"What's the situation now?" Tilly asked.

"The enemies intercepting the convoy have been almost completely annihilated, and the devils still in the sky are retreating. It looks like we've won," Sylvie replied.

"It's a pity I didn't get a chance to show off in the end," Andrea shrugged with regret. "It seems that devil lord from last time was injured pretty badly."

The Seagull didn't participate in the battle. Instead, it hovered in the clouds, guarding against the possible appearance of a Hexode or other high-level devils. After all, the most effective method to deal with these bizarre ability users is still Andrea's close-range sniping.

Unlike her listless partner, Sylvie breathed a sigh of relief.

She knew very well that this counterattack was not the same as the ambush on the Lord of the Sky last time. The reason the enemy had failed to detect the Seagull's presence was because she wasn't on the plane at the time. Changes in the battlefield situation were communicated through listening to the Sigil. Even if she was exposed to the sight of the Guardian Eye Demon, the Seagull remained hidden.

But this time, because she needed to operate away from the camp, she had to accompany the Seagull to effectively command the overall situation. It was also for this reason that if the Lord of the Sky appeared with new Guardian Eye Demons, the Seagull would also be discovered. In other words, Andrea's attack could only achieve a surprising effect when a Hexode or other high-level devil appeared alone.

Otherwise, if the attack missed, it was difficult to predict how the subsequent battle would develop.

Therefore, their absence was a good thing.

After all, nothing is more gratifying than completing the mission smoothly and everyone returning safely.

"It's better if you didn't have to attack. If a Hexode really came, I don't think the convoy could have retreated unscathed," Tilly shook her head helplessly. "I guess when Edith drew up this plan, she was betting that a freely mobile Guardian Eye Demon wasn't something that could be replenished immediately after being used up, so the Lord of the Sky didn't dare to show up rashly."

These words echoed Sylvie's thoughts.

She couldn't help but nod repeatedly, worthy of being Her Royal Highness the Princess!

"By the way..." Tilly steered the glider out of the clouds, "Since the victory is set, let's confirm the results before we withdraw."

Sylvie was quite experienced in this kind of thing—without the obstruction of obstacles, she could complete a rough assessment of the battlefield with very little magic power.

However, the moment she reached a conclusion, she couldn't help but freeze.

"Two thousand... no, close to three thousand..."

"Three thousand?" Wendy asked in surprise. "How can there be so many?"

"Those Mad Demons—" Sylvie took a deep breath, looking towards the hillside. "They weren't coming for the convoy. They were fleeing in all directions!"

Only then did she notice the dense holes on the hilltop—obviously, to reduce fog consumption, most of the enemies had burrowed into the ground, and they would only be awakened when combat was needed. But when the Fortress Behemoth collapsed, the red mist, without a source of supply, quickly dissipated, and these devils faced a catastrophic disaster.

Their swarm emerged not to eliminate the attackers, but because they sensed the dissipation of the mist and, driven by instinct, crawled out of their hiding places and ran wildly down the mountain, hoping to reach the next red mist supply point before their breath was cut off.

However, both Fine Sand City and Sunken Pool Bay were too far away from them.

The world, after the red mist dissipated, became clean and clear again, but for the devils, it was a dead land where they could not survive. They didn't run far before falling to the ground, evenly spread out at the foot of the hill. Except for a few Mad Demons equipped with air tanks, most were now silent.

The General Staff's judgment on this point was undoubtedly correct—just as Graycastle couldn't equip every soldier with God's Stone of Retaliation, the enemy couldn't distribute mist tanks and breathing devices to every Mad Demon. After deploying the well-equipped army to attack human cities, all that was left to guard this place were the troops that originally operated in the red mist zone.

If it had been two days later, the situation might have been completely different.

Even recruiting drivers outside the army to launch a counterattack the day after the First Army withdrew from Sunken Pool Bay, it had to be said that this decision was extremely decisive.

"I think the title 'Pearl of the Northern Lands' will spread throughout the Four Kingdoms after this battle," Tilly said, pouting.

……

With a force of less than a hundred men annihilating nearly three thousand enemy troops, with losses of only one steam truck and two Skyfire, and no casualties among the participants, this highly successful counterattack boosted the morale of the First Army's command headquarters, and everyone's voices were much louder when reporting their work.

But Edith didn't show any satisfaction because of this. Almost on the same day that news of the victory reached Cage Mountain, she launched the next operational plan.

The plan was immediately approved by Iron Axe, the overall commander.

The convoy even received orders to reroute to the Cage Mountain West Pass while still on its return journey. The trucks carrying the special purified water for the magic cube met them halfway, replenishing the small team's water supply before joining the team and heading west together.

The air knights returned to Thorns Town, and after a short rest, took off again, arriving at the West Pass airport before nightfall.

At noon the next day, the convoy, which had been traveling for a full day and night, also entered the Wolfheart Western Territory. Because night driving made it more difficult to avoid potholes and other obstacles on the road, three more steam trucks were damaged along the way, while the remaining trucks were immediately put into the attack on another Fortress Behemoth.

Although the devils had realized that humans were after these moving obelisks, they did not expect that in just a day and a half, the counterattack squad would complete a transfer across Wolfheart. Another Fortress Behemoth had just retreated to Howling Fortress at this time. In the absence of external protection, the convoy approached within ten kilometers under the harassment of several patrolling Terror Beasts and deployed four fortress cannons.

The air knights once again acted as "hunters"—under the tacit cooperation of Sylvie and Tilly, this group of rookies who had been on the battlefield for less than half a year almost replicated the process of the previous battle. Taking advantage of the enemy's air force targeting the artillery as their primary target, they swooped down from the enemy's head and instantly broke up the enemy's formation.

The Behemoth was shattered by the sound of artillery fire, and even if a small number of Mad Demons got close to the convoy guarded by God's Punishment Witches, they did not have the ability to hold them back.

By the third day, the enemy finally began to expand the defensive circles of the four cities and sent people to destroy the simply paved hardened roads between the cities, but it was almost impossible to achieve complete coverage as the entire front line was hundreds of kilometers long. On the same day, the steam trucks drove through an area dozens of kilometers outside Fine Sand City, attracting the devils' attention, while twenty-five Skyfires bypassed the towering Mountains of Impasse as planned, directly entered the rear of Goldstone Ridge, and strafed the red mist supply line.

It was also at this time that the continuous losses in the two air battles and the impact of the long front line on the devils gradually became apparent. By the time they gathered enough Terror Beasts to reach the scene, the air knights had long disappeared into the howling winds of the sky.