At the Kingdom’s western wing camp.

The light was dim, and a vast sea of fog shrouded the encampment. If one raised one’s eyes high enough, it would look as if the entire cloud layer had fallen from the sky, swallowing the whole enormous army formation into pure white mist.

From time to time, Imperial cavalry scouts would race along the edge of the fog, but because they could not see through to what lay inside, they could only sigh in frustration and withdraw.

"Hahaha! Well? Wasn’t my idea for this grand fog formation excellent?"

Inside the massive central tent, a banquet was underway. Goblets clinked, music drifted through the air, and scantily dressed maids moved back and forth between the long tables. It was a scene that looked nothing like something that belonged on a battlefield.

Seated at the place of honor, Grand Duke Borgia patted the huge belly that got in his way, casually grabbed a chicken leg and stuffed it into his mouth. Chewing heartily, he laughed in smug delight.

"Using magic to bring down fog and completely cover our camp with it, and then filling that fog with magic besides, so the enemy’s scouting methods are utterly useless. Other than staying on guard at all times, there’s nothing they can do.

"That means they have to keep their nerves stretched tight, always watching for our attack, while we can rest however we please. We can even hold a banquet like this without fearing harassment. I’m practically a genius!"

"Your Grace is wise and mighty!"

"Your Grace is brilliant beyond compare!"

"Your Grace is unmatched in all the world!"

"Hahaha, you flatter me, you flatter me!"

The chorus of praise put Grand Duke Borgia in even higher spirits. He raised his goblet from afar and drained it in one swallow, then shoved the remaining four-fifths of the roast chicken into his mouth.

"Still, even though I suppose I barely count as a genius, no matter how outstanding a man is, there are always things he overlooks. That’s when I need all of you to point them out for me."

Grand Duke Borgia actually swallowed the whole chicken in one bite. The fat all over his body trembled with the effort. His gaze swept across the entire tent as he asked with a very kindly smile,

"Does anyone have any suggestions to offer?"

"..."

Silence fell over the tent in an instant. Even the music stopped at once. Everyone looked at each other, then lowered their heads in "shame."

"Your Grace is so wise. How could there possibly be anything you overlooked?"

"Nothing at all?"

"Certainly nothing!"

The old man seated closest to Grand Duke Borgia twitched his beard and said with a fawning grin,

"Your plan is flawless. There is absolutely no need for—"

"Your Grace, I have something to say!"

"..."

The old man’s expression changed, and he was just about to rebuke the speaker when Duke Borgia had already raised a hand to stop him, smiling pleasantly toward the direction the voice had come from.

In the corner of the tent, a middle-aged man in a mage’s robe seemed to have finally reached the limit of his patience. He stood and raised his hand.

"Oh? You have something to say?"

Duke Borgia remained just as affable as before, his tone warm.

"If you’ve got something to say, then say it. I’m a very easygoing man. Speak freely."

"...Th-thank you, Your Grace."

The middle-aged man took a deep breath. After realizing that Duke Borgia did not seem quite as terrifying as rumor claimed, he finally gathered some courage and spoke.

"Your Grace, I hope you will stop this foolish behavior!"

"Oh? Foolish? What do you mean by that?"

"I mean that this practice of hiding our movements with heavy fog is far too foolish!"

The middle-aged man said, "Leaving aside the fact that a target this large remains highly conspicuous even when covered by fog and cannot actually deceive the enemy, the important thing is that keeping up such an enormous area of mist places too much strain on the military mages. It simply cannot be sustained!"

"Is that so?"

Duke Borgia looked as if this were the first time the thought had ever occurred to him.

"Is it really that much?"

"Of course. To summon fog across such a huge range, and to mix it with magic that interferes with detection besides, no single mage can maintain it for long. Even with an entire military mage squad casting in rotation, the burden is still extreme. Several mages have already collapsed from the strain!"

The middle-aged man dropped to one knee, his tone utterly sincere.

"If we needed it for a surprise attack, that would be one thing. But all this time, all we’ve done is keep Count Eller’s Imperial force pinned in place so they can’t return to reinforce the rear. We’ve rarely attacked proactively at all. So the greatest benefit of doing this has ended up being nothing more than letting us hold banquets as we please without being disturbed. It really is... is..."

He could not force out the rest.

But the heartfelt sincerity with which he was thinking of the army, of Duke Borgia, and of the entire Kingdom was plain for everyone present to feel.

