As Sophia's command — "Move out" — fell, five thousand pairs of military boots struck the black stone cement of the Drill Ground in perfect unison, sending a deafening thunderclap rolling across the plaza.
This was a legion forged from steel, Potions, and fanatical faith.
They pushed towering supply wagons and shouldered black muskets that gleamed with a cold light, moving like a long grey dragon as they slowly departed the Royal City — the city that had given them dignity and a second life.
And the citizens of the Royal City had already gathered of their own accord along both sides of the streets.
It was a scene destined to be written into the annals of Mason's history.
There was none of the cold indifference or dread that had accompanied the old nobles' campaigns. The streets were packed shoulder to shoulder with Mason's people.
When that flash of silver armor appeared in the crowd's line of sight, what erupted was not cheering — it was a suppressed, heartbreaking sound of weeping.
"Your Majesty… please come back safe!"
An old woman trembled so hard she could barely stand, clutching a cloth bag of freshly baked wheat cakes — still warm, still fragrant — and forcing them through the side of a passing supply wagon with all her strength.
"This old woman baked these through the night. I added salt and a little oil. Take them with you, Your Majesty the Queen! Don't go hungry on the road!"
On the other side, a man was slapping his own thigh in distress, tears streaming freely down his face.
"Damn it all — I'm such a useless wretch! If only I'd fed those breeding hens a little faster… if only they were laying eggs right now, I could've boiled a few for the soldiers to keep their strength up! But the little things only just got their feathers in… We're useless. All we can do is stand here and watch Your Majesty go off to suffer…"
"This is some wild mountain ginseng my family picked in the hills a while back. It hasn't aged long, but if the soldiers hold it under their tongues it'll keep their spirits up."
"Your Majesty, you must bring General Delilah back to us!"
"I've got nothing good to give — just these thick boot soles I stitched for the soldiers. The roads in Avalon are rough, whatever you do don't let them wear out their feet!"
"Your Majesty the Queen, this is my favorite stone. I'm giving it to you… bring Delilah big sister back home, please!"
"These are some dried wild greens we saved up at home. Keep them for brewing soup on the road — don't think less of us for it. We'll be waiting for your triumphant return!"
These wheat cakes, dried herbs, and rough boot soles — things that elsewhere might have drawn a noble's contempt — became, in that moment, the heaviest military provisions in all of Mason.
They were passed forward by pair after pair of rough, calloused hands, carrying the purest and most burning protective devotion of Mason's people.
Sophia sat upright in the leading carriage, the curtains undrawn. Willow, Irene, and Daphne were ranged on either side of her.
As those faces — etched with worry, pleading, and fervent zeal — flashed past the window, as those wheat cakes and dried goods, still warm from human hands, piled up on the carriage step, the air inside the cabin seemed to freeze solid in an instant.
Irene, who had been inspecting the core components of her newly improved heavy compound crossbow, suddenly halted her work entirely.
She stared blankly as a child reached up and pressed a freshly picked wildflower into her hand. Her sapphire eyes welled with tears in an instant.
"Good heavens…"
Irene sniffled, her voice thick. She tried to wipe the grease smudges from her face with her sleeve, only to smear them worse.
"These people… these people actually gave us their wheat cakes. They used to rather starve themselves than let a single grain out of their cellars."
Daphne gazed quietly out the carriage window, her eyes shimmering with an inner light.
She watched a farm woman press a bundle of sun-dried bloodwort into a passing medic's arms, weeping as she did it, and in that moment Daphne felt a force more powerful than any Potion she had ever made.
"Bonds."
Daphne murmured softly, so quiet the words barely left her lips.
"Your Majesty… do you see this? This is the final form of the work-point system and shared prosperity logic you built. It is no longer a simple contract of mutual benefit — it has chained the very lives and souls of Mason's people together as one.
Can the mists of Avalon truly stand against a force like this?"
They had once assumed Her Majesty was simply farming, practicing Alchemy, and building things — but watching the terrifying tide of emotion surging outside the window, they suddenly understood: Her Majesty had been performing a transfusion on all of Mason.
In the shortest of times, she had taken a mob of scattered, rootless refugees and smelted them into a community of shared destiny — a community called Mason.
