During the period of physical isolation in the underground base the event we had all been waiting for began, my companions and I spent a lot of time following and speculating what would happen when the enemy army attacked the borders of the kingdom, but we did not expect such shocking news.
As the weeks went by the news, we could get from the intelligence reports got more and more aggressive, the traders had a few weeks to plan their moves, but when the news of the war spread completely to all spheres of influence in the realm, chaos broke out in the Kingdom.
In order to prevent normal people from being able to easily flee the kingdom the borders were basically closed completely by the army for the sake of the kingdom's security, but that didn't stop many people from fleeing the southern region of the kingdom to avoid being involved in the war.
The main and secondary roads were used by traders and the army were swamped by refugees leaving the southern region, this meant that many civilian caravans had to take risks and travel through less safe routes. If a certain necromancer were still alive and occupying a settlement in an isolated area, he would have been very happy, that his home would be visited by many lost people in need of shelter.
But I do not doubt that there are other hidden threats spread across the realm, we may have been able to track down the red sparrow before it managed to create its permanent base within the realm. Not knowing when he entered the realm it wouldn't have been so easy to find him unfortunately it's ridiculous not to think that more threats of the same level or style are still lurking within the realm or wanting to enter it.
As our only source of information was the reports until Raven got back which is taking longer than it should, I'm not the only one to notice that Mia gets more nervous with each passing day, it was really a shock to read the report that started more or less like this:
'The first battle on the southern border began and on the first day the casualties were extremely high for both sides, but the casualties were greater in the enemy army.'
After that simple sentence, but with scary content, the report was divided into how the battle took place and the movements in the enemy camp after the battle. By the time I was reading the report, not only had the battle been over for two days, the next battle could be taking place right now.
Although the realm has its own way of communicating the news through magical messaging tools, they don't feel it necessary to do so at a fast rate to the rest of the realm.
In Milena's words, these reports have to be approved by more than one supervisor in order to be eliminated, this means that there is always a good period of time between the report of an event and the event itself.
The fact that this report arrived the next day shows how urgent it is, it would be normal to have to wait three to five days rather than a full day to hear from the border, Melina really emphasized this point when she said my earlier comment about discrepancy of the time was idiotic.
Even after understanding how quick the report about the first battle was, I still believe it could be better it's not like there's a lack of people on the border or in the capital to relay the news to the remains of the kingdom's bases. Just modify the message protocol a little so that the basic shortcut report is not considered secret.
It makes sense to hide many things from the battle like who's giving the orders and what's involved in the battle, but the battle itself doesn't make sense, doing with that part of the battle has to be analyzed for security reasons so it can be passed on to the rest. of the kingdom is a waste of time. It's not a secret what happened during the battle as there were a ridiculous number of witnesses.
After the first battle the kingdom finally entered the state of war completely, the borders that were being guarded more intensively than usual were basically closed, except for the materials bought by the army itself that still has permission to enter the kingdom, everything is fine. being barred and what is useful is learned.
This causes a lot of traders and adventurers to be irritated by the new policy on the frontier, I find it very strange that they don't realize that crowding around the border of the warring kingdom is a very stupid move.
This doesn't increase the chances of them entering the realm and make it easier for something bad to happen on the border, nor does one of them realize that if the border they are near is attacked they will be pulled into a messy confrontation that could end up killing them.
It's very strange, I feel that a good part of these merchants may be getting paid to keep this theater on the frontier. With the soldiers focused on them, the chance of spies infiltrating the kingdom across the border increases, unfortunately even though all the military power of the kingdom is not completely focused on the part of the frontier where the war started, there is an insufficient number of soldiers to patrol the rest of the troops. borders completely.
It's not enough to simply have a soldier facing every meter of the border, without the necessary skills, low-level soldiers don't have much chance of detecting competent spies. Most threats must be entering over a shadow curtain, during the day it is already difficult for soldiers and mages to notice the shadow element if the terrain is not clean, at night this type of ward is useless to detect threats to the realm, but since enough trackers to spread across the entire realm as a surveillance network the most common strategy is to disguise them as normal troopers and blend them into the sentries.
So, the enemies don't know if the sentries that are on watch can or won't notice them or if they will activate some loud alarms if they detect them, often the silent alarms are activated so that those who are invading the realm don't know they are going in direction of a trap.
The battle on the border between armies is not the only form of dispute between the kingdoms on the borders, I believe that even the northern border that is extremely difficult to defend against spies and saboteurs is being the scene of a silent battle, between the sentries and the infiltrators from enemy kingdoms.
But in the report, there is no report about spies being captured at the border, but this is not strange results of this type of operation should not be spread different than what happens in the large-scale battles of war.
Spreading news about spies will only interfere with the work of those who have the duty to kill, deceive or capture spies, they need anonymity in an intelligence war since if the enemies discover that a form of infiltration is compromised, they will look for a new one, this types More things will happen the longer it takes the enemies to notice something like this, but your men will fall into the hands of the counterintelligence division.
It wasn't until three days after the war began that our fearless leader returned from her personal challenge, her face still a little pale behind her excited smile and it was clear to everyone that the political repercussions of the last mission were great.
I believe that starting the war didn't help her, but it seems that it also didn't stop idiots from being idiots, Raven should have come back sooner if she wasn't the target of some political schemes between the high command and the temples, during a war the temples are always problematic as they are responsible for preventing the realms from breaking the rules of the gods and bringing more chaos to the world.
Half the team was in the room, but that didn't stop Raven from talking about official matters, it seems that unfortunately our break is over and she hasn't even had time to rest for a day. Being the leader is actually more difficult than simply being a follower, a lot of work and responsibility, I don't envy even one of Raven's positions.
"Have they rested enough while the rest of the kingdom is at war? Yeah, I know, it was a surprise also to me and our superiors when troops from enemy kingdoms appeared near the border, incompetent spies didn't even notice the enemy troop movements."
"If it wasn't so difficult to move so many black and gray core tier troops without causing commotion, we would have been completely taken by surprise by the enemies. But this lack of information still hurt us a little, many resources had not been moved to the border for fear of being used in the first battle."
"What was missing during the battle? In the report we saw the battle looked in our favor, the numbers showed that our side lost fewer soldiers."
"This does not mean that we are winning, it is obvious that we will have fewer casualties as we are defending the soldiers had the help and protection of some runic formations and this saved many lives, but this number would be even higher if the kingdom had more time to assemble your defense before battle."
"You must remember that we are in the attrition phase of the war, they will try to reduce as many warriors and mages as possible on our side. The high command has certain infractions that both kingdoms are employed cheap slaves in their army, they are the slave kingdoms and corporations' way of destroying our kingdom which has a very clear stance on slavery. This has made us not very popular in this area of the continent, our enemies have a much larger and more stable supply line than we do."
It seems that the situation in the kingdom is not so optimistic, I think the number of enemies is higher than expected.
"But now we better focus on our mission, it's not our job to lead the troops or decide where the kingdom's resources are going to be allocated. We will hunt our targets again, and now our destination is the enemy realm again."