"Damn, this is exhausting... first time I’ve ever worn armor this thick. I’m roasting to death."

Taking advantage of a brief lull when the column’s pace eased slightly, Old Bear finally got the chance to take off his heavy helmet and breathe in the still fairly cool autumn air.

Looking out, the thunderous mass of the army stretched to his left, while dense woodland lined the open plain to his right. He was positioned near the edge, mechanically moving in step with the marching rhythm.

The army never stopped moving, only occasionally slowing its pace. With armor this heavy on top of that, even with his own decent strength, Old Bear could feel the physical exhaustion steadily deepening.

"Man, I knew this would be hard, but I didn’t think it’d be this hard." Old Bear sighed, starting to regret why he had ever chosen to get mixed up in something like this instead of enjoying his good life as a local boss in Belrand. He was basically asking for suffering.

"Then why’d you take the job?"

The person beside him took off his helmet as well and asked curiously, "I remember this wasn’t forced, right?"

"Right, not forced. But this came straight down from the Rat King himself, and supposedly it was also an order from that Emperor. No matter what, I had to show my face a little, didn’t I?"

Old Bear tilted his head up at a forty-five-degree angle, gazing toward the clouds covering the distant mountain woods, and said with a rather melancholy air:

"During those major incidents in the Lower District, I was always out working somewhere else. By the time I came back, the whole sky had changed. Sure, I’ve still got some old ties with the Rat King, but how long can that kind of old favor last? Take the two smuggling routes I control. I know the people above are only turning a blind eye. One day they’ll cut them off completely. And when that day comes, this local big shot who looks so impressive won’t be anything more than an ant those higher-ups can casually crush to death."

"...You’re surprisingly good at thinking ahead in times of peace."

"I’m just ambitious."

Old Bear grinned. He was just about to go on bragging to the man beside him about how he had clawed his way up from an unnamed nobody in the Lower District to where he stood now when... his gaze suddenly sharpened, sweeping toward the dense wilderness on both sides.

"Something’s wrong." Old Bear’s expression turned serious. "I can feel eyes on us!"

"Oh? You can even sense that?" The other man looked around in surprise. "I don’t see anything."

"You think I survived in the Lower District this long for no reason? Without sharp instincts, I’d have been dead ages ago! The watcher’s probably at the five o’clock direction. Very well hidden. I can’t pin down the exact location."

Old Bear hurriedly pulled his helmet back on and urged the man beside him, "Quick, quick, quick. Follow the plan. Chest out, head up, march properly. Don’t look over there. Blend into the main force... and remember, what we’re playing is elite soldiers!"

...

...

"Young Master Muen."

A woman wearing the crest of the Royal Mage Corps # Nоvеlight # on her chest descended from the sky. After giving Muen, who sat astride his horse, a slight bow of greeting, she lowered her voice and said:

"So far we’ve discovered at least thirteen groups of unidentified personnel lingering around the column. Some of them should be the Kingdom’s rats, along with intelligence agents from other countries. What should we do next?"

"Only thirteen groups?" Muen kept his eyes forward, still sitting tall and straight on the magnificent white horse, though he frowned slightly. "That’s fewer than I expected."

"Thirteen groups are only the ones we found."

The female mage shook her head and explained, "People in the intelligence business usually have extremely refined concealment methods. Truly experienced veterans are difficult even for us to detect... unless we fully spread out magical detection. But that would easily alert them, and with the number of mages currently marching with the army, we couldn’t sustain it for long."

"I see..."

Muen stroked his chin and pondered for a moment. "Then ignore them."

"I-ignore them?"

"That’s right. If they want to watch, let them watch. If we don’t let them, wouldn’t that just mean we’re feeling guilty?"

Muen smiled. "We’ve made such a huge spectacle of this. Of course we’re not afraid of them taking a few extra looks. The more they look, the more excited I get... no, the happier I get. Just make sure no flaws are exposed."

"Yes. Please rest assured, Young Master Muen."

The female mage answered seriously, "Everything is being carried out according to your instructions and Grand Duke Oranriel’s."

"Then go get back to it."

"Yes."

"Oh, right."

Muen called out to the female mage just as she was about to turn and leave.

"What’s your name?"

"My... my name?"

"We’ve been working together this long. I should at least know what you’re called."

"O-Orlina."

"Then Miss Orlina, I’ll be relying on you and the others these next few days."

The light around him warped slightly as Muen turned his head and showed a bright smile as radiant as spring sunlight.

"Ah... mm! Please don’t worry, Young Master Muen. We’ll definitely do our best!"

