"I apologize for disappointing you, my Queen Yulania," Palo earnestly announces as he kneels and lowers his head.

But even though Yunia wanted to win the wager, she's still quite happy with his duel. She fought him once years ago, and she has seen with her own eyes how far he has risen since then, so all she feels is pride at seeing his power.

"You haven't," she softly states and flashes a dazzling smile. "You fought your best, and you fought beautifully, but the unmovable mountain that was your opponent was too much for you to surpass."

"Thank you, my Queen," he replies in kind and stands again.

It seems that Montague is an even bigger monster than Palo, and we have nobody that could've won against the white mountain, but the question of whether our knights or their Sworn Hunters are stronger can't be answered by having these monsters fight since they're outliers.

Once he joins his fellow knights, Alissa hears one of them ask him, "Couldn't you just have fought defensively?"

But Palo shakes his head negatively. "It's very hard to lure an opponent into a trap without fighting aggressively."

I'm inclined to agree. I like to open myself up to lure my opponents in because it's hard to get within their defenses if they're too skittish for me to get close.

But anyway, now that the excitement is over, we stop the dueling and begin a joint exercise since we're going to be fighting together soon.

 

The men line up, shield with shield, but not perfectly tight like a real shield wall since that doesn't work against soldiers with heavy, enchanted armor that can just bulldoze through anything but a rain of halberds. And even then, a single, well-angled [Searing Blade] can decapitate the mass of weapons and screw over their attack capabilities.

In Rupegia, full plate is even more impenetrable and terrifying than it was in Earthling medieval times. You have trouble damaging their armor due to [Wind Armor] and [Reinforce], you have trouble holding them down with numbers due to the numerous enchantments they can use for mobility like [Rush] or [Fly], and they can just mow down scores of your men with a single [Searing Blade] swipe.

The only thing preventing absolute invincibility is the high mana cost of using all those enchantments. But then again, Lords like Jacques and Confiel have thousands of points of MP, allowing them to wipe out armies single-handedly before they need to rest, not to mention all of the high-power MP potions they have at their disposal.

When you grow even further than the Lords, gaining enough levels to make others feel awed just from your presence and enough MPower to bend reality with just your mind, it's no wonder that people called them God-Rulers.

But I digress. My thoughts were corrupted by Lina's history fangirling, but what I wanted to say is that in a high-level, high-skill, high-magic battlefield, conventional tactics don't work as well. Perhaps in the future, if we manage to find ways to make enchanted equipment cheaper, we'll also begin to standardize it so that it can be used in mass combat and benefit from army-wide tactical coordination.

For now, we have to fight the standard way, with the Lords at the center and the men on either side of us. Hana, Yunia, human-Aoi, and I stand on one side with Ciel, Silvano, Lina, and Jacques facing us. I'm thankful that the red beast is my opponent, but the girls feel uncomfortable fighting against each other. It's just a mock battle, but it's still hard to get into the spirit of it when it isn't sexual roleplaying.

"Hit the armor, make your opponent feel the impact, but avoid any exposed spots!" Léonne shouts from the balcony.

I keep my thick tail stiff and upright to not get in the way of the men behind me, and I only use three tentacles wielding spears because they're unable to hurt anyone through armor.

Then I raise my shortsword up in the air and shout with a hint of [Godly Language] infused into my voice, "We need to at least give each other a good spanking, for our enemy won't be as kind on the fourteenth!"

And I hear a few amused cheers as their spirits begin to rise. Only the knights and Sworn Hunters are participating in this exercise, so the Lordsguard are just observing us, and they find this no-bloodshed, beatdown type of exercise rather amusing.

The lines approach each other, both sides now grinning at the silliness, then we begin smacking our weapons against our opponent's armor.

Jacques becomes a musical instrument as my spears smack at him repeatedly with a rhythm. He slashes at them with his longsword, but I've become quite adept at reconnecting sliced tentacles, so the music doesn't stop no matter how many times he slices them.

"Jacques, Blade!" Léonne orders, and we both turn serious.

