In little more than a month’s time, a puzzling day of battle came, for as soon as dawn broke, not three, but five armies showed up:

* The Demon Queen’s

* The World Elves

* The Order of the True Goddess

* The Alliance of the World Tree

* The Lockpick Hero

It was puzzling, because nobody had been aware of the Order and the Alliance at all until just then. They had come into existence just three weeks ago in anticipation of this very battle; they didn’t even know the other guy existed until their marching columns started meeting each other and their captains couldn’t identify the other’s banners.

The mortal nations were like that, doing things on a whim, in short order, and without prior warning.

As a result, there were four banners flying that day, but under each of those four banners were dozens of colors, coats-of-arms, and insignias. It was simply logistically impossible to color-coordinate this world’s equivalent of NATO and the Warsaw Pact within a span of three weeks; the logistics of turning in tens of thousands of uniforms, dunking them in dye, and shipping them back to their soldiers, was just too impossible for a pre-industrial world which hadn’t invented trains yet.

The real root of this issue was even more vexing.

Both sides believed their intelligence and counterintelligence operations to be flawless. The truth was that both sides’ counterintelligence operations were so good that they had both successfully fooled the other into thinking they didn’t exist at all—and if they were the only secret alliance, then why bother color-coordinating? This led to both sides cutting the budget on color coordination, which was a prohibitively expensive endeavor just for a one-off military campaign.

One might believe this to be stupid and unrealistic. However, in societies where politicking, and not rational thinking, was the meta for surviving in the upper echelons of society, it regularly occurs that a decision-making body accumulates a critical mass of sycophants to the point that the last remaining pocket of diverse ideas shrivels into nothing, and the real facts on the ground never reach the top leader’s ears until it’s too late.

Even now, each camp’s tailors and seamstresses were busy crafting new banners and flags just for the sake of clearly identifying each unit’s allegiances. It wouldn’t take long, actually, but it was still a few hours. The soldiers had taken to painting color-coded stripes upon their helmets and shields, because clearly, high command was high on something before they decided to just charge in here without doing something as simple as this.

Not until a sufficient number of banners were produced that any of the armies wanted to make a move, for fear of accidentally moving against their own allies. Verbal identification was out the window—anyone could do it, and if everyone did it, then you still wouldn’t know who you were fighting! On the other hand, violating the Convention on Banners in Warfare was also out the window: an army disgracing its kingdom, violating pre-established codes of honor, would result in political and economic contempt against that kingdom. Therefore, banners were more trustworthy than words.

There was, however, one man who was not beholden to any of this. This was a legal fact, because the Lockpick Hero was an individual, not a corporate nor military entity. Banners? Flags? Answering to someone else who probably didn’t have his best interests in mind? That didn’t matter to him.

He was no soldier, and yet, as he nonchalantly strode forth through the Forest of the World Tree, entirely shattering the barrier that fenced it off from the rest of the world like it was nothing, all the armies—camped outside the forest, marching towards it, or watching from within—quavered in their sandals and boots. This was a man who could not be restrained, not even when a rain of arrows from the elven rangers came, and not even when the World Tree itself fired a great spell at him, shrouding him in a firestorm, was he dissuaded from the path he walked.

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—A straight line.

He reached the base of the World Tree—then turned back.

This confused the World Elves and the Archangel herself. Did he suddenly become…afraid? Some of the elven rangers jeered at him, calling him a coward.

The truth was, he just wanted to make sure this wasn’t a fluke. For Christ’s sake, he walked in a straight line! That shouldn’t be possible! What kind of defense system did they have going on here?

Thus, he reached the edge of the forest, and once again turned around—to the World Elves’ horror.

This time, their defense was more sustained—more desperate. A thicker cloud of arrows rained, and the Alliance of the World Tree joined the fray, having finally made 3,000 banners to equip all their platoons. These were mortals who revered the World Tree, and earnestly believed that it shouldn’t be touched.

…On the other hand, they also believed that they couldn’t touch the Lockpick Hero. Fighting the Demon Queen’s forces was also out of the question, and so they focused their energies on fighting the Order of the True Goddess, instead.

In the first place, some of these nations were saved by the Lockpick Hero, and neither did they really have a bone to pick with the Demon Queen. Their participation in this battle amounted to “gaining rep and glory,” and it just happened to be in the name of the World Tree.

Just like the Alliance, the Order of the True Goddess also didn’t have any real vested interest in fighting the World Elves in particular. Yes, their kings may have received a few visions from the True Goddess of Sera to inspire them to support the Lockpick Hero, and neither did they think that turning the World Tree off then on again, for just a fleeting second, was a bad idea. However, they had to be realistic: the only person who could really do anything about the real problem here was the Lockpick Hero, and it didn’t look like he was going to have any problems doing it at all.

So, just like the Alliance, the Order was just here to rack up rep and glory.

Even if there were a hundred-thousand soldiers on each side, moving in grand formations that kicked up dust in their wake, that was just the result of hundreds of nations sending a thousand soldiers each—not even an exceptionally huge chunk of their respective standing armies. Given their intentions in this battle, they wouldn’t even be fighting tooth-and-claw, either.

The majority of battles in this world was just taunting each other and occasionally hooking the other guy’s leg. Few battles were ever to-the-death, although people certainly died. The aggrieved were simply compensated, and the whole thing, dismissed as an operating expense.

Although this battle between mortals might seem unnecessary, the meta of this world was politicking. The one who would come out of this time in history and be able to say, “We fought for the victors,” had more clout, rights, and privileges than the losers.

That said, they were just poking each other with very long sticks right now, and among the miles-wide battle lines clashing with each other in the plains surrounding the Forest of the World Tree, only twenty-one people have been sent to the back lines for bone fractures thus far.

Compared to their petty little war games, the Demon Queen had a real bone to pick with the World Elves. The friendly forest bastards were quaint little creatures, thinking themselves above everyone else. Certainly, they guarded the World Tree and were very good at it, but their stubbornness as defenders also extended to their stubbornness in general, not even listening to reason!

Just turn it off then on again, that’s what the goddess had said, and yet, why didn’t the World Elves follow? She had created them, and yet they dared question her wisdom?

Vampires, orcs, goblins, and wicked men flooded the forest, setting it alight to flush out the elven rangers. Tree roots shot out, impaling charging trolls and war boars, flailing them around, then tossing them away. The magics of the Four Demon Generals cut through swathes of forest in cataclysmic beams, vaporizing hapless defenders, while Sages swept away the goblin hordes with raging rivers, and Talking Trees lulled entire orc battalions to eternal sleep in clouds of poison pollen, turning their corpses back to nature. The wicked murdered the rangers and strung them up from their own tree-homes, and the rangers avenged their comrades in efficient lightning assaults that left the forest in silence.

For these two sides, this brutality had to be earned, and it was: by 400 years of contempt that had, all this time, bubbled under a facade of peace.

With a hundred-thousand mortal soldiers poking each other in the plains around, and true murder and carnage between demons and elves in the forest behind him, the Lockpick Hero reached the base of the World Tree, proving once again that its barriers were just feel-good contraptions that failed to keep anyone out.

The Archangel waited for him at the very entrance.