I tried to force myself to sit and endure it, but my anxiety kept making me shift in my chair.

In the end, unable to bear it any longer, I sprang to my feet.

"Your Highness. Sometimes, you must know how to wait."

Seeing me like that, Malcoy scolded me, telling me to settle down and stay still for once.

I forced myself back into my seat, only to spring up again not long after.

"I should go even now. If I hurry, I should be able to catch up to those who left first. I will go and add my strength to theirs."

"They departed four days ago already. How exactly do you intend to catch up with them?"

Malcoy sighed and tried to dissuade me.

"Besides, have I not told you again and again that only if Your Highness firmly protects the citadel can those who left it fight with peace of mind?"

I repeated that process of sitting down and standing back up countless times.

It was like sitting on a bed of thorns.

As I remained there in restless agitation for some time, footsteps sounded outside the conference room.

"Your Highness!"

"Come in!"

No sooner had I spoken than the defense captain opened the door to the conference room and appeared.

"What happened?"

At the question I threw at him without even giving him time to catch his breath, the defense captain smiled brightly and said,

"Dame Arwen has defeated an enemy of legion size and is heading south according to plan!"

"And Eli?"

"The young lord of the Eli family has likewise raided the enemy's logistics base and achieved considerable results!"

At the successive reports of victory, my fists clenched tightly.

"Ahh."

Malcoy staggered and then collapsed into a chair.

He had scolded me, saying a man ought to know how to wait patiently, but it seemed he himself had been quite anxious after all.

"At present, all our forces have smoothly infiltrated the enemy rear, and a considerable number of the enemy are turning back to deal with the chaos behind them."

"How many?"

"They say that, of the thirty-one legions marching toward the border, about ten have turned back."

At those words, I found myself looking at Malcoy without realizing it.

It was exactly as Malcoy had predicted.

Malcoy had said that if our three legions infiltrated the enemy rear, the Empire would turn back at least ten of the thirty-one legions marching toward the border.

He had also said this was because the doctrine of the Imperial Army always called for mobilizing more than three times the necessary force to ensure victory, and because that was exactly the number of nobles whose territories lay not far from the border.

"We moved three legions and made ten legions turn back, so it is not a losing bargain."

"This is only the beginning."

Malcoy said with an unusually grave face.

"The success or failure of the operation depends on how well the kingdom's army that infiltrated the rear performs. Also, while they are disrupting the rear, the kingdom's border must hold firm. If the border collapses, everything will come to nothing."

Saying that every moment from now on would be a critical juncture, Malcoy laid out the plan once again.

"From a defender's standpoint, it is common sense to shorten the front line and make defense easier, but if we do that, in the end, only the kingdom suffers. Unlike the kingdom, where everything has stopped for the war, the Empire's industries are still functioning smoothly even at this very moment."

His tone sounded less as if he were explaining it to someone else and more as if he were repeating it to himself, checking the strengths and weaknesses of the operation.

"If things are left as they are, the kingdom may not be defeated in battle, but in the end it will be unable to bear the enormous war expenses and will have no choice but to collapse from within. My homeland, the Marseille Kingdom, was strangled to death in just that way."

As I listened to his explanation, I went over the plan once again as well.

Reinforcements organized from the rear had arrived one after another, and by now, the number of our forces deployed along the border was close to fifteen legions, roughly thirty thousand men.

The number of our forces who had boarded the Eastern Fleet's ships with the King was around five thousand, so the total force the kingdom was currently operating amounted to roughly thirty-five thousand men.

Compared to the approximately forty-seven legions the Empire had mobilized for the war against the kingdom, it was not even half, and compared to the Empire's total military strength, it was truly no more than a handful.

Even operating that handful of troops was making the kingdom's finances stagger.

If we had not, upon declaring independence, purged more than a hundred noble houses and confiscated their property, the kingdom's treasury would have collapsed long ago.

But even the wealth we had reclaimed in that way was not infinite.

As proof of that, the Grand Marshal had sent a letter.

It said that sending any more troops to the front was impossible, and that we had to stop the Imperial Army with the forces we already had, no matter what.

We were in a situation where we had to stop an enemy force of thirty-one legions currently approaching the border with fifteen legions, many of which included conscripts.

It would not be easy, but considering the advantage of defense, it was not entirely impossible either.

In fact, despite being overwhelmingly outnumbered so far, our forces had defended the border like an iron wall.

But even so, at most, we would only be able to hold for a year, or perhaps two.

After a war of attrition, the one that would lose in the end could only be the kingdom.

Just as Malcoy had said, unlike the kingdom, which had reorganized everything for war, the Empire maintained its peacetime system except for a few territories that had become battlefields.

"The kingdom must expand the front line somehow and force the Empire to accept bloodshed."

Malcoy continued in a deliberately calm tone.

"Fortunately, there are things the kingdom has over the Empire. The kingdom's army moves for one purpose alone, but the Imperial Army does not. The Legion Commanders who lead each legion each belong to different factions, and their political positions are also different."