Even Duke Borgia could not help being moved. He turned to the old man beside him and asked,

"Is that so? Is he right?"

"What he says is of course... utter nonsense!"

The old man drew himself up and barked sternly,

"What do you mean, for the sake of a banquet? Hasn’t Count Eller refrained from moving recklessly and leading his troops back to reinforce precisely because he’s been frightened by our fog? And as for mages collapsing, I’m a mage myself. If someone faints from a little spell like this, that only means he’s incompetent. No one else is to blame for that!"

"You—"

Seeing that the old man, also one of the military mages, would slander him like this, the middle-aged man was furious.

But before he could speak in rebuttal, Duke Borgia had already nodded to himself.

"I see. So that’s how it is. So you were trying to deceive me. Good thing I’m clever enough not to be taken in."

"No, Your Grace, I wasn’t—"

"Guards. Drag this liar outside and behead him. Don’t let him shake morale in here."

Duke Borgia waved a hand casually, as if the matter were no more significant than tossing aside the chicken bones in his hand.

The guards outside the tent quickly entered and forcibly dragged the middle-aged man out.

"No, Your Grace... Your Grace... Borgia... you can’t—"

The middle-aged man struggled in fury, even trying to use magic, but the central tent had a specially arranged anti-magic formation set in place. He could not even put up much resistance. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

With a wet slice, the sound of a blade cutting through flesh rang out from outside the tent.

Then everything fell silent again.

"Hm? What are you all staring for?"

Duke Borgia looked at the tent, now sunk into dead quiet, and waved his fat hand.

"Keep the music going. Keep dancing. The banquet isn’t over yet!"

"Ah, yes, yes... it isn’t over yet. Continue, continue!"

The old man was the first to recover. He rose and poured wine for Duke Borgia. The others, as if waking from a dream, could not help but let sincere smiles spread across their faces.

And so the music started again. The guests raised their cups in celebration and chatted merrily.

"Mm. That’s more like it."

Duke Borgia nodded, clearly very satisfied with the scene before him. A banquet, after all, ought to look like a banquet.

You’re happy, I’m happy, everyone’s happy, morale runs high—how could there be any battle you couldn’t win?

As for all that talk about how he had not launched any proactive attacks, he was merely conserving his strength. And he had successfully pinned down Count Eller’s full two hundred thousand Imperial border troops. Wasn’t that merit enough already?

"Your Grace..."

Unfortunately, the happy moment did not last long before it was interrupted again.

A fully armored knight hurried into the tent and went straight to Duke Borgia’s side. It was obvious something important had happened.

"..."

Duke Borgia glanced at the letter in the knight’s hand and said irritably,

"Read it."

"Well..."

The knight hesitated, then bowed his head.

"Your Grace would do better to read this personally."

"What matter could possibly require my own eyes? Has that little brat Aurier finally agreed to my proposal and decided to marry my lovely youngest daughter?"

Borgia muttered to himself. He reached out a greasy hand and carefully wiped it several times across the pale full breasts of the maid beside him. Only after thoroughly cleaning it did he take the letter and scan it quickly.

"What—"

After reading it, Grand Duke Borgia’s brow twitched, and all the fat on his body shuddered once.

"Something like this could actually happen? This isn’t another trick, is it?"

"My lord, the envelope bears Prince Aurier’s private seal."

"..."

Grand Duke Borgia turned the letter over. Sure enough, Aurier’s exclusive private seal was stamped across the flap.

Both the pattern and the aura of magic were unmistakably Aurier’s handiwork. There was no chance of forgery. Which meant that what was written in the letter...

"Bastards!"

This time, with no one "deceiving" him, Grand Duke Borgia grew angry rather than pleased. He slapped the dining table in front of him to pieces with one blow.

"Trash! Aurier, that worthless trash! Tividis is trash too! To let a blunder this huge happen!"

The atmosphere in the tent froze yet again, and this time everyone could tell that something was seriously wrong. At once, no one dared make a sound.

"What are you all looking at me for? Do I have to say it a third time? Keep the music going. Keep dancing!"

"..."

The music continued. Everyone kept enjoying the cheerful banquet as if nothing at all had happened.

"Your Grace, what happened?"

As the most trusted confidant there, the old man was not affected by the duke’s fury. He took a fresh goblet from one of the maids, poured Duke Borgia more wine, and asked at the right moment,

"Could it be that the situation on Prince Aurier’s side has changed?"

