"Those men were nothing more than pawns Earl Guderian sent out to test the waters.
But what I was waiting for was not those thousand heads — it was the latest battle report that Delilah would bring back when she returned to the city.
By my calculations, the moment those thousand men set foot on Mason's territory, Delilah should have already completed her second sweep of Olan's rear lines."
"Since Olan wants to play at probing us, we may as well let the whole board expand."
Sophia rose to her feet. The silk of her sleeping robe grazed Willow's fingertips as she passed, sending a subtle tremor through the air.
She walked to the great map on the wall, and her finger fell with precision upon that fog-shrouded, desolate expanse to the north — Avalon.
"If Olan takes no further action after those thousand men are destroyed, that will prove their main forces truly are pinned down by something in Avalon.
And when that moment comes…"
Sophia turned her head. Moonlight and candleflame converged in the depths of her eyes, giving birth to a brilliance that was at once utterly calm and utterly mad with ambition:
"This Queen will wait no longer.
The ten thousand new recruits and eight hundred black musketeers — all except those left to garrison Mason — will serve as my vanguard. They will cross Iron Throat and strike first. Target: Avalon."
Willow stood rooted to the spot, the ivory comb nearly slipping from her fingers.
A proactive offensive… crossing Iron Throat, the blade pointed at Avalon.
So that's how it was. In Her Majesty's eyes, the lives and deaths of those thousand men didn't even amount to a single scene in a play.
Her Majesty was using Olan's probe to test the teeth of her newly built ten-thousand-strong army.
She had deliberately shown weakness, deliberately cut off intelligence — all to lure Olan into making a move, to give herself a righteous justification to strike back and swallow the north whole.
What Her Majesty had her eye on was never those thousand men. It was the fog blanketing the entire northern continent.
This boundless, mountain-swallowing ambition. This confidence in carving war apart with the precision of an alchemist's blade…
Your Majesty, are you truly certain you are not a god toying with all living things?
The mists of Avalon, faced with your will, can surely only dissolve into the dust heralding a new golden age.
The border checkpoint.
The border was no longer where it had once been. After all, Qubi and Orr had already been taken — the frontier now stood at a new position entirely.
The thin mist of early morning had yet to lift. The air was heavy with the damp smell of earth soaked through by dew.
On this land that Mason's people regarded as the lifeblood of their realm, city walls cast from black stone cement lay like a great slumbering grey dragon across the valley — cold, silent, immovable.
And beneath those walls, a thousand Olan light cavalry wheeled on horseback, their armor catching the faint light of dawn in flashes of arrogant brilliance.
At their head, an Olan officer clad in a flamboyant blue surcoat yanked his reins without the slightest restraint and let loose a stream of grating mockery at the towering walls above.
"Cowards of Mason!
Where is that silver-haired little queen of yours playing house?
Is she hiding in her palace, so frightened she's wet her skirt — or is she busy stuffing straw into her laughable stone house?"
His taunts, thick with an Olan accent, echoed back and forth across the valley, drawing peals of laughter from the thousand riders behind him.
"A girl who still smells of her mother's milk, and she dares to crown herself Queen?
Looks like Mason really has run out of people — reduced to letting a silver-haired little brat who only knows how to eat guard its borders.
If you know what's good for you, open those gates and let the men in. We're looking for our missing Olan envoys — and while we're at it, we'll teach your little queen what real power and submission look like!"
On the walls above, the breathing of Mason's soldiers grew very heavy. The knuckles of the hands gripping their spears went white from the force of it.
In their hearts, Sophia was a sun that could not be profaned — a god who had given them meat broth and dignity.
This verbal contempt cut deeper than any blade.
Valery stood expressionless behind the battlements, his jet-black heavy armor seeming to merge with the cement wall at his back.
He watched the Olan officer below — still sneering, twisting in the saddle, hurling insults with theatrical relish — and there was no anger in his eyes. Only the flat indifference of a man looking at an object already dead.
He estimated the distance.
"Eight hundred paces.
The black muskets' spread at this range is too high. Firing now would only expose our hand, with no guarantee of a kill.
Miss Irene has done her utmost, but a musket that fires accurately at this distance is still beyond our current reach.
But in Her Majesty's logic, efficiency is the first law.