I activate [Heat Reversal] on my shield at the same time that his longsword starts to glow with heat. Then he slashes, and I block.

My enchantment absorbs the heat of his sword and releases it back towards him in an explosive fashion. His [Rainbow Shield] and [Wind Armor] both flare up, reducing the power of the explosion so much that all he should feel is a mild discomfort.

"Next!" Léonne orders, and another soldier activates their [Searing Blade].

Everyone will use their enchantments in sequence, but we don't know who and when, so we snuff out the levity and put our war faces on. This training is no joke.

While this is nice to get us used to the chaotic nature of this type of combat, the real danger comes from the Lords that we'll be fighting.

After most of the men have used their enchantments at least once, Jacques jumps back, then he glows, and his hulking form grows even bigger. After just a few seconds, he's now at his elephant size, but this time, he's also fully armored with cheap iron plate.

Everyone takes a step back, and we spread out so that he can't crush multiple people with his body.

Now that I'm free, I keep my focus on him, and the moment he pounces, I cast [Telekinesis] to slow him down. But he jumps past us, at our backline, and Roxanne reflexively uses [Explosion] in front of herself, outside his [Dead Zone] enchantment.

The force of both of our spells makes him spin in the air, and he falls on his side, his head pointing towards the back of our melee line, but he doesn't waste a second before pouncing forward again onto one of our men.

The mages finish their [Telekinesis] and lift Jacques up before he can crush the poor little one, and we retreat further to get away from him. Then the mages on the other side get a hold of our [Telekinesis] spells and interrupt them, allowing Jacques to drop down like a fucking boulder.

But now I get the signal for me to play my part, and I grin excitedly. We've been hiding this power for so long, but Katasko and many others should already be guessing that I can do this, so we'll use it to its fullest before we completely lose the element of surprise.

I summon two Orc Chiefs.

"What the fuck?!" I hear Capri Sun exclaim in surprise.

Two huge, burly green men with big tusks and plate armor appear, each wielding a lump of metal they call longswords.

"Loose!" I shout.

"UOOOO!" The Chiefs reply and barrel through the enemy line.

One of the Chiefs suddenly falls as his legs get caught up in something, and Palo slides in front of the other, blocking the Chief from getting to their backline.

The elf is wearing a closed helmet, but just from looking at his eyes, I know that he's showing a handsome smile, which infuriates the Chief in front of him.

The men try to hold the other Chief against the ground, but he lashes out and eventually gets up. Then Ciel touches her [Judgment]-infused glaive to the Chief's head, and he roars in pain, stunned long enough to be tackled down and partially immobilized.

Jacques pounces towards us again, but dragon-Aoi tackles him head-on, and the two entangle in a messy fight where neither has the strength or speed to harm the other.

Things are becoming messy and dangerous, but that's the whole point of this exercise: to keep a level head as crazy abilities are thrown left and right.

Two of our men are fighting Lina, but she's actually winning as they're both moving too sluggishly to keep up with her speed.

Ah, fuck…

She trips one man with the back spike of her war hammer, then suddenly swings it at the other man, who lifts his shield too slowly to defend himself. His helmet rings as the hammer strikes him right on the forehead, and the man staggers back, but the attack didn't even leave a dent.

"Bonk, you're out," she hums flatly, then she also hits the fallen man's head. "Bonk, you're out."

I use [Telekinesis] to fly and land before her, just outside of her hammer's range. She turns her head towards me, and I let out a smile as the only things I can see under her helmet are her adorable, gloomy eyes.

"You don't feel pain in your tentacles, right?" She casually asks.

And I nod. "Yep. [Electric Magic] still hurts, tho."

Then she promptly swings her hammer at me, and I almost fail to dodge it as I feel a subtle sluggishness creep into my mind.

Okay, she's a bit scary.

"I'm very scary," she corrects me and pouts, then promptly swings again.

I summon a bird to be my eyes, then I close the real pair and stab her armor repeatedly with my spears, which annoys her.

Suddenly, my shield heats up, and I promptly interrupt her [Manipulate Metal], but she instant-casts it again, and I immediately interrupt it. The problem is that she can just repeat this endlessly, and the shield's temperature continues to rise.

