The battle at Kelaba Market came to an end. Over a thousand Gray Wolf Army soldiers laid down their weapons, clasped their hands behind their heads, and stepped out from their entrenchments.
Covered in soot and dirt, their expressions were crestfallen. Most carried wounds that had not yet scabbed over, and not a single glint of light remained in their dust-dimmed eyes.
Losing to the Alliance would have been somewhat easier to swallow, but looking at the militiamen before them—men who could barely scrape together a single intact garment among them—all they felt was utter humiliation.
These militiamen had driven them from the northern end of Kelaba Market all the way to its eastern side, forming a long cordon across the market’s entrance.
The survivors watching from a distance took in the scene, every face etched with sheer disbelief.
"...His Majesty's army actually lost."
"That’s the invincible Gray Wolf Army..."
"And they lost to the Moon Clan of all people."
In truth, it wasn't just the Moon Clan.
It was simply that the slaves in Rowell Camp were predominantly Moon Clan, so naturally, this militia force was composed mostly of them as well.
Pious believers stared blankly toward Kelaba Market, their lips murmuring in prayer.
"Holy Sun-Bearing Divine Bull above."
This time, the skies might truly be changing...
Watching the militiamen stride toward him, Chiliarch Satish's face was as pale as ash. After several internal struggles, he finally handed over his sidearm.
Their radio had already been captured; continuing to resist was utterly pointless.
Yet to his utter surprise, after taking the pistol, the bare-armed man merely popped the magazine out and tossed the gun right back to him.
"Run east."
Satish froze.
"Wha—"
Before he could ask what that meant, the man fired a shot right in front of his boots without a word, sending up a spray of gravel and dust that made him jump in fright.
*Are you insane?!*
Satish stared with wide eyes, silently questioning him with his gaze, but seeing that the man was dead serious, he could only scramble back a few steps before breaking into a jog.
He ran from the center of the market straight to the eastern edge. No one obstructed him along the way, right up until he saw the crowd of disarmed prisoners huddled near the eastern gate.
*What in the world are they trying to do?!*
Satish’s heart surged with terror. Compared to the fate of being captured, the uncertainty of what was about to happen was far more terrifying.
The cluster of Gray Wolves standing by the eastern gate all looked at him dumbfoundedly, clearly never expecting to be reunited with their commander after being taken prisoner.
The group's confusion did not last long. A man carrying an LD-47 assault rifle strode up to them, raised his barrel toward the sky, and pulled the trigger without warning.
*Rat-tat-tat—!*
Like startled birds, the captives packed at the gate jolted in shock at the sudden burst of gunfire, instinctively recoiling. The survivors watching the spectacle from afar were also spooked, immediately ducking back inside their homes.
The gunman grinned evilly at the prisoners like a predator tormenting a herd of dazed sheep. He made a show of aiming his emptied rifle toward them, mimicking gunshots with a barrage of "pew-pew" sounds to fake them out.
Watching the terrified crowd frantically stumble backward, he crisply slapped the empty magazine out, loaded a fresh one, and racked the bolt with a sharp *clack*.
What that motion meant went without saying—
This time, it was live ammunition!
Without needing him to utter a single word, the panicked prisoners turned and bolted away from Kelaba Market.
Bullets whistled over their heads. The fleeing captives had no time to think, let alone look to see if the person beside them had fallen. Driven by the ragtag militia’s sporadic gunfire, they could only flee headlong toward the outskirts of the settlement.
Meanwhile, standing in the center of Kelaba Market, Laxi tapped the earpiece hooked over his ear to contact Fang Chang, who was stationed back at the port's forward command post.
"As you instructed, the prisoners are fleeing through the east gate toward the outskirts of the settlement. I've detached a hundred-man unit to trail them."
A response soon crackled through the comm channel.
"...Copy that. Well done. I need you to lead everyone else north of the settlement on standby. Our forces will support your advance there."
Although there had been a slight hiccup in the plan, it was not beyond salvage.
Now that the captives' weapons were confiscated, letting them run was fine.
Worst-case scenario, they would just round them up again once they fled back to their lines.
Laxi responded crisply.
"Understood."
Even though the intelligence showed an entire ten-thousand-man division waiting in full battle array there, he did not feel the slightest trace of fear or cowardice.
After experiencing the previous two battles, he knew very well who was truly invincible. It wasn't the Gray Wolf Army, nor was it himself, but the "iron men" standing behind him.