Since this rabid dog insists on barking, we'll send him off in the language he understands best."
Valery slowly extended his left hand. The personal guard at his side immediately presented a composite heavy bow, lacquered entirely black, with a draw weight that was staggering to behold.
He drew a slow breath. The muscles of both arms coiled like dragons beneath the skin as he pulled the string back to the perfect roundness of a full moon.
"Thrum——!"
A single low, resonant note from the string.
The Olan officer, who had been gesturing grandly on horseback and spewing filth without pause, had his laughter cut off in an instant.
The feathered arrow, trailing a sharp whistle, drove clean through his throat. The sheer momentum tore him from the saddle and pinned him into the mud behind him.
One moment an insufferably arrogant elite. The next, a dead dog with a broken neck, twitching twice before going still forever.
The clamorous Olan cavalry formation plunged into dead silence — then erupted in terrified chaos.
"He's dead! They actually dared to do it!"
A deputy officer let out a shriek of horror, trembling finger pointed up at Valery on the wall, his voice saturated with the almost absurd sense of superiority that characterized the subjects of a great empire.
"Are you out of your minds?! That was a formal Olan officer!
Aren't you afraid that Olan's armies will march to your border and wipe this miserable little patch of dirt off the map?!
Don't you wretched mud-footed peasants know the meaning of fear?!"
In his mind, a backwater like Mason, faced with Olan's provocation, ought to have prostrated itself in trembling apology.
Valery braced a hand against the battlements and looked down at the cavalry below, now scattering like startled birds. A cold laugh escaped him.
"Retaliation?"
Valery turned his head, looking back at the rows of Mason eyes blazing with fury behind him. His voice was clear and low and heavy as iron.
"You seem to have gotten something wrong.
The order Her Majesty issued was: combat readiness, level one."
"In Her Majesty's plan — since you have already set foot on Mason's road, we never had any intention of letting a single one of you walk back alive."
Valery's hand swept down in a single violent arc, his gauntlet carving a cold flash of light through the morning air.
"Warriors of Mason! For Her Majesty's Order——
All forces, loose!"
With that roar like a thunderclap, the massive compound crossbows and siege trebuchets anchored into the black stone cement of the walls released a deep and terrible groan in unison.
Since the black muskets were still in a phase of technical development that limited their effective range, large-scale long-distance suppression still relied on these ancient heavy weapons — each one refined and improved by Irene.
Countless steel bolts, each over two meters long, shrieked through the air like falling meteors and plunged into the light cavalry formation below.
"Thwump——!"
The wet, muffled sound of bolts punching through flesh merged into a continuous roar.
The Olan light cavalry, clad in their nimble armor and counting on speed to harass and evade, were as fragile as sheets of paper before bolts that could punch through city gates.
One Olan deputy officer had just wheeled his horse to retreat when a heavy bolt drove through him and his mount together, nailing them both at an angle into the cement road surface. Scalding blood flooded instantly across that smooth, grey foundation.
"Trebuchets — incendiary oil, prepare!"
Valery's gaze was glacial as he directed his soldiers to hurl barrel after barrel of highly refined disinfectant spirits blended with combustible oil into the enemy formation.
Flames erupted in an instant — not only cutting off the Olan troops' line of retreat but turning the narrow valley into one enormous furnace.
"Get a look at these Olan dogs who act so high-and-mighty every other day — they don't even have time to scream in front of His Majesty's crossbow bolts!
Chancellor said five work-points for every head, fifty for a squad captain's!
This isn't a battle — this is Her Majesty scattering gold coins on the ground for us to pick up!
Don't let the bolts blow them all to pieces — leave some for the rest of us to finish by hand!"
The Olan cavalry had already lost more than half their number in the first salvo, their formation completely shattered. Valery wrenched his sword from its scabbard and leveled it at the enemy.
"Open the gates! Heavy swordsmen, follow me out — leave not one alive!"
The massive gates groaned open under the winding of the capstan.
One thousand heavy swordsmen who had been straining at the leash — clad in the composite inner armor with steel-plate lining that Irene had developed — poured out like a black flood.
These soldiers ate richly nutritious meals every day and drank thick broth dense with meat. Their bodies had been honed to iron hardness through the exercise regimen and proper breathing techniques.
