The layout of the transit base was quite simple. The teleportation arrays reserved exclusively for personnel were located in the central square, while the surrounding perimeter was completely lined with arrays for "cargo." Living beings showing vital signs, such as monster beasts and giants, were also classified under cargo shipments.
Their thick hides and resilient flesh could withstand much greater spatial turbulence and tearing forces during teleportation, unlike priests, who—apart from those specializing in physical enhancement—were mostly quite "fragile."
This distinction was aimed at maximizing efficiency while minimizing costs as much as possible.
Now that all personnel were in position and roll call was complete, the next step was receiving equipment. Every cargo teleportation array along the perimeter had been activated, operating at maximum capacity.
Dismissing everyone else, Karen took Neo alone up to a watchtower inside the base.
Neo pulled out a cigarette, offered it to Karen, and seeing him shake his head, lit it for himself. He teased, "The way you started things off, you're bound to offend just about every colleague in our department before long. You do know that once a war drags on, logistical problems are inevitable."
"There's no helping it. That's just how the process goes. If nothing goes wrong on my end during this campaign, I'll return in a whole different league compared to our former peers. Offending them won't really matter. And if things go wrong, if the fighting goes south and our assets are squandered, I'll be prosecuted immediately upon returning. There won't even be any need for those offended colleagues to seize the chance to attack or take revenge."
"Fair point." Neo blew out a smoke ring. "You see things clearly enough."
At that moment, magic crystal cannons wrapped in treated leather were hauled out of the portals one after another, pulled by Golden-Armored Dragon Turtles.
Seeing this, Neo inhaled sharply, drawing the smoke ring he had just exhaled right back in for a second round.
The Golden-Armored Dragon Turtles actually had little to do with true dragons; they were utilitarian monster beasts bred and raised by the Church of Order. They varied in size—the largest were as massive as adult mammoths, while the smallest could still fill an entire room—each matched to pull different grades of magic crystal cannons.
On the march, they served as the artillery's finest traction. In battle, their armored scutes could fan out to form a protective dome over the cannons and crews behind them. Furthermore, they possessed short-range, low-altitude flight capabilities, aiding in navigating rugged terrain and rapidly redeploying firing positions.
Neo licked his lips excitedly and took another deep drag on his cigarette.
"Didn't you read the supply manifest?" Karen asked.
"I read it, but numbers on paper aren't the same as seeing it in person. Equipment like Dragon Turtles is usually reserved for the knight orders. Even the regular army doesn't have that many; they mostly make do with other monster beasts."
"That's thanks to the Whip-Wielder pulling strings. His words carry far more weight than ours."
Even setting aside Foden's status as a direct confidant of the High Priest, the Whip of Order's traditional purview was internal oversight. Unless pushed to the absolute brink, no one dared to slight the Whip-Wielder. Even if someone didn't fear retribution themselves, what about their trusted aides? What about their entire branch?
If someone deliberately dug into your affairs, they could always turn up dirt.
Neo pulled a sheet of paper from the sleeve of his clerical robe and began checking off items against it.
"Don't worry," Karen said. "I audited everything before coming. There are no shortages or omissions."
"Do you think I care about the total? I'm enjoying the process!"
"All right, enjoy it in peace."
Once all the magic crystal cannons had been hauled out, Neo flicked the inventory sheet in his hand. "Let's see... counting what we already had, as of today, our corps has a total of three hundred low-grade magic crystal cannons, one hundred and fifty mid-grade, and fifty high-grade."
"Do you think that's too many or too few?" Karen asked.
"Too few."
"Huh? When you first arrived and I allocated cannons to you, you complained it was too many."
"Back then, I had only a thousand men under me, and I had to maintain support units of every specialty. The manpower I could spare for artillery was very limited. But looking at the roster now, this corps totals eleven thousand five hundred men. I could easily assign half of them just to man the cannons."
"That much?"
