A flashback to fifteen years earlier shows the young friends Shu and Kai, along with other children from their poor village, being offered to Rekka in lieu of paying taxes and forced to become soldiers. Shu decides to exploit the opportunity to succeed and change the Rekka system from within. In the present, the mercenary group of Four Friends attack and breach a Lutoh border outpost in the "Neutral Zone". Meanwhile, Sol Athin suggests the Granedger dreadnaught follows a path through the neutral zone used by traders as the best way to reach the Wall in the north...