They crossed the smooth cement road in great strides, and every battle cry shook the valley walls.
"For Her Majesty!"
"For our homes!"
One soldier bellowed as his broadsword swung out and split a panicking cavalry rider in two, horse and all.
"This one head is worth a whole crate of dried fish!"
Another leaped into the air, his heavy blade caving in an Olan rider's armor with a single blow.
"Protect the golden age — cut down every last weed!"
"For our human cubs and our livestock cubs!"
Valery rode his black warhorse through the battle, where blood misted the air on all sides.
He did not rush to cut anyone down himself. Instead he directed his soldiers in a cold, methodical encirclement.
One Olan soldier dropped his broken sword in terror and fell to his knees, crying out for mercy:
"Surrender! I surrender!
Under the law of nobility, you are obliged to take me prisoner and demand a ransom—"
Before the words were finished, Valery spurred his horse past and the sword in his hand swept cleanly across the man's throat.
"Ransom?"
Valery looked coldly at the body on the ground.
"In Mason's logic, a living person with no use is worth far less than a dead one who can serve as fertilizer.
What Her Majesty wants is a complete disappearance."
Watching these soldiers unleash terrifying combat power in pursuit of rewards and military merit, I finally understood why Her Majesty built the work-point system.
She is not driving her army with military law. She is arming their souls with a hunger for a better life.
One thousand light cavalry?
Against this mob of fanatics who hunger for a golden age, who fight to earn dried scallops and academic degrees — even if Olan's main legion showed up, they would just be more work-points waiting to be harvested.
"The horse! El, you stupid fool — don't cut that horse, we can use it too!"
"Yes, sir!"
Out on the battlefield, the soldiers were not only fired up — they had already started discussing what to do with the horses afterward.
Barely two hours later, the noise and screaming fell completely silent.
On the plains outside Iron Throat, nothing remained but one thousand cold corpses and the Black Rose banners snapping in the spring wind.
Every horse that had not been grievously wounded was cheerfully led away by Mason's soldiers, who looked at them the way men look at a heap of precious, breathing strategic resources.
Valery stood at the center of a pool of blood, wiping the blade clean, and found himself marveling at just how wealthy — and how powerful — Olan truly was.
To dispatch a thousand horses so casually. The scale of their wealth defied imagination.
If Olan is already like this, then what of the Imperial Capital?
No wonder Her Majesty, capable as she is, still strategizes so painstakingly. She must have known from her time studying in the Imperial Capital just how formidable the other nations truly are — and so she poured every ounce of thought into building up Mason's people.
She deserves every life we have to give.
"Clear the field. Bury the bodies where they fall, melt the armor down, send the horses to the rear."
He turned to look toward the Royal City, and in his eyes burned a fervor and certainty unlike anything he had felt before.
"Your Majesty, the first reply has been sent.
From here on, you may proceed with your plan without restraint."
Inside the Royal City's Council Hall.
The heavy rosewood doors were gently pushed open. A battle report smelling of gunpowder and the lingering warmth of warhorses was laid before Sophia's long desk.
The room had been silent until that moment. When the report was unrolled, it was as though a great stone had been dropped into still water, sending ripples spreading in every direction.
The messenger knelt on one knee, his voice trembling faintly with excitement:
"Report——!
A great victory at the border!
Olan's thousand light cavalry have been annihilated to the last man. Not only did our forces capture nine hundred and eighty-two warhorses, but thanks to the excellence of our equipment and the swiftness of medical treatment…
Not a single defender of Mason died. Lightly wounded personnel number fewer than one hundred!"
"Yes!"
Irene was the first to leap to her feet, her pink ponytail bouncing happily in the air, her sapphire-blue eyes brimming with satisfaction.
She strode to Sophia's side without the slightest regard for decorum, pointed at the zero-casualty figure on the battle report, and grinned her most triumphant grin.
"Your Majesty! Look at this!
Didn't I say my composite protective lining was the finest in the world?!
Even when Olan's arrows punched through the outer cotton armor, they were completely deflected by the steel-plate inner layer.
That is a victory of physics — the absolute industrial supremacy of Mason!
From now on, anyone who dares say my iron cans are useless, I'll make them stand at the base of the city wall and take crossbow bolts in person!"
