When the Lulin Duchy was utterly destroyed, a massive Caesar Empire army was advancing eastward.
The Dragon Horn Legion was the Caesar Empire's standing legion stationed along its eastern border. Unlike the Empire's other legions, the Dragon Horn Legion faced over a hundred nations of every size across the Eastern Plains, yet none of their armies posed any threat to the Caesar Empire. Instead, the Dragon Horn Legion had to deal with the countless disputes, great and small, among those hundred nations, and thus needed to maintain an enormous size.
For this reason, the Dragon Horn Legion on the Caesar Empire's eastern frontier also bore the title of the Western Continent's number one "great legion."
That title was no empty boast. Although the Dragon Horn Legion's scale was nothing compared to Arthur's absurd legion, it possessed a standing force of five hundred thousand men, along with another five hundred thousand logistical and auxiliary troops. Thus, when the Caesar Empire urgently mobilized the Dragon Horn Legion for this campaign, a million-strong army surged across the border in a mighty tide.
Marching alongside the Dragon Horn Legion were thirty thousand Flame Knights of the Church. The Flame Knights of the Blazing Flame Temple all cultivated flame battle aura, and were famed as the Church's foremost knight order for mass casualties. They might have been lacking when dealing with high-end combatants, but against ordinary soldiers, a single Flame Knight could be used as a hundred-man unit.
Especially since they all rode Flame Lions. The innate magic of these mid-tier Magic Beasts was the wide-area Flame Sea spell. When thirty thousand Flame Knights attacked in concert with their mounts, no force with less than twenty times their numbers could withstand that terrifying assault.
With the thirty thousand Flame Knights as the vanguard, the Dragon