The very same battle report was not only updated on the official website's forum, but also landed in the hands of Grand Commander Absaik.
At the Presidential Palace.
Seated behind his office desk, Absaik finished reading the report in his hands, stood up vigorously, and couldn't help marveling.
"Damn it all... After playing the humble grandson for so long, we finally get to hold our heads high! What a magnificent battle!"
Seeing the Grand Commander's beaming countenance, Internal Affairs Commissioner Vadiya, standing to one side, wore a pleased smile as well.
Yet, out of professional duty, once his smile subsided, he quietly offered a reminder.
"My Lord, the myriarch of the 11th Myriad is Yokale, and that man is one of Udono's people."
Although the State of Brahma's Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Academy's Department of Internal Affairs shared similar names, their functions and founding objectives were entirely different.
The latter was an administrative organ responsible for the Academy's internal management, whereas the former was actually modeled after the Mammoth State's Stormtroopers—essentially an internal secret-service agency tasked with monitoring officers of all ranks and commissioners to see whether they performed their duties diligently, while maintaining secret dossiers on personnel who required close observation.
Such dossiers covered confidants whose wings had grown stiff like Anwo, capable young officers like Ishel, and even Education Commissioner Kabaha representing the literati faction, the Agriculture Commissioner representing agrarian interests, and many others.
Even the "opposition" Zayed and his Family Association were subjects he had once instructed Internal Affairs to watch. Only later, when his subordinates failed to see any potential for this Family Association to become a genuine political force—believing they wouldn't even get a chance onto Tiandu's political stage—did the investigation slacken.
After all, there were far too many matters demanding attention.
Compared to a Family Association that had accomplished nothing, far more worthy of scrutiny were those fellows in the military making eyes at the Wilante.
After all, he himself had once flirted with the Legion. With the war in such dire straits, there was no guarantee someone wouldn't hedge their bets and prepare to trip him up from behind.
A certain ruthless figure who had died upon the throne remained a lingering shadow in Absaik's mind.
He constantly worried that some lunatic might burst in one day and shoot him dead, so he maintained vigilant precautions at all times.
However, multiple factions existed within the State of Brahma, and several grand commissioners held military commands. Absaik himself had only secured the position of Grand Commander with the backing of various factions; naturally, he couldn't blatantly form stormtroopers like Laxi, pointing submachine guns at anyone who opposed him.
Consequently, this agency operated behind the scenes of Tiandu's political arena for the most part, focusing primarily on background checks to inform the Grand Commander's decisions.
Absaik knew what Vadiya meant. Myriarch Yokale was once Udono's subordinate, which meant he was a veteran of Heavenly King Janusz's old guard.
In the entire Brahma Army, the ones he guarded against most warily were precisely Janusz's old followers.
Those men were like ticking time bombs.
Not only might they seek vengeance against him at any moment, but they were also extremely likely to push for Janusz's posthumous exoneration in the future, dragging the State of Brahma into a bottomless abyss.
Although he and several other grand commissioners had joined hands to purge the most extreme among them, he knew all too well that an expedient purge conducted in haste could never be thorough.
Herein lay the dirty side of politics.
The best end for those men was to perish heroically on the battlefield, taking the crimes committed by the Heavenly King Army to their graves with them, rather than becoming living heroes.
Absaik hesitated for a moment, but in the end he could not bring himself to be that ruthless. He sighed.
"...We can't always live in the past. We have to look forward."
Vadiya was slightly taken aback and asked respectfully, "What do you mean, My Lord?"
"We must give him a chance to receive our brand... Besides, bringing promising officers into the fold is a good thing for us as well."
Absaik pondered for a long time. His gaze settled on the battle report, an idea striking him, and he said, "Let's do this... Promote Ishel to Two-Star Myriarch and appoint him commander of the Northern Field Army, leading the 3rd and 11th Myriads north to the Three Northern States to support Mammoth State's operations!"
In the great victory at Akale, the 3rd Myriad and the Alliance's Death Corps had been the main defensive force, capturing an entire Legion myriad intact. Its commander, Ishel, rightfully deserved promotion.
