On the 10th of December, 1788 on the Galentea Continent's standard calendar, the Andinaque Kingdom once again launched a surprise assault on the Mana Hill Plains during the harsh winter season. The White Lion Corps, under the command of Augustero I (the
A miracle occurred. The defenders of Robertvia doused the city walls with water, transforming the entire city into a fortress of ice. No matter how many catapults the Andinaque Kingdom amassed, they could not smash through the icy ramparts. In a fury, the Second Prince commanded the White Lion Corps to launch several siege assaults, but gained nothing except casualties and lost troops.
In the Second Prince's original plan, he had intended to spend about thirty days clearing the network of small fortress barriers across the Mana Hill Plains, seizing the remaining three fortified cities, and then marching to
It wasn't that the Second Prince didn't want to continue attacking the Commercial Union, but his feudal nobles had been campaigning year after year and were growing homesick and weary of war. Nearly three years had passed since the Second Prince initially said they would merely march out, using their million-troop advantage to force the Commercial Union to meet the Andinaque Kingdom's demands, only for everyone to be unwillingly drawn into this conflict. As resistance from the Commercial Union intensified, many feudal nobles began to have second thoughts, seeking various excuses to avoid the battlefield.
The departure of the
No matter how loudly the Second Prince had sworn oaths like cutting his hair to declare he would not rest until Morant City was leveled, in reality, he was already deeply satisfied. The mighty Krisen Empire had fought the Commercial Union for over a century, and how many times had they even reached the walls of Morant City? He, however, had led a hastily assembled army of feudal nobles to seize three fortified cities on the Mana Hill Plains and reclaim all the former territories of the Krisen Empire. With such a feat, his name would surely be recorded in history, enough to once again declare himself Emperor and restore the prestige of the Krisen imperial house.
Furthermore, after nearly forty years of peace, the towns and villages on the Mana Hill Plains were incredibly wealthy. The three captured fortified cities, in particular, yielded so much plunder that the feudal nobles could hardly believe their own eyes. As the King of the Andinaque Kingdom, the Second Prince naturally claimed half for himself, with the remaining half shared among the feudal nobles. However, the spoils from the Norton Family's armed forces were not included, nor did they offer any tribute to the Second Prince. Considering that
Now, the Second Prince's thoughts were focused on returning to the imperial capital to hold a grand coronation ceremony, becoming the Restoring Emperor of the Krisen Empire, and having the Andinaque Kingdom resume its former name as the Krisen Empire. But before demobilizing, the Second Prince also hoped to conclude this war with a single decisive blow that would inflict enough pain on the Commercial Union to force them to admit defeat and sign a ceasefire agreement, giving the Empire a few years to recover.
It was for this purpose that the Second Prince had launched another surprise attack in the winter, specifically mobilizing his elite White Lion First Corps. Yet, he had not expected to have his path blocked before Robertvia City, where a gleaming ice fortress appeared before him amidst the howling snow and wind. All siege actions proved futile against the city of ice, instead resulting in several thousand casualties among the White Lion Corps soldiers.
As the chief defending general of Robertvia City, Sir Karltock rose to fame for the ice fortress tactics that successfully thwarted the Second Prince's winter surprise attack and catapult assault, earning him an enfeoffment as a territorial baron from the Commercial Union. The fact that he had once served as one of the Second Prince's royal knights before defecting back to the Commercial Union was picked up and widely publicized by every newspaper, large and small, in Morant City, which mocked the Second Prince for being blind to talent. Even though the Second Prince held the advantage on the battlefield, this affair left him thoroughly humiliated.
After the war, many military scholars and experts reviewing the history of warfare on the Galentea Continent commented that the Andinaque Kingdom had mastered the winter surprise attack and catapult tactics, turning the bitter cold of winter into a war assistant for achieving victory. But for every spear there is a shield — the Commercial Union's ice fortress tactics perfectly countered the Andinaque Kingdom's winter surprise attack and catapult tactics, reducing those two advanced tactical advantages to nothing...
