April 25, 1787, by the common calendar of the Galentea Continent. The
Campo Province had been a strategic linchpin in the territory of the former Krisen Empire — a transportation nexus connecting Bodorolge Province, the two southwestern provinces, the northwestern territories, and Malivie Province. The hills and mountains that dotted the province, along with the Morisan River that originated in the Cloudsever Mountains, made Campo Province a critical chokepoint that was easy to defend and difficult to attack. It could be said that whoever controlled Campo Province held a decisive strategic advantage over the five surrounding provinces.
However, before the Redilis Kingdom established by the First Prince had even been destroyed, the First Prince had already suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the
The peace treaty signed between the First Prince and the Second Prince had a mere five-year term. The First Prince, thoroughly terrified by the Second Prince's devastating victory, did not dare slacken when he heard that the Second Prince was mustering his forces and preparing for war. However, he no longer had the courage to face the Second Prince on the battlefield. Instead, he adopted a strategy of hunkering down behind fortifications, expending enormous quantities of manpower, resources, and wealth over the course of more than three years to construct over a hundred castles and fortresses at every strategically vital location throughout Campo Province. He garrisoned them with nearly seventy thousand troops, transforming the province into a defensive bulwark for Bodorolge Province.
Once Campo Province had been turned into a fully armed hedgehog, the First Prince finally felt at ease. He declared with smug satisfaction that even if the Second Prince led three hundred thousand troops to attack Campo Province, it would be impossible to breach without suffering over two hundred thousand in casualties. If the Second Prince did attack, then by the time he managed to take Campo Province, he would have no strength left to advance on Bodorolge Province — at which point the First Prince could launch a counterattack and reclaim his lost territories.
Meanwhile, to steel the resolve of Campo Province's seventy thousand garrison troops to fight to the last man, the First Prince thoughtfully gathered the families of the garrison officers of all ranks and brought them to the Fedriga Royal Capital, claiming he would personally look after the families of these loyal and courageous subordinates so they could fight without worries. In truth, everyone understood perfectly well that these families were hostages.
The First Prince's calculations were impeccable — but events did not unfold according to his wishes. What happened next was known to all. The Second Prince crossed the frozen White Egret Lake marshes in the bitter depths of winter, braving blizzards and gales at the cost of over twenty thousand men frozen to death or frostbitten. He crossed the Cloudsever Mountains and the Great Snow Mountain, then launched a surprise assault that captured the Fedriga Royal Capital. The First Prince abandoned the city and fled, his whereabouts unknown.
Thanks to the families of the Campo Province garrison officers who had been gathered at the royal capital, the seventy-thousand-strong Campo garrison surrendered without a fight. The elaborate defensive system the First Prince had spent so heavily to build proved utterly useless and became a laughingstock. Although the First Prince had merely disappeared — his fate unknown — he never reappeared in the following two years, and the Redilis Kingdom perished.
The Second Prince, having seized the Fedriga Royal Capital, was on one hand swollen with arrogance, and on the other, his judgment was clouded by illness. In the midst of his favorable position, he turned against the landed nobles of Andewolfe Province, dragging himself into a quagmire. He spent two years locked in brutal warfare against the rebel lords' coalition in Andewolfe Province and Majik Province, while simultaneously provoking the four central duchies. This allowed the Wissia Trade Association, which had been watching from the sidelines, to seize its opportunity — they sent troops to capture Campo Province, delivering a fatal blow to the Second Prince.
After the seventy-thousand-strong Campo garrison surrendered, the Second Prince transferred them to Andewolfe Province as his rebel-suppression army, leaving Campo Province's defenses completely neglected. Many castles and fortresses went unguarded and unmaintained, while the ones still manned were held by ragtag garrisons of old men, the sick, and the disabled. Perhaps the Second Prince considered Campo Province to be well within his rear area at the time, and simply did not place much importance on it.
