The command from Emperor Alaric—patricide or ruin—left Duke Alexander von Caligula with no recourse. The sheer finality of the Fort Astra annihilation, coupled with the existential threat to House Caligula, forced the Duke into a singular, devastating military response: an assault based on overwhelming, brute-force numbers. With the political collapse in the South and the terrifying uncertainty of the MSW-1 rendering all conventional strategy obsolete, Alexander had only one remaining advantage: the ability to gather a force so vast, so numerous, that it might simply drown Valum in bodies before Max could deploy his terrifying, magic-negating alchemy again. He was betting the entirety of the Imperial conventional war machine against the genius of a single, spiteful bastard, his own son.
Within forty-eight hours of the Emperor's chilling decree, Duke Alexander embarked on a logistical frenzy unprecedented in the Empire's history. He drained the last reserves of his ducal coffers, selling off ancient family heirlooms and leveraging future crop yields to secure immediate cash. He called in every feudal debt of service and loyalty that House Caligula had accrued over centuries, demanding that every banner, every knight, and every able-bodied peasant march west. He consolidated his own loyalist forces and the bewildered, panicking remnants of the Imperial legions not already destroyed or committed to the distant Southern front.
The result was a colossal, desperate army, numbering more than half a million soldiers. This force was not a cohesive unit; it was a grim, agonizing fusion of feudal levies, mercenary companies, professional Imperial infantry, and a large, crucial contingent of Mages. Alexander personally vetted the Mages, focusing on the most powerful Earth Mages (to undermine Max's concrete walls) and Fire Mages (to incinerate the Scofield factories), desperately hoping their concentrated power could breach Max's defenses before the dreaded anti-magic effects could take hold. The mobilization itself was a catastrophic logistical nightmare, turning every road leading west into a choked, disorganized river of men, horses, and wagons. Officers struggled to maintain order, fighting over water sources, forge time for shoeing horses, and space on the few navigable dirt roads. Discipline was nonexistent; the men were plagued by the specter of Fort Astra, convinced they were marching to their collective doom.
Duke Alexander's internal conflict was a private agony, a silent war fought in the confines of his command tent. He paced endlessly, his boots sinking into the map of Valum. He was a father, yet an executioner. He had exiled Max to the small, insignificant town of Valum hoping to bury his shame; instead, he had given his son the perfect laboratory to breed a world-ending weapon. Now, he was forced to destroy his own creation to save his House and his life. He felt a perverse, intellectual pride in Max's devastating efficiency, immediately followed by the visceral terror of confronting it.
His strategy, however, was ruthlessly sound, born from years of conventional warfare knowledge. He knew his son would anticipate a slow, lumbering frontal assault on his main fortress. His limited intelligence from the rapidly crumbling border regions, gleaned from desperate local lords, indicated two distinct, vulnerable targets that represented Valum's twin strengths. Scofield, the annexed town, contained the vital industrial facilities—the refineries, the oil fields, and the Central Forge—that Max had built. It was Max's economic heart, protected primarily by hastily constructed trenches and machine-gun nests. Valum, the original small town, had become Max's heavily fortified stronghold. Max's engineers had already erected thick, high concrete walls around the town and its core research facilities, turning the mountainous terrain into a nearly impregnable, modern fortress. Alexander resolved to strike both simultaneously to divide Max's attention and resources, forcing a difficult choice.
He divided his half-million soldiers into two distinct, massive armies, creating a two-pronged assault designed to test Max's defenses to the absolute breaking point:
The Scofield Force, dubbed The Hammer, comprised a faster, more concentrated force of two hundred thousand soldiers. This army was commanded by Byron, the elder son, who carried the family's rage and ambition like a burning brand. Byron was ruthless, unburdened by empathy, and eager to prove his superiority over his bastard half-brother. His orders were to move with maximum speed, bypassing the formidable walls of Valum to strike directly and swiftly at the Scofield factories—destroying the refinery, the Central Forge, and the industrial hub. If they could cripple Max's ability to produce weapons, fuel, and vehicles, the head would eventually wither from lack of sustenance. Byron's secondary, yet critical, order was to prioritize the destruction of the oil refinery at all costs, denying Max the fuel for his new motorized machines and the asphalt for his logistics. This force traveled lighter, relying on speed to avoid detection and a quick, devastating strike to succeed.
The Valum Force, designated The Anvil, was the significantly larger, slower force of three hundred thousand soldiers, personally commanded by Duke Alexander himself. This army carried the bulk of the old Empire's siege weaponry—trebuchets, massive battering rams, and the most powerful, specialized Mages dedicated to breaching stone walls. Their goal was to execute a relentless, brutal siege of Valum, pinning Max and his inner circle down behind his high concrete walls. Alexander's only, agonizing hope was that the sheer, overwhelming number of bodies and the ceaseless assault would either overwhelm Max's technological defenses or, more tragically, force him to deploy the terrifying MSW-1 against his own father and brothers, a moral stain that might, perhaps, break him. The vastness of this human wave was a deliberate, cynical calculation: trade a guaranteed, conventional massacre for a chance at neutralizing the unholy alchemy.
The logistics of moving The Anvil were crippling. The column stretched for miles, a vulnerable serpentine line winding through the rugged foothills. Food and water were constant issues; desertion was rampant, as men slipped away under the cover of night, driven mad by the fear of being erased by a weapon they couldn't see. Alexander had to dedicate nearly twenty thousand men simply to patrolling his own supply lines and hunting down deserters, further depleting his offensive numbers. The Mages, too, were increasingly unreliable. The Fort Astra anti-magic effect had terrified them, and many refused to spend their energy on simple logistical tasks, hoarding their mana for the moment they might face Max's void. Alexander felt the army was not a blade of steel, but a block of crumbling sandstone.
As Duke Alexander stood on the observation ridge, watching the two endless columns begin their terrible march toward the western horizon—one column containing his legitimate heir and the future of his House, the other his own person—he felt the weight of his patricidal mission settle onto his soul. He was leading the last great, organized conventional army of the Everwinter Empire on a crusade of forced patricide, fighting not against an enemy general with predictable moves, but against the terrible, cold ingenuity of his own, abandoned blood. The fate of the Empire rested on whether sheer, agonizing quantity could, just this once, defeat the terrible quality of science and terror. His gaze lingered on the distant, silent mountains where Max waited, and he whispered, "You chose this, Maximilian. You made me choose