The first few spies around the northern region were killed without too much of a hassle and because there was a lag in the time to report back, Number 4 and Number 8 took this chance as per order to get around Ress to defeat any monsters that were surrounding them.
They had no idea that between the Rifle Mage Battalions and the tanks supporting them, there was actually another group that Ress had cultivated to do some dirtier work which was not known to the public, the military, and even the ministers. Find your next read at mvl
The ones who were known were only Jin, Kraft, and Gara, the Royal Mage General. This mysterious group was not so mysterious after all if their identities were known to the public partially because Kraft had decided that even lowlife have their uses.
Prisoners of Ress were given a second chance to work for the kingdom or that was the main idea behind Star Foxes. Unlike the Moon and the Sun where people will notice them in some way or another, the stars were different. They glimmer and glitter under the veil of darkness and people only appreciated them for what they had done shining from afar.
Like the stars, these prisoners were never given a second chance to shine brightly, but Kraft put it in a crude way that humans still needed to be fed so it was important for them to work too. But in actual fact, they were racking in more money than usual due to Jin's courtesy but also because the training they were given was equivalent to the Commando Mages.
The only difference was that their training was more...restrained despite the given regiment. They thought the cuffs that they wore could break easily given the amount of magic training that they went through but all of the Star Foxes eventually realised that the chains were equally strong like them.
This was because Jin had improvised smithed all of the chains individually to make them have the 'growth' trait imbued on those chains. So, whenever they leveled up in rank, the chains would also grow in strength. But that does not mean that they did not have any freedom in what they were doing.
Because Jin believed that the current world is still too sheltered by the likes of Demons and Celestials and they would not be able to do anything about it when the time came. In addition, Jin had already seen the capability of this world through Grand Sage Mex. It felt as if he was in a video game where the game gave such terribly lousy levelled NPCs unless he directly intervened in it.
"Go! My Star Foxes! It's your turn to shine!" Kraft said as he finally gave the order to sortie when the Rifle Mages had reported that they had encompassed the five kilometre radius.
The bombardment was ongoing and sightings of flying monsters had already emerged, indicating that the demons were communicating with each other and it would be a matter of time even more flying monsters appeared to kill the Rifle Mages who were having a field day.
The Star Foxes were all in black camo uniform as they put up their fox masks in order not to be identified during the fights when against enemies. For the Rifle Mages, they will know that the Star Foxes were friendlies due to their Friend or Foe system with the Goggle Artifact they had been bestowed with.
(Only the Commando Mages were equipped with Odin's Lesser Jewels but fun fact, the Star Foxes were equipped with 'Odin's Jewels'.)
They took their M4 assault rifles and flew off instantly, provoking the monsters with rubber bullets in an attempt to lure the remaining monsters to catch after them at low altitudes too.
The plan to surround the entire Ress with Demons had commenced.