Xiang An's offensive route began at Topeka, while Thomas Edison's began at Des Moines.
Both advanced eastward, but due to geography, Thomas Edison's route would change at Lake Michigan, turning south before eventually joining up with Xiang An and launching a joint offensive toward Washington.
But now, both of their advances had been severely bogged down.
The problem was actually very simple: they lacked troops.
Even though Thomas Edison had fully embraced his capitalist nature, making the rear work overtime to manufacture mechanical soldiers and ship them to the front lines, their numbers were still insufficient.
As for Xiang An's side, he had nearly fought through all three thousand of his spectral soldiers. Now, only a little over nine hundred remained, and most of them were missing arms or legs.
Queen Maeve had the Holy Grail as the foundation of her forces, so producing mass-manufactured units like these was simply too easy for her. Thomas Edison and Xiang An, meanwhile, had to consume immense amounts of labor and pay a price that was difficult to replenish just to produce these inferior mass-produced goods.
Making it separately to Chicago and East St. Louis had already pushed them to their absolute limits. Xiang An had even been forced to retreat some distance because of the enemy Shadow Servants.
It was only after Artoria arrived to support him that the situation improved somewhat.
"Can your spectral soldiers still exist after you leave?" Artoria asked after coordinating with Xiang An to wipe out another wave of Celtic warriors.
"They can, but there's a distance limit. If you want me to travel back and forth to Shreveport to deliver intelligence, that's not realistic." Xiang An's voice carried a trace of exhaustion as he shook his masked head.
Though both of them rode horses, Artoria's speed