Because he had served as a Legion Commander of the Empire for quite a long time, he knew the ills of the Imperial Army better than anyone.

He said that Legion Commanders belonging to different factions kept one another in check, and in severe cases, two factions even opposed each other within a single legion.

"That is precisely the Empire's blind spot that the kingdom must exploit."

The essence of the operation was to create a situation in which the enemy commanders, each moving for different goals, had no choice but to act separately.

Sending our forces into the rear and making the Legion Commanders with ties near the border leave the front line was also part of that work.

What remained now was how to divide the enemy's twenty-odd legions, but Malcoy had already prepared every plan regarding that as well.

If we waited, the results would come.

But merely waiting quietly still did not suit my temperament.

Especially not in a situation where my subordinates had infiltrated enemy territory and were carrying out an extremely dangerous mission.

All I wanted was to draw my sword at once and head to the battlefield.

Of course, I could not do that.

Malcoy would not stand by and let me rush out of the citadel.

"The members of the Royal House of Leonberk have a tendency to invite danger far too readily."

"The Royal House of Dortmund is no less impressive."

When I mentioned the Royal House of Dortmund, father and son having gone off together quite amiably to the imperial mainland, Malcoy snorted.

"You must be joking."

Malcoy's face was full of cynicism.

"The people who benefit most from the Leonberk Kingdom's war are those of the Dotrin Kingdom. It is thanks to the Empire's attention being focused on the kingdom that Dotrin's territory has been safe until now."

He spoke passionately, saying that the King of Dotrin was extremely cunning.

"You called them the Azure Sky Knights, did you not? They are the same. You may think the kingdom is receiving help from them, but in truth, it is closer to them borrowing the kingdom's troops in place of their own. You could also see it as them waging a proxy war with only a single knightly order put forward. The kingdom is being used."

At words so harsh they were almost biting, I shrugged.

Strictly speaking, Malcoy's words were not entirely wrong.

In fact, the Dotrin Kingdom had not committed any troops to the war except for the Azure Sky Knights.

It was partly because the Full Moon Clan and the Lord of Pestilence had occupied the sea of trees, making it impossible for troops to advance by land, but in truth, if they had looked for a way, it was not as if none existed.

Even so, Malcoy's interpretation went too far.

That was only natural.

To Malcoy, who did not know about the house of the Marquis of the Azure Sky, the Azure Sky Knights would seem like nothing more than a single knightly order with a special means of transportation called wyverns.

But contrary to Malcoy's thoughts, the Azure Sky Knights were not merely a single knightly order.

Not only was each individual's combat strength outstanding, but their mobility was the greatest on the continent.

On top of that, the current head of the Dortmund family who led them was a true monster who could devour several knightly orders all by himself.

If I had to convert them into military strength, I would say they were at least equal to three legions and more than a Penta knight.

But even though I explained by bringing up even a Penta knight, something I had never actually seen, it apparently did not really sink in for Malcoy.

Malcoy simply answered my words with a lukewarm, "Is that so?" and immediately brought up another subject.

"What worries me most is what the Emperor's intentions are."

He went on voicing his concern that, if the Emperor wished it, making the Empire's legions, now split into many parts, move for a single purpose would be no difficult matter, and that he could not understand why the Emperor was simply pouring in his strength so crudely as he was now.

It was a reasonable point.

I, too, knew that the Emperor possessed such ability.

But I guessed that the present situation was not what the Emperor had intended.

Malcoy asked me the basis for that guess.

"Wait. Once the Rangers who went out scouting return, it will become clear."

And when a day had passed, the Rangers who had gone out scouting finally returned.

"They say the enemy commander-in-chief is one of the direct line of the Imperial House of Bourgogne."

"Which one is he?"

"Perhaps because they feared a raid by the Wyvern Riders, they have not even raised a flag, so we cannot tell at present."

At the Ranger's words, I immediately sent Yorden out and told him to identify the imperial prince.

A keen-eyed Ranger who had gone with me to the Empire's imperial capital should be able to tell which imperial prince he was just by seeing him from a distance.

Not long after, Yorden returned.

The Ranger's expression was brighter than ever.

Looking at that face, my heart began to pound.

It was as if I had heard news of someone dear to me.

"Which one is he?"

Yorden grinned and replied,

"It's that bastard."

He said it was the very bastard I had been waiting for so long.

I ended up laughing.

Because I was so glad.

"Who in the world is that bastard?"

Malcoy, unable to understand the conversation between me and Yorden, frowned and asked.

"The hope of all who oppose the Empire."

A direct scion of the Imperial House of Bourgogne whom I had coddled during the last defense of the Dotrin Kingdom, carefully feeding him military achievements lest he come to any harm.

"The epitome of incompetence and greed."

"Surely..."

Malcoy, belatedly understanding the situation, looked at me.

I silently held up three fingers.

"That's right. It is the Third Imperial Prince."

The calamity of the Empire I had spent several years painstakingly raising,

had finally appeared on the kingdom's battlefield.

I was so very glad to see him.