It would not be allowed to declare war, and a portion of its resources, and soldiers, sent to Reim for a duration of fifteen years, pending renegotiation…

I wonder most about the twins though, especially Teres: here is this warlord they accidentally woke, doing warlord things. He engages in slavery, for crying out loud!
And yet, Teres, who shouted at Flos for preserving his dead friend’s head, is only slightly bothered. She went as far as defending the crimes Flos is committing. Going along with him, killing people.

The twins have no agency. Yes, they’re young, but they are in a position for change. Why are they going along with all of this? Have they not thought for themselves once since arriving?

It’s as if they are slaves of Flos’s will. Then again, it need not be magical influence: we’ve seen people fall to fanaticism aplenty in our own world, from the nazis to ISIS. It’s just frustrating to read. Would there be anybody in Flos’s court to meaningfully counter him.

A big part of it is who they are paired with.

Teres is in the group of Flos and his Seven, all of whom are munchkin characters. While not inherently bad, those characters are rather boring for this type of story, since instead of growing and becoming better, they are already at the peak. Teres is thus also boring, because she’s just a side character to a boring character.

Trey is grouped with Fetohep and the Quarass. While Fetohep is also kind of a munchkin in many ways, he doesn’t use that to just stomp all over everyone. He’s also got a number of “negatives” from the other parts of the story, such as being undead. The Quarass has vast knowledge, but her new body is comparatively weak, and can still go through the whole leveling process – she’s kind of like a New Game+ character. Both of these characters are very different from each other, and aren’t just focused on war/battles/war/fighting/more war/flaunting how powerful they are at combat/and finally war.

Assuming the story continues for long enough, about the only way Teres is gonna get more exciting is if she ever actually reaches level 50+, and could be a contender for a position as one of the Seven.

Flos’ army likely has quite a lot of people that can use additional movement skills. Pretty sure we’ve seen others in effect just from Flos himself, even if they aren’t specifically mentioned by name. Orthenon has quite a number of movement skills.

As well, different Skills would probably interact in different ways to provide greater or lesser benefits. You mentioned how Rapid March doesn’t actually make them physically move twice as fast, but rather shortens distances. Imagine that effect – which Flos seems to be able to keep active nearly all the time – with Skill that do speed people up. Now you have people moving twice as fast while the distance is halved.

It’s possible some Skills would synergize beyond that, too. Maybe Rapid March on shortens distances by 50% when at a normal walking/marching speed, but at a dead sprint it would shorten them by 70-80%. So, when you combine that Skill with one that actually makes people move faster, you get an even greater effect overall.

Raelt had already decided to surrender to Flos. Doing so right at this moment would be dumb because they don’t want the Minotaurs targeting Jecrass’ forces along with Reim’s. But, once the fighting between Flos and the Minotaurs finishes, assuming Flos still had his army there, Raelt could just surrender as he was going to and avoid any further conflict with Reim.

Right at the moment, Jecrass has little to fear from Reim. Their “only” enemy is Medain.

I honestly don’t believe anything points to Earthers being sent to Innworld previously, but almost rather the reverse. Given the time differential between Earth and Innworld – which seems to be about 4:1 – it would make far, far more sense for things that were developed on Innworld were brought to Earth.

Chess was developed on Earth around 1,500 years ago. If it was brought to inn afterwards, even at a 1:1 time flow, there is no way it would have completely disappeared from public knowledge. Innworld has had global communications for tens of thousands of years, and while not perfect historical records, they have far better records than we have on Earth up to the last few hundred years. Yet, even on Earth, we have records of games and such that are far, far older than 1,500 years.

However, if it was originally developed on Innworld, long enough back for all records to truly be gone, then a world traveler that left when the Creler Wars started – about 6,000 years ago – could have brought it to Earth – which would end up around the equivalent of 1,500 years of Earth time, right around when it was supposed to be created here.

To be fair, a lot of his actions up to this point haven’t been just arrogant, but idiotic.

It’s hinted that no one really likes him, yet he gets pissy when Wistram doesn’t seem to want to show a parade celebrating him, compared to something actually exciting like battles. If people don’t like you, parading around espousing your own inflated ego is just face palm stupid.

It’s been noted multiple throughout the story that adventurers generally don’t fight in wars. Yet not only is a significant portion of his army made up of adventurers, but the only forces he sends to “help” are those same adventurers that don’t fight wars. Granted, Raelt is also.pretty dumb for not publicly calling out those adventurers as cowards way prior to this point.

Beyond sending inferior and idiotic forces as assistance, he’s pushed past the borders of both Belchan and Jecrass, which would only serve as a pretext for declaring war on Medain after the conflict with Reim is resolved. Whether Jecrass wins or loses, Medain is basically next on the chopping block, and he’d have either Jecrass + Belchan against him, or be fighting Reim. That is just tactically idiotic.

Fairly publicly kidnapping a princess is definitely upping the stupidity bar, though, especially with the new scrying network allowing the entire world (filled with the previously-noted people that don’t like you!) to see how disgraceful you are.