"The overall battle hasn’t changed much. Just a little hitch. Our prince wants me to wipe his ass for him!"

Grand Duke Borgia drained the wine in one swallow and casually handed the letter to the old man.

"Read it yourself."

"A letter from Prince Aurier?"

"Written by that subordinate of his, Kaepel, but sent in his name."

"Then there’s no real difference. It still represents Prince Aurier’s will."

The old man’s eyes swept rapidly over the page. There were not many words in the letter, and he finished reading quickly. But even with all his knowledge and experience, he could not help sucking in a sharp breath when he reached the end.

"Thirty thousand... punched through a formation of two hundred thousand. Hiss... As expected of the Empress of the Empire."

"Hmph. It’s not that the Empress is formidable. It’s that Tividis is utter trash! That man’s a lump of rotten mud. I’d hate the stench even if I threw him in the fireplace and burned him!"

Grand Duke Borgia cursed.

"Aurier’s rotten mud too!" he added.

"But no matter what, this is still Prince Aurier’s order. At least in name, we can’t disobey him."

The old man smiled, though at the same time he was secretly studying Duke Borgia’s expression.

—That was true enough on paper. But the true commander of this army was still Grand Duke Borgia.

Because this great army did not consist solely of troops the Kingdom had drawn in from every direction. At its core were private soldiers Grand Duke Borgia had spent years building up.

Suppress rivals, reshape the structure, preserve his own strength... faced with such a perfect opportunity, Grand Duke Borgia was never going to let it slip. Taking advantage of this national war between the Kingdom and the Empire, he was doing everything he could to digest whatever parts of this army he was capable of digesting, swallowing and devouring more and more, strengthening his own power like a beast that could never eat its fill.

That mage who had just been casually beheaded was only one small glimpse of that process. By now, there was no one left in this army who dared go against him.

"Prince Aurier wants us to send men to guard the grain route, and to prevent the Empress of the Empire from really doing anything outrageous with those twenty thousand men. He also wants us to send an elite cavalry force to catch up to her... What does Your Grace think?"

"The grain route obviously needs guarding. Otherwise what am I supposed to eat?"

Grand Duke Borgia stared coldly at the delicacies spilled all over the ground at his feet.

"But sending cavalry? Impossible."

"Why?"

The old man froze for a moment.

"There’s no need to slight Prince Aurier over something like this, is there?"

"Hmph. Slight him? Can that be eaten?"

Duke Borgia said, "The grain route is of utmost importance. Not the slightest mistake can be allowed there. More importantly, those lowborn rabble we drafted in on the spot can handle that duty just fine.

"But the cavalry under my command? I raised them with painstaking care. Armor, weapons, horses—which of those didn’t cost money? How could I possibly let them be wasted on something so meaningless? They’re the foundation of my house!

"Write back immediately. Say... say..."

Grand Duke Borgia’s tiny eyes rolled.

"Say I’ve had several mages defect, so the cavalry has already been sent to suppress the mutiny and can’t be detached for the time being. But as compensation, I’ll immediately split off thirty thousand... no, fifty thousand men to guard the grain route and guarantee there won’t be the slightest problem with logistics."

"But..."

The old man hesitated.

"The letter says the reason he wants you to send cavalry is to prevent the Empress of the Empire from doing something extraordinary, just in case..."

"Just in case? What just in case?"

Grand Duke Borgia let out a scornful snort.

"She has all of twenty thousand men, and cavalry at that—cavalry that isn’t good at sieges. As long as the grain route is secured and she can’t cut our logistics, what exactly can she do? Don’t tell me she’s actually going to overestimate herself and attack the royal capital."

"Unless she can conjure several hundred thousand troops out of thin air like that Muen Campbell, she’d be walking straight to her death!"

...

...

The sunset was like blood spread across the earth.

Celicia rode her horse to a natural rise by the riverbank. Her cool eyes turned toward the increasingly magnificent sunset glowing in the afterlight, but after only a moment she lost interest in the breathtaking view. Her gaze lowered to the scene before her.

Along the riverbank, a cavalry force was resting. They had formed circles according to their own units, lit bonfires, and, with water just drawn from the river, silently gnawed at dry, hard rations.

