Inside the Mercenary Guild's mission hall, dozens of brawny men and women with knotted muscles stood with their arms folded, glaring hostilely at the magic light screen flashing with glaring red light. This was a light screen crafted by high-ranking water mages, using magic crystal powder to display all kinds of writing, images, and more.
Ordinarily, missions flowed across this magic light screen like running water—from commissions offering three or five gold coins to find a medicinal herb, all the way to major assignments paying thirty or fifty thousand gold coins to serve as a noble family's personal guard for a year. Mercenary corps of every level of strength could find a way to earn their bread.
But several months ago, ever since the Dragon Wing Legion had invaded Green Forest Province, only one mission had lingered on the Mercenary Guild's screen for a long time—the Vias government was hiring vast numbers of soldiers to form the Vias Northern Expedition Legion, strike back against the Dragon Wing Legion, reclaim Green Forest Province and Vicoe Fortress, and recover Vicoe Gorge, the vital route connecting the two nations.
Standing motionless in the mission hall were the leaders of Port Vias's twenty strongest mercenary corps. Men or women, every one of them was a hardened commander who had braved life and death, with at least a hundred lives on their hands. They had weathered too many storms and grown accustomed to the brutal sight of flesh and blood flying everywhere. But precisely because of that, they knew better than anyone that wars between nations were not something one could casually meddle in.
Especially when the opponent was Black Duke Karon, Governor of the Caesar Empire's southern frontier. He was a butcher through and through. Said to possess the bloodline of both dragons and