Liens leaned against Marmiadoysse, its blade driven into the earth, and murmured those words.
By rights, the lands north of Hadrian's Wall belonged to the northern territories.
And those northern territories-Scotland-had no vast plains capable of accommodating tens of thousands of troops.
For Scotland consisted mostly of:
Highlands, mountains, hills, gorges, marshes, bodies of water, and fjords.
Though Scotland was hardly large, spanning only seventy or eighty thousand square kilometers.
One could almost say that, apart from deserts, rainforests, and other landforms requiring specific climates, Scotland possessed every kind of natural strategic depth that could exist on Earth.
And yet.
With such formidable natural defenses at their disposal, how had they been driven this far?
Memories kept flashing through Liens's mind.
Until a silver figure appeared.
He sighed.
"Sovell."
Three months earlier, facing Liens's army entrenched behind natural defenses, the forces under Artoria's command had been repelled several times, making their advance exceptionally difficult.
To break the deadlock, Sovell spent an entire day and hundreds of magecraft materials constructing a colossal magecraft field that encompassed the entire region north of Hadrian's Wall and south of Antony's Wall.
The next day, Sovell cast "Keep Out Idlers" over an immense area-Expulsion Magecraft, in other words. This time, however, its targets were not merely humans, but also the animals roaming the wilderness.
On the third day, he waited.
On the fourth day, he waited.
On the fifth day, after confirming that over ninety percent of living creatures had left, Sovell recklessly poured out the endless magic power pumping from his heart, unleashing a storm that blotted out the sky and sun.
With the amplification provided by his magecraft field, Sovell put every last trace of the magic power he released to perfect use.
A million raging gusts became blades.