The Diriya Kingdom.
Thorn Territory.
This was a magnificent, imposing city, situated beside a great river.
To the west lay low, rolling mountains, and to the east stretched a forest. The river wound past the city's northern side, while an endless plain spread out to the south.
Seen from the sky, the entire city had been built against the mountains.
The western part of the city had been built upon hills.
Above the city's battlements flew a flag embroidered with thorns and a golden sun.
The thorns lay below, the golden sun above.
This was the crest of the Osman Lineage, the Thorn Sun!
It symbolized how Osman, the first head of the Lineage, had started with nothing and founded the great Osman Lineage above the thorns and beneath the golden sun.
The first head of the Osman Lineage had started as an Adventurer and founded the Sun Knights amid thorns and blood.
The order had grown from weak to strong, its members all mighty practitioners of the potion-based Sun Knight Sequence.
With this, Osman had entered the service of the Diriya Kingdom and waged war across the land on its behalf, eventually becoming a count of the Diriya Kingdom and receiving Thorn Territory as his fief.
Afterward, through the tireless efforts of more than ten generations of Osman Lineage heads, Thorn Territory had grown from a small town into the foremost great city in the northern Diriya Kingdom.
Even across the entire continent, it ranked among the most prosperous cities, while the Sun Knights passed down within the Lineage had continued unbroken for generations, flourishing without decline.
The Osman Lineage was renowned throughout the world for its knightly order, riding far and wide and expanding the Diriya Kingdom's borders generation after generation. Only then, a century ago, had its