Greycastle, Neverwinter City.

Roland sat at his desk, answering a call from the front lines of the Fertile Plains.

Of course, calling it the front lines wasn't entirely accurate. The signal attenuation meant it could only reach between Neverwinter and Longsong Stronghold. Before the repeater amplifier was invented, this was the limit of manual telephone communication.

But that didn't mean the limitation couldn't be overcome.

The simplest method was to have Leaf act as a "relay operator." In her Forest of Hearts state, her consciousness could cover the entire controlled Misty Forest, meaning the speed of message delivery even surpassed lightning. The front lines only needed to call Leaf, and Leaf would relay the call to Roland. In a sense, it could be considered real-time communication.

"The situation is still going smoothly," Leaf said, lowering her voice to imitate Iron Axe's tone, "As you predicted, the devils have launched several sabotage attacks on the rails, but the impact on logistics transport is not significant. Without Spider Demons, they can only airdrop near the tracks and use brute force to displace them, and they have to retreat before the Blackriver comes close—and without needing to replace the rails, the Engineering Department can quickly repair the damaged tracks."

"It seems the armored train is playing its intended role."

"Indeed, Your Majesty. Whether for mobile rescue or railway maintenance, it can be used as a small fortress. The only regret is that the number of trains is still too small. If possible, I would like to have a Blackriver unit stationed between each station."

"That's easy for you to say," Roland couldn't help but grin. "Besides the armored trains, freight trains must also continue to be produced, and this part of the work is still inseparable from the witches. Being able to provide two trains now is already quite good. Continue to push the front lines forward, and strive to complete the general offensive deployment before midsummer."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

Leaf replied in a muffled voice.

Actually… you don't have to imitate even the nasal sounds.

Roland coughed twice. "By the way, have the devils shown any signs of launching a large-scale offensive again?"

When he was awakened by Nightingale in the middle of the night a week ago and learned that the First Army camp had been attacked, he was indeed nervous for a while. Fortunately, Anna told him that the losses were small, and Edith stepped forward to stabilize morale, so Roland was relieved.

In fact, combat in dark or dim environments has always been the First Army's weakness. The inability to observe targets leads to a significant decrease in the effectiveness of firearms, and tracer bullets have never been able to be mass-produced. Target designation relies heavily on the abilities of witches. He didn't expect the devils' first initiative to attack at night. They not only thoroughly investigated Sylvie's Magic Eyes, but also realized the essence of gun attacks, adopted dispersed formations, and even crawled forward. Fortunately, the enemy still lacked weapons to counter them, and the First Army executed every requirement of the emergency combat training excellently, otherwise the results would have been hard to say.

"If it's an attack like the night raid, there are indeed no related signs," Leaf relayed. "Sylvie always takes one or two hours a day to inspect the necessary places in front of the tracks, and also makes irregular reconnaissance trips with the Magic Ark or Seagull. At least so far, it's safe."

"What does the General Staff Department say?"

"They believe there are two possibilities. One is that they have noticed our changes and can no longer repeat the same trick; the other is that the devils have limited forces and cannot plan two large-scale offensives in a short period of time."

"Is that so?" Roland said thoughtfully. Besides the opponent's amazing learning ability, one thing that worried him most about the attack was the high-ranking devils acting as shock troopers.

And this wasn't the first time this had happened.

Now that he thought about it, since encountering the first high-ranking devil behind the snow-capped mountains, Neverwinter City had dealt with this type of specially evolved devil four times. It should be known that hundreds of years ago, high-ranking devils existed as generals of the army. The Union only had a chance to kill them after the Holy Guard was deployed to defeat the enemy head-on. But now, their status has declined significantly, and their frequency of appearance has greatly increased, which is not good news.

The God's Punishment Army, with only brute

force, can still be specifically targeted. If a group of high-ranking devils with various abilities break into the camp, then one can only pray for divine protection.

Since there is no special targeting method, the only universal solution that Roland could think of was to relentlessly pursue more powerful firepower and completely eliminate the enemy before they even launched an attack.

"The devils will never sit idly by and watch their foothold in the Fertile Plains be threatened by humans. Continue to be vigilant and don't give the opponent any chance to take advantage."

"Understood!" Leaf said loudly, then returned to her usual tone, "Your Majesty, Iron Axe has hung up the phone."

"Hah..." Roland let out a soft breath. "So who's next to report?"

"It's the Minister of Construction, Karl van Bate."

The Ministry of Construction? He was slightly surprised. With enough materials and manpower, there shouldn't be any difficulties in the construction projects. "Put him through."

"Your Majesty," Leaf imitated Karl's voice again. Although it wasn't as indistinguishable as Echo's, the combination of swaying branches and rustling leaves made it surprisingly believable, "The construction team has recently encountered some trouble. I think it may require the assistance of other departments in the Administrative Office."

This girl… she's addicted, isn't she?

The matter that the Minister of Construction wanted to report was very simple. After the night attack, many workers were frightened, and their morale was significantly reduced. In addition, the construction of the railway was a long process, and many foremen had discovered that their subordinates were slacking off. Karl hoped to carry out a shift change or use family visits to boost morale.

The entire shift change was basically difficult to achieve, after all, not everyone was willing to take risks to pursue high remuneration, so Roland focused on the second method, "Family members? I remember that 70% of the workers who applied to build the railway were migrants, and many of them don't have complete families. If the polarization is too obvious, I'm afraid it will cause even worse effects."

"I've also considered this, Your Majesty," Leaf replied on his behalf. "The railway engineering team issued a transfer contract before departure. I think we could use the transferee designated in the contract to replace family members. Since they are willing to entrust everything after their sacrifice to the other party, they must be extremely important people in their hearts. In a sense, they can be regarded as family."

"That's a feasible solution." Roland pondered for a moment, "Well then, I'll arrange for Barov to do it."