Most of those units were no longer whole. Which meant the circles gathered around the bonfires were broken as well. Yet it was precisely that brokenness that gave them a kind of breathtaking beauty.

The setting sun was like blood, but it was still less vivid than the bloodstains on their armor. The river shimmered, but it was nowhere near as bright as the firelight reflected in those pairs of eyes.

A grim killing aura hung over the valley. In the span of a single day, the bearing of this force had undergone a complete transformation.

They had been elite from the start, one of the Empire’s swords. And now that sword had finally completed its last step. In slaughter and death, it had been tempered through fire and fully reborn into a true weapon.

"Beautiful. Like flower branches after a storm—broken, but still standing."

The shadows writhed in the gaps where the sunset spilled through, and the beautiful girl in the black dress appeared once more. Resting her lovely cheek in one hand, she too admired the terrifying aura this army was giving off now.

"I really didn’t expect it. To punch through a formation of two hundred thousand with only thirty thousand men... The losses weren’t small, of course, but it seems the Empire’s about to gain another trump-card elite force."

"They were a trump card already."

Celicia said, "From the °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° moment they chose to follow me, they were."

"All right, all right, no need to show off how wise you are. I know you just pulled off something astonishing. Once this news spreads, I’ve no idea how many jaws are going to hit the floor."

Anna stretched lazily. Her figure was more slender than the river bend itself.

She looked at the river too and let out a sigh.

"But even if they are a trump-card elite force, I still have to remind you of one thing. What you did was far too risky. Once you cross this river, it’s the Kingdom. With this little strength, even if you really went to raid the Kingdom’s royal capital, you wouldn’t achieve much."

"I know."

Celicia nodded.

"But I also need to remind you that your reminder contains two mistakes."

"Oh? And what two mistakes are those?"

"First, who said I was going to attack the Kingdom’s royal capital? Taking twenty thousand cavalry that isn’t suited to siege warfare and sending it against a city like that—how is that any different from eggs striking stone?"

"Hm? But a moment ago you looked as though you were about to charge straight to the capital and drag everyone down with you. And before that, you also told me..."

"I’m not going to attack the Kingdom’s royal capital. I’m going to follow this grain route and reach the Kingdom’s royal capital in the shortest time possible. Then, once I’m there, I’ll make a sudden turn west."

Celicia swept out a hand and pointed toward the sunset.

"West?"

"To the west of the Kingdom’s royal capital stands a pass. It’s the western gateway to the capital, an extremely important one, and like Notasia Fortress, it’s easy to defend and hard to take. But I imagine that because the Kingdom has drawn on the strength of the whole nation to attack us, there can’t be many defenders left there right now. If we circle behind it like this and launch a surprise attack from the rear, then so long as no enemy reinforcements arrive, it should be easy enough to capture."

Celicia paused.

"Aurier’s move should work very well there."

"What would be the point of attacking the western pass?"

Anna blinked in surprised, playful curiosity. The tear mole at the corner of her eye radiated startling charm beneath that rare trace of girlish innocence, though unfortunately there was no one around to appreciate it except a giant lump of ice.

"If we’re going to counterattack, shouldn’t we start from the Kingdom’s south?"

"That brings us to the second point."

Celicia turned her head and said expressionlessly,

"Who told you I only have these twenty thousand men?"

...

...

Kingdom of Saint Perod, western border, at the edge of the Abyss.

Over the land, the violent wind suddenly stilled. The endless yellow sand that shrouded the place all year round also settled into eerie calm.

And within the world, gradually growing clear, a figure slowly appeared—tiny, yet towering.

"Ptui, ptui. Damn it, got sand all through my mouth. The road through the Abyss really is a miserable one."

Lorne Campbell spat out the grit in his mouth, covered in dust and looking thoroughly displeased.

But when his gaze fell on the completely unguarded border pass not far away, an exceedingly innocent smile spread across his face.

"Still... an occasional special outing does help a man recover the feeling of being young again, doesn’t it?"

Woooo—

A low war horn rang out.

Behind Lorne, a long line of blood suddenly stretched outward.

At first it was only an almost unnoticeable line, moving along the edge of the horizon.

But gradually, as it advanced at terrifying speed, within the span of only a few breaths it revealed its savage true form.

—Cold light like iron, killing intent that shook the sky, banners bearing the image of a dragon-slaying sword still billowing even without wind...

There was no question.

It was an army.

The most elite army of the Empire.

Bar none.