spend money.

Compared to the difficult march of ordinary Imperial soldiers, the Holy Alliance army seemed to be on a spring outing.

At least that’s how Hanske saw it.

He had served as both Imperial soldier and Holy Alliance soldier, and thinking about this, he couldn’t help but sigh softly.

After learning to read for three years at Friendship Primary School, as the battle corps expanded, he was recruited into the First Battle Corps’ Vanguard Corps in Xia Lvcheng.

This time, the Battle Commander instructed their Vanguard Corps (Pioneering Corps) to take fifty bicycles for the scouting mission.

Hanske was particularly unlucky, usually incapable of much but a good cyclist, hence he was selected.

It was a task of deep ingress into enemy territory to probe enemy situations; at the time, why did he rush to enlist with such heat?

Hurriedly after filling his stomach, Hanske dug out some hard biscuits and sugar from his pocket, ready to brave the snow to distribute them to the town’s starving residents.

These hard biscuits shouldn’t be underestimated, soldiers might feel overwhelmed by the salty sugar and flour, but for refugees, it might be winter’s lifesaving medicine.

After all, Hanske could always see his own reflection in them.

Seeing him act this way, the other soldiers rolled their eyes.

"Is Saint Hanske going to give alms again?"

"The Senior Pastor is not here, what’s he showing off? It’s just spotlighting himself."

"Outsider!"

"Did he do anything wrong? What are you all grumbling about?" With Captain Ten’s words, the soldiers stopped their sarcastic comments.

After exhausting the reserves, the quality of new recruits in the new battle corps was indeed lower compared to the old ones with designated numbers.

This was inevitable; the old corps had undergone seven or eight years of ideological education and purification, with high ideological heights among soldiers.

These new recruits of the new corps had only trained for six months in the boot camp.

Thinking high-ideological levels might exist, but only within the Senior Pastor’s vision, only under the Corps Commander’s stick.

In such circumstances, those with higher ideological awareness are easily promoted.

Like Hanske, who can read and has high ideological awareness, after a few battles, he should be promoted as a military sergeant or even as Captain Ten.

Unfortunately, this unwritten rule was unknown to other soldiers; otherwise, they would act the way he does.

Shovel in the food, Captain Ten frowned and looked up, seeing Hanske still among the crowd, he was slightly annoyed: "Hanske, let’s go."

Having given out all the biscuits, Hanske jogged over: "Captain Ten, I’ve discovered some important information."

"Speak."

"There seems to be a large number of vampire troops wandering nearby, possibly preparing to ambush us."

Captain Ten froze: "How do they know?"

"They came from the refugees over there, a fellow believer said, as long as we provide her child with sugar cookies, she would lead us there."

The red-haired youth brushed the snow off his shoulder and stepped forward: "What about her husband? Call him over; a woman’s physique is unsuitable, inconvenient."

Hanske kept his face taut, shaking his head: "No, a woman with several children, holding sugar cookies, waiting for her husband to return, there might not even be clothes left."

After saying this, the accompanying soldiers were stunned.

Most of them were around seventeen or eighteen, the Holy Alliance existed since they could remember.

Their parents might have had experiences as vagrants, but they had zero understanding of these common notions for refugees.

"This world..." Captain Ten sighed several times before uttering this, "Who has extra cookies?"

Once the setup was cleaned up, the remaining small amount of leftover food scraps were seized by the surrounding refugees.

The soldiers mounted bicycles, rode along decently smooth country paths for a distance.

They stopped near evening, finding a hillside bush.

Captain Ten poked his head out from the leaves, extended a lookout mirror to observe down below.

The north wind mixed with snowflakes, revealing a stretch of black tents in the whiteness, with scarlet dots moving.

"It’s the Royal Court troops, should be the pioneering force like us." Captain Ten said solemnly, "This is definitely the main force corps, Victor, immediately go back to report!"

"Yes!"

"And us?" Hanske asked carefully.

Captain Ten drew a dagger: "We’ll keep riding further and capture a tongue from their luggage unit!"

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