Neo pointed downward and said, "We have twenty-one transit bases like this one on our side alone, and the coalition has nearly three times that. Their troop strength is probably triple ours as well. Counting heads, those numbers look huge, but scattered across the desert, they're really nothing. In practice, however, the area each organized unit can effectively monitor and control is massive. Viewed from that perspective, this desert battlefield is actually quite crowded.
"In such a crowded environment, it's not impossible to achieve dramatic results in a single stroke—provided Order deploys ten knight orders here. But that's obviously out of the question. On paper, Order has only committed two knight orders to this theater. Even with personnel drawn from other knight orders to reinforce them, the effective combat power won't exceed three knight orders by any measure. Those three knight orders are enough to guarantee the baseline for this front, but raising the ceiling is virtually impossible.
"Therefore, barring any surprises, my assessment is that once fighting resumes after another brief lull, it will turn into a game of pushing tiles across a map. The opposing combat echelons will constantly grind against each other along a sprawling, meandering frontline. In localized sectors, one side gathers momentum today and launches an offensive; tomorrow the other side takes the initiative and attacks. The defending side will do nothing more than dig in behind fortifications. As the clash drags on, so long as no clear breach opens on either side, it will come down to the broader tide of war. If the momentum is ours, we push forward, and the enemy falls back to avoid encirclement and division; if the momentum favors them, we fall back.
"A pitched, open-field decisive battle between two armies will be exceedingly rare—it practically won't happen unless the commander on at least one side is a pig in disguise. Because of that, magic crystal cannons will play an immense role in the coming days. Most of the time, the artillerymen will just shell enemy positions, while everyone else, scouts aside, will be stuck soaking up the sun back in camp."
"Should I submit another requisition for more cannons, then?"
Neo nodded. "Requisition them. The Church of Order's smithing division may be working overtime, but the old stockpiles are still around, so supplies are relatively flush right now. Once the war drags on, believe me, damaged cannons won't get replaced in time, and cannon crystals will be in short supply too."
"So we hoard as much as we can beforehand?"
"The problem with hoarding too much is what we can carry when redeploying..."
Neo stopped mid-sentence as he saw a hundred hunched, white-haired old men emerging from the cargo teleportation array. They wore straw hats, had shackles around their ankles, and their skin was covered in strange runes.
These elders weren't truly aged; they were giants by nature. In humanoid guise, they appeared rather grotesque, but once their seals were removed and they were put to work, each possessed a frame as colossal as a mountain.
Neo grinned. "A hundred white-haired giant elders? That settles it. Submit the requisition."
With these giants as pack beasts, the corps' cargo-carrying capacity would skyrocket to terrifying levels.
A flock of falcons flew out from within, swiftly diving down at the sound of a military whistle.
Soldiers began drawing their gear: armor, shields, warhorses, crossbows, wands, and the like... As for personal effects, designated logistics officers would retrieve and distribute them last.
In sharp contrast to the disciplined order of the Yorktown Region troops, the contingent from the Dinge Region still appeared thoroughly disorganized, despite their efforts to maintain discipline.
"How long will it take to integrate them?" Karen asked.
Neo dismissed it casually. "I know what you're worried about. Don't sweat it. Break them up, reorganize them into squads, drill them for a few days, and they'll shape up. After all, the baseline caliber of Whip of Order priests deployed to the frontier domains is solid. Of course, you'll need to watch over the drills in person."
"Understood."
Once the handover of equipment was complete, Karen returned to camp. His command tent had already been pitched. Lifting the flap and stepping inside, he found it not only spacious, but also fitted with embedded arrays that regulated temperature and ventilation.
Daina was inside, helping arrange the daily necessities he had brought along.
"When I was with Uncle Daan, I would help him with whatever was within my power," Daina said, shooting Karen an "I bet you didn't expect that" look.
"So the reason you resented becoming my aide-de-camp so much was because jumping from one aide-de-camp post to another made you despair?"
