"What a hassle."
The Lich Mentor, Duke Ulysses, withdrew his gaze from above the inner castle and looked at the towering figures shouting 'Bo Fu Clan' and charging below the outer castle, frowning: "We've just started exchanging blows, and the school's wizards have already deployed a Second Rank battle array... I'm afraid our youngsters will find it hard to cope."
In the minds of old-school wizards, including demons, a large-scale war is a prolonged and brutal catastrophe, with both sides moving from entry, to probing, to engagement, fierce battle, decisive battle, and finally the end, often taking months or even years. Sometimes high-level wizards on both sides get so engrossed that they extend the timeline, expanding the battlefield to a range of decades up or down from the moment of combat.