In January of the new year, while the Second Prince was leading the White Lion Corps in its continued struggle against Robertvia's ice fortress, Tagel and Reddy once again came to the hunting lodge to report on the situation in Winston Province to Lorist. Currently, Baron Kamola had accepted Lorist's appointment to handle all immigrant affairs, and both division commanders — Bodfenger of the Bedrock Corps and Ross of the Flying Tiger Corps, who had arrived at Wendbury Royal City — had expressed their obedience to orders. The Hunt Cavalry Corps was still on the road and had not yet returned.
All the lords willingly lent out large quantities of stored grain, and the food crisis in Winston had been alleviated. However, in his letter, Baron Kamola asked Lorist how they were supposed to arrange over a million immigrants after the rainy season, since Winston Province had already granted so many territorial lordships that there was no longer enough wasteland to reclaim...
Lorist once again issued instructions to Baron Kamola, requiring him to relocate five hundred thousand immigrants to Pasture Plains Province after the rainy season in March, to construct fortress cities there and carry out agricultural colonization. At the same time, he ordered the Hunt Cavalry Corps' division commander Jost to ensure the safety of these agricultural colonies and protect them from harassment by barbarian nomad riders.
In addition, Lorist instructed Baron Kamola to select one hundred thousand artisans from among the million immigrants and arrange for them to settle in Wendbury Royal City and Pietro City, serving as catalysts to accelerate commercial and industrial development in both cities. With five hundred thousand new immigrants in Pasture Plains Province, their demand for daily necessities and the trade flows between the two regions would be enough to revitalize that desolate trade route. As for the remaining immigrants, Lorist had Baron Kamola assign them to repair Winston Province's water conservancy, transportation, and road infrastructure, and once Lorist had recovered his strength and quelled the rebellion in the Northland, they would be relocated to the family's territories.
After Tagel and Reddy departed, Lorist resumed his peaceful cultivation. February brought the spring thaw, March brought the rainy season, and by April when the winter wheat harvest began, Lorist's strength had recovered to the peak of the third-rank Sword Saint. Lorist believed that with another two months of effort, he would once again become a Sword Saint and unlock the Bloodlust Domain.
In June, Aristorli finally got her wish and was pregnant again — it turned out those three days over the new year had been wasted effort on Lorist's part. Instead, it had been at the end of May, when Aristorli had gone up the mountain with Triek and her handmaidens to gather large red mushrooms, that she and Lorist had been seized by passion in the crimson grove and things had happened. The result was that Aristorli had conceived on the spot. It just went to show that having children followed no pattern whatsoever — everything depended on luck.
On the seventeenth of June, Tagel and Reddy came again, though Reddy had gone off to the wooden castle to reunite with his little lover Sunilulu. Tagel, meanwhile, brought Lorist news: the Second Prince had been defeated in a field battle against the Commercial Union's armed forces on the Mana Hill Plains and was now holding Clido City in a defensive position against the Commercial Union's offensive. However, despite winning the battle, the Commercial Union's losses had actually been greater than the Second Prince's — it was a victory purchased with human lives. Between both sides, total casualties had reached one hundred and sixty to seventy thousand, with the Commercial Union's forces accounting for two-thirds of the damage.
Lorist was curious about how this battle had come about, and Tagel told him an almost laughable fact: the battle had not been organized at all but was a chaotic melee. Neither the Second Prince nor the Commercial Union's leadership had intended to fight such a large-scale field engagement — they had each assumed it was merely a small skirmish. It was only after the fighting escalated beyond control that both sides realized they could no longer contain the situation and were forced to throw in all the armed forces at their disposal for a bloody clash. The Second Prince, acknowledging that he had gotten the worse of it, retreated to Clido City and began setting up defensive lines.
Ever since his winter assault on Ice Fortress ended in failure, the Second Prince had been unwilling to accept defeat. He decided to wait until the rainy season was over before launching another attack on Robertovia City, to see what tricks that deserter Kilitock could come up with this time to counter the catapults' assault. What the Second Prince had forgotten, however, was a rather crucial detail — once the rainy season ended, every artificial canal and irrigation ditch on the Mana Hill Plains would have thawed out, once again becoming impassable river barriers.