These people wept as they sent the army off not because they feared war, but because they saw Her Majesty as the living embodiment of Order.
Her Majesty needed no magic to win hearts. She only needed to give them dignity.
This fanatical devotion — transcending class, ignited purely by the fire of human life — was the Black Rose's deepest divine radiance.
Willow had been quietly fastening the straps of Sophia's armor, but at the sight of the scene outside she turned her head and looked toward Sophia.
Sophia lay still against the cushioned rest, her pale-gold eyes deep and cold beneath the dappled light filtering through the window. Only the irregular tapping of her fingertips on the armrest betrayed the unquiet within her.
Willow looked at Sophia, and from the depths of her eyes there rose an irrepressible, burning warmth.
This is the Her Majesty I am most enchanted by.
Looking at this near-miraculous send-off outside — Your Majesty, has even a ripple stirred in your heart?
You built Mason's walls with the most ruthless of logic, yet beneath those walls you sent the warmth of fish broth to every soul who lives there.
Delilah may not be here, but her killing spirit has already merged with the devotion of these people.
Your Majesty, you yourself are the highest law by which this world operates.
What are Avalon's miasma and mists to you? As long as I can stand at your side and watch you swallow the northern fog with those pale-gold eyes, even hell would shine as brilliantly as a midsummer garden.
Sitting in the carriage too was little Hailey — a child not yet seven years old, who that morning had planted herself directly in the path of the convoy.
"Go back, Hailey," Her Majesty Queen Sophia had said.
But Hailey, for the first time in her life, defied the queen she most revered. The small girl gave a fierce shake of her head, then raised her eyes and said in a voice of iron resolve:
"If Grandfather Victor must remain behind to guard the rear for Your Majesty, then the war at the front also needs a little historian to record everything. Olan's atrocities, General Delilah who is trapped, and Your Majesty Sophia who fights for the people — Hailey should contribute her part of the responsibility for Mason!"
"Aren't you afraid of dying?" Sophia crouched down and gently cupped the child's young face in her hands.
She had no desire to describe to a small girl the brutality of war — unless that small girl wished to step into it herself.
"Hailey is afraid of dying," little Hailey said — then immediately with even greater resolve: "But I'm still going.
Whether it's Your Majesty, or Miss Irene, Miss Daphne, Miss Willow, or the soldiers behind Your Majesty — they all still move forward even knowing there is danger ahead. Then Hailey can do the same.
If Your Majesty had not rescued Hailey from that merchant's hands, Hailey would already have died in last winter's cold.
If Hailey dies on this year's battlefield — that is worth it!"
Sophia's eyes filled with something moved and tender. And so a child who should never have been on any battlefield was scooped up bodily by Willow and carried into the carriage.
The dust settled slowly at the far end of the great road, and that flash of silver brilliance finally vanished into the misted edge of the northern horizon.
The heavy city gates of the Royal City groaned with a dull, mournful sound — like a long, slow sigh.
Valery and Victor stood side by side on the city wall, the cold wind tousling their white hair, half-concealing the deep flush of shock and awe that had crept into the corners of their eyes.
"Old friend, we should head back."
Valery pressed a hand to the sword at his hip — a fine iron longsword Sophia had bestowed upon him not long ago, sharper than anything he had ever carried before, and heavier too.
Victor rubbed the feather quill between his fingers — the one that had recorded countless dark secrets over the years — now trembling in a way that wasn't quite dignified. He glanced at the old Chancellor beside him, a man who had served three generations of monarchs, and his voice came out rough:
"Valery… do you think men like us — relics of a bygone age — ever truly understood Mason?"
Valery was silent.
Before Sophia's return, what had Mason been? Bones frozen stiff by the roadside in winter. Spines that knew only how to bow and tremble before nobles. People numbed like still water — who only let out a few wretched cries when the whip actually struck their skin. Livestock.
In those days, Mason's people had no names. Only tax receipts.
The two men stepped down from the city wall and made their way along the smooth cement road toward the Council Hall.
They had assumed that with the main army gone, the people left in the city would fall into war panic — rushing to hoard grain and retreating into their cellars.
Yet the moment they stepped into the city district, the noise that greeted them was not panic at all. It was a warmth of humanity they had never witnessed before.
"Chancellor! Lord Victor!"
