Yesterday Once More

An hour and a half earlier, at the supreme command headquarters in the Radiant Holy City.

When the pope learned that the Pansy had suddenly appeared at the Meiladas Tidal Flats, and that its fleet formation suggested a strong likelihood of a landing, he was delighted for a moment.

The Pansy's overwhelmingly superior combat power left the Temple of Light with no command of the seas. The warships of this world might look formidable, but in an actual naval battle, only magic warships might withstand a few more of the enemy's attacks, whether from above or below the water, whatever those attacks were called.

Augustus had racked his brains over the development of the Final Bone Mad Machines on the Eastern Continent, but could find no way to intervene directly. Even though the church had hundreds of thousands of ground troops as fierce as lions, and Augustus had never been one to spare casualties, the vast expanse of sea between them was impassable.

This time, he had expected the Final Bone Mad Machines to attack the Dawn Territory. It lay within the Cold Mountain Kingdom, and the forces of the Northern Continent Jurisdiction of Light were relatively weak. Crucially, the attack route was long. If they attacked, the Dawn Territory's forces could use their command of the seas and the Pansy's suppression of the coastal area to disengage and withdraw at any time.

However he looked at it, the Dawn Territory was a trap designed to lure them into a rash attack and waste their troops-an assessment he and the Ashen Repentance Friar shared.

But with the battlefield suddenly shifting to the Radiant Jurisdiction, everything was different!

Augustus studied the sand-table map again and again as more intelligence poured in: the Pansy's fleet had deployed into a formation suitable for