"If she can only move forward, she'll be forced to expose the Golden Griffon and reveal her plan. "At that point, we can strike while she's at her weakest and take Phloria back. Then, we blow the lost academy and her sorry ass in one fell swoop." *** Griffon Kingdom, a few days later. Tessa and Fyrwal kept looking for Phloria, but had no luck. The missing Ernas had just switched to a different partner and her fame as the Dragon Knight kept growing. Ne'sra, the capital of the Deirus Grand Duchy had held out just to fall the day after Valeron's companions left. There was no trace of Thrud, yet her army kept advancing and no one knew how. On top of that, reconquering the north was taking much longer and was harder than Lith had expected from the reports. Even with the Warp Gate network, moving troops and supplies took time. To make matters worse, Thrud abandoning her outposts had only been a ruse. The moment the army had lowered their guard and the cities relaxed their security, thinking that the Mad Queen's focus was now in the south, they had been taken by storm. Fresh troops and Forgotten had attacked in great numbers, ruining in a few hours days of hard work and even recapturing a few cities. "I swear to the gods, this makes no sense." King Meron's frustration and stress worsened his health. "Even if the Golden Griffon were a perfect academy, this shouldn't be happening. "We have a precise estimate of Thrud's troops yet these numbers don't add up. If she had this many Awakened, she should have already won during Verhen's honeymoon. The only plausible explanation is that she can somehow move her troops quickly and recharges them with Invigoration." "Maybe, if you told us what an academy can do, we could help you figure out a solution." Raagu said, barely holding the curiosity in her voice. "Yeah, right." Sylpha said with a snarl. "So that you can add more crazy demands or request the blueprints of an academy for 'research purposes.' Thanks, but no thanks. Only the Royals know the secrets of the academies, and for a good reason." "Not even the Headmasters?" Lotho was flabbergasted. "Too dangerous." Meron dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. "It would make their retirement equal death or the risk of the secrets of the First King being exposed." "I see." Feela nodded in understanding, yet now her curiosity now burned even stronger and the same happened to her peers. "Can you at least tell us what you think Thrud's goal is? The attack on Deirus is surgical, it can't be a coincidence." "It's not." Sylpha replied. "The Fire and the Black Griffon are there. We can assume Thrud is going to destroy them, starting from the Fire Griffon." The arrays of the War Room projected a map of the region and how Phloria's attacks were moving along an invisible line that connected the known mana geysers and led to the Fire Griffon. The Black Griffon had only been recently acquired by the Deirus household after foiling the civil war so it was at the edges of the region on the hinterland. "We can anticipate her movements and set our defense forces on her path." Meron said. "This way, when she reaches our academy, Thrud's resources will be spent and she'll find us ready." *** Nestrar Region, at the same time. "Dammit, not only are we going to conquer these cities a second time, but if it keeps up like this, in a while Thrud will be back and everything Tessa has achieved will be for naught." Lith grumbled as his appearance was enough to make a city militia surrender. "Think positive, little brother." Xenagrosh replied. "I've taken a few free days exactly to be by your side and strike together as soon as we learn the position of the Golden Griffon." Seeing the two Divine Beasts fly side by side with the Golden Knight in the middle made the Kingdom's soldiers bust into cheers and the rebels despair. No matter what strategy they tried or how many of her Generals Thrud sent, any city they attacked would fall in the space of a minute. The Blade Spells, the Cursed Flames, and the Eldritches' Chaos Magic needed but one hit to take down the strongest barrier. The Divine Beasts fighting for the Mad Queen used teamwork to combine their bloodline abilities, but with their 25 meters (82') of height, they looked like children in front of Xenagrosh who stood 35 meters (115') tall. On top of the extra mass, she also had two cores that fueled respectively Chaos and Decay. Her millennia-long battle experience allowed the Shadow Dragon to make the best of her superior magical and physical prowess, taking out opponents infused with Life Maelstrom in a few exchanges. Bytra wasn't as powerful, but she was much faster. One hit from Solus' Fury while at the Raiju's top speed was enough to rip a Divine Beast's head off their spine, let alone when Solus used both the Fury and the Absolution. To make matters easier, Nandi fueled everyone with the world energy equivalent of a mana geyser, bestowing upon Solus the full prowess of the tower and to Lith the boost of his abilities that came with that. Theseus the Bastet was there as well, but he kept himself at a distance. His allies had plenty of destructive power already so he preferred to keep an eye on their surroundings and watch out for any nasty surprise Thrud's army might have prepared. When it happened, he combined his Mana Body bloodline ability with his Meneos regenerative powers to take even a Silverwing's Annihilation without so much as a scratch. "Not to be a sourpuss, but I'm afraid it's already too late." Bytra sighed. "White cores have uncanny recovery abilities so I bet that the moment Thrud got back to the Golden Griffon, she got her body back before sundown." "Way to be the Lith of the situation, Bytra." Solus said. "Is she always this optimistic? Because if that's the case she and Lith can start a whine club." "That's hysterical! I'm stealing that." The Shadow Dragon laughed her ass off while her wife's horns turned from white to red. "I don't know about Lith but Byt is one of the hardest to please people I've ever met. "She always has something to complain about. Her work, her social life, her work, her original self's atrocities, her work, and everything that doesn't go exactly as she hoped." "That's Lith down to a t." Solus laughed as well. "Just replace the original self with any mistake he made in the past. By the way, is it me or did you say 'her work' three times?" "You heard me." Zoreth nodded. "When it comes to Forgemastery, Byt whines about everything. She wasted too many ingredients, the artifact is not as powerful as she hoped, more powerful than she hoped hence harder to control, or too average powered. "Nothing is ever okay and she goes on and about like that for days after a failed experiment. Don't get me started about what happens when she succeeds."