Daphne sat to one side, holding a cup of warm medicinal tea. Though she maintained her composed bearing, the curve at the corner of her lips she could not quite suppress betrayed exactly how she felt.
"Your Majesty, beyond Miss Irene's contribution, the batch of high-concentration hemostatic Potions I prepared also played its part," Daphne said softly, her eyes flowing with deep reverence for Sophia.
"The lightly wounded soldiers applied the Potions the instant they were injured. The wounds were treated so quickly there was no chance for infection to take hold.
Your Majesty's foresight is truly astonishing… You not only gave them the will to survive, you gave them the means."
They had once thought Her Majesty's bulk purchases of cotton cloth, iron plates, and medicinal herbs reflected excessive caution. But now they could see clearly — Her Majesty had been racing against the God of Death with money as her weapon, snatching people back from the brink.
In an age where soldiers were considered no more than grass to be trampled, Her Majesty had achieved the impossible: a battlefield of a thousand men with zero fatalities.
This was no war. This was Her Majesty rewriting the brutal rules of war itself, by force, through the power of her logic.
That absolute mastery over life — that was the deepest, most bone-chilling authority the Black Rose possessed.
Sophia set down the battle report and looked at the soldier before her — caked in dust, eyes shining with undisguised worship.
"You've worked hard.
Convey this Queen's decree: double work-points for all soldiers who distinguished themselves in this battle. As for casualties — though there were none, every warrior who participated tonight shall receive an extra serving of crab meat broth."
Sophia's voice was cool, and while it carried praise, those pale gold pupils held none of the wild elation everyone had anticipated.
The messenger withdrew with overflowing gratitude, privately marveling that Her Majesty was truly a wise ruler, steady as a mountain.
And yet Irene and Daphne, still in the room, had already picked up on the irregular tapping of Sophia's fingertips against the armrest.
"Your Majesty…"
Irene let her smile fade. She edged a little closer with care, and dropped her voice.
"You look… like you're not happy?
Is it because there weren't enough warhorses captured — or because you feel those Olan soldiers were too easy to beat?"
Sophia raised her head. Her gaze passed through the window lattice and settled on the mountain range to the north, shrouded in fog.
"Plenty of warhorses. Very low losses. That is good."
Sophia spoke quietly, a trace of worry she could not conceal threading through her voice.
"But… Delilah still hasn't come back."
"It's been too many days now."
Sophia rose to her feet. The silk sleeping robe pooled at the floor, and in that moment her figure looked lean and solitary.
"Those thousand men were annihilated, yes — but they were only the pieces played out in the open.
What Delilah faces is the reckoning behind Olan's lines, and that unknown called Avalon.
If she were safe, she should already be on her way back to the city by now."
Irene and Daphne exchanged a glance, and something inexplicable and aching stirred in both their hearts.
So that was it. Her Majesty's joy was incomplete.
No matter how many horses were captured, no matter how high the walls were built — without that red blade who always stood at Her Majesty's side, all the splendor of spring was nothing but an illusion in her eyes.
Her Majesty was afraid, wasn't she?
However powerful, however seemingly all-capable she appeared — for the people at her side, she harbored a personal feeling that even logic could not suppress.
This worry, so vulnerable and so real beneath that cold imperial exterior, made you want nothing more than to wrap her in your arms and tell her everything would be all right.
"Please don't worry, Your Majesty."
Daphne moved to Sophia's side and gently laid a hand over hers.
"General Delilah is the sharpest blade on this continent — and beyond that, she set out carrying the luck of your personal hand upon her shoulder.
She will cut down even the God of Death if he dares block her path back to your side."
"Exactly, exactly!"
Irene nodded vigorously beside her, sapphire eyes bright and sparkling.
"That Delilah is a bit emotionally dense, sure — but she's incredibly hard to kill!
And she took my improved emergency signal flares with her.
As long as we haven't seen a red flare, it means she's out there somewhere in the dark, quietly keeping an eye on the bad guys for Your Majesty!"
Sophia felt the warmth the two of them offered and let out a long, slow breath. The tension in her shoulders eased, just a little.
"I hope so."
Sophia settled back onto the throne, and the cold clarity returned to her eyes.