As long as those iron men had his back, there was nothing to fear...
Once the transmission ended, he immediately hailed all the chiliarchs under his command, ordering them to lead their respective units toward the northern part of the settlement according to the plan.
What the Alliance had supplied them with wasn't merely light weaponry and ammunition; it also included communication devices distributed all the way down to the ten-man squad level.
It was precisely because of this that, despite being a hastily assembled rabble with raw combat experience, the communication barriers between their various command tiers were virtually eliminated. In fact, their level of informational coordination was slightly higher than that of the Gray Wolf Army, who only issued radios down to the hundred-man company level.
Even when orders were occasionally conveyed unclearly, it only took shouting a couple more times over the comms to resolve it.
At the very least, there would be no situations where a centurion couldn't find his squads, or a chiliarch had no idea where his companies were.
With this single perk alone, their baseline was already far superior to that of ordinary guerrilla fighters, to say nothing of the automatic weapons shipped in from the port...
At the exact same time the First Corps of the Avengers Alliance pulled out of Kelaba Market, a head was tucked behind a second-floor window in a three-story residential building slightly south of the market center. Eyes peered tensely outside through a slit in the curtains.
Seeing that the rioters occupying the market were pulling back, Prince Dilip let out a slow sigh of relief, completely unaware that his back was drenched in cold sweat.
It seemed the Sun-Bearing Divine Bull was still watching over him after all.
Although he had unfortunately lost this battle, the silver lining was that these foolish rebels hadn't swept through the entire market, rushing off elsewhere instead.
Furthermore, that cowardly Chiliarch Satish hadn't ratted him out, allowing his presence to remain hidden.
Perhaps...
He could seize the chance while those people departed to slip away undetected.
The Alliance and those puppet soldiers wouldn't even know he had been here...
Prince Dilip backed carefully away from the window and turned around, preparing to discuss the matter with his guards, who were holding their breath in the room.
Yet before he could open his mouth, a fawning, flattering voice carried up from downstairs.
"Yes, sir, right here..."
***
North of Golden Gallon Port.
In a camouflaged observation post on the frontline positions less than a kilometer from the urban district, Myriadman Manu held up a pair of binoculars, watching the distant city with a solemn expression.
The artillery bombardment on the settlement had ceased. To cover that fool's retreat, they had wasted nearly five hundred precious shells, yet that quiet urban district showed not a hint of movement. He couldn't even spot a single shadow.
The adjutant standing beside him looked anxious.
"Could something have happened to Prince Dilip?"
Manu gave a cold sneer and said nothing.
If that were truly the case, it would actually be a blessing.
By comparison, his heart ached far more for the five thousand brothers of his clan. They were brave lads; even if they had to die, they should have died for something meaningful.
He only hoped more of them could make it out...
Just then, several figures abruptly materialized through the morning mist, sprinting forward in utter disarray, with gunfire seemingly chasing their heels.
Manu's pupils contracted. He leaned forward instinctively, his index finger swiftly adjusting the magnification of his binoculars to see farther.
"It's our men!"
A flicker of delight rose on his face, but he quickly snapped on high alert.
*No!*
*Something's wrong!*
*Far too many men broke out!*
Hundreds of possibilities flashed through his mind in a split second, yet no matter the scenario, he could never imagine the Alliance launching a counteroffensive against their fortified positions with fewer than a thousand men.
That would be utterly absurd!
The Legion had supplied them with Panzerfaust rocket launchers capable of penetrating even power armor!
Combined with the field guns hidden in their positions, flattened 100mm howitzers, and machine-gun nests, he was confident he could repel an assault even from an armored unit.
Even though he disbelieved it with every fiber of his being, he still prepared for the worst. Grabbing the handset from the radio beside him, he roared,
"All units, heads up! Prepare for battle!"
The roar calling them to combat echoed through one radio after another, and piercing alarms sounded across the frontline positions, which stretched more than a dozen kilometers wide.
Battle orders trickled down from regiments to companies, and soldiers hiding in bomb shelters rushed into the trenches in squads of ten.
Heads capped in steel helmets dotted the trenches like landmines planted in the soil, flanked by gleaming bayonets.
Yet herein lay the problem.
The trenches were dug too deep!
And it wasn't just a particular stretch; it was every spot near the front along the entire dozen-kilometer-wide line. Only a few slopes blasted open by artillery fire allowed anyone to reach the parapet.
