Watching the people from Noble Red gradually gather, Iver narrowed his eyes slightly from inside the priest's house.
...There are a few too many.
He quickly counted them. There were at least thirty people in red robes, and they had not even completely emerged from the forest yet.
After leaving the forest, these red-robed people restored order without anyone directing them—
They had only been somewhat noisy and boisterous from excitement when they first emerged, but they soon quieted down and voluntarily formed a caster formation, each person standing more than a meter apart. They immediately began performing rituals row by row, ensuring that everyone had companions to monitor their surroundings while they worked.
Just seeing that sense of order made Iver's heart sink.
—Could these be Noble Red's elite troops?
The group they had sent when they attacked the Bureau of Supervision had already seemed highly professional. But they were clearly inferior to this group.
Iver did know that Noble Red had a regular army within its ranks. However, he did not know much about it. After all, Noble Red had never appeared in the original story.
Giant Prince Wolfram himself probably did not know how to train people... After all, the reason the giants had been defeated by the knights was that they had long been accustomed to their own strength. They had no battle formations or coordination to speak of, and simply fought on their own.
However, there was a Sky Knight who had defected to Noble Red. He had brought them a systematic training and command program—Iver had completed this side quest and vaguely remembered it. But everything in between had been skipped over, so he did not know the details.
He only vaguely remembered that this person had been a student of the Grand Guardian,