“Why are Segireneto’s soldiers walking beside the Hexclaw Legion?! Aren’t they mortal enemies?!” Milia’s eyes flashed like glass catching a storm.

She’d felt Segireneto’s hatred for Eunomia like a scar under ice. What’s more demonic than wolves loosed on lambs, torturing and butchering civilians?

“This can’t be...” Iling’s face was all denial. Sais cast her a questioning look. Medith stayed silent, willow brows knotted tight.

A beat passed. Medith’s brow smoothed like ripples settling on a pond. “The world bustles for profit, not pride,” she said, voice cool as shade. “They don’t share a aim, only a cut.

“And I happen to block their cut, the enemy of their ledger,” she added, a blade of calm under a cold moon. “By that scale, Segireneto’s near emptied its nest. Here, we end it. Both sides.”

“How many? Can you see clearly?” Sais pressed, breath quick as a trapped bird. The Hexclaw’s remnant alone was a dark tide; she could only pray Segireneto’s headcount was thin.

“Not clear,” Medith said. “But by the after-images I traced... no fewer than eight thousand.”

They all drew in a sharp breath, like winter air biting the lungs. Gerald’s jaw throbbed again; his teeth ached like a cracked stone.

He clutched his swollen cheek, despair pooling like dusk. “What grudge warrants this? Using a cleaver meant for an ox on a chicken?

“Dawnlight had barely four thousand in its prime. After these days, fewer than two thousand can still fight.

“Hexclaw plus their support puts them at fifteen thousand, easy.

“At that scale, they don’t even need to swing a sword. They just cinch a noose, front and back, and wait.” His hope guttered like a candle in a draft.

The enemy had prepared beyond their nightmares, laying nets like a patient fisherman. They counted variables, sent reinforcements, and even took a long road to avoid frictions before joining.

Their tactics, resources, numbers, and gear crushed like a millstone. This wasn’t Sia City, with a magic wall like a cliff to buy breath.

No lucky hidden tunnel waited like a fox’s burrow. Only two roads lay open like forks in a dark wood.

First, a frontal breakout. That’s suicide, a moth into a forge.

Second, a side-gate thrust. In theory, it works; with Medith and her elite, slipping out before the circle tightened would be easy as a knife through silk.

But if they meant to run, they wouldn’t have hauled a mountain of pressure in to save everyone.

A dead board. For Gerald and Dawnlight, the dead end was carved in stone; Medith could only snatch a few days’ breath.

There was food in the castle like sacks of grain in a granary. But with too few hands and no messengers, rescue gone, a month was a dream.

Worse was the mind. Under this weight, the bowstring frays; people snap. In seven days, at most, stone walls stand, but hearts crumble like damp clay.

“Two thousand mercenaries against fifteen thousand royal elites, hmm...” Medith said, gaze flat as iron. “The gap is... wide.”

Hearts sank with a cold thud. She was their spine and last reed on a flood. If she had no path, the river took them.

“Watch first,” she said. “Gerald, post people along every wall point. Fill every slot with any man who can move.

“Don’t hold reserves inside. If the city falls, we’re dead anyway. This way we buy time, drop by drop.”

“...” Gerald stood a breath, then bowed his head like a tree finally shedding snow. “I understand. Command passes to you now.

“I’ll tell them. With your skill, who’d object?” The words slid out natural, and a boulder rolled off his chest.

Finally. Finally, he could lay down this burning weight.

Only, he owed Medith another debt, a tally ink that never dries.

“Medith, be straight with us,” Sais said, voice tight as a drawn string. “Right now, is there really no way?”

Medith sighed, a reed bending to wind. “What, you think I’m a deity? How do I have a plan without lifting the enemy’s veil?

“Don’t forget, the Sia City plan had Powell’s hand. He grabbed the Emerald Hawk early and sent the crucial force map.

“Every tactic is built on intel. Right now, our intel is fog, and their headcount is a mountain. Where do I conjure troops?

“Let’s say each of you can fight a thousand, and I can fight three thousand. That only drags us to even on paper.”

She spread her hands like empty sleeves. “I’ve got nothing. Stop leaning on me. Brains grow on your necks. Turn them.

“Maybe you’re already sharper than me.”