"Now that the first reply has concluded — the moment she returns to the city, that will be the true starting gun for Mason's march on Avalon."
Two more days passed.
The wind outside the border remained biting. The thousand Olan cavalrymen's remains had long since become silent nourishment beside the grey cement road.
Yet in the wake of that great victory, the air of Mason's Royal City did not grow lighter. Instead, the long silence from the northern border had congealed into a suffocating pressure.
Sophia stood before the vast sand table in the deliberation hall, her fingertip tracing the fog-shrouded unknown that represented Avalon.
"Another two days have passed."
Sophia's voice sounded in the empty hall without a trace of warmth — and yet every person present felt a chill seep all the way to the bone.
She slowly lifted her head. In those pale gold pupils, the deep calculating intelligence that usually resided there seemed to have burned into the most intense of flames.
"Delilah is not the sort of person who wastes a single second on a mission.
If she has not returned to the city at the appointed time, there is only one possible explanation — she has already read the shifts on the front line and cut directly into the heart of this game.
She has gone to Avalon."
Sophia turned. The moon-white silk cape swept through the air in a sharp arc.
"If that fog wants to swallow this Queen's blade, then this Queen will go tear it apart herself.
Convey this Queen's Royal Decree: in three days, this Queen marches personally on Avalon."
"Your Majesty, you must not!"
Willow was the first to drop to her knees, her customarily graceful bearing suddenly frantic.
She clutched her white handkerchief with both hands, her voice going sharp with desperate worry:
"You are Mason's sun — the very core of tens of thousands of subjects' faith!
Avalon is a place of pestilent miasma and ceaseless unpredictability. How can we allow you to walk into such danger yourself?
If anything were to happen to you — even the smallest thing — Mason's Order would collapse in an instant!"
Irene was so anxious she stamped her feet, her pink ponytail nearly flying clean off, her sapphire eyes brimming with agitation:
"That's right, Your Majesty! Yes, my heavy compound crossbows and bulletproof vests are formidable — but those are for the soldiers.
Avalon has all sorts of strange traps, and toxic miasma of every kind — if anything were to go wrong, if something…"
She couldn't bring herself to finish. She just seized the hem of Sophia's robe with both hands, like a child terrified of losing sight of a parent.
Daphne had gone pale. Of everyone present, she understood best what Avalon signified:
"Your Majesty, as a Magical Girl, I have never sensed that fog directly — but I have sensed something close to it in power.
It is a forbidden land that can corrode even the soul.
Chancellor Valery could lead the expedition. I myself could lead it. But you — you above all others — must never leave this sacred throne!"
Is Her Majesty staking her own life for the mere chance of a golden age?
They had assumed Her Majesty was letting personal feeling override reason — but looking at Sophia's cool, clear eyes, they suddenly understood. This was no impulse. This was a higher and vaster gambit of logic.
Her Majesty was declaring to the entire continent that Mason's Order was not built by issuing commands from a palace — it was forged step by step by this sovereign herself, in the field.
She intended to use this personal campaign to temper the soul of her ten-thousand-strong army into something unbreakable.
She wanted to make herself the sharpest spear of all, driven straight into the heart of the darkness.
This disregard for her own priceless life, this resolve to share the nation's fate — who else but that sun could do such a thing?
Sophia extended her hand and brushed Irene's grip away — gentle but utterly unyielding — then swept her gaze across the core ministers kneeling on the floor before her.
"Commander Valery and his troops will remain to garrison the border, coordinating with the defensive lines at the City of Hill and the City of Qubi — that is more than sufficient to hold against any possible Olan counterattack."
Sophia's voice returned to its coldness, carrying with it a momentum that could swallow mountains and rivers.
"As for Avalon — not only is Delilah there, but so is something this Queen has long been searching for."
"You call this Queen the sun?"
Sophia let out a cold laugh, a savage and sovereign madness blazing in her eyes.
"Then you should understand — the sun was never an ornament hiding behind clouds. The sun burns everything in shadow to ash."
"Irene, go prepare the finest transport supplies.
Daphne, bring every Potion you have.
Willow, compile the roster."
Sophia turned back to the map.
"This Queen will take five thousand soldiers and five hundred black musketeers.
The rest will remain with Valery as Mason's final line of defense."
