Despite everything I had been through, this had only been the second battle I had ever really been part of. The battle between Aberis and the Ost Republic ended without either country attacking. It had been more of a personal battle between me and the Demon Lord Aberis. As for my fight against Aberis’s army, that had been done with two of me, and we had planned the fight mostly against each other. It had been an insane move, and it probably didn’t have any right to work, but we had succeeded in catching the Demon Lord by surprise and managing to defeat him.


    This battle would be completely different. Two armies that knew everything about each other would engage in earnest. King Roth had even seemingly given me every chance to prepare, recruiting as many soldiers as I could. In the end, I had done pretty well for myself.


    We had the Chalm soldiers, those who had slowly joined the guard since I had reclaimed New Chalm. This was mostly made up of slaves, both animalkin and humans. I had asked around, and the animalkin of Chalm almost universally had no problem fighting against Dioshin. In their minds, Dioshin was a country that abandoned them. Many were sold into slavery, while others were refugees exiled during tribal disputes. We had fifteen hundred that were at the trained level and another five hundred which were militia level from Deeksville.


    Then there were the Osterians, who had two thousand soldiers able to fight in this battle. This excluded the women, children, and those too old or otherwise incapable of fighting. The Deep Dwarves offered another two hundred fighters, and while they looked like children, especially compared to the Osterians, I didn’t doubt that they possessed fighting prowess. After all, King Diorite had been the most dangerous foe I had faced to date, and he was much smaller than me.


    “Master, we want to break some skulls.”


    “Celeste told us what they did to Boss!”


    “We want to mess them up!”


    They still sounded like mobsters though.