Even then, it was barely manageable.
Previously, these trenches were used solely as shelters to mitigate artillery damage; no one had ever imagined that the Alliance might actually fight their way out of Golden Gallon Port.
Because of that, no one had paid any heed to this seemingly insignificant detail, and they had even been quite satisfied with these trenches they had obtained so easily.
Now, the imperial soldiers across nearly the entire front faced an awkward dilemma—
Even jumping up, they couldn't see anyone outside the trench, let alone shoulder their rifles to aim and fire.
On the other hand, their machine guns and field artillery were unaffected, as most of their emplacements had been dug out by combat engineers.
Yet for that very reason, their camouflaged positions received special attention from the Alliance's supporting fire.
Almost the moment the routed troops fled the settlement, a chorus of shrieking airbursts streaked over the heads of the Gray Wolves in the trenches.
Deafening roars tore through the positions. A tempest of shrapnel swept down like a torrential storm, instantly engulfing several emplacements that had just flashed with muzzle flare.
Watching the artillery barrage ahead, the routed soldiers outside the city looked hopeless, while the militiamen chasing on their heels were greatly emboldened.
They could practically see the despair burning amidst the flames!
The very things they had once dreaded turned out to be so utterly fragile!
Laxi felt a blaze erupting in his chest, just like the moment he had reached out to catch that pistol thrown toward the crowd.
It was the flame of ambition!
The opportunity to make a name for himself in a single battle lay right before his eyes!
He would become a new legend—and not just in the eyes of the Moon Clan.
Those "iron men" had already paved every step of the road for him. At this moment, all he had to do was charge forward—
He was going to defeat the supposedly invincible Gray Wolves!
"Charge with me! Flay their hides! Show those bastards who belongs in a cage!"
He screamed at the top of his lungs, his eyes bloodshot with excitement, raising his LD-47 to spray burst after burst forward.
He looked as if he had been pumped full of stimulants.
Under that roaring rallying cry, nearly twenty thousand militiamen with white gauze wrapped around their arms launched an all-out charge toward the positions outside Golden Gallon Port.
"Kill—!"
Battle cries shook heaven and earth, mingling with the clamor of gunfire and artillery.
At the edge of the settlement, Prop Master, prone inside a DWX-1 "King Crab" all-terrain infantry armor, watched the distant positions rumbling with artillery fire, a trace of envy touching his face.
"Holy crap, when can we pull off something this massive?"
Corner Camper, beside him, replied,
"Scraping together this many players might be a tall order."
Prop Master grinned.
"Doesn't have to be players, you know."
Corner Camper blinked and looked at him.
"Are you out of your mind?"
While the two were bantering, Bro Fang Chang's voice came over the comm channel.
"...What are you two dragging your feet for? Our allies have already moved in. They need armored fire support right now. Get moving!"
Hearing that, the two immediately straightened up and replied in unison,
"Sir!"
At the exact moment the tactical command was issued from the forward headquarters, the Alliance forces dispersed along the north of the settlement opened their assault.
Five King Crab armors sped toward the Gray Wolf Army positions at full throttle, firing on the move. Twin 20mm autocannons roared with thick, searing tracers, picking off machine-gun and field artillery emplacements one by one, every volley unleashing a storm of blood and gore.
It wasn't just the King Crabs; the Alliance infantry advancing alongside them were the same. In mobility, firepower, and protection, they were orders of magnitude superior to the Gray Wolf Army, which relied on the Legion's cast-off gear.
To say nothing of the soldiers themselves.
Every single person standing here was an Awakened at tier two or above!
Buried in their trenches, the Gray Wolves could only watch helplessly as their heavy weapon points were dismantled one by one without infantry cover. The rifles clutched in their hands were no better than fire pokers, incapable of posing the slightest threat to the charging horde.
A few struggled out of the trenches, attempting to retaliate with Panzerfausts, but a distance of nearly two hundred meters was clearly beyond the weapon's effective range.
The occasional rocket streaked out from the trench parapet, hitting nothing in particular, while the operators carrying the launchers received undivided attention.
Concentrated gunfire pinned any Gray Wolf soldier attempting to clamber out of cover firmly to the dirt, while the ceaseless artillery bombardment kept the rear supporting fire thoroughly suppressed.
Standing in the observation post, Myriadman Manu's eyes turned crimson—half with rage, half with terror.