"Yes, exactly." Daina took a deep breath, then broke into a smile. "Though if I get to experience what happened today every few days, I suppose I could get used to it."
"Remember to find time to see a psychologist after the war."
"You think there's something wrong with my head?"
"Drop the 'think.'"
Daina went over to hang Karen's towel. With her back turned, her lips began moving rapidly in a soundless barrage of venting.
Having finished organizing, Daina paused at the entrance of the tent and asked, "Do you need me to bring your meals here?"
"No need. I'll go eat myself. Thank you for today. From now on, you only need to work in the conference tent; you don't have to come here."
"Do you have a problem with my work?"
"I believe that in a military camp, the standard of living between commanders and ordinary soldiers should be kept as equal as possible."
"Understood."
After Daina left, Karen let out a sigh, stood up from his chair, and began rearranging everything himself. He remarked with feeling, "Commander Daan suffered all those years, didn't he?"
Just then, Little Kanna came running in and asked, "Where's Sister Purr?"
She had just searched all over the camp for quite a while without finding Purr.
"She and Kevin took the scout squad out for field training. They won't be back until tomorrow morning."
"Oh," Little Kanna said downcastly. "I thought Sister Purr would be waiting here to check my homework."
"Did you finish it?"
"All done." She paused, then added, "Everything I was supposed to write is written."
"She can check it tomorrow."
Little Kanna looked around the inside of the tent, and her eyes suddenly lit up. "Hey, there's no way to take a bath here!"
"There are communal shower facilities in the camp. Unless it's a wartime emergency, they're open around the clock."
"Then when are we going to war?!"
All because she didn't want to bathe, Little Kanna had now become a staunch hawk.
"Soon." Karen picked up two mess trays, handed one to Little Kanna, and said, "Come on, let's get dinner."
When they reached the camp dining hall, a long line had already formed. Karen's appearance prompted all the surrounding priests to salute in unison. Karen nodded in acknowledgment and declined an invitation to cut ahead.
Still, Karen decided to let Little Kanna fetch his meals in the future. Approaching the troops and acting as their equal was commendable, but every time he showed up, it disrupted the soldiers' regular dining routine. Many had collected their food and squatted down to eat on the spot; seeing him arrive, they had to hurriedly swallow their mouthfuls and scramble up to salute, which was far too troublesome for everyone.
Next, the food in the camp proved to be quite an eye-opener. Karen could only describe it as... extravagant squalor.
Ordinary priests would only buy point coupon ingredients on special holidays or anniversaries to treat themselves. In the military camp, however, everyone was allocated a daily ration to replenish the spiritual power expended during training and combat, making every meal quite expensive.
Yet the culinary skills of the army cooks left much to be desired. On Karen's tray sat three dollops of mush in different colors: staple mush, vegetable mush, and meat mush.
Carrying this meal back to his tent, Karen finally understood why Neo had been cooking for himself every time they communicated earlier. After a few days of eating this stuff, even Karen would probably be tempted to cook his own meals.
Dining inside the tent, Little Kanna was surprisingly cheerful. She pulled out a pill, smeared some of the mush over it, and took a bite, finding it unexpectedly pleasant.
After dinner, Little Kanna looked at the bed, then turned to Karen and said, "I'm sleepy. Let's go take a shower."
"I have a meeting. Go find Daina and have her take you."
"Fine."
Little Kanna picked up a washbasin, put her towel, toothbrush, and toiletries inside, then grabbed a bag, folded some clean clothes, and tucked them in. With the basin in her left hand and the bag in her right, she walked out with a drooping head.
Karen stood up and headed to the conference tent to hold the corps' first officers' meeting. Aside from a few who were out on duty, practically everyone in the camp was present.
The meeting had only three agenda items.
First, Karen conveyed the Whip-Wielder's encouragement and expectations to everyone present. In truth, Foden had never sent an official dispatch saying any such thing; the supposed encouragement and expectations were entirely Karen's own improvisation. There was no avoiding it—such was the current political necessity. If this were still just the Yorktown Region militia, Karen could easily have skipped this step. But now, he needed to borrow the Whip-Wielder's name to bolster his own legitimacy.
