At the East Pillar Mountain camp, Neil, Saffron Helen, and Yavenni Golden Moon arrived together in the map room. At its center, this map room—steeped in the style of the Imperial Capital Knights—held a terrain map centered on East Pillar Mountain, covering a radius of fifty kilometers. Around it stood a larger-scale map of Four Pillar Mountain.
Huge maps covered the walls, each depicting one of the nearby Elf clans in detail.
Since East Pillar Mountain, home to two Demigod magic beasts, had been taken in a single day, and the various factions of the Imperial Capital had gathered a fresh force, the war could no longer be confined to the area around the two Pillar Mountains. The Elves, the Human royal family, and the Imperial Capital Knights all saw this as a rare opportunity to change the local balance of power and hoped to improve the plight of several Elf clans.
Safrun first led Yavenni to the map of Four Pillar Mountain. He quickly traced the newly opened roads across it with magic, explaining as he worked:
"The northern detachment should be back soon, too. The dark-aligned Dao-Yuan are hard to deal with over there. If they run into a high-rank one, we may have to call in the Elf Knights."
"Don't underestimate Petreus," Neil said with a smile. "They were feeling pretty confident yesterday!"
"Now that the roads to the eastern and western Pillar Mountains are open, we need to keep thinning out the magic beasts there, keeping the numbers of lightning-aligned Magic Rats and dark-aligned Dao-Yuan under control," Yavenni said with a nod. "At the same time, we need to open roads to the five surrounding clans, including the Dousong, Ginkgo, and Fir clans, and maintain a watch over the surrounding area."
As more and more forces