As some parties were siding with the Church, others allied with the Voidwalkers. The side backing the Church was completely confident of victory, while those backing the Voidwalkers hoped for a huge upset that would benefit them. In a bid to emerge the victor, both sides went all in.

The nobles that sided with the Voidwalkers sent over their militia and mercenaries, but Da Xue turned them back. To the Voidwalkers, harboring soldiers that did not meet their standard would lower their chance of winning the war. The Voidwalkers also made it clear that the provisions the nobles offered, along with their mercenaries, were not part of that return.

“Our rations are more than enough to cater to the army, no? If I add what we have now with what the Merchant Walker and his contractor friends brought over, even after our recruitment drive ends, we will have enough to feed the army for three years,” the Thane Walker said, his brows furrowed in concentration.

The Voidwalkers did not need a lot of soldiers, so the resources they had to part with were not much.

“Our friends from the North, aren’t they one of our primary offensive forces?” The Thane Walker asked.

“Their arrival will depend on how fast Grant’s men can set up that transporter portal. Since they’re doing this in secret, we can’t expect them to finish it soon,” the Archmage replied.

“He’s putting himself out there, huh?” The Thane Walker chuckled. “I can’t believe he’s willing to stick his neck out like this.”

“He’s brighter than he looks. He saw a glimpse of Isythre’s future in the few papers I showed him and realized what the best choice knew,” the Archmage replied. “I’ll admit that I didn’t predict him to go all out like this, though. I imagined him sending some of his most trusted underlings to smooth things up for us, but who would expect the Vice President to personally set up a transporter portal linked to the Northern Continent for our sake, his welfare be damned? One could only wonder the methods he used to send those restricted spatial materials to the North…”

Should his activities be discovered, the least Grant could expect would be expulsion from the Association, thus automatically losing his chance at the Presidency.

“Well, it’s all thanks to his valiant effort that we manage to cover the biggest weak spot of our plan. And so in conclusion, we now have a slight edge over our enemy,” the Thane Walker said as he wrapped up the last few pages of the report detailing the groups that had taken a side in the war, their respective military support, as well as the total gap of power between the two warring blocs.

The ones who had made clear that they were on the Voidwalker’s side were the Duke of Wright, VP Grant, the Dole family — the Merchant Walker’s very own descendants — along with their coalition of business partners, and the Chandra Clan, which was Attie’s tribe of origin.

Since the moment the Church made their belligerence clear, Attie drew from her authority as the tribe’s former chief, the current Messenger of their most revered War God, and the holder of the mighty War God’s Sword to write an emergency letter home.

The Chandra clan, meanwhile, had long grown beyond their beginning as a tribe of barbarians whose understanding of the world was limited to the Steppe. They enjoyed the fruit of participating in the Dole family’s Northern-Southern Commercial Route, particularly the economic prosperity that had allowed the clan to flourish and re-establish themselves as a city-state.

Then, the perks of a stable society became apparent. The Chandra people enjoyed better education, higher yield and quality of food, and access to better, mightier weapons. Soon, they dominated the entire Steppe through soft power alone. Even though they had long refrained from the Steppe Barbarians’ fight for kingship, the Chandra clan had become a force respected by all in the Steppe.

As an esteemed member of the most respected clan along with her other lofty titles, Attie’s letter meant even more than the commands of the current King. Every tribe in the Steppe instantly gather their best warriors befitting her standards before organizing them into the strongest and most resilience nomadic cavalry the Steppe had ever produced.

Some strategists may point out the limited use of cavalry in what was effectively a defense against a siege. The only way one could imagine putting the cavalry into use was to have them directly clash with the Church’s infantry; but, how would that be different from using them as garden-variety cannon fodders?

The chief tacticians of the other side, the Archmage and the Thane Walker, had different thoughts, though. They were never intended to be used to guard themselves but to round up the enemies and annihilate them as follow up attacks!

The Voidwalkers never intended to play pure defense, even though the Church had done everything they could to back them into a corner and to a disadvantage. Instead, the Voidwalkers wanted their enemies to regret ever picking them on their home turf, and the expansive, open field right outside Arfin was the perfect battlefield for the nomadic cavalry to charge through their foes!

No one could provoke the Voidwalker so recklessly and not pay dearly for it; even the Church.

Aside from Attie’s calvary, the Voidwalkers were aided by the Northern nations’ elite troops of martial powerhouses. Far from trying to take advantage of the Southern continent’s infighting, the North only sent in their help because their sons managed to out-stubborn their Southern peers in school.

Headstrong and always clean-shaven, Wu’ke, the leader of the Northern gang, had named Da Xue as “mair than juist thae Northern lads’ schuil; it belongs tae us tae!” and had wanted more of his brethren to obtain world-class education from it as he and his boys did. Hence, he would defend the academy from the hands of the religious zealots with a call to arms that sounded like this, “Come, brothers! Time tae shaw thae Southern scunners us Northerners’ spirits!”

Since many of these brave-hearted young lads were scions of Northern nobilities, the nations had no choice but to join the fray to protect them. They could not possibly leave their heirs and young masters on their own devices and hoped that they did not die ina foreign war, could they?

This was the kind of incident that prompted the Thane Walker to wonder how differently Da Xue’s coalition would be had the Archmage not rejected most of the students’ offer to help or demotivated them from joining the war. If the Archmage had stirred the students instead of turning them out, Da Xue would have been able to secure a tidal wave of support. The nobles would automatically side with the academy their children were defending instead of supporting the Church.

Not that it was a lost opportunity. Just as the Archmage had made abundantly clear; the Voidwalkers were far from desperate.