A young man pushing a handcart stopped in his tracks. He was drenched in sweat — clearly having just finished hauling the last crate of supplies for the logistics department.
He did not drop to his knees in the old terrified way. Instead he flashed a wide, slightly sheepish grin:
"With Her Majesty away from the city, there'll be a lot of heavy work ahead — you two will have to carry the load. Don't overdo it though. Mason's roads are smooth enough now, and our hearts are steady. Those of us holding down the fort — even if we work ourselves lame — we will never let the supply lines go dry!"
A woman running a roadside stall — who should have been haggling over a few copper coins — came rushing over instead, carrying two bowls of steaming hot wheat porridge:
"My lords, have something warm to drink. I heard from that child Hailey that the Historian Lord's eyes have gone nearly red from staying up all night keeping records. Her Majesty is fighting hard at the front — if we let the two elder lords run themselves ragged back here, we'll have no face to collect our work-points when Her Majesty returns!"
Valery's hands trembled as he accepted that plain, scalding bowl of wheat porridge. The steam rose straight into his eyes.
Is this truly Mason?
In the old days, the people saw officials as wolves and tigers — they wished we'd drop dead sooner so they'd have one less bushel of grain to hand over.
And now… they are showing concern for us?
Your Majesty Sophia…
What manner of spell did you cast upon this land?
The cement roads you built don't only lead outward — they work like a surgeon's blade, cutting with precision at the humiliation and hatred buried in their bones.
What you gave them was not merely fish broth and work-points. You took something called dignity and homeland — a soul — and kneaded it with your own hands into the flesh and blood of these millions of people.
This cohesion that requires no sorcery yet is more fearsome than any binding spell — this is Mason's true and indestructible wall.
I have served three kings. They pursued power. But what you pursue is turning a herd of livestock into human beings.
The weight of this one bowl of porridge outweighs that Olan earl's head by ten million fold.
Victor watched the scene, and the old man's stooped back straightened in a way that seemed almost uncanny.
He looked at Valery, and in each other's eyes the two old men saw the same fanaticism — and the same willingness to die.
"Victor, did you hear that?"
Valery drained his wheat porridge in one swallow. The longsword in its scabbard rang out a single clear, bright note.
"They told us not to work too hard."
"I heard."
Victor tucked the quill back into his breast pocket. His gaze sharpened into something blade-like and cold.
"I've lived more than half my life, and this is the first time I've felt that keeping accounts for these mud-footed rabble is something worth losing your head over.
Her Majesty Sophia has trusted her back to us — that is a shadow trusted by the sun itself."
Valery spun sharply around, facing the direction of the City of Hill and the City of Qubi, his voice dropping low as rolling thunder:
"Then let's make a vow, Victor.
Unless the enemy can grind these old bones of ours into the dirt — as long as a single cement brick of Mason still stands, not one soul will set foot inside the Royal City!
Her Majesty goes to seek the truth at the front. We guard her sun at the rear!"
"By the soul of Mason, I swear it."
Victor answered in a low voice.
The clamor of the Royal City receded into the distance behind them. In its place, the deep greenery lining both sides of the black stone cement highway began to blur past.
Old Pierre sat in the slightly jolting lead wagon, the carriage packed full of Mason specialties purchased from the Royal City, though his mind was entirely elsewhere — not on any of the enormously profitable goods surrounding him.
As one of Avalon City's preeminent merchants, the thing he had always been best at in life was working that gold-lacquered abacus. Yet now, he found he simply could not calculate the weight that Mason had left in his heart over these past six months.
"Grandfather, what are you thinking about?"
His little granddaughter Nina, sitting across from him, was swinging her feet — shod in brand new leather boots — her eyes wide with innocent curiosity.
"Isn't war supposed to be very dangerous? Lots of blood, lots and lots of people dying? Then why is Her Majesty, along with all those big sisters, still going so resolutely to that misty, foggy place?"
Old Pierre came back to himself. Looking at his granddaughter's eyes — not yet touched by the world's grime — he let out a quiet sigh and gently rubbed the top of her head with one large, rough hand:
"That is to protect something. Nina, in the past when we ran out of money we could always flee to another country for shelter. But it's different now. If Avalon's mists swallowed the Royal City, the fish broth we enjoy in Avalon would go cold too. Her Majesty and the others are going so that we can walk this road more steadily — so we need not suffer the aggression of other nations."
