That day, Paimon finally decided to execute the operation.
A communication line via Magic Crystal Orb had already been established with the Imperial Princess's side. They had agreed to march at the very crack of dawn so that it would be difficult to tell who attacked first. Just in case, so that Barbatos could claim she had struck first.
As it turned out, this was a blessing in disguise for Paimon. In preparation for the dawn march, the scouts had been moving nonstop late into the night—and in the keen, beast-like eyes of this diligent wolf rider, a group came into view.
At first, he thought it was a monster settlement on the move. Barbatos's Sixth Legion had been receiving reinforcements continuously, and rumors were rife that in return, they guaranteed the most fragrant of all delicacies: human thighs.
'Ugh, just one bite of a thigh and I'd die without a single regret.'
Surely the Sixth Legion wasn't so lavish that they could hand out thighs to every last reinforcement. Still, the advertisement made his mouth water.
His own First Legion never fought humans, so there was no human flesh to be had. Captain Paimon had even gone so far as to strictly forbid the pillaging of human villages under military law!
He didn't know what the higher-ups thought, but the monsters of the First Legion had to exercise tremendous mental discipline every time they passed through human villages and cities. That is not human flesh, that is not human flesh, that is not human flesh.... The wolf rider's faith had, curse it all, grown stronger than ever.
It was a chicken instead of a pheasant. The First Legion marched while annihilating every nearby monster settlement in its path. Goblin meat and orc meat were quite palatable, actually.
The wolf rider reportedly spotted what seemed to be settlement reinforcements heading toward Barbatos's Sixth Legion and cautiously gave chase. He planned to figure out where they were headed, then hurry back to base to brag about having found provisions.
'Are they orcs or goblins? They look pretty big, so probably orcs. Tch, tch. Those ears are mine—huh!?'
The dark elf wolf rider instinctively melted into the shadows. He pressed his chest flat against the wolf's back, hunching over as much as he could. Only his face was turned forward, and his gaze trembled violently.
They were far more than a handful of settlement folk. What he had assumed was a few dozen turned out to be hundreds—no, thousands. Despite the dead of night, they marched in tight formation with banners fluttering.
'That's a— that's a— that's a knightly order!?'
Scouts were required to memorize the heraldic crests of every major knightly order on the continent before deploying. The First Legion's scouts in particular knew the orders of the Teuton Kingdom by heart, since that was where they had originally been slated to advance. The dark elf's keen night vision instantly identified the banner waving among the group as the war standard of the Red Pointed Shield Knights. It was—the Teuton Kingdom's Royal Guard!
'Shit, I oughta bolt right now... No. Wait.'
The dark elf, who had been about to flee without looking back, fell into thought.
The knightly order was terrifying, but his curiosity and sense of duty as a scout burned even brighter. This was not the Teuton Kingdom. This was the northern reaches of the Habsburg Empire. Why was a Teuton Kingdom knightly order—and the Royal Guard, no less—here?
No matter how he turned it over in his mind, this was no ordinary matter. The dark elf made the truly sagacious judgment that this could very well prove to be a matter momentous enough to decide the outcome of the entire war. He quickly pulled out a pencil and drafted a report.
─ Approximately 90 kilometers to the rear. Teuton Kingdom army detected. Minimum one thousand or more. <Red Pointed Shield Knights> confirmed.
The dark elf rolled up the paper and stuffed it into the cylindrical pendant hanging from the wolf's neck. He ordered the wolf to race back to headquarters and deliver the command, then continued to follow the knights' trail in secret.
Thanks to the wolf cavalryman's swift action, the Crescent Alliance Army's First Corps received word of the Teuton Kingdom army's sudden appearance within two hours.
On top of that, through bold and rapid reconnaissance, the wolf cavalryman ascertained that the enemy force was composed not only of Teuton Kingdom troops but also of Habsburg Empire border count armies, and that it was fielding at least nine knightly orders and twenty thousand infantry.
The moment the wolf cavalryman decided he had gathered enough intelligence, he sprinted at top speed. As a result, the First Corps learned the enemy's approximate scale that very morning. Once the intelligence was confirmed to be accurate, the wolf cavalryman was awarded a medal for possessing "exceptional judgment and unmatched courage." And of course, the human-thigh cutlet he had so desperately craved came to him as a bonus.
But quite apart from the individual wolf cavalryman's good fortune, the First Corps command was thrown into an uproar. The appearance of a Teuton Kingdom army was, quite literally, a bolt from the blue.
The attack scheduled for dawn was abruptly canceled. Paimon and twenty-seven other Mountain Faction Demon Lords were roused from deep sleep and gathered beneath the headquarters tent. Among them were Demon Lords whose faces were still groggy from not even having had time to wash.
Paimon spoke in a grave tone.
"This is no ordinary matter. Why would a Teuton Kingdom army—and their Royal Guard, no less—show up behind our lines?"
The Demon Lords had no answer. They couldn't possibly know the reason either. But there was one fact that everyone present tacitly acknowledged: the Teuton Kingdom army would certainly not be friendly toward them.
One Demon Lord spoke carefully.
"Could it be that the Habsburg princess called them in as reinforcements?"
"Without telling us?"
"Yes. Honestly, it's hard to believe the princess would trust us fully. To humans, the Sixth Corps and our First Corps are all the same Demon Lord army. She might be anxious about the possibility that we could betray them, join forces with the Sixth Corps, and attack Habsburg..."