Under that handsome, sunlit smile, Orlina nearly fell under his spell. Fortunately, some inexplicable chill snapped her awake. Her cheeks slightly flushed, she nodded in response, then turned and sped away.

Only after quite a while did Muen turn back in confusion, pull open the little booklet in his hand, and scratch his head.

"The best way to build good relations with subordinates—raise the corners of your mouth forty-five degrees in a smile... doesn’t seem all that effective after all."

He flipped the booklet over and looked at the author’s name on the back.

Pink Bear.

"..."

Damn it. He should’ve known that dead bear handing this thing over with such an earnest face back then couldn’t possibly have meant anything good.

Muen clenched the booklet in one hand, about to throw it away... but after thinking it over carefully, he still put it back.

Although it was packed with plenty of Pink Bear’s personal nonsense, it really did contain some genuinely useful experience and knowledge.

Before this, Muen had never led an army into war, nor had he ever organized and commanded so many people to do the same thing.

Even the most extraordinary genius could not perfectly accomplish, on the first try, something he had never done before. So during the previous three days, Muen had mostly remained in the role of an observer.

In this operation, Pink Bear had finally gotten serious for once and displayed a capability worthy of the title of Regent. In only three days, he had made all of Belrand spin at full speed.

From the national treasury and officials at every level above, down to the factories and the common people at the bottom, a silent mobilization had unfolded within Belrand’s fog. Through the full-force workings of every side, Muen had finally, on the third day, mounted that carefully chosen white steed and led an army of one hundred thousand out of the city.

It was unquestionably a feat.

Anyone who understood what had happened in Belrand over those three days would marvel at the ability of the person who had coordinated it all, and at the speed with which every part of the Empire had mobilized. It was like a giant mechanical construct, with every side of Belrand functioning as one of its gears. If even a single gear had gone wrong, the entire machine would have jammed.

And yet under such tangled and complex circumstances, that enormous mechanical creation had still managed to run smoothly in such a short span of time.

So when Muen was the one who finally took hold of that massive machine, he felt tremendous pressure. He knew that with his current ability as a commander, it would be difficult for him to truly lead an army of one hundred thousand.

But fortunately...

"An elite army of one hundred thousand? Heh..."

Muen laughed at himself somewhat mockingly, then suddenly muttered in a low voice, "Illumination Spell, Fifth Form—modified."

The light and shadow around him distorted. Muen gradually turned transparent and swung down from the horse.

Yet atop that white steed, another Muen Campbell remained, staring forward with noble bearing as he led the army onward.

The Royal Knights following behind Muen shifted their gaze slightly, noticing the change, but made no move at all. They still guarded "Muen Campbell" at his side.

Everything seemed unchanged.

Only Muen himself was now temporarily free to slip through the orderly ranks of soldiers. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

"If only my Illumination Spell were enough, maybe this wouldn’t have to be so troublesome."

Muen sighed, but the moment the words left his mouth, he realized that was impossible. Setting aside how immense an Illumination Spell it would take to simulate an army of one hundred thousand, the inherent flaws of this kind of pure light distortion when used on such a large scale would never fool anyone.

Take the trembling of the ground he could feel right now. Even if he drove his Illumination Spell to heaven-shaking, ghost-wailing heights, there was absolutely no way he could develop it to the point of reproducing vibration patterns too.

So in a certain sense, this army of one hundred thousand really did exist. Only...

Muen brushed past a soldier. As he passed, he looked through the slit in the heavy visor... and found nothing inside.

That’s right. Nothing inside.

An army of one hundred thousand—even if they squeezed Pink Bear dry, squeezed him until not a single drop remained, even if they drove the Empire’s officials to death from overwork within three days, there was absolutely no way they could put one together.

But through Pink Bear’s tireless efforts, the massive showering of money, the stripping bare of every armory’s stockpile, and the united cooperation of every side, in those three days he had forcibly scraped together something else.

—One hundred thousand sets of pig-iron armor that looked intimidating on the outside, but were actually useless and of terrible quality.

That was the truth of this army of one hundred thousand: using one hundred thousand ornamental suits of armor to impersonate one hundred thousand elite soldiers.

Of course, one hundred thousand suits of armor were only the foundation that made this plan possible... Muen’s gaze shifted slightly. As if it had actually sensed his stare even in this disguised state, one suit of armor suddenly puffed out its chest much higher than the one beside it.

That one was real.

One of the 9,531 actual people in this army of one hundred thousand.

