?
The Empress looked at Sukehiro and waited for him to leave. If her magi came, they'd be able to tilt this battle in her favor, so he had no reason to stay.
"I guess there's no time for us to continue doing this. It has been fun sparring with you, come again in the future."
Sukehiro cupped his fist in his palm and left the place. The Empress knew she wouldn't be able to find him, so she just returned to the base to rest before the journey back home.
"Everyone, the vile magi of the Assassin Order have run away with their tails between their legs. Victory is ours!"
The soldiers' spirits lifted up when they heard their victory was final. However, there wasn't the usual celebration of the side that won the battle; everyone mourned the dead. The casualties were far higher than they expected.
The Empress also felt bugged about it. Sukehiro wasn't supposed to be there, and there was one more True Magus than they expected.
Furthermore, the assassins were prepared for their attack. Otherwise, they wouldn't be grouped together with fully supplied magic circles.
Although preparing for it didn't save them, it cost the empire with precious soldiers and the platoons' morale took a heavy hit.
'Do we have a mole in our ranks? We kept the number of people in the know to a minimum. If it's truly a mole it can't be someone in a very high rank, or else they wouldn't alert me just to kill a few mages.'
Although those mages were precious to the empire, The Empress knew nobody would risk exposing their mole if they had access to a lot of sensitive information.
The Empress decided to give the platoons' commanders the instruction to check their forces for spies later.
"I'm going to rest for 2 hours, and then we will leave back to the capital. Be prepared to leave on time."
The only ones who heard those words were the 3 magi, the 3 princes, the princess, and Kisuke. As for the troops, they had to remain until the normal forces arrived and took care of the aftermath. As special forces, they had the privilege of leaving this type of job to others.
She went to the room prepared for her by the soldiers and rested for two hours.
When the two hours were over, she exited her room and boarded the airship. Nobody dared to delay The Empress, so everyone was waiting for her already aboard. Kisuke and Hanako already boarded it an hour ago, and so did most of the others.
One True Magus stayed behind to oversee the issue of holding the fort and passing the responsibility to the new troops that were on their way.
The airship took off and started its 6 hours trip back to the capital. Hanako was still glued to Kisuke the whole time; the beginning of relationships was always the stickiest part. New couples can't take their hands off each other in this phase of the relationship.
When they neared the capital, The Empress widened her eyes in surprise. She darted through the sky toward the palace grounds with the other 2 magi behind her.
"WHAT HAPPENED HERE?"
Her raging voice resounded throughout the whole palace. Everyone felt a sense of dread envelop them; nobody wanted to be the one to give The Empress bad news.
But luckily for everyone except for one person, there was one woman directly under The Empress, an eighth-stage magus who was in charge of the defense of the palace. The only one who wasn't happy about it was this woman herself.
The woman appeared with a gloomy expression in front of The Empress as soon as the latter shouted. As the highest-ranked person in the palace during The Empress's absence, she had to be the one to report the news.
She was a tall woman with smooth hair. Golden bangs fell on her forehead, and she tied up her hair at the left side of her head with a scrunchie. Her blue eyes were in a phoenix shape, and her tall stature allowed her to look into The Empress's eyes without raising her head.
"Ai, tell me what is going on, and where are my children."
The Empress couldn't sense any of her children on the palace grounds. The only ones were those still a few kilometers away on the airship.
"The Amistrys Empire infiltrated our dynasty and attacked the palace. I was held back by three of their eighth-rank magi, and the other magi were held back as well."
She reported with a heavy tone. The Empress looked at her in surprise; it was unprecedented in a couple of thousand years. The Nikkokuni Dynasty wasn't attacked for a very long time.
"How can they do that without us noticing anything?"
"They managed to sneak in a large number of Expert Mages disguised as magicians. We don't know how they achieved it, but they have developed a technology that allows people to suppress their connection to mana and hide their real stage."
By then the airship already landed and the few people onboard left the airship and listened to the conversation.
"What happened to my children?"
"Everyone who was here… died. They killed many geniuses of our empire including the children of the imperial family."
The Empress clenched her teeth in rage when she heard she lost her children. The fourth, fifth, and sixth princes were at their houses on the palace grounds as well as the fourth princess.
Ai's words meant that 4 of her children died while she was absent.
'Wait, absent?'
The Empress realized what was wrong. The attackers were from the Amistrys Empire, the Assassin Order was ready for her attack on them, and the magi of the Order stalled even after the war was already over.
The Assassin Order kept her and the other 3 magi busy on purpose so the Amistrys Empire can use her absence to attack!
"Let's go to the meeting room, I want to know what happened."
"Mother, should we come with you?"
"No, you will be given a full report later, there's no need for you to come."
Although it'd be good for her children's growth to be present in such meetings, she wasn't in the mood for that.
In a large meeting room, The Empress, Ai Hasaka, Shirokami, and 5 other True Magi were standing around a large map that was laying on top of a table.
One of them was the commander of the troops in the borders and he was there to report about the breach in their defenses.
"I want a report about everything that you know."
The man, Shio Saki, started reporting briefly everything he knew.
"In the past months, there has been a large rise in the number of merchants coming from the Amistrys Empire. We noticed it lately, but they had a large amount of merchandise. Our spies in the Amistrys Empire heard rumors that a few merchant companies put their hands on some new resources and have a lot of goods to sell. We thought the tide of the merchants was a result of the new resources grounds in their empire."
"And those rumors were nothing but a hoax?"
The Empress asked Shio.
"Apparently so, yes. We guess now that those rumors were spread on purpose by the Amistrys imperial family to mislead us. Even worse, we believe those merchant companies belong to the Amistrys imperial family, and now they have many troops roaming in our dynasty."
"And it seemed it worked perfectly well."
"Do we know how the Amistrys Empire or the Assassin Order knew we were going to attack that base?"
"No, but we believe that one or more soldiers are spies of the Amistrys Empire. They started their covert operation when you took off. By the time we found out about it, we couldn't reach you."
"The base we attacked had magic jamming magic circles. They prevented my communication device from picking up any messages from outside the base. I should've seen this coming when they delayed us there and prevented us from returning."
"We asked for reinforcements from Xia Dynasty and Minjung Dynasty, but although their magi rushed all the way here, the swift operation was over by the time they arrived. We also don't know how many other Expert Mages they have in our territories now."
Shio said with a dejected voice. It was a disaster for their dynasty. They lost a lot of geniuses at once, cutting the future generation of the dynasty.
"Did you lose any children?"
"Yes, I lost both my sons."
"I lost my 3 daughters and my only son."
The magi all said with gritted teeth and clenched fists as they thought about their late children. Since affinity and talent were mostly passed genetically, the easiest way to target geniuses was to target magi's children.
Being the child of a magus was a double-edged sword; on one hand, they enjoyed many benefits as guidance, high status, and a lot of resources. On the other hand, they had a huge target on their heads until they became strong enough to protect themselves.
"What's our casualties count?"
"We lost 26,422 magicians, 8498 True Mages, 6888 Advanced Mages, and 3975 Expert Mages. We killed around 1700 Expert Mages and 2300 Advanced Mages…"
"What are you hesitating to say?"
"Kyojuro Ren and Gyutaro Daki died."
"HOW?"
Kyojuro and Gyutaro were both True Magi and were pillars of the dynasty. Their deaths were a huge loss for the Nikkokuni Dynasty.