By December, deep winter had arrived, bringing swirling snow, bitter northern winds, and bone-deep cold.
By the traditional thinking of the Sains Continent, such a season was clearly unsuitable for any military operations.
In weather this cold, even an ordinary march, let alone a battle, could leave large numbers of soldiers frozen to death. Snow-covered roads, slippery and muddy, made marching difficult enough already.
Thus, winter had traditionally been a season of truce on the Sains Continent. No country would choose to go to war at this time.
Yet... this winter had shattered that tradition completely.
In mid-November, the Lampari Kingdom had won a sweeping victory over the Marfa Coalition Army near the Grixius Mountain Ranges, virtually annihilating two-thirds of its main force of two hundred thousand. To everyone's astonishment, it had even killed an Archmage outright on the battlefield-a figure countless people regarded as the very symbol of invincibility.
That single victory had instantly reversed the situation between the two sides.
Before then, the Lampari Kingdom's army had retreated again and again under the Marfa Coalition Army's attacks. By the time it fell back to the Grixius Mountain Ranges, it had already surrendered well over half the territory it had seized from the Frank Kingdom.
At that point, everyone believed the Lampari Kingdom had no ability to resist and would ultimately be driven out of the Frank Kingdom by the Marfa Coalition Army.
If the Malo Empire grew a little bolder and directly broke the Sains Continent's tradition forbidding Archmages from participating in wars to invade other countries, the Marfa Coalition Army might very well invade the Lampari Kingdom itself.
Indeed, that possibility was highly likely.
In this war, which had swept across almost the entire Sains Continent, one side was the camp represented by the Xinfei Merchant Guild.