"Is Her Majesty very powerful, then?"
Nina pressed on.
"Can the fire-spitting tubes that Miss Irene invented really scare the bad people away?"
"Of course they can."
Old Pierre smiled with quiet pride.
"Her Majesty is the most brilliant ruler I have ever seen. And Lord Irene and the others… they are creators kissed on both hands by the Holy Spirit. They are not only powerful — they carry people like us commoners in their hearts."
"What about Hailey?"
Nina tilted her head, and something heavier than her age crept into her voice.
"Did Hailey go because she wanted to be powerful too? She's still a little girl just like me."
Old Pierre was taken aback. Then he sighed:
"Hailey, that child… probably wants to help Her Majesty keep records, grind ink, that sort of thing. She's still so small — she shouldn't be going anywhere so dangerous."
"No, Grandfather."
Nina shook her head. The look in her eyes was so resolute it felt unfamiliar to Old Pierre.
"This morning, when the convoy set out, I saw it. Hailey stood right in front of Her Majesty's carriage. She lifted her head and said she wanted to be Mason's little historian and record Olan's crimes.
She said… she was willing to die for Mason."
Creak——!
The wagon lurched hard over a bump, and Old Pierre's heart clenched with it.
He sat frozen, his mind filling with the image of Hailey — that slight, fragile little figure who was always clutching her small duckling and smiling with dimples.
"Hailey protects Mason. I want to protect Mason too."
Nina's childish voice floated through the cabin.
"Grandfather, when I grow up, can I also make stronger walls like Miss Irene does?"
Old Pierre's eyes had reddened without his noticing. He hurriedly turned his head away, one hand gently patting Nina on the back, while the other pressed hard over his own eyes — already streaming with the tears of an old man.
Is this Her Majesty's power of assimilation?
Even a seven-year-old child is already thinking about how to die for the country.
And here I am — this old man who has enjoyed the convenience of the cement roads and profited from the work-point system — still calculating how many gold coins this trip back to Avalon might earn me.
In the old Mason, the people were the lord's property. In the new Mason, the people feel they are the masters of the nation.
This warmth of humanity, this art of kneading loose sand into steel…
Your Majesty, the roads you built are not roads — you are replacing the very bones of every man and woman in Mason.
If even a child who can barely climb up onto a carriage step can march at the very front, then what reason does an old man like me have to stay in the rear counting money?
Old Pierre steadied the surge of emotion in his chest. He pulled back the carriage curtain and looked out at Mason's people laboring busily in the fields in exchange for their work-points.
A wild, burning idea spread through his chest like wildfire.
"Next time," Old Pierre murmured to himself, and a resolve unlike any he had ever felt before appeared in his eyes.
If next time the Royal City's logistics convoy went to the front lines to deliver battle supplies — should he bring every horse and every guard in Old Pierre's merchant caravan along as well?
Not merely to deliver goods. But to add his own small part of effort to this miracle called Mason.
— ✦ —
That evening.
Because Avalon lay in a remote and extreme corner of the north, far from the axis of continental trade, Sophia's party chose not to pass through any principality at all. Instead, they moved in silence with five thousand elite troops and a heavy supply convoy through the uninhabited mountain paths of the wild outskirts.
A campfire crackled at the center of the camp, its orange tongues licking at the cold air.
Five thousand soldiers had made camp in the wilderness beyond where the cement road ended. The conditions were spartan, yet the orderly rows of tents and the rhythmic alternation of patrol footsteps still gave off a reassuring sense of Order.
"Report——!"
A scout bearing a longbow on his back, covered in grass and debris, passed through the outer sentries and strode briskly to the fireside.
He looked weary, but his eyes, lit by the firelight, gleamed with a sharp, focused energy.
"Your Majesty, within fifty li ahead there are nothing but boulder fields and dense forest — no villages or towns of any kind have been spotted. At our current rate of march, it is estimated we will need another three to four days of travel through the wilderness before we reach the outer edges of Avalon."
Sophia sat by the fire, holding a dry branch with which she idly stirred the embers. The firelight fell across the cool, clear side of her face, tracing a silhouette that looked almost divine.