The Second Prince was utterly dumbfounded. Although the fortresses and ramparts flanking those canals had all been reduced to rubble by his catapults, the most pressing problem now was building bridges across these rivers to prevent his army from being sliced into isolated fragments. But while the Second Prince's legions were busy constructing river crossings, the Commercial Union's reinforcements finally arrived at Robertovia City — and they kept growing in number, pitching camp all the way outside the city walls.
When the Commercial Union's armed forces surpassed the Second Prince's in numbers, small-scale skirmishes became inevitable. The Second Prince soon found himself in a trap of his own making — the enemy's reinforcements across the field had already topped a hundred thousand, and more were still streaming in. On his side, he had only the White Lion Second Legion with a little over fifty thousand troops and two heavy-armored regiments from the Kenmess Family numbering just over twenty thousand. He was already at a numerical disadvantage. Left with no choice, the Second Prince had no option but to summon the noble lords from the rear camps to bring their family forces forward as reinforcements.
By the time both sides had over a hundred thousand troops each, they discovered that the crisscrossing network of waterways on the Mana Hill Plains had become an obstacle for everyone — those artificial canals and ditches had chopped the armies' camps into scattered pockets. Since the rainy season had just ended and the rivers were swollen with water, filling them in would only cause the water to overflow and turn the camps into a quagmire. The only way to connect both banks was by building wooden bridges.
Since the Second Prince's side occupied the upstream section of the canals, one of the nobles — no one quite remembered who — came up with the idea of deploying a fleet of fire ships to drift downstream and burn the wooden bridges the Commercial Union's forces had built across the rivers within their camp. It was really nothing more than a petty nuisance tactic with no real impact on the battle. The first time, the Commercial Union's troops were caught off guard — two wooden bridges and several riverside tents were burned, though there were no casualties.
But the Commercial Union was not about to swallow such a provocation. Several nights later, they launched a retaliatory strike under cover of darkness. About a dozen skilled swimmers slipped along the river and infiltrated the two outermost camps of the Second Prince's forces, hurling jars of fire oil everywhere. They torched a vast stretch of the encampment, and nearly a hundred soldiers perished in the flames.
These escalations only drove the scale of combat ever larger, while the commanders on both sides — stationed far in the center — still had no idea that their subordinates were already fighting tooth and nail across the front.
When the high command on both sides finally received reports, they realized that the majority of their forces had already been drawn into the conflict. At this point, no one could pull out — whoever retreated first would be the first to suffer disaster, and a single enemy pursuit could very well trigger a total army collapse. In the end, the Second Prince gritted his teeth and committed every last one of his troops to the battlefield. The Commercial Union's forces were visibly a step slower to react, which gave the Second Prince the initiative and inflicted devastating casualties on the Commercial Union's troops on the field.
This battle, born from what had started as a mere skirmish, dragged on for three days and two nights. If you imagined the battlefield on the Mana Hill Plains — carved into isolated pockets by the web of waterways — as squares on a chessboard, then this war constantly played out with one square occupied by the Commercial Union's forces while the adjacent square was won by the Second Prince's troops. The two sides, separated by rivers, could do nothing but trade arrows and hurl insults at each other across the water — neither able to reach the opposite bank...
The Second Prince was the first to throw all his troops into the battle, and also the first to gather his forces and withdraw from it. This war simply could not be fought — he had no way to command or control the situation on the battlefield. He could see the fighting with his own eyes, yet his orders went unheard. Sending messengers meant navigating countless turns and crossing how many rivers, and they might very well die along the way.
The battle fought beneath the walls of Robertvia City ended with over sixty thousand of the Second Prince's soldiers killed or wounded, while the Commercial Union's forces suffered more than a hundred thousand casualties. However, despite their greater losses, the Commercial Union's troops seized the initiative on the battlefield, shifting from defense to offense; they could afford the heavier toll as reinforcements could be mustered. The Second Prince, on the other hand, was forced onto the defensive after this engagement. The loss of over sixty thousand soldiers was already a crippling blow to the Kingdom of Andinak, and the deaths of more than a dozen noble territory lords on the field only made many in his camp start to consider retreat.
"We should go as well," said Lorist.
"Your Highness, you're completely recovered?" Tagle jumped to his feet.
Lorist nodded. "Let's go. It's time we returned to the Northland. There's still a bunch of rebels waiting for us back there to sort them out."
...