If it were only one hundred thousand suits of armor, anyone experienced would certainly find the flaws easily. Marching was not just an army simply walking forward. Setting up camp, lighting cooking fires, building hearths... all sorts of traces of daily life, all kinds of supply consumption and leftovers, were also part of an army.

And those more than nine thousand people, barely scraped together within three days from Belrand’s guards, security forces, and various other personnel—a chaotic mix of fish and dragons—were the ones who would create those traces.

During the day, they would carry the Empire’s banners and mix themselves into the flood of armor.

At night, the mages marching with the army would set up alert barriers according to the procedures of a normal army, and under the cover of darkness and those barriers, each of them would create ten men’s worth of traces of daily life.

There were even even more logistics coordinators, transport workers, and all kinds of laborers behind this "army." To outsiders—and even to those people themselves—they too were part of the proof that this army existed...

One hundred thousand sets of shoddy armor.

9,531 temporary soldiers.

All kinds of logistics personnel who believed they were truly supporting an army... together, in only three days, they had built this astonishing trick, proposed single-handedly by Pink Bear and carried out personally by him.

—"One hundred thousand elite soldiers falling from the sky."

Of course, though so many things had been listed, the most important part of this trick was not those one hundred thousand suits of armor, nor those 9,531 temporary soldiers, nor even Pink Bear, but...

Moving upstream through the army, Muen quickly arrived at the middle section of the great military serpent.

By all reason, the vanguard where he, as commander, was stationed should have been the area the guards needed to protect most heavily. But if one spread even the slightest bit of perception here, one would discover that no fewer than ten powerful Royal Mages were secretly guarding this section.

At the same time, because this was the very center of the army, it was also the hardest area for the outside rats to probe.

At the center of this zone, five wagons with utterly ordinary appearances moved slowly along with the river of troops.

And the moment Muen stepped into this area, he clearly felt the dense magical power in the flow of the air—the wagons were not ordinary wagons at all. The four wagons positioned on the outside were clearly parts of some precise magical array, and what they carried were not ordinary supplies either, but magic stones storing magical power.

A tremendous amount of magical power was being consumed in that array every moment, and the array had only one function... amplifying spiritual power.

Once, in the depths of that lost land, Muen had encountered an array that possessed amplification properties. Through that array, he had actually been able to release black flames capable of burning one million souls.

This array was a simplified version of that one. Although Muen was missing just the tiniest little bit of talent when it came to magic, fortunately the Royal Mage Corps did not lack geniuses. Muen only needed to imprint that array through the Black Book Interface’s recording function, and the Corps’ mages quickly produced an ultra-simplified version from the blueprint.

It was an ultra-simplified version, yes, but it was already enough to achieve the effect Muen wanted.

"How are you feeling?"

Muen bent down and climbed into the wagon at the center.

This wagon no longer held cold magic stones, but a dignified beautiful girl dressed in a black-and-white maid uniform.

"Are you tired?"

Muen took An’s hand and asked with concern.

"I’m not."

An shook her head.

"It’s only a simple forward-motion action. It isn’t enough to burden me."

That was what she said, but her complexion was still somewhat pale, and there was a faint trace of weariness hidden between her brows and eyes.

Most of the burden on her had indeed been diverted by the array, but using Divine Favor for such long periods over several days in a row was still a kind of mental torment for her.

"I see... I’m sorry."

Muen lowered his gaze, tenderness in his expression. "I have to trouble you again this time."

"N-no, please don’t apologize. Being needed by Young Master makes me very happy."

An gently rested her head against Muen’s chest. The faint tension in her brows immediately smoothed away, as though this little bit of warmth alone had already driven off most of her exhaustion.

"I would be even happier if Young Master would stop provoking those insects."

"...An, listen to me. That wasn’t what I wanted. Pink Bear set me up..."

Muen’s explanation echoed inside the wagon, then abruptly stopped.

Because An had quietly closed her eyes in his arms.

She had not fallen asleep, and she could not possibly fall asleep at a time like this. She was simply savoring, as fully as she could, the happiness that belonged only to her in this moment.

So Muen quieted down as well, using gentle movements to help tidy the hair of An, who was usually so neat and efficient, yet over these past few days had not even had the strength to comb it.

"Don’t worry..."

Muen placed another gentle kiss on An’s forehead and softly said, "What needed to be done has already been done. For the next few days, I’ll stay with you the whole time."

Observation, pursuit, probing... the undercurrents from every side, especially from the Kingdom, still swirled outside this army of one hundred thousand "elite soldiers," but Muen had no intention at all of dealing with them proactively.

Because he had already made his move.

Now the side that had to choose how to respond... was the one across from him.