The Alliance's armor was terrifying, yes, but there were only five units!
As long as they could hold back those charging cannon fodder, it was impossible for the Alliance to breach his positions with less than a thousand men!
Yet what made him break into a frantic sweat was that the soldiers in the distant trenches acted as if their knees had been sawn off; every last one of them buried their heads in the dirt, refusing to come out.
Unable to take it any longer, he grabbed the handset on the radio and roared at the chiliarch commanding the front line,
"What the hell are your men doing?! Those mongrels are practically on top of you, and you're still cowering in the trench! Open fire!"
The din of artillery and gunfire crackled through the radio, accompanied by a tremor in the chiliarch's voice.
"Commander... my men say it's not that they don't want to fire. The trenches are too deep; they can't see outside at all!"
Hearing that, Manu nearly spat a mouthful of blood across the radio, barking furiously,
"Why the fuck didn't you say so earlier?!"
Saying anything now was too late.
The artillery had ceased.
Pursuing the routed troops who had broken through, the cannon fodder rushing out of the city had already swarmed into the outermost frontline trenches under his command.
Fierce firefights initially broke out between the two sides, but as several grenades detonated inside the trenches, the Gray Wolf soldiers—unable to even peek over the parapet—swiftly gave up their pointless struggle. Under the shouting and berating of the surging militia, they tossed their useless fire pokers out of the trench.
Cheers of victory resounded across the battlefield, but sadly, they belonged to the enemy.
The collapsing defensive line crumbled like an avalanche. Trench after trench fell like dominos, overrun by the unstoppable wave of militia.
Manu stared with wide, bloodshot eyes, his drained lips pale as paper, his hands clutching the binoculars gripping so hard he wished he could crush the barrels.
He saw it with his own eyes.
The pride of the Empire had guns pointed at their heads, covered in soot, hands clasped behind their necks as they filed out of the trenches in droves.
Humiliation...
An absolute, unprecedented disgrace!
His entire force was being captured as organized units!
And by a ragtag bunch of cannon fodder that had just been cobbled together!
Never in the history of the Gray Wolf Army had such an absurd disaster occurred!
Seeing that the situation was unsalvageable and a turnaround impossible, Manu closed his eyes in despair.
At that moment, his adjutant burst into the observation post, panting out of breath.
"My lord, the Alliance soldiers are storming up! If we don't leave now, it'll be too late! We must retreat!"
Manu opened his eyes. The muddy pupils held none of their former swagger, as if he had aged several decades in an instant.
"You go," he said in a trembling voice, looking at the anxious adjutant.
The adjutant froze.
"Then what about you—"
Before he could finish asking, his respected commander drew his sidearm, pointed it at his own chin, and answered with action.
*Bang—!*
Red and white splattered across the camouflage netting covering the observation post, along with the glory he had earned over the past forty years.
Losing a battle wouldn't result in execution, nor would being taken prisoner.
But he no longer had the face to go on living...
***
The battle outside Golden Gallon Port was completely over.
During the engagement, the Gray Wolf Army units in the rear had attempted several counterattacks, even deploying their only motorized units and modified vehicles. But before the Alliance's mechanized forces, those tin cans weren't even worthy of being called toys.
Strength-type players equipped with power armor or exoskeletons could stand upright and fire 37mm Heavy Lances with ease.
In that sense, while they lacked the bulk and armor of a tank, they were virtually no different from light infantry fighting vehicles.
The Skeleton Corps' Chimera wheeled IFVs only mounted 37mm autocannons as well, using the exact same ammunition.
After leaving behind nearly a thousand corpses, the reinforcements rushing to the front line were forced to beat a hasty, miserable retreat. The battlefield thus presented a bizarre spectacle: over ten thousand men were chased around by fewer than a thousand, right until supporting artillery fire from the banks of the Yongliu River rained down, halting the pursuers.
The port's artillery battery laid down a smoke screen over the captured front lines, covering the third and fourth companies that had pushed into enemy depth, as well as Laxi's militia units, as they withdrew in phases back to the settlement.
And greeting them...
Were actually the cheers of the local survivors.
"Holy crap... are we fighting in Dawn City or Golden Gallon Port?!" Lost Noob's face was a portrait of astonishment, especially when he took a bouquet of flowers from a young woman in a long dress—he almost instinctively reached into his pocket to pay for it.
Most survivors living on the outskirts were impoverished folk who couldn't even afford decent clothes, whereas anyone wearing clean attire belonged at least to the middle or upper class.