Curiously, in Umbra’s roundup, Link was not listed as part of Walkers’ bloc despite contributing a good deal of logistics and soldiers. Duke Link was trying to have his cake and eat it. His minimal aid was to protect himself from accusations of going against the Church while still wanting to appear supportive to his business partner and profit provider, Da Xue.

A two-faced opportunist like him would never be regarded as the Walkers’ friend. They had decided that the people he sent in were only going to be used as expendables at best.

At the very end of the page was a section termed “Unknown affiliation” where an unexpected name was found among the groups — the Dragon Knights.

Since the President and the Vice President of these elite sky-conquerors were Baiyi’s family, one would have expected them to stand for their liege as his private militia. There should not even be an instance when their loyalty was a question; and yet, this awkward situation happened anyway, and it was the result of a long-term issue.

The dragons were not the problem. They were simple creatures who all heed Aya directly, after all. The problem was the knights. Upon receiving the Dragon Knights into his hands, Baiyi had no immediate plans to brainwash them into supporting the Voidwalkers unconditionally. Instead, he had decided to change their minds and allowed them to foster their loyalty to him through time and quiet ingratiation.

Unfortunately, this meant that many of the knights remained uncorrected when they assumed that their liege was the Emperor instead of Baiyi. It was common among the Dragon Knights to believe that they were only renting a space in Da Xue instead of belonging to the Voidwalkers.

The Archmage was unsurprisingly apoplectic at the reveal and had pressured Aya to expel every single knight who failed to pledge loyalty out of Da Xue. The young dragon lady, however, did not have it in her hearts to kick those under her wings to the streets, and so her only response to the Archmage’s fury was endless bawling, even when the First Walker was screaming at her.

“How do you expect yourself to be accepted into my prestigious Rohlserlian royal bloodline with a pathetic character like yours, hmm?” The Archmage shrieked. He was so furious that he was rattling off imaginary scenarios again.

Even when under that much pressure, Aya offer no rebuttals other than crying harder as her eyes became redder and puffer. Mordred, too, joined her mother in wailing and sobbing loudly as she pled for the knights.

In the end, the Archmage managed to force the sobbing woman to fire everyone whose loyalty lied elsewhere other than Da Xue, which caused a dramatic shrinking of the dragon knights’ size into just a handful of seasoned riders and some Da Xue students who did not opt to flee. As a result, the dragons vastly outnumbered their masters, and what was supposed to be a force that dominated the air became nigh non-existent. The crux of the fiasco was that these dragon knights were the Walkers’ specialized counter to the angels, who were similarly powerful aerial fighters.

Needless to say, this debacle had dragged the Voidwalkers’ offensive powers down. It was only moderately mitigated by the Engineer, who offered to solve the Voidwalkers’ lack of airforce through his way.

It did little to mollify the Archmage’s anger, though. “That female reptile and that brat, Mordred! They depend on Hope on everything so much that they can’t do a single thing right on their own! They have the knights under their wings for ten years!” He snarled. “Just look at every other girl. They were all taking things under their hand and manage them splendidly, like real, respectable adults. I guess it’s the schism of maturity between humans and dragons compared with age, is that it?”

“Um, I think we should keep our hot take to ourselves,” the Thane Walker said helpfully. “When the Third Walker descended, let’s not mention any of this to him.”

“Pfft. Like I need you to remind me,” the Archmage sniped.

There were still several Voidwalkers who were still inactive in the Void even after Baiyi had gone to his deep sleep, but preparations had already been made so that when needed, Tisdale could summon them to the real world much as she did previously. It would have been a colossal waste of power not to use the Second or Third Walker.

“That’s all for our ordinary, mortal power. Honestly, our challenge lies in the angels,” the Archmage said.

“Well, they could only stay in our realm for three days and they can’t go past a transporter portal. If things ever go south, we could always just retreat to Da Xue’s micro-realm.”

This was the reason why the Voidwalkers could never truly be defeated. If the angels turned out to be invincible, the Voidalkers could still just retreat to the academy and wait until three days were up. Then, when the Church’s supermundane force glumly return to heaven, the Voidalkers would emerge again and crush the Church.

There were two problems to doing that: one, it was, quite frankly, a humiliating chicken-out method; two, the Voidwalkers would be forced to lose Noirciel because the girl was similarly unable to pass the transporter portal and reach Da Xue. Unless the Void was keen to live under the threat of the gods’”divine punishment” forever, they would do better to succeed in protecting their angel.

That was not the only reason why the Voidwalkers were obliged to protect Noirciel from her former brethren. A few days ago, Baiyi, despite being in deep slumber, had commanded every Walker to protect the angel because she was the key to their future.

The message was sent directly to the Voidwalkers’ mind like a divine decree from a god. It was short and devoid of elaboration, but if Baiyi had squeezed out what little time he had to give a direct order to the Voidwalkers, Noirciel’s importance was beyond a doubt.

“So, how’s Noirciel?” The Thane Walker saved the most crucial question for the last.

“She’s not doing too badly at all. We’d managed to learn to compress her power and will into a mortal’s body from the Church’s ritual, and so we’re transferring her mind into the Mindstone as we speak. It’s gonna take time, though. As her power, we came up with this recently,” the Archmage replied as he produced a bracelet akin to rosary bead filled with fist-sized empty crystals.

“It won’t be as good as using a large vessel from the get-go, but with the Church’s trick in energy compression, we will be able to store more power into these little beads. Thus, this is now our back-up,” the Archmage explained as he fidgeted with the bracelet. “It looks tacky and a bit unfashionable, though. Like some monk from the Journey to the West, even…”