When the Candel Empire and the Malo Empire joined more than forty other countries and over sixty prominent organizations on the continent in declaring war on the Xinfei Merchant Guild, no one held out any hope for the guild's future. No one believed it could withstand such a terrifying force.
Although quite a few countries, including the Lampari Kingdom, the Rulson Kingdom, and the Deral Duchy, subsequently voiced their support for the Xinfei Merchant Guild, this still did nothing to change anyone's opinion.
Compared with behemoths like the Candel Empire and the Malo Empire, the Lampari Kingdom and its allies were merely small countries, far inferior in overall strength.
Of course, because the Xinfei Merchant Guild and these countries possessed some military magic machinery supplied with the guild's support, some people speculated that the two empires' advance might not go entirely smoothly once war broke out. They would probably encounter counterattacks from these countries.
But no one believed they could hold out in the end. The gap in national strength was simply too great. Even in a war of attrition, the two empires would inevitably wear them down little by little.
Yet once the war actually began, everyone discovered that its progress differed from anything anyone had anticipated.
Both the Candel Empire's invasion of the Rulson Kingdom in the south and the Malo Empire's invasion of the Deral Duchy in the north met with crushing blows, suffering exceptionally heavy losses.
The Malo Empire fared somewhat better. It merely fought the allied forces of the Drake Duchy and the Lampari Kingdom along the border between the Drake Duchy and the Frank Duchy, then was forced to withdraw after paying a price.
The Candel Empire's invasion of the Rulson Kingdom in the south, however, incurred tremendous losses-losses almost beyond imagination.
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