Meanwhile, Zweit and his fellow Wiesler faction students were busy looking for faults in the city’s defenses.
“Okay... So there are two gates: one on the Solistia side, and one on the Artom side,” Zweit muttered. “We’re underground, and there are no entry points besides those gates, so if the people in charge keep a close eye on who’s coming in, they should effectively be able to stop any outside forces from seizing it.”
“A revolt inside the city would be an issue, though,” Diio said. “No way in, no way out...”
Isa Lante was basically self-sufficient.
Since it was underground, it had no need to worry about invaders breaching it from above. It just had to pay attention to the merchants and mercenaries coming in and out, and it’d be practically unassailable.
Nothing in life was absolute, however, and countries could sometimes be taken down through unexpected methods.
“There are barracks in front of both the west gate and the north gate, right?” Zweit said. “Plus, some guard stations dotted throughout the city to keep the peace—oh, and watchtowers on the street corners. Just from the way the city’s laid out, they were obviously pretty serious about maintaining order. I can’t even imagine how many soldiers they had...”
“The files show a pretty big armory, so... I don’t know exactly how many there would’ve been, but yeah, it was probably a lot, right?” Diio said.
“It looks like the patrol division in charge of protecting the people was under different command from the army. They were definitely well organized, that’s for sure. I wonder how the two worked together when they had different chains of command, though?”
“I mean, whether they’re guards or soldiers, they’ve kinda got the same job: protecting something. Just different positions, that’s all. Apart from that, both groups would’ve been effectively the same. I don’t think they would’ve had to deal with anything like what we’ve had between the Order of Mages and the Order of Knights.”
“Maybe. Still, knowing how things went down between the orders, splitting the army and the city guards into separate groups doesn’t sound efficient. Just seems like it’d invite tensions between the two...”
The tension between the Order of Mages and the Order of Knights went back to when both were founded.
Originally, a majority of mages had been alchemists. They made potions, magic tools, and so on, providing logistical support to the knights, who in turn maintained public order and protected the country as a formal army.
Potions were prized for their ability to heal wounds on the spot and get injured knights right back to the front. After all, Metis had enjoyed a monopoly over healing magic at the time, which had inevitably boosted the demand for potions.
There were problems, though, in that both the Order of Knights and the Order of Mages had many members from the nobility.
Nobles prized honor above all else. In the country that had existed before the Magic Kingdom of Solistia, mages were treated poorly; any mage was looked upon with scorn, even if they were nobles. And of course, many of those perpetuating that scorn had been nobles from knightly lineages.
In turn, the highborn mages had staged a coup against the monarch. Ultimately, knights born into noble families had taken part in the coup as well, though they’d only cooperated because it aligned with their own interests.
The mages wanted better treatment, while the knights had been worried the state might collapse entirely if its tyrannical rule continued any longer. Ultimately, the coup succeeded, leading to the founding of the Magic Kingdom of Solistia.
For a while, tensions between the highborn mages and knights cooled. But eventually, things flared up again, turning the groups into distinct political camps and worsening the situation.
In short, the highborn knights returned to spewing the same vitriol that had kick-started the coup.
The mages retaliated by restricting the supply of potions, leading to further animosity. All the while, both lowborn mages and lowborn knights became casualties in the conflict.
This same conflict had been simmering ever since—right up until Zweit and his comrades put together a plan for reform and got it implemented.
As a sidenote, their reformation emphasized merit, ensuring that nobody, even nobles, would be hired for key roles unless they’d earned it. As the country put that in place, it was weeding out its incompetents through prompt dismissals—a process that was ongoing at this very moment.
“Well, grumbling about the state of things won’t get us anywhere,” Zweit said. “Let’s get to the point: Diio, if you had to mount an attack on this city, how would you do it?”
“I’d send in some allies disguised as merchants, then slowly take the city down from the inside,” Diio said. “You’re not going to defeat this city with a frontal attack. It’s impregnable. And sure, maybe you could challenge its ruler to single combat, but it’s not like whoever’s inside would be under any obligation to accept.”
“Yeah, I guess. Though...with my position, I wouldn’t have a choice. I’d be forced to agree to single combat...”
“Being a noble sounds rough.”
In the current era, royals and upper nobles had to fly flags displaying their heraldry on the battlefield.
This was done to lift allied morale and organize the army’s troops, helping them determine unit formation and iron out tactics—crucial aspects for any fighting force to act like a well-oiled machine.
Of course, at the same time, these banners told the enemy where an army’s commander could be found, making targeted attacks likely.
That was doubly true when it came to mage nobles, who were conventionally poor in melee combat. And even mage nobles had to accept single combat if challenged—especially if they had royal blood in their veins. They couldn’t disgrace themselves by running away.
The practice of single combat was the number one reason fueling knight nobles’ contempt for mage nobles. When a mage was challenged to single combat, they’d blast their opponent with magic from afar. You could see why knights would consider that cowardly.
From the mage nobles’ perspective, though, the knight nobles were the cowards for expecting mages to fight up close, where knights had a major advantage.
When each group’s background gave them such different perspectives, they were never going to see eye to eye.