Riding on the horse, Alice's speed was at least doubled, which meant that she reached the friendly command centre within around 2 hours of non-stop riding.

While she was fine, the one sitting behind her was not. Although he was back to a bright green colour, his face was somehow matching that colour.

*BLUUUUURG*

Along the way, the chap was leaving a trail of incredibly putrid vomit. Thankfully, his stomach had been emptied out after the first few vomits, and not nothing but saliva and stomach juices were coming out.

"Halt!" yelled a voice from inside the tall walls of the forward base of command.

Along with that, multiple arrowheads, and magic attacks pointed towards Alice and the traitor on the horse.

"State your identity or die!"

Since this forward command was within enemy territory, all guards at the top of the gates were on guard. The scouts in the area had already notices this group of two people on a horse, but since it was only two people with one of them seemingly incapacitated, and none of their mana signatures being too high, the scouts did not stop them and just reported the situation to the base before Alice even arrived, especially since the two were wearing, although bloody, Leon uniforms.

"Alice! Alice Bard. Squad captain of the 21th squad." While saying this, Alice looked over her shoulder and scoffed.

"Next time when expunging information, at least make sure you have the correct information. Well, in fact, don't, since the only information you give is to the enemy. Just do what you have been doing so far, it will mess up the enemy's plans."

Alice then raised her badge and smiled amiably at the lieutenant standing on the tall wooden walls.

…

A few minutes later, she was inside a tent full of those at or above lieutenant rank individuals. Around 12 lieutenants, each having around a single battalion… just thinking about the number of soldiers present at this forward command base made Alice feel secure. Furthermore, in front of her was the Deputy-General and the General of this entire army.

The Leon kingdom did not have a single army, but had 6 official armies, each with around 5000 soldiers. Naturally, each of these armies had a general, who was the highest level of command for the entire army, and who reported directly to the royal family. Since the Leon kingdom did not allow its aristocrats to have armies, all the armies were maintained by the Royal Family.

This also put the generals at an incredibly high standing of power in the kingdom, one that could take on the wealth and influence of a Dukedom on their own military power. Although nobles were not allowed to maintain armies, they could still hire guards and always found other loopholes to exploit, and most Dukes had a rough estimate of 3000 official 'guards' and 'hired personnel'. Since Generals could command around 5000 soldiers, they could easily crush the disorganised 'personnel' of even the dukes. Naturally, this was the reason why all of the 5 dues had already secretly partnered with one of the 6 generals of the armies.

The person in front of Alice was one of the non-allied generals, and one of the oldest generals still maintaining his army; Sir Merlin Von Snide.

"Tell me the situation briefly." He spoke in a rough yet majestic voice that carried a sense of power and authority with it.

"We were ambushed."

"…"

"Elaborate more…"

"I had arrived late due to getting lost in the forest along the route to the assembly point of the temporary base camp. When my squad and I arrived, the entire base had already been burnt to ashes. Inside the camp I found footsteps of people and horses, and assumed it was the enemy's. Following them, I reached a Rolandian camp where I found a total of around 40 survivors from the entire battalion. Using smoke and some poison mixed in, I was able to successfully escape with most of them, after which we decided to move to the north as fast as possible to reach here. However, the enemies had somehow recovered their ranks from the poison faster than expected and around a day's walk from here we realised that the enemy would catch up to us in half a day. We decided to split up and rely on luck to escape till here. However, I realised something. I realised that the enemy had not cleared their ranks of the poison, just suppressing it with drugs and forcing the soldiers to fight. This made them much weaker than what they normally would be and so I took the chance to kill them. I think I killed around 30 of them before escaping since there were 2 incredibly strong enemies with someone who seemed rather important to Roland. Along the way, I found an enemy with a horse and killed him to get this horse, and picked up this fellow here along the way. And that is how we reached here."

For some reason, Alice did not reveal the fact that the man next to her who seemed to have become as small and insignificant as an ant among elephants, was a traitor.

Seeing that Alice was done, the man heaved a sigh of relief and suddenly realised something.

"You forgot to mention the divine descent!"

"Divine Descent!?" hearing the man's words, everyone in the room suddenly sat up straight from their long expressions.

Alice glared at the man for a moment, thinking about whether or not to reveal his true identity, but then saw the satisfied expression on his face and realised something.

'This traitor… he is thinking of increasing my rank in the army by bringing in my blessings?'

Shaking her head at the pure intentions she had uncovered; Alice spoke once more.

"Yes. Along the way, I realised that two of my friends, squad captains the both of them, had perished along with most of their squads." While speaking, her eyes turned red and she clenched her fists.

"I lost control of my emotions and just as I was about to harm the survivors with the unintentional aura I was releasing, my lord descended and helped my look to the future."

Suddenly, Alice's red eyes calmed down slightly as she looked to the general's left in surprise only to see another equally shocked face.

'This guy tried to put a really strong calming spell on me, enough to almost put a normal human to sleep! Do magicians casually toss out spells like that?' she looked at the deputy general that used the spell.

'Her magic resistance is so high that none of my previous spells even registered to her, and I had to use a rank 2 spell which should have knocked a normal human out cold!'

ShadowMagus

long chapter