As the Two Suns gradually sank, smoke rose both inside and outside the forest. Both sides were cooking over fires, preparing for the evening's offensive and defensive battle.
Rebeta the Rabbit-Man's Gray Crow and Fang's Peregrine Falcon took to the sky at the same time, keeping watch on the Rat Clan's movements alongside several observation Runes.
The Black-Scaled Horses, rested for half a day, were gathered together. The Barbarian Priest and the Flame Priest blessed these fiery tribes with the Barbarian God's and Blaze's blessings.
In the basement of the Secondary Castle, the captains of the teams about to depart gathered around the map with Netherland for their usual pre-operation briefing. They would decide how many Hunter Cavalry to send out based on the size of the Ratmen force and the directions in which it was spread.
Until today, Xing 8 Castle and its surroundings had been home to twenty Hunter Cavalry teams and five Frost-Wolf Knight teams, each consisting of twenty people.
Each twenty-person Hunter Cavalry team had a low-rank Black-Scaled Horse assigned to its captain. The team also had at least ten more Black-Scaled Horses and nine or ten warhorses of other breeds.
Every evening, before the Rat Clan entered the forest, ten Hunter Cavalry teams would enter Xing 8 Castle's various underground passages and head in different directions to harry the advancing rats.
After nightfall, the remaining ten teams of Hunter Cavalry would serve as a reserve force, committed as needed according to the intensity of the fighting in each direction.
Then, in the morning, just before the battle was due to end, the Frost-Wolf Knights would enter the battlefield to cover the Hunter Cavalry's retreat.
This afternoon, however, Night-Kirin City had sent new reinforcements: Neil had arrived with fifty knight cadets from Gallop Academy to replace