I cast [Entangling Vines] on her to keep her in place and take a step back to get out of the very short range of [Manipulate Metal], but my left foot remains in place, and I fall on my back.

My tail moves on its own and presses against the floor, keeping me upright like the leaning tower of Pisa, then I look down and see that a dome of stone has grown around my foot.

Clever girl.

With spells being used left and right, her quick use of [Earth Wall] escaped my notice.

I use [Earth Bullet] on the dome to break it, then I sacrifice a tentacle to absorb Lina's strike, but the attack doesn't land as she [Blink]s past me and spins in place to hit my back.

Panic settles in, and I cast another [Earth Bullet], this time at her face, and her head snaps back as the accelerated rock hits her forehead, but her hammer still snags on a tentacle growing out of my back, and I'm pulled backward.

I fall on top of her, and she's too dazed to react, but then I see a curved blade glowing with dangerous-looking light right in front of my face, preventing me from standing up again.

"No bonk, but you're out," Ciel asserts, and I smile wryly as I slowly raise my hands.

"Hello…?" Lina's voice echoes from under me.

"Oh, sorry!" Ciel hurriedly apologizes as she pulls back the glaive. Then I use my tail to stand up, and we help our little wife get up off the ground.

The ground starts to rumble as Yunia decides to use her Ramodia armor to grow vines all over the battlefield and disrupt our opponents, which can prove fatal no matter how small the disruption is. Ciel tries to stop her, but she has problems dealing with Yunia's [Precognition].

Then things progress quickly. Lina teams up against Yunia, but it takes them too long to wear down the elven Queen, and even with me out of the fight, Hana bonks enough people to turn it in our favor while Silvano struggles to keep her in check.

"Enough!" Léonne suddenly shouts, and we end the exercise.

 

We gather around a large table inside a private room to discuss the results of the first exercise. The knights and Sworn Hunters stand behind us in case they have something productive to contribute.

"Okay, that was fun," Hana cheerfully comments, but Silvano, her main opponent for most of the exercise, is frustrated with how hard it was to do anything against her.

"I'm completely useless if I'm unable to stab anyone in the eye," Silvano frustratingly states.

"We shall give you dull swords with padded tips, then," Léonne calmly replies. Her idea is logical, but it's still rather humiliating to give someone like Silvano the equivalent of pink pool noodles.

Yunia quickly moves the conversation on to allow Silvano to mope in silence, "The results were fairly interesting, but I propose that we involve the mages more to intensify the battle."

"I'm concerned that Your Highnesses were fighting differently from what we've come to expect from them," Alcander interjects.

And I explain, "When we're fighting against each other, our telepathic communication has to be cut off, or we won't be able to fight properly."

"The training is still more for the men than the Lords, so it's an acceptable compromise," Léonne states, and the whole table nods in agreement.

Then Yunia promptly continues, "An issue I've identified is that we have too many tools at our disposal, and we don't know when it's best to use them."

And I point out, "We also don't have enough mana to use all of them, so we can only use a limited number."

"Test all of them and determine which are more cost-effective," Lina quietly contributes, and we go silent for a moment as we think.

"Your instant spells and summoning are very disruptive," Jacques contributes. His huge form is almost fully countered by our instant spells since they can dull his pounces.

"In one-on-one combat, the Ryders seem to be unmatched," Léonne adds, which strokes our egos a little bit.

"But we lack high-impact tools," Yunia tempers our pride.

"And summoning monsters has a high mana cost," I point out.

Then Léonne curiously asks, "What monsters can you summon? We need to identify a clear tactical advantage that they can give to justify their cost."

I take out a piece of paper and have the golems write out the list of monsters for me because my calligraphy sucks.

And Alissa begins with the newest addition to my repertoire, "Heralds of Ruin will cause extreme damage to the enemy's weapons the longer they fight."

It's true. Enchanted equipment is a big multiplier of a knight's power, and without it, they aren't a threat to other knights. Just look at [Searing Blade]. Without it or another enchanted weapon, a full plate knight is basically invincible.