The Wissia Trade Association seized this golden opportunity, using bribery and sneak attacks to capture Campo Province in one fell swoop. This severed the supply lines and logistical support for the Second Prince's three-hundred-thousand-strong army at the front, leaving him unable to receive reinforcements or provisions. Ultimately, his forces suffered total defeat before the Fedriga Royal Capital.
The Second Prince broke out with roughly six thousand of his most loyal men and fled into hiding. On his way back home, however, he encountered the First Prince's father and son, who had been living in seclusion in a remote fief within the Cloudsever Mountains. A bloody battle ensued. The First Prince and his son perished, and the Second Prince's remaining forces were destroyed. Without a reliable military force to back him, the Second Prince was powerless to return home and wrest the throne from the usurper Queen Kairi. He had no choice but to flee to the Northland and seek the support of
After defeating the Second Prince, the Wissia Trade Association merged Campo Province, Portoorg Province, and Andewolfe Province into the Trade Confederation's territory, with Portoorg Province becoming Wissia's own fief. They also extracted two southwestern provinces and the Hansdamoss Province from the Andinac Kingdom, signing a peace treaty with the usurper Queen Kairi. Furthermore, they established puppet states — the Britte United Duchy from the two southwestern provinces, and the Ztralam Duchy from Hansdamoss Province and the northwestern region — using these two duchies as buffer states between the Trade Confederation and the Andinac Kingdom.
What the Wissia Trade Association had not anticipated was that the Second Prince secured Lorist's support. Norton Family forces launched an amphibious invasion, destroyed the Madras Duchy, and established a direct border with the Andinac Kingdom. From there, they marched straight against the usurper Queen Kairi, reinstalling the Second Prince on the throne once more. They then swept through the two southwestern provinces, destroying the Britte United Duchy, and turned their blades toward the Ztralam Duchy.
They finally withdrew back to the northwestern region, handing over Hansdamoss Province without a fight, allowing Norton Family forces to fulfill their agreement with the Second Prince at virtually no cost. The Second Prince once again became His Majesty, King of the Andinac Kingdom, and recovered both the two southwestern provinces and Hansdamoss Province. This was devastating news for the Wissia Trade Association, and it also meant the peace treaty signed with Queen Kairi had become nothing but scrap paper. In truth, the Trade Confederation and the Andinac Kingdom were already in a state of enmity — they simply had not formally declared war on each other.
To prevent the Second Prince from marching directly into Campo Province and cutting the Trade Confederation off from Portoorg Province, the Wissia Trade Association had no choice but to provide substantial support to the fief-holding lords they had installed in Campo Province. Leveraging their position as one of the Trade Confederation's Seven Powers, and drawing upon the defensive network of castles and fortresses left behind by the late First Prince, they assembled a reasonably reliable combined garrison force of Campo lords. This was meant to counter the heavy troop concentrations the Second Prince was amassing in the two southwestern provinces — forces that eyed Campo Province with predatory intent, poised to launch a potential surprise attack.
In truth, the Second Prince was all bark and no bite. Despite his loud declarations about recovering lost territory and restoring the glory of the Krisen Empire, he privately ordered the White Lion Corps stationed in the two southwestern provinces never to cross Campo Province's borders. He even instructed patrols to keep well away from the border, lest they give the Trade Confederation a pretext to invade the Andinac Kingdom.
Having only just reclaimed his throne, the Second Prince knew he was a paper tiger — impressive on the surface but utterly lacking in real strength. Fortunately, both the Wissia Trade Association and the Trade Confederation had been bluffed by the formidable power displayed by the Northern Alliance, led by the Norton Family. The surprise attack on the Madras Duchy, the conquest of the Andinac Kingdom, the destruction of the Britte United Duchy, and after all that, the defeat of Grand Duke Fesabren — the legendary steppe war god of the former Krisen Empire — and his coalition with the Four Central Duchies. For a time, the family armies of the Northern Alliance had become the most powerful and important military pillar in the Andinac Kingdom.