The second topic covered the latest personnel assignments, training schedules, and subsequent command structures. This part was rather intricate, but after Karen gave an introduction, he sat back down and let Muri read the details aloud. Before Karen arrived, Muri was Neo's puppet; now that Karen was here, Muri had become a double puppet for both Karen and Neo.
When Muri finished reading, Karen said, "Implement accordingly." He did not leave the slightest room or opening for discussion among the officers. After all, this involved seniority, positions, ranks, and power; if open debate were allowed, the bickering would never end.
The third agenda item was a reaffirmation of military discipline and regulations. Karen recited them personally. They were the same as the old version, but coming from his mouth produced a vastly different effect than if Muri had read them. With all three agenda items concluded, Karen adjourned the meeting.
Once the crowd had saluted and filed out, Karen convened an internal meeting limited to Muri's group and Count Rekar's group. These were his true inner circle.
Even so, it was just an informal chat to remind them of the precautions for concealing their identities, particularly since Count Rekar and his companions had no souls.
Fortunately, the new batch of masks Karen commissioned from Mr. Lemar had been completed just before their departure. A new feature had been added: fluctuations of soul aura. This was an idea Karen had gleaned from his grandmother's fleeting reaction when he visited her home to pick up some items.
Powerful figures would inevitably come and go in the military camp, and the knight orders were accompanied by Temple Elders; extra caution was only prudent.
Finally, Karen recharged Count Rekar. This left Muri, Daliwenluo, and the others looking solemn, as though witnessing the baptism of a divine miracle once more.
After the internal meeting ended, Karen summoned several individuals privately: Richard, Aisen, Ashley, Dake, and the rest...
Richard was originally the best fit for his aide-de-camp—or more nicely put, herald—and Richard had even volunteered for it himself. However, Richard had already grown accustomed to serving under "Neo," so Karen decided to keep him at "Neo's" side.
As for Uncle Aisen, his skin had darkened, yet he actually smiled of his own accord now. Against his tanned skin, his teeth looked strikingly white when he smiled.
To many, the battlefield was an asura hell, yet Uncle Aisen had managed to rediscover sunshine here.
With the meetings over and the conversations finished, Karen—who had only teleported in earlier today—felt a touch of weariness. Instead of returning directly to his tent, he made his way to Neo's quarters.
Lifting the tent flap, he saw Neo seated before a small grill, roasting beef. The meat was sliced and marinated; placed over the heat for a few seconds and flipped, it was ready to eat.
Karen sat down. "I thought you'd be cooking an Order hotpot."
"The kitchen staff has their hands full. In the past, the food tasted bad, but at least you could tell what the dishes were. With so many new recruits arriving these past few days, they'll probably be making mush for a while, and there's nothing left to fish out of the slop buckets either." As he spoke, Neo set a plate and chopsticks before Karen, then shook out some dry dipping seasoning from a jar.
Karen picked up a slice of beef, dipped it in the spice mix, and popped it into his mouth. It was fragrant and tender, but after eating a few pieces, he set down his chopsticks.
Neo asked with a chuckle, "No appetite?"
"I've already eaten dinner. I'm not hungry." That mush had been made from point coupon ingredients; while its presentation and texture were terrible, its nutritional value was exceptionally high and kept hunger at bay.
"Tired?"
"Not too bad. Today was the exhausting part; things should be easier from here on."
"Come on, do you really want to just be a mascot? Learn how to run a war. It's not like I can stay by your side forever."
"Don't say such ominous things. Who knows? Years from now, when I'm leaning against a fireplace gazing into the embers and remembering you, that exact line might be what comes to mind."
"Whatever. Suit yourself."
"Enjoy your food. I'm heading back to rest."
"I won't see you out, Lord Corps Commander."