Conferring the rank of Two-Star Myriarch was beyond reproach!
Not only that, Ishel was a former subordinate of Anwo, and Anwo was his own man. With this arrangement, Yokale would effectively be brought under his own umbrella.
As long as that fellow wasn't an idiot, he would understand the painstaking goodwill behind this move.
As for Akale County, it would be handed over to other myriads.
Moreover, having suffered a bitter loss there, the Legion would definitely seek payback, making the next engagement a grueling fight.
Right now Dog State hung in the balance; coming to their rescue in their hour of need would strategically cement relations with Mammoth State, tactically shield his own core troops from heavy casualties in the grinding battle to come, and incidentally pull a promising future general into his own faction.
This was truly killing three birds with one stone!
Absaik was exceptionally pleased with his scheme. Beside him, Vadiya turned it over in his mind and couldn't find any flaws either, so he respectfully accepted the order.
"Understood."
Vadiya took his leave and exited the office.
Absaik sat back down at his desk, but before his chair had even grown warm, he received a call from the Alliance representative bearing grim news: four airships had already arrived at West Sail Port.
The Alliance representative consoled him by saying there was no need to worry excessively—after all, worrying was useless—yet this was hardly comforting.
A single airship had leveled half of Lion City; now four had arrived at once.
If this news got out, more than half of the State of Brahma would descend into chaos before the fighting even began.
Just as he was fretting over this, hurried footsteps echoed outside the office, followed by two loud thuds on the door. Before he could even respond, the door was shoved open roughly.
"Absaik, give me a goddamn explanation! What the hell is this supposed to mean?!"
Stalking into the office, "Tiger King" Duwata wore a face of fury, slamming the newspaper in his hand hard onto the desk.
Startled by the racket, Absaik had thought an assassin had come for him and shoved his hand right into his desk drawer. Only when he saw it was Duwata did he straighten up and curse angrily.
"What the hell is wrong with you now?"
Duwata widened his eyes, fuming and cursing, "What's wrong with me? I'm out there with the brothers fortifying the city perimeter, fighting Wilante bastards so you can sit in this cushy office enjoying yourself, and you ask what's wrong with me?! I'm asking you one damn thing: why isn't my son on here?!"
Absaik picked up the copy of *Survivor Daily* and glanced at it, his eyes landing on the roster for the Grand Examination. Instantly, he understood what had happened.
Kabaha really was pig-headed. Making a ranked merit list was one thing, but splashing it across the newspapers with such fanfare left zero room to maneuver.
He might feel satisfied, but everyone else sure as hell wouldn't.
Besides, more than half of those five hundred names belonged to scions of former imperial nobility. Never mind what the residents of Tiandu City thought—what would the soldiers think?
Even if those five hundred students picked through the examination were truly pillars of talent, this was no way to handle it.
The whole reason he had set up this committee, modeling it after the assemblies of the Alliance and South Sea Alliance, was so everyone could put their issues on the table and negotiate, rather than having no outlet and silently reaching for guns at the first sign of trouble.
This guy, on the other hand, was something else.
He wore the hat of a commissioner himself, enjoying the committee's freedom to speak his mind, yet treated Absaik like an autocrat emperor.
Absaik felt both irritated and amused, but mostly helpless and plagued with a headache.
Perhaps putting Kabaha in the position of Education Commissioner really had been a mistake.
Once Tiandu University was established, he would be better off serving as university president.
The man had genuine ability, but he clearly wasn't cut out for politics.
Yet at this critical juncture, he had no bandwidth to make fine-tuned adjustments. All he could do was kick the can back for now, shelving it until the war was over.
"Well... I don't oversee the examinations. If you have an objection to the scores, go talk to our Education Commissioner."
Duwata narrowed his eyes.
"You don't oversee it? Didn't you appoint Kabaha? Fine, then I'll take my men over to his house right now for a little visit!"
With that, he turned to leave, but Absaik glared at the back of his head and roared, "Stand your ass right there!"
Duwata halted, turned around, and glared back at him without a shred of fear.