There is an idiom about a fox borrowing a tiger's ferocity. The Wissia Trade Association did not know the true nature of the relationship between the Second Prince and the Northern Alliance, nor did they realize that the Second Prince was the fox. And the Second Prince himself needed time to rebuild his military strength. And so, for the next several years, the border between the two southwestern provinces and Campo Province remained perfectly calm — a picture of peace. Even when the Trade Confederation and the Central-Southern Kingdom alliance went to war, the Wissia Trade Association still feared the Second Prince might exploit the situation. To their surprise, he behaved with perfect restraint.
Another year passed before the Second Prince redeployed the White Lion Corps from the two southwestern provinces to attack the Four Central Duchies. Only then did the Wissia Trade Association finally let down its guard, believing that the Second Prince didn't dare trifle with the Trade Confederation's authority. After all, the Trade Confederation was now the most powerful nation on the Galentea Continent — no longer the minor regional power that had been ground into the dirt by the Krisen Empire a century ago. They concluded that the Second Prince had tacitly accepted the new territorial boundaries of the Trade Confederation and the Andinac Kingdom, and had abandoned his beautiful dream of reclaiming the former Krisen Empire's pre-unification territories and restoring its glory.
Sure enough, after the destruction of the Four Central Duchies, the Second Prince made no further incursions into Andervorf Province, sensibly halting beyond the Trade Confederation's territorial borders. At the same time, he invested Grand Duke Handala and Grand Duke Sabaji as the new dukes of the two southwestern provinces. This series of actions finally put the Wissia Trade Association completely at ease, convinced that the Second Prince would no longer pose a threat to the Trade Confederation.
Of course, the Wissia Trade Association wasn't operating on blind conjecture. The Trade Confederation's armies had crushed the Central-Southern Kingdom alliance, and the Qigeda Kingdom had been secretly colluding with the Trade Confederation, reducing the kingdoms and duchies of the central south to a battered mess. The war was nearing its end, the outcome was all but settled, and the Trade Confederation had expanded its territory once more, its prestige resounding far and wide. Most importantly, the Trade Confederation now possessed a National Sword Saint. Under such circumstances, how could the Andinac Kingdom and the Second Prince possibly dare to make a move on the Trade Confederation?
The Wissia Trade Association overlooked the Second Prince's determination and ambition to unify the former Krisen Empire, and as a result was struck by a surprise attack from the Norton Family's armed forces, angering Lorist — leading to the Association being torn out by the roots and expelled from the Seven Grand Powers of the Trade Confederation. And the Norton Family's Rock Legion, after marching out following the rainy season to campaign in Campo Province, proved utterly unstoppable. The fortresses and castles in Campo Province had all been oriented to defend against the Andinac Kingdom from the direction of the two southwestern provinces — no one had expected the Rock Legion to strike from behind. Territory after territory was swept clean, and the lords enfeoffed by the Trade Confederation fell either in battle or as prisoners, with only a few lucky nobles managing to flee back to
When word spread that the northwestern region had been struck by the Andinac Kingdom's great army and the Zthuram Duchy destroyed, that the Norton Family's armed forces had launched a surprise assault on Andervorf Province and seized the royal capital of Fedriga, that every senior member of the Wissia Trade Association and their relatives had been slaughtered to the last, and that the Rock Legion had swept through Campo Province — and when these reports reached the Trade Confederation and spread across the entire continent — the Trade Confederation was shaken to its core, and every nation on the continent was set ablaze by the news.
The Trade Confederation was seething with fury. This was practically a series of resounding slaps across its face at the very moment of its greatest arrogance. When had the Trade Confederation ever suffered such a humiliating blow? The effect was particularly pronounced among the Central-Southern nations that had been on the verge of submission. Stances that had previously been declared began to shift once more, and several trade agreements close to being signed were conveniently delayed on one pretext or another — a clear signal that they intended to see how the Trade Confederation would handle the Andinac Kingdom's invasion.
