The expansion and routine of establishing bastions went on and on, Alkayne allowed his troops to operate without his presence to directly command them for efficiency, permitting for his knights to gain some experience in leadership, since his personal elite was a rather large force compared to that of other minor lords, he could not always command all of them as their numbers called for a proper allotment across the grid, unlike his contemporaries whose units were smaller and more geared toward acting as a single body at all times.
Everything was going well so far, too well in fact, apart from some accursed that had wandered much further than rest and a few that had mutated to high degrees, nothing stood in opposition to their advance apart from the environment and weather itself, which was hardly a problem for the soldiers.