Paimon rested her chin on her hand. That was plausible. In other words, the princess would ally with the First Corps to crush the Sixth Corps, and then immediately betray them and join forces with the Teuton Kingdom army to crush the First Corps instead. That scenario was entirely possible.
But it was also impossible.
Paimon did not like leaving room for betrayal. Ever since being stabbed in the back by allies during the second Crescent Alliance Army—though they had made excuses that they had no choice, and there had actually been evidence to support it, Paimon was not stupid enough to swallow those claims at face value—she had become almost fanatically devoted to preventing betrayal.
In her cooperation with the princess this time, Paimon had placed dozens of magical safeguards. Among them was an oath never to withhold information on military matters. Short of a legendary 10th Circle archmage showing up, there was no way to break such an oath.
"Well, that much is certain at least."
Another Demon Lord spoke.
"Those bastards came to sneak up on us from behind, is what they're saying."
"But that's strange, isn't it? How on earth did they even know we were here..."
"...That's what I'd like to know."
No answer came.
Around dawn, the wolf cavalry arrived with word that the Habsburg Margrave's forces were among the enemy rear. The initial suspicion was that "the margrave seems to have brought in foreign troops." Unlike Margrave von Rosenberg, who guarded the Black Castle region, this was Margrave von Westphalen, stationed along the Habsburg-Teuton border.
Regardless, one thing was certain: the enemy had appeared. The First Legion scrambled to fortify positions at their rear.
The situation was turning against them. Just yesterday, it had been Princess Elizabeth's Habsburg Imperial forces and the First Legion of the Crescent Alliance Army encircling Barbatos's Sixth Legion. Now the tables had turned—Barbatos's Sixth Legion and the Teuton Kingdom's army were closing in around Paimon's First Legion.
Paimon strained to gather more intelligence, but extracting high-level information in just a day or two was nearly impossible. Yet it was within that very window that yet another dispatch arrived.
"The Frank Empire's army has appeared!?"
— Indeed. I don't quite understand what's going on myself.
On the screen conjured by the Magic Crystal Orb, Princess Elizabeth the Third was frowning. She reported that four thousand troops from the Frank Empire had been spotted approaching from the flanks that very morning. Not through the Habsburg Empire's border, she added—they appeared to have broken through the Teuton Kingdom's border instead.
— We've hurriedly dispatched an envoy. We'll only know the full picture once they arrive... But given that they violated Habsburg sovereign territory without so much as a notification, I doubt this will work in our favor.
"Then... does that make them enemies?"
— At the very least, you should prepare for the worst.
The bluish glow of the Magic Crystal Orb faded out.
The situation had turned critical. Compared to the Teuton Kingdom's twenty thousand troops, the Frank Empire's four thousand were insignificant on their own. But the sheer fact that armies from multiple nations had converged on one spot was deeply alarming.
A massive coordinated effort was underway. Paimon had a very bad feeling that some unknown scheme was being set in motion somewhere beyond his sight. Getting multinational armies to move in concert was no easy feat—it required aligning dozens of interests and dozens of pretexts.
No, more fundamentally—what were they even marching for?
To annihilate Barbatos's Sixth Legion? Then it made no sense that they hadn't coordinated with Princess Elizabeth the Third. Habsburg affairs should have been handled by Habsburg forces. This was an outright violation of sovereignty.
To annihilate his First Legion? No—the First Legion had only arrived here four days ago. How could they have mustered an army, marched it out, and even made it here in that time? Impossible.
"……."
Paimon gazed at the map repeatedly, lost in thought. The other Mountain Faction Demon Lords were no different. They paced restlessly around the camp or hurried their scouts along.
Most critically, the balance of forces had reached a dead even.
Paimon's First Legion numbered thirty thousand. To that was added the Imperial Princess's Habsburg Empire force of ten thousand. A combined army of forty thousand.
The enemy they had to face was Barbatos's Sixth Legion at eighteen thousand, the Teuton Kingdom's army at twenty thousand, and the Frank Empire's army at four thousand — a combined force of forty-two thousand. ……In pure numbers, the Imperial Princess–Paimon alliance was actually at a disadvantage.
However, Paimon no longer had the luxury of worrying about the numerical shortfall.
"Commander-in-Chief!"
The scout commander burst into the tent in a panic. Traditionally, scouting duty was held by dark elves, and the man who had just charged in was indeed a dark elf. His ashen-black face was etched with shock. The moment Paimon saw that expression, her ever-present sense of dread began to creep upward once more.
"What is it?"
"There's — there's another army appearing in our rear."
"Pah."
Paimon pressed her hand to her forehead. Her foreboding instincts were never wrong. Whose army was it this time? The Batavia Republic? Polithunia? Or had the Teuton Kingdom or the Frank Empire sent reinforcements?
Her guess went completely wide of the mark.
"The crest of a severed-head bull! There's a banner depicting a severed-head bull!"
"…Excuse me?"
Paimon, for her part, let out a remarkably vacant response. Her thoughts ground to a halt for a moment. She chewed slowly on what the dark elf before her had just said, savoring each word with painstaking care.
When the meaning finally clicked into place, Paimon's lips parted wider and wider.
"That's impossible!"
"It's true. And what's more — we spotted a standard. A Prairie Wolf standard."
"No — but — that can't be right!"
She shrieked.
"How — the Second Legion of Marbas has come here!"
The Crescent Alliance Army's Second Legion, led by Marbas, who commanded the Neutral Faction.
A monster army of some twenty thousand had appeared at their rear.