"You've worked hard."
Sophia did not look up. Her tone was cool but steady.
"Go to the supply wagons and draw double rations of dried meat and hot soup. You're off duty tonight — get a proper sleep."
"Thank you, Your Majesty!"
The scout saluted excitedly and withdrew, feeling as though the bone-deep chill from his long-range sprint had been swept away entirely by those few considerate words.
On the other side of the fire, Irene was prodding a wheat cake — sizzling and dripping with fat — listlessly with a stick.
She furrowed her brow and stared north at the wall of black shadow, muttering under her breath:
"It's strange, when you think about it. Avalon is so out-of-the-way that even we in Mason couldn't be bothered to trade with them — they're practically a dead zone on the map. How did a place so isolated, with so few people, end up in bed with those old foxes of Olan all the way down in the south? Do the Olan riders' horses run faster than our crossbow bolts?"
Daphne had also set down the medicinal herbs she was sorting. Her jade-green eyes carried a trace of deep thought.
People like them — accustomed to thinking in laboratories and libraries — did genuinely struggle to fathom this kind of political partnership that spanned such vast geographic distances.
Sophia stopped stirring the campfire. Her pale-gold eyes fixed on the dancing flames, and her voice came out with the calm of someone stating an eternal and unchanging truth:
"Power is the best map, Irene. In the eyes of the ambitious, there is no such thing as near or far — only leverage.
Since Olan has nursed ambitions against the Imperial Capital, their calculations will never stay on the surface.
To shake a colossus like that, Olan must rally every force it can lay hands on — the close ones to serve as the cutting edge, the distant ones to serve as a fallback or a sacrificial altar."
Sophia slowly raised her head, her gaze stretching deep into the northern mist:
"Avalon may be remote, but it holds the secrecy they need — and a variable capable of tilting the balance of power in the north.
As for why they never came to us…" she let out a soft sound, somewhere between mockery and a cold laugh: "That is because in their original plan, Mason was too small, too weak, and too quiet. In the eyes of those competing for dominion over the continent, we were nothing but weeds by the roadside — something to be crushed underfoot at will. We were not worth being their ally."
Willow, standing behind Sophia, had been in the process of draping a windproof cloak around Her Majesty's shoulders. At those words, her fingers trembled ever so slightly.
This is the angle from which Her Majesty sees the world.
While we were still puzzling over the geographic divide, Her Majesty had already seen through the instinctive flow of power.
She has deconstructed Olan's ambitions into a cold exchange of resources.
Her Majesty says Mason was treated as a weed — yet that calm voice of hers contains a counterattack that will soon make the entire continent shudder.
The greatest mistake Olan ever made was not choosing Avalon. It was underestimating this black rose, blooming in the hardest cement crack of the northern frontier.
Looking at those eyes of hers, reflecting the firelight — I understand. This expedition to Avalon is not merely about bringing Delilah back. Her Majesty intends to use this war to carve Mason's name into the very center of what they call the map of power.
Hailey, meanwhile, was hugging her small waterproof, windproof notebook — specially made for her by Willow — and scribbling furiously by firelight:
Spring. Third night of the march.
Open wilderness.
Her Majesty has unlocked Outdoor Lecture Mode, topic: High-Dimensional Politics!
Miss Irene thinks the road is too far for the bad guys to run over. But Her Majesty says the bad guys' ambitions have wings.
I understand now! The reason Her Majesty isn't angry that the Olan people looked down on us is because Her Majesty thinks — only by letting the dummies believe we're weak first can we knock all their teeth out in one go!
Miss Daphne nodding along looks so serious. Not having Miss Delilah around does feel a bit strange. I hope Delilah big sister is safe.
— ✦ —
Three days later.
The deep brown dense forest loomed like a silent and immense beast, swallowing all light whole.
The convoy advanced slowly through the crunch and snap of dead branches and fallen leaves, the sweet clean scent of woodland that had filled the air gradually giving way to a sharp, acrid smell of scorching.
"Halt."
Sophia's clear, cold voice came from within the lead carriage.
The curtain was lifted, and the silver-haired queen stepped down onto this ash-covered ground with Willow's assistance.