"Absaik, I call you Grand Commander because I see you as one of us, so I'll lay it all out. The reason the brothers followed you was that following you offered a better future than following Janusz."
"I don't object to you promoting remnants of the old empire; the State of Brahma has uses for them. But if you let them shit all over the brothers' heads, or if you think you can be an emperor who answers to no one, don't say I didn't warn you—the last man who tried that didn't meet a good end."
Absaik's heart twitched, and Janusz's face rose in his mind once again.
He widened his eyes, but ultimately suppressed the anger in his chest. Rising from his chair, he walked up to his old friend, placed both hands on his shoulders, and reasoned earnestly.
"Come on, brother, you've got me all wrong! How could I let the old imperial nobles sit on our brothers' necks? Those five hundred students are going to Mammoth State to study, not to live in luxury! And you're a grand commissioner—why fixate on a few student slots? If you want to carve out a path for your son, that's easy enough. Just name which unit he wants to join!"
Duwata chuckled coldly.
"I don't care about that; my son's got what it takes to be a general. But my men are watching like hawks. Don't play dumb with me, either. Once this war is over and reconstruction begins, do you think those students will just be professors? Even if they become professors, won't their pupils end up running bureaus and ministries?"
Without waiting for Absaik to reply, Duwata continued, stressing each word.
"Brilliant move you've got going here... Elevating children of old imperial nobility so that when this war wraps up and us old bastards are mostly dead, you can use these new elites to check our kids. Tsk, tsk. I always knew you were a sly fox, but don't take us for fools."
"No, wait... You're reading way too much into this! Do you know what time it is? The Legion's airships are practically bearing down on our faces!" Absaik looked caught between tears and laughter.
In all honesty, he genuinely hadn't thought that far ahead—though hearing it now, it was indeed intriguing, and he might even play it that way down the line.
Then again, while the "Tiger King" looked burly and crude, who would have thought he had ten thousand schemes running through his head just like himself?
Why was everyone around him cut from the exact same cloth?!
If these motherfuckers redirected just a fraction of that scheming brilliance elsewhere—became scientists, engineers, artists, or even painters—would the Alliance ever have needed to build the space elevator, or the Legion ever have dared invade them?
Against the simple, straightforward plots hatched by blunt Wilante minds, they could have strung them up and thrashed them!
"One thing at a time. My subordinates came to me demanding answers, so I'm coming to you. If you don't give me an explanation, I'll repeat your exact words to them, and when something happens, don't blame me."
Seeing that the man wouldn't budge an inch, Absaik's temper flared too. He glared at him and warned, "I'm warning you, don't get reckless! If Tiandu City falls, you and I will—"
Duwata raised a hand to cut him off.
"Don't worry about that. On matters of fundamental right and wrong, I won't pull any reckless stunts. But if someone uses public power for private gain, the righteous men of the Reformist faction won't stand idly by."
"If there's nothing else, I'm heading back to camp."
Throwing out those words, Duwata walked out the door without looking back.
Absaik stared fixedly at his retreating back, boiling with anger yet completely helpless.
Just then, Internal Affairs Commissioner Vadiya, who had just dispatched the telegram to the front lines, returned.
Looking at the Grand Commander's grim expression and recalling his encounter with Grand Commissioner Duwata in the hallway, he immediately grasped what had transpired.
Closing the door behind him, he murmured quietly, "My Lord, perhaps it isn't my place to say this... but when it's time to be ruthless, we must be ruthless."
Absaik sighed.
"It's not that I lack the stomach for it or cling to old sentimentality; the situation simply doesn't allow it. Outside, the Wilante are glaring hungrily, while inside, that sly dog Shahrukh waits in the south to reap the spoils. If we act too drastically here, that bastard will instantly raise another banner, and then the chaos won't be confined to Tiandu."
Watching the troubled Grand Commander, Vadiya's mind stirred, and he promptly ventured, "What about the Alliance's position?"
Absaik shook his head.
"On the battlefield, we can rely on them, but the Alliance stated clearly that they will not interfere in our internal affairs. Besides... they advised against being too harsh on our own people; otherwise, I wouldn't have bothered setting up this committee. Alas, it comes down to time. We've been given too little time. If only we had a few more years."