Karen returned to his tent, grabbed his gear, and went to shower. When he came back, Little Kanna was already sound asleep. The bed was small, yet she still slept huddled at the foot of it.
Karen picked her up, turned her around properly, lay down beside her, and closed his eyes.
Late into the night, Karen woke up as he sensed someone approaching. Hearing the familiar patter of canine paws, he didn't open his eyes, choosing instead to go back to sleep. Soon, a fluffy creature slipped into his arms. Karen rested his hand on its back, and its tail naturally wrapped around his wrist.
After a sound night's sleep, he opened his eyes and sat up, thoroughly refreshed.
Beside him, Purr and Little Kanna were still snuggled together, fast asleep. As Karen got up to wash, the golden retriever sleeping in the nearby dog bed raised its head. Karen smiled at it and gestured for it to go back to sleep.
Only after Karen had freshened up and stepped out of the tent did Kevin yawn and lie back down.
Breakfast was still mush. Karen had arrived late, so only cold mush remained.
Declining the cooks' offer to prepare something special for him, Karen finished his portion.
Morning drills were already underway. Neo had been standing there watching for a while. Karen walked up to him and said, "We need to address the kitchen situation. I'm worried that eating like this will hurt morale if it keeps up."
"It's fine. They just got sick of canned rations, so eating mush is actually a welcome change for now. Once they get tired of the mush, I'll go back to issuing canned rations. Anyway, go take your station. I've already arranged it for you. Look, right over there."
Neo pointed toward an elevated platform erected in the center of the camp.
When Karen climbed up, he discovered not only a chair, but also a side table set with snacks like roasted peanuts and an insulated bucket filled with ice. Several books rested on the shelf beneath the table, and an umbrella was mounted overhead, inlaid with water-attribute gemstones that cooled and humidified the air.
Karen unbuckled the leather whip hanging at his waist—part of the ensemble that matched his clerical robe—and sat down.
Those who knew the truth understood he was overseeing the drills and team coordination; those who didn't, seeing this leisurely setup and the leather whip, would probably mistake him for a slave overseer or a ruthless foreman.
For the next seven days, Karen sat there every day, actually finishing all the novels Eunice had prepared for him.
It had really been far too long since he had had such "free time" to immerse himself in reading novels from morning till night without distraction.
Meanwhile, Karen's supervision had an undeniably outstanding effect. The lash Scarlett had received continued to produce results to this day.
Now, during military drills, one could no longer tell the difference between the Dinge Region troops and those from Yorktown Region. Even a layman watching from the sidelines could see that the corps executed military orders with crisp precision and speed.
Neo was right: with solid fundamentals, a little polishing brought out brilliant quality.
At the same time, the brief period of unspoken truce—maintained while both sides brought up reinforcements and expanded their strength—finally drew to a close.
Yesterday, the hierarchs of the Church of the Goddess of the Night, the Church of Life, and the Church of Earth, leading representatives from various orthodox churches, appeared together in the desert. They journeyed to the Desert Forbidden Zone—the legendary site where the Desert God fell—to pay homage to the fallen deity.
Newspapers and publications across the major orthodox churches all ran the photograph, declaring that the church world respected freedom of faith and would resolutely support the religious independence of the Church of the Desert.
Cardinal Kred, in charge of military affairs for the Church of Order, also arrived yesterday at the Knight Order Headquarters. Via frontline military conference communications, he delivered a pre-war address to all combat echelons under Order's command, including the knight orders, the regular army, and the militias.
The Order Weekly and newspapers of affiliated churches also published photographs of the conference, reiterating Order's steadfast stance on punishing and eradicating the Desert remnants in accordance with the Order Regulations.
Karen received military orders from the Knight Order Headquarters. The directive designated a location and operational objectives: he had to lead his corps to arrive there by the specified date, clear out any enemy forces that might be present, and establish a defensive network anchored on the site.
The curtains of war were drawn open once more!
Chapter 778