Ahead, a once-well-concealed guard post had been reduced to ruins. Charred, broken walls and beams shuddered in the cold wind.
Irene strode forward quickly and kicked at a metal frame that had been melted and warped by fire. Her brow furrowed:
"Your Majesty, this looks like the folding-tent skeleton characteristic of the Olan army. The fire burned thorough — all documents and supplies were destroyed. These people evacuated like professionals; they left absolutely no trace behind."
Sophia said nothing. She slowly crouched down, her fingertips brushing over the trunk of a surviving fir tree.
There, several deep sword marks crossed and slashed into the bark. The cut surfaces were mirror-smooth.
"No. They left quite a lot."
Sophia closed her eyes. Her pale-gold pupils, in the darkness behind her lids, seemed to activate some form of higher-dimensional simulation.
"Three heavily armored infantry flanking from the left, two heavy crossbowmen suppressing from high ground, and a commander at the rear attempting to trigger a chain-trap.
And yet…"
Sophia opened her eyes, her gaze landing with precision on a depression in the earth three paces away.
"Their opponent used a single horizontal slash to neutralize the left flank's defense — then exploited the activation gap of the trap to reverse course, turning this entire camp into a sea of fire."
Her Majesty is replaying a battle from the past!
All that's here is a heap of ash and a few sword marks, yet in Her Majesty's eyes, that breathtaking counter-ambush seems to have happened moments ago.
Her Majesty has even correctly deduced how many enemies there were and where they were standing — down to the last detail.
Is this absolute calculation of gravity, momentum, and the landing point of killing intent — is this what Her Majesty has always called logic?
I thought Her Majesty was only here to find the General. Now I see — Her Majesty is reviewing the battle report that the General submitted.
This composure tells me everything is still on Her Majesty's board.
Could the disappearance itself have been a long-laid lure, designed to draw out Avalon's hidden sentinels?
"Your Majesty, look at this."
Daphne carefully pinched a crumpled piece of herb debris from a crack in the bark — a distinctive color, an unmistakable plant.
Sophia took it and raised it to her nose for a light inhale.
That familiar, cool, clean herb fragrance — it was the scent from inside Delilah's personal sachet. The very scent Sophia had brushed her fingers across when they last parted.
The corner of Sophia's mouth curved into an arc that was nearly transparent:
"Delilah is telling this Queen that although she was taken to Avalon, with every step she took, she was calculating their pace and the terrain. These herb scraps were not discarded at random — they are arranged in a linear pattern, pointing toward… the direction against the wind."
"Against the wind?"
Irene scratched her pink ponytail in confusion.
"Isn't that the most impassable ridgeline?"
"Because that is the only location in Avalon's altar defenses that cannot be covered by heavy crossbow wagons."
Sophia rose to her feet, pointing toward the mountain ranges to the north that dissolved into the mist, her tone ice-cold and absolute.
"The Olan people think they have captured Mason's General. What they do not know is that they have personally escorted a living surveying instrument into their own heart."
Irene listened to Sophia's deduction, and the wrench in her hand nearly clattered to the ground.
Now I understand… I understand everything!
Why did Her Majesty, before General Delilah set out, give her no magical enhancements at all — only that fragrant sachet?
That was never a keepsake. That was a signal transmitter Her Majesty had planted!
Her Majesty calculated that the General would deliberately expose a vulnerability and be taken into the core zone. She also calculated that the General would use physical markers to open a path for the follow-up forces.
The General is testing their defensive blind spots with her own body up ahead. Her Majesty is performing reverse modeling from these traces back here.
This isn't a personal campaign to rescue someone.
This is a high-precision guided missile exercise — written, directed, and starring Her Majesty herself!
Avalon's so-called altar defenses, faced with Her Majesty's logical modeling, are nothing more than a net riddled with holes!
"Willow, record the position."
Sophia returned to the carriage and drew a circle on the map with one fingertip.
"Tell the vanguard — we will not take the main road. We will cut along the logical blind zones Delilah has left behind and insert directly into the rear of the altar.
Since the enemy likes to play with traps, this Queen will show them what it means to be uprooted — in the most literal, physical sense of the word."
"By your command, Your Majesty!"
Hailey, meanwhile, was crouching beneath the fir tree, patting the sword mark with one small hand, her pen flying across the sheepskin page:
Spring. Sixth day of the march.
