"They've already retreated?"

An army of 2000 strong marched forward. Despite the lack of enemies before them, their formation remained neat and organized. In fact, other than the unique sound of synchronized footsteps, the army had been completely silent until this point.

At the helm of it all, the warrior who spoke wore black robes accented with white flexible armor. He rode on a scaled horse Leonel would easily recognize as the steeds Heira and the other members of the Kaefir family had been using when they first ran across him.

Of course, the ten individuals who headed this army were the White Knights of White City.

Each of them rode upon one of these scaled horses, their demeanor stoic. It almost seemed out of place for any one of them to speak at all.

Among them, four were women and the remaining six were men.

"They've likely retreated to the first line of mountains." Another White Knight replied indifferently.

"Where they've retreated to doesn't matter. Their death is imminent."

The White Knights continued forward as though none of them had spoken a word to begin with. With barely a shred of communication, they shifted the direction the army was headed in, making a straight line toward the first line of defense.

It was not even a couple hours later that the first line of mountains came into view for the White City army.

…

Sitting atop a mountain peak, Leonel's head nodded to sleep every so often.

"Yip! Yip!"

The little mink lightly clawed at Leonel's face, waking him up.

"Oh? Are they here?" Leonel asked.

Leonel's gaze seemed somewhat sharper. Though the fatigue was still there, it seemed that he had at least rested his mind a bit. But, whether it would make much of a difference still remained to be seen.

Leonel looked over the horizon.

Though Camelot's lands had been dispelled of the perpetual rain, no-man's land and the Demon Empire still had heavy dark clouds hanging over it, a very familiar light drizzle of acidic rain pitter pattering ever so softly.

From Leonel's vantage point, high up on a mountain peak, he could see the grey, cracked lands White City's army marched through.

Leonel stood a bit too quickly, causing his head to spin.

'More than 30 hours of sleep wasn't enough?' Leonel grasped onto his head, sighing lightly.

It had technically only been two hours of sleep. But, split between his minds, thanks to Dream Sense, it should have been the equivalent of more than 30. Unfortunately, it seemed that Leonel had underestimated just how much time he would need for his mind to recover.

'This state should still be more than enough to deal with them.'

Leonel's gaze grew cold, a calculating indifference reflecting in his eyes.

…

"Hold."

The acting commander of the White City troops held up a palm.

She gazed calmly toward the looming mountains without an ounce of panic. Though they had been constantly sending canon fodder to the battlefields up to this point, that didn't mean their elites were standing idly by. In fact, they had already thought through their plan of attack thoroughly.

Facing this mountain, the acting commander, White Knight Farialice, already had everything mapped out in her mind.

However, the mark of a true commander wasn't so simple.

Generals all began by studying the battles of their predecessors before they got the chance to come to the battlefield on their own. But, Generals who restricted themselves based on what they had read on what were ultimately dead pieces of paper would be forever destined to not reach the pinnacle of warring masters.

Farialice immediately felt that something was off just by laying her eyes on the mountain.

There were three paths up this mountain and there was no easy way to travel between them, at least not in large groups. The advantage of the demons was obviously being able to prepare in advance and having such great terrain to work with. But, the advantage for White City was that the demons would have no idea which paths they would pick.

The obvious choice for the demons, then, was to destroy two of the paths. Due to their narrow and not very safe to begin with structures, this task would have been very easy. This way, they would easily eliminate White City's first advantage by forcing them down a single path.

This would have been the perfect plan. Destroying all three paths would have shot the Demon Empire in the foot as well. After all, they also needed a path out. So, two was the perfect balance of hurting the enemy while helping themselves.

Of course, White City had already been prepared for this. As a counter, they had hidden mechanisms within their supply units that would actually allow them to fly over the mountains entirely and assault the Palace from the skies.

Though the mountainous structures appeared to be terrible from the outside, the location of the Demon Empress' palace was actually a flat of the mountainous land and, not unlike a castle, acted as its own city.

But, the problem was that the obvious action the demons should have taken by destroying the two paths… hadn't been taken at all.

From the outside, this seemed to be a good thing. It should have meant that their enemies were more foolish than they thought. But, was this really the case? Nôvel(D)rama.Org's content.

According to their intelligence, the demons were no less intelligent than humans. In fact, even if they weren't, their Empress was a human who should have easily been able to think of this.

'Could it be that they want to begin the battle on the next mountain range? Did they retreat further back than we assumed?'

Farialice thought that there was a good possibility that this could be the case. After all, this initial mountain pass only led to the main mountain range the Demon Palace could be found.

However, if this was the case, their plans would definitely be less effective as the Palace would be heavily guarded. Compared to Camelot, the Demon Empire had many more aerial options available to them thanks to the variability of demonkind.

'Interesting…'

Farialice's lip curled.

"Begin phase one. My troop, Roah's troop, Cannon's troop… and Bourg's troop will not participate, we'll be going up the mountain on foot."

"HAI!"

White City's warriors got to work immediately, not doubting Farialice's judgment despite the fact it went against everything they had prepared for.

Soon, massive platforms that almost looked like enlarged hot air balloon baskets soared into the air, each carrying dozens of warriors beneath the beating wings of massive birds of prey.

At the same time, Farialice led a troop of the remaining thousand on the ground and toward the middle mountain pass, her heart thumping with a will for battle.