Above the battlefield, a Mana Airship had been hovering roughly eight hundred meters off the ground since before the fighting began. Neither Regel nor Great Mage Yale had noticed it.
That was hardly surprising. It flew so high that, viewed from the ground, the Mana Airship-nearly a hundred meters long and several dozen meters wide-was no more than an inconspicuous dark speck in the sky.
This Mana Airship belonged to the Xinfei Merchant Guild Guard Corps, and its mission was to serve as their eyes and provide targeting coordinates.
It had spotted the Saint Joan Legion before the legion even entered the Rulson Kingdom and had been quietly following it from high above ever since.
Every movement of the Saint Joan Legion fell under its observation and was relayed to a mountain hollow roughly five kilometers southwest of that mountain.
In that hollow, twenty New Rapid-Fire Mana Rocket Artillery Vehicles stood neatly arranged in two rows.
The hollow no longer rang with the roar of mana rocket artillery as it had earlier. Silence had returned.
Wisps of bluish smoke drifted from the muzzles of the twenty rapid-fire mana rocket launchers as their intense heat scorched impurities in the air.
"Hey, those Saint Joan Legion guys have already run out of range?" Blonck, commander of the Second Artillery Battalion under the Xinfei Merchant Guild Guard Corps, grumbled into the Magic Communication Box in his hand. "Those spineless bastards. I hadn't even had my fill, and they all ran away."
An exasperated voice came from the Magic Communication Box. "Come on, Blonck. Were you really planning to kill every last one of them? Do you know how many mana shells that would waste? Never mind anything else-you've already exceeded your quota just now, haven't you? Captain Hart is definitely going to chew