Chapter 879: The Everwinter City Front

Henwell's extensive support is gradually stabilizing the Everwinter City front in Kosen Kingdom.

In addition to large quantities of supplies, he has sent a warband.

The warband is not there primarily to fight Frost Corpses. It is there to protect Peace Haven's technical team.

Kosen has plenty of warriors. What it wants is Peace Haven's technical team.

As descendants of a vast empire that once ruled the whole continent, the people of Kosen have inherited a great deal.

They still have the knowledge and techniques. Harsh conditions and the passage of time have left them unable to produce the finished goods.

In less than two years, Peace Haven's technical team has used the techniques Kosen provided to produce weapons and equipment specifically designed to fight Frost Corpses.

A metal called Warmsteel is particularly important.

Despite the warmth it gives off, Warmsteel is not an extraordinary metal in the strict sense.

Special materials and smelting methods give it only slight extraordinary properties.

Warmsteel can continue giving off warmth for about two years, and it is highly effective against Frost Corpses.

Its strength and toughness, however, fall far short of extraordinary alloy.

Yet that one feature makes it far more useful than extraordinary alloy in this northern land.

In northern Kosen, the coldest winter temperatures can fall to between minus forty and minus fifty degrees Celsius.

Such cold makes metal brittle. Warmsteel's unusual properties counteract that brittleness.

In this environment, its effectiveness is unmatched.

A soldier can grip a Warmsteel weapon without frostbite, while the armor provides him with a little warmth.

Such equipment is invaluable when fighting Frost Corpses.

Kosen would even forgo other aid supplies to have Peace Haven prioritize equipment for its smelting center.

After Operation Dried Fish ended, few people knew that Everwinter City had also seen a successful counterattack.

The first legion equipped with Warmsteel no longer needed thick cold-weather clothing and could maneuver normally in the freezing conditions.

The weapons dealt heavy damage to extraordinary Calamity creatures such as Frost Corpses. Against non-extraordinary Frostborne Warriors, a single strike was lethal.

This ten-thousand-strong warband, composed entirely of professionals, carried out a series of mobile operations over several days.

It destroyed several Frost Graveyards, special areas the Frost Corpses had established as strategic strongpoints.

Such sites can continually bring Frost Corpses and Frostborne Warriors through gaps onto this continent.

The Fury Spirits have the Barren Lands.

The water demons have the Deepwater Caverns.

The Lightchasers have the Sand Sea.

The Quiet Forest Wanderers have the Forest of Mists.

The Tidal Pirate Legion has the Whirlpool Waters.

The mountain demons have the Bone Hills.

These are enemy reinforcement points. They must be destroyed quickly, before each grows into a vast stronghold that keeps bringing in fresh troops.

Kosen's Warmsteel-equipped legion is targeting those very nodes.

It is racing to destroy them in midsummer, before the far north enters its coldest season.

For Kosen, the success of this counterattack is no less important than Operation Dried Fish.

The victory has changed how everyone in Kosen sees Peace Haven's technical team.

Money, status, beautiful women... Kosen offers everything it can.

They mean to keep that team in Kosen.

As the poaching grew more blatant, Henwell had to send the warband to protect the team. He also demanded that no one interfere with its research.

Only then did Kosen's powerful figures ease off. The team's projects are too important to the coming campaigns to disrupt.

The team is recovering ancient technology and reproducing cold-resistance potions, cold-resistant fabric, and poisons specifically intended for Frost Corpses...

All of this is preparation for next summer's offensive. There is no room for delays.

Cold-resistant crops and building materials also matter greatly to Kosen's economy and its people's livelihoods.

For its part, Kosen, the heir to a former continental power, has not been stingy.

It has shared a wealth of knowledge and techniques that Peace Haven can use in its own technological development.

No one knows how many years Kosen's predecessor ruled the continent. An inheritance like that is not to be dismissed.

Even after several calamities comparable to mass extinctions, much of that inheritance survives.

What Peace Haven values most is not powerful weaponry.

It is what Kosen has learned about the continent, especially in basic disciplines such as materials science.

Even where theoretical research is lacking, all those years of trial and error have left Peace Haven plenty to learn from.

Beside that knowledge, even the extraordinary resources Kosen has sent in return count for little.

Their cooperation during the Calamity War should help Peace Haven's technology advance much faster in the years ahead.

Kosen has also recently sent Peace Haven a standard legion of ten thousand men, all drawn from its elite troops.

Its bitterly cold homeland does not make Kosen a weak country.

Otherwise, the Empire and the Church would have ruined it long ago.

Even now, Kosen remains the power with the most professionals on the continent.

The harsh climate forges tough bodies. Northern warriors are fierce.

Were the Empire and the Church not keeping them in check, the other nations of the continent would be no match for them.

Kosen has never lacked capable fighters. It lacks supplies.

Now that these unequipped northern soldiers are in Peace Haven, Henwell must scrape equipment from his already strained military stores to arm them.

Still, a legion made up entirely of professionals is hard to turn down.

The Calamity War is about to grow much fiercer.

He is not worried about the Northern Mountain Front. With the Empire and the Church involved, the subterranean waterway front should not deteriorate too badly either.

The whole of Ika Kingdom stands between Peace Haven and the Fury Spirits and Lightchasers.

Those enemies will have to bring down that giant before they can even reach Peace Haven's borders.

What Henwell fears most is the Misty Forest Expanse Front to the south.

Ogiro is utterly useless!

Outside the forces of Sundike, the sixth prince, Ogiro has precious few armies that can fight well.

After the Quiet Forest Wanderers poured out of the Misty Forest Expanse, Ogiro lasted only three months before broad gaps opened in its defenses.

Back then, while Henwell was still in seclusion, Ogiro was already taking a beating. Yet it still rejected Peace Haven's offer to help defend the line.

Had the three allied power blocs not intervened in time and forced three legions into the front, the situation in Ogiro would have collapsed long ago.

After the alliance agreement was reached, Sundike bypassed Diversion Bay and asked coalition headquarters to invite Peace Haven's legions to help defend the line.

The alliance did not care what Diversion Bay's nobles thought. It approved the request immediately.

Only then did three warbands from Peace Haven's Eastern District, accompanied by the Second Battalion of the Lord Iron Guards, enter the Misty Forest Expanse Front.