In other words, the survivors cheering their triumphant return weren't merely the poor folks from the outskirts who had received relief handouts; even ordinary townspeople had voluntarily rushed over.
Under normal circumstances, they would never set foot outside their own districts so casually.
Beyond bouquets, there were floral crowns and garlands, and even bolder gestures like hugs and sudden kisses, which ended up flustering the players.
The degree of conservatism among different social classes here seemed entirely distinct. Seeing that these iron men were too embarrassed to refuse, some of the more passionate and outgoing young women grew increasingly daring, with a few even whispering their addresses into players' ears during the brief seconds of handing over flowers and embracing them...
Toward the militiamen with white gauze wrapped around their arms, however, they were noticeably more reserved. Perhaps because they were too familiar, or perhaps due to faith or unpleasant rumors, the crowd was enthusiastic, but merely scattered flower petals toward them.
Laxi, marching among the militia ranks, paid no mind to the settlement survivors' preferential treatment.
When it came to "iron man worship," none of the cheering survivors lining the street could hold a candle to him. After all, he knew better than anyone how this victory had been achieved, and who had granted him his power.
The other militiamen felt the same. In fact, some who had been slaves for far too long felt overwhelmed by the honor of having petals showered on them.
They remembered vividly how much these people had looked down on them before, yet the eyes gazing at them right now were unmistakably filled with fear and reverence.
This psychological thrill far surpassed any physical pleasure.
Many hadn't even finished walking the celebratory path before their hearts were already eagerly anticipating the next campaign...
To savor the people's adulation and cheers a little longer, and to share more of the joy of victory with his subordinates, Laxi deliberately ordered his men to slow their pace.
For the nearly ten thousand captives sandwiched within the formation, however, this undoubtedly prolonged their torment and misery.
What people hurled at them were not flower petals, but spit, mud, and even sharp stones.
Their hands and feet were bound with ropes, leaving them unable to dodge or even raise their arms to shield themselves, forcing them to endure whatever trash was thrown into their faces and chests.
Some stumbled and fell to the ground, dragging their group of nine down in a tangled heap, only to be dragged back up roughly by the guarding militiamen.
Numbness, humiliation, and despair were etched onto every face.
Especially when the survivors' stones and mud struck them, their hearts held not only fury, but confusion and incomprehension.
Why were these people treating them like this?
They had clearly come on His Majesty's orders to save them...
Why refuse to be proper human beings, just to be dogs for the Alliance?
***
Inside the port's forward command post.
Watching their comrades basking in the cheers via the drone feed, most of the veteran players wore expressions of pure envy, jealousy, and spite.
Good grief!
They had spent half the day commanding and coordinating, only for those guys to soak up all the glory.
Had they known the enemy was this incompetent, they would have geared up and charged in alongside them!
Staring at the screen in silence for a long time, Lao Bai finally couldn't help but say,
"Do these people have no sense of shame at all?"
Fang Chang replied concisely,
"They have no concept of a nation. Just like most survivor settlements on the wasteland, concepts far too advanced for the people here include not just 'equality,' but many other things. This so-called Empire is actually more like a Brown Farm with a slightly larger area and a few more people."
After all, this wasn't any real-world country or region. Analyzing it through the lens of real-world experience was like concluding that "bananas are round" simply because "watermelons are round, and both bananas and watermelons are fruits."
According to the official forum's public lore, traditional borders had already disappeared from this planet long before the Era of Prosperity, replaced by a civilization-wide union.
Rather than an empire mimicking the Legion's racial supremacy, it was more of a theocratic empire that had borrowed an obsolete textbook from the Era of Prosperity as its bible, seasoned with a bit of theory borrowed from the Wilantes.
Evidently, the rulers here were a bunch of "shrewd" operators. They had collected original texts on the animal kingdom, refined and repackaged them, and produced this bizarre hodgepodge theory of "a thousand clans and a thousand gods."
In name, a thousand gods protected Polo Province, but in reality, every totem pole was bound with iron chains. What had shielded Polo Province for two hundred years was never any animal kingdom myth, but a natural mountain range, a war-torn desert, and perhaps a few peculiar relics left behind by the first generation of survivors.
According to Ms. Han's research, the Sun-Bearing Divine Bull had not always been the head of the pantheon; before it, there was a Moon God akin to the Silver Moon Goddess in the Sunset Province pantheon. That was also the most direct reason the Moon Clan had abruptly fallen from the pinnacle of the pyramid to become "untouchables."