Willow stared at Sophia's unwavering back. The words of protest she had been gathering dissolved in her throat, becoming only a long, quiet sigh.
Very well… if you are determined to go, then I will become the shadow at your back.
This unreasonable, indomitable strength. This confidence in treating the whole continent as a board game to be played — this is the Majesty I am most utterly devoted to.
What is Avalon's miasma?
As long as I stand at your side and watch you see through the fog with those pale gold eyes, even hell would be as radiant as a summer garden.
At that moment, Hailey was crouched at the top of the tall bookshelves in the Council Hall, her quill pen moving across parchment so fast it nearly left a blur, her small face flushed crimson with excitement and tension.
Spring. The eve of the personal campaign.
Her Majesty has activated the highest-tier war instance: the Divine Expedition!
When Her Majesty said she was going to Avalon, it felt like every lamp in the Council Hall flickered at the same moment.
Sister Willow looked so tender just now — you could tell she'd already steeled herself to block every arrow for Her Majesty.
I'll bet that when Her Majesty's ten-thousand-strong army — oh wait, five thousand elite — set foot on Avalon's soil, the miasma there will be so scared of Her Majesty's light it'll run away.
Night wrapped itself tightly around Mason's Royal City.
Yet beneath that surface of stillness, the West Tower and the Alchemy Laboratory blazed with light — like two beating hearts, pumping the last of their energy into the vast body that was about to march to war.
Inside the West Tower, the clang of metal and the scrape of workers' movements rang out in an unceasing rhythm.
Irene was buried up to her ears in a mountain of wooden crates, pink ponytail slightly disheveled.
"Spare draw-strings for the crossbow mechanisms — pack them!
That special armor — load two more crates!
And this — find a space for this too!"
Irene directed her engineering assistants in loading and packing, checking boxes off her list at a frantic pace.
Avalon. The name sat in her mind like a black hole.
Compared to the previous campaign against Orr, which had been right on their doorstep, Avalon was not only far away — the terrain was complex and the environment brutal.
And worse still, Olan's shadow loomed over it.
No, not enough. Still not enough.
Her Majesty is taking five thousand elite troops — Mason's five thousand hardest bones.
In a place like Avalon, the roads will be treacherous. If the supply line snaps, they will be completely cut off.
If Olan is backing Avalon, then the walls there will be thicker than anything we've seen before.
I have to bring all of these big treasures along. If the walls there aren't hard enough — I'll blow them into a flat field with explosives!
Her Majesty has placed the sharpest black musket force in my hands. I will not let this blade rust in the fog.
Even if I have to load the entire West Tower onto the supply carts, I will ensure that wherever Her Majesty's fingertip points, nothing is left standing.
Meanwhile, the atmosphere inside the Alchemy Laboratory was one of subdued solemnity.
Daphne stood motionless before an enormous crucible, the deep blue alchemical flame illuminating her face — pale from exhaustion she could no longer conceal.
She had been ordered by Sophia to rest for two days following the arrival of the victory report. The moment the personal campaign decree was issued, she had returned to this small domain of hers.
"The miasma of Avalon… is most likely a compound toxin — death-energy intermingled with natural decay."
Daphne murmured under her breath as she precisely fed pinch after pinch of moongrass powder into the crucible.
The hiss and sputter from within was startlingly clear in the quiet of the night.
For two days running, the candles in the Council Hall burned without rest — Mason's mind turning at full speed.
In Delilah's absence, Sophia's cool voice had become the steadiest anchor in the entire palace.
Her fingertip rested on the edge of the sand table as her gaze moved between the faces of her two senior ministers, Victor and Valery, and she issued her final defense deployment orders with unhurried precision.
"Valery, the one thousand captured warhorses from the border are to be allocated first to your heavy sword reserve corps.
Even in my absence, the bolt on the border cannot be loosened by so much as a fraction.
Victor, all matters of Royal City security and logistics transfer are under your complete authority. Any weeds that appear like those from before — uproot them on the spot, no need to report."
"Your ministers receive this command!"
Both men pressed their foreheads to the floor with full force. In their eyes were both worry for the far campaign and a reverence beyond words for the force of mind that made it all possible.