The burned-out guard post.
Her Majesty has activated Detective Mode: Scene Reconstruction!
Delilah big sister seems to be playing hide-and-seek up ahead — she deliberately left a yummy-smelling trail for Her Majesty to sniff out.
The reason Her Majesty isn't in a hurry is because Her Majesty has already seen through every secret this whole mountain holds.
The bad guys who burned the house must still be laughing. But they don't know — Her Majesty's eyes have already looked right through the ashes and spotted them hiding under the covers, shaking.
The carriage wheels rolled over the blackened ruins and pressed onward, deeper into the dense forest that devoured all light.
The sand table on the writing desk was swept away, replaced by a fresh map — one annotated with all of Delilah's logical blind zones.
Sophia reclined against the cushioned rest, her slender fingers lightly stroking the hilt of her sword. Her pale-gold eyes fixed on the tree shadows flowing backward outside the window, her expression cold and still as ice.
The sword marks in the ruins and the lingering scent of herbs proved that Delilah was not merely alive — she had even had the presence of mind to strike back and lay out this whole chess game spanning time and space.
And yet, until the day she laid eyes with her own hands on that proud, single-minded figure in red, the quiet worry stirring in Sophia's heart from something altogether personal would remain — like the mist outside the window — impossible to dispel.
"Avalon…"
Sophia murmured softly, the words barely audible.
This country was too remote, too unknown — even the intelligence Victor had gathered described the internal terrain largely in terms of rumor and legend.
This was nothing like their campaign against the Orr Principality, where she had been able to exploit the corruption within the old nobles to unravel it from within.
Now, facing an Avalon sealed behind mist and fog — one that had very likely already mobilized its entire population into a fighting force — she had to be prepared to fight a full-on, head-to-head siege war.
Willow picked up a cup of warm red tea and set it gently by Sophia's hand, her eyes full of tender anguish.
She knew Her Majesty too well. The stiller those pale-gold eyes became, the more fiercely the longing for the General burned within.
Her Majesty's silence in this moment was heavier than the roar of ten thousand horses.
Irene and Daphne are rejoicing over the coming great victory — yet Her Majesty, having finished calculating every piece of logic Delilah left behind, still holds onto that worry that belongs uniquely to a sovereign.
This is no concern for a general.
This is an almost obsessive protectiveness over one of her own.
Her Majesty will allow people to die within her logic. She will not allow them to die in the enemy's trap.
The Olan people probably haven't yet realized — what they seized was not a bargaining chip. It was the spark that has set the silver-haired queen's most personal fury ablaze.
When the sun withdraws its mercy, all of Avalon will be reduced to cinders beneath this rage born of worry.
Less than ten li after the convoy passed the ruins of the guard post, the scenery changed entirely.
The thin mist that had been drifting through the canopy seemed to catch the scent of the living and thickened in an instant.
This was no ordinary water vapor — it was a strange, pale grey color, viscous as a substance, and where it clung to armor it produced a faint hissing sound.
The acrid scorched smell retreated rapidly, replaced by a nauseating odor of rotting vegetation mixed with some unknown, sharp-smelling alchemical compound.
"Cough, cough… what's wrong with this fog?"
A soldier walking alongside a supply wagon could not help but cough. Each breath felt as though fire was being lit inside his lungs.
"It's awful — I can't catch my breath."
A ripple of disorder spread lightly through the ranks.
Sophia had already pulled the carriage curtain open the moment the strange smell first appeared.
"Irene — have everyone put on their masks."
No further explanation was needed. Sophia's voice reached the ear of every squad captain with precision.
Irene leapt down from the supply wagon. She could be scatter-brained at the best of times, but in a moment like this, Mason's greatest inventor displayed a ferocious efficiency.
She brandished her checklist and bellowed at the logistics soldiers:
"Don't panic! Her Majesty anticipated this! Break out the first-sequence filtered masks — now! Move!"
They were a special design, sewn from black cloth, with three layers of filter material embedded inside. The innermost layer — the most critical one — was a filter core made from mugwort, mint, and several detoxifying and restorative herbs that Daphne had graciously contributed.
