Two full years had passed since the first battle to put down the rebellion of Liens, the descendant of a god.
Yes, two years.
Although the unusually bitter winter of the first year had forced both sides into a three-month truce, the war had, on the whole, continued.
His defeat in the first battle made Liens begin to give it his all in earnest.
His victories over eleven kings and unification of northern Britain had not relied solely on the Fire God Sword in his hand.
Far more important was the extraordinary quality of his soldiers, who all but overwhelmed their enemy counterparts.
Liens had stopped holding back.
After the first battle, the combat proficiency and discipline of Liens's army gradually began to far exceed what Artoria and Sovell had imagined.
Their equipment, compared with what they had used in their first battle against Sovell and the others at Kerimud City three years earlier, had also undergone a qualitative leap.
As a result, advancing and capturing territory proved extremely difficult for Artoria and her allies.
But that difficulty extended only to their advance.
Percival, Bedivere, Palamedes, Sovell, and even Artoria herself.
Their presence magnified the lack of elite fighters on Liens's side to a tremendous degree.
Especially Sovell.
Unable to contact Merlin, Sovell could no longer release Rhongomyniad, which had only one seal remaining, and had to rely primarily on wind-attribute magecraft in battle.
Moreover, Marmiadoysse in Liens's hands was an overwhelming counter to Sovell's wind-attribute magecraft, which had even gone out of control several times when facing its flames directly.
Yet even so, as the greatest practitioner of wind magecraft in Britain, if not all of Europe...
During the battle to retake Connova nineteen months earlier, Sovell had forcibly captured the supreme commander of the enemy cavalry, at the