Her mouth tugged into a fox’s smile by the end. Sais blinked, then bit her lip and swatted her, a petal-sting. “Ha! I knew you were playing us.

“Spill it. Time’s on fire. We’ll execute.”

Medith only shrugged, like a cat guarding a secret. “Not telling.”

“Hey! Is your skin itching because I haven’t smacked you lately?” Sais frowned, a spark in dry grass.

“I said, use your heads,” Medith cut in, voice like steel on stone. “One day I won’t be at your side.

“If every trouble makes you cry ‘Medith, Medith’, the day that name’s gone, you lose your foothold and tumble into a bottomless abyss.”

The words were nails; the air went still. They knew she was serious.

Milia remembered Medith’s strange moods lately; a lantern lit in her mind.

Medith was testing their floor, seeing how far they could walk without her hand. Only then could she rest easy.

“But our intel does rest on what we know,” Milia said, calm as a lake at dawn. “First, the Hexclaw’s strength roughly matches the Dik elites. That frames their weight.

“Second, Segireneto, we’ve fought head-on. We know Manto and Erig, their leaders, skin to bone.

“Plus, you probed the Legion’s vanguard temper a few days ago with that baited snare.

“By intel, I don’t see a total fog like you claim.”

Her clear gaze and clean logic cut like spring water. The others hesitated, then something in them unknotted.

“Right! What are we afraid of? We know their bottom cards. Strong or not, known is half-won.”

“Exactly! And Segireneto’s my defeated foe, anyway!” Iling puffed up, a sparrow faking eagle wings.

“Eh, Iling, since when?” Sais laughed. “I recall you got rattled half-dead by a Magic Breaker, and missed the fiercest fight.”

“Ah~ ah—shut up, Sais, please! I finally get to brag once. Can’t you let me have it?!”

“True enough. A mere defeated foe, not worth a mention,” Fangge added, mood lifting like clouds torn by wind.

She had seen too many crushing wars, won by numbers braided to steel. In this era, quantity is the bluntest cudgel and the heaviest shadow.

But for Medith, headcounts evaporated. She carved numbers with tactics, shaving the mass piece by piece, until they matched a line she could accept.

Simple to say. To do it, you need a mind cold as winter water, knowledge stacked like books, and thoughts that leap like lightning.

Medith had all three. Which raised a thorn in Fangge’s mind: why did someone like this rise only this past year?

Her battlefield sense wasn’t counterfeit. Instinct doesn’t lie. Skill doesn’t lie. Wisdom and presence stood there like mountains.

In the Elf Clan, such a figure should be a rarity bordering on myth. Sprites don’t wrestle the world; without wars, where’s the grindstone?

Skill and wit can be born, but even a prodigy needs tempering. Medith bore no scars of that furnace. So...

Medith watched Fangge watching her, and felt the woman’s intuition prowl like a hunting cat. Fangge turned, and their eyes locked like blades.

In each other’s pupils, they read answers, silent as snow.

“So it’s true... that such a thing exists...” Fangge breathed, a hush for unseen threads. “The Ancestor Master’s legend... could it be real?”

“Who’d have thought,” she murmured, gaze soft as rain. “One day, I’d believe in fate again.”

“But no matter what, we still can’t walk around the hard power gap,” someone said, as their talk circled and cooled.

They’d sweated for half an hour, burning maps on paper. The enemy was solved in ink, but iron strength smashed every plan like a hammer.

Medith watched them stall and sighed, a leaf falling. Their limit stood there, a line in sand.

Yet through it all, they hadn’t looked her way once. They treated her as air, and even at the wall, didn’t ask.

Medith smiled and patted Milia’s shoulder, a quiet tap. “You’ve done enough.”

“We can do better. Give me a little more time. I’m close to a clean layout.”

“Let it go,” Medith said, gently solemn. “You won’t get it. Not scorn—our minds are worlds apart.”

Heads lifted. Eyes turned. They asked for her thought.

“Fine. I’ll nudge you,” she said. “We can’t bridge hard power. Drop it. Seek other seams.

“I’ve watched you pace this dead lane till my heart smoked.”

One sentence, sharp as a spear: “Cut off the head to unravel the body. Swap blossoms between branches. Use the foe’s craft to break the foe.”

“That’s all I’ll say. How much you grasp is on you.”