Under such premises, expecting the survivors of Golden Gallon Port to offer their loyalty to the Emperor like the citizens of Dawn City did was unrealistic; they were essentially a herd of thoroughly domesticated sheep. From the moment he first met Laxi, Fang Chang knew that these people only wagged their tails at whoever seemed stronger and bared their teeth at whoever seemed weaker.
Not to mention that the Gray Wolf Army's artillery bombardment on the city center to cover their comrades' retreat had pushed the local survivors completely to the opposing side.
Now that those captured dogs had been stripped of their weapons, expecting the locals to show them any warmth would truly require a miracle from the Great Horned Deer God.
Lao Bai shook his head.
Not wanting to dwell on such complicated matters, he cut straight to the chase.
"The reinforcements from Tiandu have been routed, and all three phases of the operational plan are complete. What's next?"
This battle had felt rather anticlimactic, especially when he watched the drone feed and saw an entire division being chased around by two of their companies.
Back in River Valley Province, even marauders put up a far better fight than this.
Fang Chang said in a mild tone,
"A single accident might not be enough, but three consecutive surprises ought to sober up that arrogant local emperor... unless he wants to gamble away every single elite he has on a game he cannot win."
This victory had been truly decisive.
It had even exceeded his expectations.
Aside from the 1,241 killed in action, nearly ten thousand had surrendered, and the Gray Wolf Army's 1st Division had been captured as a complete unit!
Some had even been captured twice in a single day—once inside the settlement at Kelaba Market, and once again in the entrenchments outside.
Beyond the prisoners, all the weapons, ammunition, and supplies left behind in the positions had been hauled back by the First Corps of the Avengers Alliance.
Whatever couldn't be carried off had been set ablaze.
Following this battle, the Gray Wolf Army had completely lost the capacity to continue offensive operations against Golden Gallon Port. Wutu Xilan's lifeline was now firmly gripped in their hands.
As for that Prince Dilip, he was merely an added bonus.
"Let's just hope another surprise doesn't pop up then," Lao Bai bantered in a relaxed tone. "Those guys have never played by the book."
Fang Chang smiled confidently.
"Impossible. It's clear that Wutu is a layman in virtually every field, but there is one area where he specializes. And right now, this defeat is no longer a military or diplomatic crisis for him; it's a political problem concerning the authority of the royal family."
Perhaps seizing this momentum to push up the Yongliu River and strike Tiandu in one fell swoop would be a fine idea; the Empire might even disintegrate as a result.
Yet he had to carefully weigh the Administrator's piece of advice—*do not take the initiative to escalate the situation*.
If the Empire shattered and Polo Province devolved into a chaotic mess of warring tribes, not only would the Legion seize the opportunity to expand its influence in the region, but all sorts of filth would also infiltrate the chaos. If the mess proved impossible to clean up in the end, the Alliance would lose favor with some neutral factions.
That was clearly not worth the cost.
That emperor could afford to be reckless, but they, as the Administrator's "vassals," could not.
Moreover, even if they had the strength to punch straight through the Empire, they still had to account for the predatory Legion watching from the sidelines, the ongoing 'Glued Nations' Assembly in the distance, and the Torch harboring a world-class threat.
Just as the group's casual conversation shifted from the battle itself to post-war reconstruction and whether to launch a local edition of the *Survivor Daily*, the command post's radio abruptly picked up an unfamiliar telegram.
Fang Chang took the message, skimmed it quickly, and handed it to Lao Bai with a grin.
"See what I told you?"
Reaching out to take the telegram, Lao Bai hadn't even read the contents before catching sight of the header, nearly bursting into laughter.
*Notice of Ceasefire from the Empire to the Alliance*
"That Wutu really cares about saving face."
Fang Chang took the telegram back nonchalantly.
"Doesn't matter. Setting the ceasefire line is the priority; Golden Gallon Port and its surrounding areas are already under our de facto control."
"As for apologies and reparations, those can be negotiated at our leisure. Even if talks fall through, it won't matter; it'll just make it easier for us to prop up local factions and handle reconstruction."
With that, he turned to the NPC radio operator who had delivered the telegram and issued instructions.
"Reply to them."
"Pulling back a hundred kilometers is our bottom line for a ceasefire!"
Chapter 707