The Trade Confederation was not about to sit idle. On one hand, it urgently recalled the main legions of the Six Grand Powers from the central and southern parts of the continent. On the other, it conscripted nearly a hundred thousand troops from within its own territories and dispatched them to Campo Province in a rescue effort, hoping to stabilize the situation. However, these hundred thousand reinforcements had exceptionally poor luck — upon entering Campo Province, they happened to run headlong into three regiments of the Flying Tiger Legion, which had just completed the task of sweeping the territorial lords of Bodoorg Province and was heading to Campo Province to rendezvous with the main force.
Lorist was grinning from ear to ear. In his eyes, these hundred thousand Trade Confederation reinforcements were a juicy piece of meat that had fallen right from the sky. The two armies immediately deployed formations and engaged in open battle. The result: the Trade Confederation's hundred-thousand-strong army — despite having double the numbers — was decisively crushed by the Flying Tiger Legion, which fielded fewer than fifty thousand. It was a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood: more than twenty thousand killed, over sixty thousand taken prisoner, and fewer than eight thousand managing to escape. The Flying Tiger Legion seized the opportunity to press into Marivea Province, formerly part of the Rulam Duchy, and the Trade Confederation was once again stunned by this catastrophic defeat.
On June twenty-third, Lorist led his personal guard battalion from the royal capital of Fedriga toward Campo Province to rendezjoin with the Second Prince's army and the family armed forces of the various lords and grand dukes. In truth, Lorist found it hard to respect these people from the bottom of his heart — their combat capability was simply abysmal. Boddfinger reported that after leading the Rock Legion to sweep through all of Campo Province, he discovered that those grand dukes were still gathered at the border of the two southwestern provinces, bickering endlessly over whose family's armed corps should serve as the vanguard to attack Campo Province...
As for the Second Prince — well, how to put it. He had led his so-called Blizzard Raid Corps in a winter surprise attack on the northwestern region and had indeed caught Grand Duke Zthuram completely off guard. But once the Grand Duke recovered his senses, the Second Prince had been unable to gain any further advantage. Not only did he suffer heavy casualties in troops and equipment, but after finally managing to drag over catapults to breach the castle where Grand Duke Zthuram resided, the Grand Duke simply gathered his family and several hundred cavalrymen and retreated to a small castle perched on another cliff to continue his stubborn defense.
The Second Prince had surrounded three sides of the small cliff-top castle so tightly that not even water could trickle through; the fourth side faced the river flowing far below the cliff. He intended to settle matters properly with Grand Duke Zthuram once the rainy season was over — he would hang this imperial traitor with his own hands, no matter what. As it turned out, he had barely managed to survive the rainy season and finally brought up the catapults, and was just about to launch an assault on the small castle perched atop the cliff when Grand Duke Zthuram, trapped inside, did something that left the Second Prince completely dumbfounded.
Grand Duke Zthuram had used lumber gathered inside the castle to construct a number of crude wooden boats. From the cliff face along the river, he lowered the boats down, then used rope ladders to ferry his people aboard. By the time the Second Prince's forces finally managed to blast open the castle gates, they discovered that everyone inside was gone — every last person had crowded onto the boats and fled. This outcome left the Second Prince so furious he couldn't see straight. He had annihilated the Duchy of Zthuram and conquered the entire northwestern region, yet Grand Duke Zthuram had escaped completely unscathed...
On July 11th of the year 1787 by the Galentea Continent's universal calendar, the Andinac Kingdom mustered an army of one million under the command of King Ogero I and converged upon Campo Province. From the Armenia Province border of the Trade Confederation to the interior of Marivea Province, the camps of the Andinac Kingdom's million-strong host stretched for nearly a hundred li, banners unfurling to blot out the sky and earth. Everyone in the Trade Confederation was seized with terror, as if a hundred years had melted away and they had been cast back into the era when the Krisen Empire had invaded the Mana Hill Plains.
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