And Yunia retorts, "They degrade weapons much too slowly, so we'd have to field a number of Heralds for them to have any real impact on the battlefield fast enough to matter."

"We have suits of armor to spare, so we can test how fast one can disable a knight and then extrapolate," Lina wisely states, making me proud of her developing scientist's mindset.

Nobody else has anything to add except agreement, so we all nod, and Léonne continues, "Very well. What other monsters can we use?"

"I'm always partial to having a Nalusa as it snowballs in power," I happily chime in. That's the one that can control blood and grows more powerful with each wound it inflicts.

"'Snowball'?" Allura asks and tilts her head to the side in confusion just like her sister.

"I think he means like an avalanche. A wave of snow sliding down a hill becomes bigger the longer it slides because more snow joins the wave," Hana ELI5s.

And Allura's red ears twitch. "Snow does that?"

"Snow is solid water, and water sticks to water," Lina adds.

"Huh…"

Roxanne snorts softly, but she holds her tongue and doesn't tease them because it seems that even Jacques has just learned something new. The Rakontagne mountain range that's right next to the Misty Forest has snowy peaks, but no sane werefox ever willingly goes there as it's crawling with dragons.

Then Yunia politely continues, "Anyway, I believe that monsters that inflict 'Status Effects' would be very useful as they affect the entire battlefield. Bestower of Dread, Dark elemental, Weeper, Dream Eater, Hobgoblin Witch Doctor, Watchman Ton, Arachne, and Mandrake. Combining one of each will create a massive ball of chaos that will destroy the enemy's morale."

"I-… I feel like those will be difficult to use during the exercise," Alcander hesitantly states, and even the knights look like they want to complain, but they don't want to be accused of being cowardly.

"Yes, we understand that it'll be painful for all of us to measure the effectiveness of this strategy, but it's a sacrifice that we'll all have to make," I diplomatically assert and stare at each of the men in the eye to show them my resolve.

"We should leave this test for last so that everyone can rest afterwards," Ciel gently states, and everyone lets out a soft breath of relief, though a small amount of dread still remains in our hearts.

I sigh softly and move on, "But what about countermeasures? At this point, we have to assume that Katasko is at least suspicious that I can summon monsters, so they'll probably prepare ways to nullify this ability."

And Yunia wisely adds, "We should also think of our own counters. Katasko has many hidden weapons, which could include a monster summoner of their own."

"We use large crystals filled with Light mana to counter Dark-aligned monsters," Nohopu chimes in.

"That's the same as us. I believe our magical technology is likely derived from yours," Yunia replies, and they smile at each other.

And Léonne adds, "We have Blessed necklaces and other accessories, but I don't think they'll be enough against a large number of monsters that inflict 'Status Effects.'"

"If they have a lot of resources, they could just go for variety and hire a number of people knowledgeable in [Alchemicism]," Roxanne suggests.

"Yes, I feel that's it's unlikely that Katasko has a lot of holy items in their possession," Ciel wryly adds, and someone snorts softly.

Then I finish, "We also have to ask our Faiumi allies about their resources, so I think it's best we postpone this discussion until they join us."

But Yunia has one last idea, "Let's have one more bout, but this time, it'll be the Ryders versus everyone else. We'll show you the results of our 'Gestalt' training."

 

This time, the golems also participate because we're going all-in.

To reduce the risk of injury, everyone is given [Tremor] enchanted hammers, which cause a lot of pain for anyone wearing solid armor but deal little damage to HP, making them less-than-lethal weapons. Alissa, Klein, Léonne, and the other archers are using special arrows that explode on impact, courtesy of Aisco, but they aren't very effective in real combat unless they're given to a whole formation of archers.

We're heavily outnumbered and outgunned, but we have a [Fly] advantage along with our two strongest qualities: unity and ingenuity. It'll be a tough fight, but we know we can win.

We gather in the courtyard again, but we don't immediately begin the battle. We first need to get our minds in sync, like we've done so many times before, and achieve a Gestalt.