With the southern rebels rising in revolt, the Rune People finally revealed the fruits of more than a decade of preparation.
The nobles and officials of the Lorenzo Kingdom once again showed just how low they could sink. Equipment for tens of thousands of troops, vast quantities of military supplies, instructors to train soldiers, and even more than ten thousand regular troops from the Rune Federation had all been smuggled in from the Main World through channels both open and covert. Under the Lorenzo Kingdom's nose, they had become the backbone of a massive army of more than two hundred thousand.
This southern rebellion was nothing like the minor disturbances in the Northern Province. The relatively prosperous south was the Rune People's true base of operations. Most of the two hundred thousand rebels were not rioters who had spontaneously taken up arms, but trained soldiers: the private troops of local nobles, capitalists' household guards and Factory Guard Units, great landowners' patrols, and even Police and local garrison troops who had been turned.
The entire Southeastern Province had fallen into the hands of the Revolutionary Army and the Rune People. That was why Cyrabelle had not marched south to suppress the rebellion in advance, despite having learned of the plot long ago.
The only force she could truly trust was the elite Royal Guard stationed in Stinnard City, which numbered fewer than ninety thousand.
Those troops were elite and loyal, but there simply were not enough of them. After leaving a basic defensive force in the Royal Capital, Cyrabelle could take no more than fifty thousand soldiers into the field.
If that force entered the Southeastern Province, it would quickly be swallowed by a sea of "people's war." Cyrabelle therefore chose to lure the enemy out of its lair in the