Perhaps the problem didn't lie with Kabaha alone; the entire committee suffered from deep flaws.
Those people gave lip service to supporting reform, but in their hearts an omnipotent emperor still reigned. They viewed themselves as loyal ministers daring to remonstrate, rather than members of a collective.
Sometimes that emperor was the Alliance, sometimes it was him, the Grand Commander, and sometimes it was someone else.
Most fatally of all, this emperor appeared only selectively.
When their own slice of the pie was touched, those commissioners waved the banner of equality, warning him not to cross the line. Yet when they wanted to snatch the pie from someone else's hands, they suddenly wished he would abuse his power, preferably going all out to bring the hammer down unconditionally.
Such was the Education Commissioner, and weren't the Industry Commissioner, Agriculture Commissioner, and all the rest the exact same?
Perhaps this committee was doomed from its inception, almost inevitably turning into an uneasy alliance divided in spirit.
And yet, right now was precisely when the State of Brahma needed unity the most.
After musing for a moment, Absaik looked at his Internal Affairs Commissioner and ordered, "Dispatch men to protect Commissioner Kabaha and his family... I'm worried certain elements in the military might move against him."
The examination roster had already been published in the papers, making it impossible to undo.
Still, it wasn't completely without remedy.
For example, adding an Honor Roll alongside the main exam roster and arranging a separate exam round specifically for military dependents.
Or promising bonus points for the children of fallen soldiers on the next grand examination.
However, a decision from the State of Brahma alone wouldn't settle it; Mammoth University also had to agree.
Their educational resources weren't infinite either, and they faced similar allocation challenges of their own.
Moreover, when Absaik cooled down and carefully replayed Duwata's words, that bastard had led off talking about his son, but not a single sentence afterward had actually been about his boy—it was primarily about securing benefits for his subordinates.
Thinking about it, that made sense. As a grand commissioner, why would he care so much about a handful of study-abroad slots? If he coveted anything, it was something else entirely.
Such as influence over the economy, industry, transportation, culture, and other domains.
Right now the State of Brahma was dirt-poor and knew nothing about modern governance and technology. Wouldn't it have to rely on those who went abroad to learn?
Those five hundred students were the pioneers. Down the road, how Brahma's roads were built, how utility poles were raised, how mines were dug, how steel was smelted—all of it would be decided by them.
Duwata couldn't guarantee that his myriarchs' sons would become myriarchs, but as long as he grabbed some of those slots, arranging for them to become company directors wouldn't be an issue at all.
People always let slip what they cared about most without realizing it.
Only now did Absaik understand why Duwata had uttered those "bizarre" accusations at the end.
Because that was exactly how he himself thought!
The man had hidden his true colors deep!
With that realization, Absaik immediately tacked on an addendum to the orders he had given Vadiya.
"Never mind—just escort Kabaha and his family straight into the Heavenly Palace... Tell the public I've placed him under house arrest."
That would quell the discontent within the military. Once a compromise acceptable to all parties was hammered out, the matter could be put to rest.
"Understood." Vadiya nodded gravely, then remembered something and spoke up. "Right... there's one more matter I need to report."
Absaik rubbed his temples and asked casually, "What is it?"
Vadiya said cautiously, "That Zayed fellow you sent east earlier has successfully won over the Gray Wolf Army."
Absaik looked up, his jaw dropping unconsciously. It took him a good while to find his voice.
"...That guy has that kind of capability?"
The same fellow who dropped toward his knees the second he saw him?
Vadiya nodded with a delicate expression, clearly finding it unbelievable as well.
They hadn't held out any hope of absorbing the Gray Wolf Army, yet a nobody who popped out of nowhere had actually talked them into surrendering.
Regardless, it was unquestionably good news; at least they no longer had threats looming from behind.
"We only just received the telegram. In accordance with your orders, they are currently marching toward Snake State..."
Snake State...
That was currently Shahrukh's turf.