They knew: in these few hours in the Council Hall, Her Majesty had run through every path Mason might need to walk in the months ahead, millions of times over, in her mind.
When the first light of the next day finally split the clouds in the east and fell upon ten thousand pairs of military boots on the Drill Ground, the air seemed to burn in the profound silence.
The five thousand elite soldiers selected to join the personal campaign, along with the five hundred black musketeers, had formed into perfect square formations.
And before them, Sophia stood in silver armor, her cape snapping in the morning wind.
She did not stand on a high platform looking down on all below. She walked slowly into the midst of the formations, and every step she took on the cement road rang out with a solid, ordered resonance.
She stood before the full force, pale gold pupils sweeping across the faces around her — faces that had once been blank and numb, but now blazed with fanaticism and dignity.
"Warriors of Mason."
Sophia spoke. Her voice was not loud — but in the profound silence of that Drill Ground, it struck each person's eardrums with perfect precision.
"Just days ago, Olan's one thousand light cavalry set foot on our land.
They insulted your Queen, mocked the walls you labored to build as nothing more than a grave, and even had the audacity to think they could take the fish broth from your pots and tear down your warm homes.
Tell this Queen — in the face of these bandits who want to destroy everything you have built — how do we answer them?!"
"Kill! Kill! Kill!"
The battle cry of five thousand souls erupted like a tidal wave and shattered the last remnants of cloud on the horizon.
These soldiers — once mud-footed peasants — now had blood-red fire burning in their eyes, the fire of people defending an age of abundance.
Sophia raised her hand. The roar extinguished in an instant. The terrifying obedience of it sent a shiver through Willow, standing on the flank.
"Good.
But at this very moment, this Queen's other blade — General Delilah — is deep in Avalon's fog, alone, having gone ahead to cut off the threat at its root, lighting a torch in the belly of the enemy for us."
A rare roughness and resolve entered Sophia's voice.
"She is Mason's shield. She is your comrade-in-arms.
Now, that shield is shrouded in fog. That blade is surrounded by darkness.
Are you willing to follow this Queen across Iron Throat, to flatten that Avalon, and bring your General back with your own hands?!"
"Bring back the General! We will follow to the death!"
"Cut down every bandit! Protect Mason!"
Feverish emotion blazed through the formations like wildfire.
In these soldiers' eyes, Delilah was the strict teacher who had trained and tempered them.
And Sophia was the god who had given them everything.
Now, their god was leading them to rescue their teacher, to root out that cursed land — the sense of mission made every one of them feel that the iron sword in their hand had long been hungry for blood.
She didn't use military law to intimidate us. She is telling us that Delilah isn't just her General — she is our family.
Her Majesty said the Olan people want to destroy our homes. That is the truth!
If we don't march out now, when Avalon's fog creeps over us, we'll be reduced to gnawing on tree bark again like animals.
Looking at Her Majesty's gleaming silver hair, I know — as long as we follow that light, even hell can be leveled flat.
We are going to Avalon. We are going to make those Olan people understand: touch a single blade of Mason's grass, and we will repay them with their entire fog.
Willow looked at that slender figure standing still as still water in the heart of ten thousand men's roar, and her eyes went faintly hot.
That speech of Her Majesty's — it fused the hearts of these ten thousand soldiers together in the forge.
She invoked fish broth and home — and loaded their courage with the weight of things that are real.
She invoked Delilah — and gave their killing intent a reason warmed by feeling.
Mason's army is no longer a simple gathering of force. It has become a legion of devoted believers, each one possessed of a soul.
Her Majesty prepared Irene's steel and Daphne's Potions — and with her own hands, she also dressed these soldiers in an invisible armor of hatred and loyalty.
Avalon… what do you have to stop this flood?
In the other open spaces of the Drill Ground, the soldiers who would be staying behind watched their five thousand comrades chanting slogans in fervent unison, eyes burning hot.
Her Majesty was so righteous — willing to risk herself into danger to protect their homes, to retrieve General Delilah.
Was there a single one of them who didn't want to go?
But they could not. They could not all follow Her Majesty. Those who remained still had to hold their ground — to guard their homes, to stand as Mason's final layer.
A few of the more tender-hearted soldiers even wiped their eyes, swearing oaths in the silence of their hearts.
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