Swiftly, all five thousand soldiers donned these masks — contraptions that looked faintly ridiculous, like oversized black duck bills jutting from their faces.
The soldier who had been coughing put his mask on with trembling hands.
Whoosh.
When the acrid miasma was sealed away on the outside, replaced instead by a cool, pure stream of air carrying the faint, clean fragrance of mugwort and mint flowing into his lungs — the man went completely rigid.
The suffocating agony that had brought him to the brink of blacking out dissolved in an instant, replaced by a clarity and calm unlike anything he had felt before.
Dear lord… is this the power of Her Majesty?
We always thought Lord Irene did nothing but tinker with those fire-belching iron tubes all day — but looking at these masks, one per soldier, perfectly sealing out every trace of miasma, we finally understand what it means to have left nothing to chance.
Her Majesty and Lord Irene must have completed a thorough simulation of Avalon's miasma before they ever set out.
In other countries, soldiers dying from miasma is just fate.
But in Mason, Her Majesty took a square of black cloth and a few grams of herbs and turned that act of fate into a data point that logic could defeat.
With this mask on, breathing in the smell of mugwort and mint — what is there left to be afraid of?
Even if death itself is lurking in this fog, we'll knock its teeth out with our black muskets!
As the convoy pressed deeper into Avalon's damp and sweltering interior, the trouble did not stop at the pale grey viscous miasma.
It was the turn of the season — spring giving way to summer — and in this mist-sealed dense forest that had been cut off for hundreds of years, the already-bizarre ecology bared its fangs under the catalysis of heat and humidity.
Beyond the suffocating fog, the forest began to fill with a fine, hair-raising buzzing of wings — countless poisonous insects.
They swarmed out from rotting undergrowth in teeming masses, circling the gaps in the soldiers' armor and seeking any sliver of exposed skin from which they could drink blood.
A heavy swordsman, mask on, scanning his surroundings in full alert, was caught completely off guard when a red-headed poisonous fly the size of a fingernail sank its bite into the back of his neck.
"Ssss——!"
He sucked a sharp breath through his teeth. The patch of skin immediately swelled as though it had been branded with a hot coal, and half his shoulder went numb with a burning, maddening itch.
This kind of attrition — one that no blade could cut — was often the most lethal nightmare for expeditionary forces in ancient warfare.
Malaria, inflamed welts, relentless high fever: these could decimate an army of ten thousand before it ever met the enemy.
"In a forest at this level of humidity, these variables were a certainty."
Sophia sat inside the carriage. Through a narrow gap in the curtain she had seen the soldier's suffering.
There was not the faintest flicker of panic in those pale-gold eyes of hers — only the unhurried composure of someone who had calculated this down to the bone.
"Willow — tell Irene to distribute that batch of Black Rose floral water. Every soldier applies it to the gaps in their armor and all exposed skin."
At the Queen's command, Irene — who had been busy tinkering with landmines just moments before — immediately rallied a squad of logistics soldiers and set to work.
She carried a row of elegant glass spray bottles, each filled with a pale-green liquid that gave off a cool, sharp fragrance.
"Nobody move around! Her Majesty personally supervised Daphne in making this insect repellent! Anyone who wastes a single drop gets two work-points docked when we're back in the city!"
The soldiers curiously received the little bottles and, as instructed, pressed the pump.
Pssht — pssht——!
A mist of sweetly cool herb-and-medicine fragrance dispersed into the air — the scent of mint and lemongrass, blended with a concentrated botanical repellent extract that Daphne had refined.
In that instant, the venomous insects that had been circling like parasites fused to the bone all scattered in a panic, wings beating frantically as they fled — and some, unable to endure the scent at all, seized up and dropped dead from midair.
The soldier whose shoulder had gone numb found that after applying this slightly cool liquid, the swollen and bitten area was flooded with a soothing chill — and the bone-deep venom, miraculously, seemed to be suppressed entirely.
Is this the radiance of Her Majesty's sun?
Even these tiny creatures that swords and blades cannot touch — Her Majesty had a plan for them too!
We always thought Her Majesty only cared about our stomachs and our safety. It never occurred to us that she even worried about whether our skin was getting bitten.
In other countries, soldiers getting bitten to death by insects is their fate.
But in Mason — that is a logic calculation error.
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