Absaik closed his eyes and pondered for a moment, then opened them and said, "If Zayed truly has the talent to sway the Gray Wolf Army, he might just give Shahrukh a real run for his money."
Vadiya paused briefly. "You intend to drive the wolf to devour the tiger?"
Absaik gave a low chuckle. "I doubt he has that kind of ability, but rattling that sly dog Shahrukh's cage is fine by me."
Since he couldn't command either of those two forces and had no time to deal with them, letting them fight among themselves was for the best—at least it wouldn't disrupt front-line deployments.
Besides, he fully intended to settle the score with Shahrukh for deserting in the face of battle sooner or later.
Hoping to watch the fire from across the river and scoop up bargains?
He'd teach that bastard that there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell!
Hearing this clever move, Vadiya couldn't help giving a thumbs-up and praising, "Brilliant, Commander."
He admired this leader from the bottom of his heart.
While the man was not as upright and open-handed as the Alliance's Administrator, when it came to pure cunning, the Alliance's Administrator might not even be his match.
That wasn't something to take pride in, but it was certainly a talent.
Had Janusz been sitting in this commander's seat, he would have ended up shot dead on the throne no matter how many times he tried...
***
While the war in Brahma Province raged in full fury, across the sea, the Baiyue Strait was bathed in tranquil peace.
Port French Fries and Port Fried Dough faced each other from opposite shores of the strait.
Originally mere fishing villages in scale, the two ports had flourished into bustling settlements.
Whether in their clean, tidy streets or their orderly rows of houses, they were unrecognizably transformed from days past.
Standing on the deck of a cargo ship, Arman narrowed his eyes toward the north and said to Henk, who had come from the new continent, "The northern shore is Port French Fries... See that stretch of beach?"
Henk looked in the direction Arman pointed.
It was the outskirts of Port French Fries, adjacent to the westernmost jungle. Along the scenic coastline stood distinctively styled villas.
Those Western-style cottages seemed to blend seamlessly with the environment, looking less like they had been built brick by brick and more like they had grown straight out of the earth.
Having never seen anything so strange, Henk widened his eyes.
"What's that?"
Arman smiled. "That's some kind of biomass material made by the Alliance... I don't know the exact details, but what I wanted to talk about isn't the houses—it's that beach."
Henk looked at him in confusion. "Is there something special about that beach?"
Arman squinted and continued, "Over a year ago, back when the Empire still stood, a pack of 'Gray Wolves' came ashore here and tried to launch a surprise attack on Port French Fries, only to be driven right back into the sea by the Alliance."
He had heard there were deeper layers to that incident, even involving aquatic mutants.
Yet the version circulating most widely was the one he had just told.
The transmission of truth was never without distortion.
Even for trivial matters like this.
"The Alliance and the Empire... were once enemies?" Henk's face bore an expression of disbelief. This was completely at odds with Western Legion propaganda.
The narrative he had heard was that the Empire had wavered back and forth between the Legion and the Alliance, taking benefits from the Legion while seeking to defect to the Alliance.
The spineless civilian faction had coddled those cunning rats, ultimately causing the tragedy at West Sail Port, which prompted the Southern Legion to launch a righteous war.
Seeing Henk's shock, Arman grinned and said, "They still are, but their enemy is merely the Empire, not the survivors living there."
Henk glanced at his compatriot with a touch of surprise.
He had noticed that ever since leaving the Legion's sphere of influence, this fellow smiled much more often.
A growing curiosity took root in Henk's heart—what was so special about this Alliance that even a Wilante would yearn for it so deeply?
"Will we be docking there?"
He was thoroughly intrigued by the prosperous port.
Not merely because of the pleasant scenery, but because his instincts told him that business opportunities capable of reviving his fortunes might be hidden there!
A brand-new shipping route!
That was far more appealing than the high-risk arms trade.
Looking at the harbor lying close at hand, Arman smiled and said, "Our destination isn't here. It's a place called Settlement No. 1."
Henk instinctively asked, "Where's that?"
Without hesitation, Arman replied, "It's what Port French Fries used to be—and just as full of hope."
Chapter 871