The Martial Unity

Just like the Republic of Gorteau and the Britannian Empire, the Sekigahara Confederate was also displeased by the return of the Emperor of Harmony for their own reasons. They were the most ideologically opposed and antithetical to the Emperor of Harmony.

While they respected his capacity in war as the supreme commander of the Kandrian Military, they deeply abhorred the philosophy that had come to embody his politics.

“The Emperor of Harmony,” the matriarch of the Tsukishi Clan grumbled. “Coming back and calling for a C16 meeting from the start. Who does he think he is?”

“…It’s just like him,” the patriarch of the Kenjin Clan narrowed his eyes. “Of the four powerhouses, he was the one who initiated cooperation the most.”

The Republic of Gorteau sought war for profit, while the Britannian Empire simply sought war because it was a state that was led by Martial Artists who needed physical conflict to grow.

The Sekigahara Confederate was in a similar position.

In addition to Martial Artists needing war for growth, war was also baked into the blood of its culture.

Not just its culture, war was baked into the business model of the state. The state was reborn during the Martial Revolution three hundred years ago after the fourteen clans took over from the Sekigahara Empire and rebranded to a confederate of fourteen powerful clans.

Since then, the powerhouse had been sustaining itself through war.

There was a reason that North-East Panama was the most war-stricken area in all of East Panama.

The Sekigaharan modus operandi was rather simple and was a time-and-tested strategy.

It used covert infiltration, coercion, propaganda, and other population manipulation tactics to create civil hotspots across all of North-East Panama. These were small regions, often smaller and weaker states, and entirely vulnerable. The Sekigahara Confederate would covertly create civil unrest, escalate it to civil dissent, and then trigger a full-blown civil war.

By ensuring that the civil war was between two or more groups centered around immutable differences characterized by race, ethnicity, culture, religion, and sex, they tapped into the worst of humanity and magnified it into a war.

Once a war was created, naturally, the demand for Martial Artists would increase.

That was when the Sekigaharan Clans would swoop in and supply the Martial Artists in demand in exchange for large sums of money, of course.

Thus, they created their own market by creating war.

The fourteen routinely warred against each other in these civil hotspots on opposing sides. Yet, that was entirely normal and even considered healthy by the clan heads, although the Martial Artists of the Lower Realms developed deep hostility against each other.

It was even considered a form of competition and sport, with pride, glory, and bragging rights as the reward.

Their civil culture and foreign affairs were both thoroughly characterized by deep disharmony. It sustained their Martial, economic, and cultural power.

That was why they hated everything that the Emperor of Harmony represented.

His political philosophy was entirely antithetical to everything about their state.

In their eyes, he represented an existential threat to them.

If harmony was allowed to spread across Panama, then their way of life was doomed to cease.

Among all three powerhouses, they were the most firmly opposed to him.

“…That being said,” the patriarch of the Kaze Clan narrowed his eyes. “The C16 meeting isn’t something we can ignore very easily.”

As much as they would have loved to flip the middle finger to the Emperor of Harmony, they would only be hurting themselves by not partaking in the meeting. The C16 was the platform upon which intergovernmental policies that would impact the future of the nation were agreed upon. Should the Sekigahara Confederate abstain from partaking in the C16 meeting, they would be unable to influence these changes in a manner that was most suited to them.

That was far too much to their detriment, unfortunately. The business model of the Sekigaharan Confederate was unstable because it depended on how much war they could fabricate and maintain in North-East Panama.

“Now that Emperor Rael has returned, we cannot expand our domain of war into the far East,” the patriarch of Enken Clan snorted. “All that funding we poured into Prince Randal’s campaign during the Kandrian Throne War was useless from the very beginning if the Emperor of Harmony was bound to always return.”

It would have benefitted the Sekigahara Confederate had Prince Randal taken the throne. A Martial emperor with all the desire for war without any of the brilliant genius of his father. It was ideal for the Sekigahara Confederate to prosper.

That was why, despite the enormously vast distance between the Sekigahara Confederate and the Kandrian Empire, they painstakingly tried to support the candidate that was most conducive to their interests.

They failed when Prince Rui Quarrier Silas Kandria thoroughly dominated the war for the throne and unfortunately touted his father’s abhorrent philosophy of harmony.

The return of the Emperor of Harmony was even worse, but alas, they could only play the cards that they were dealt.

“…And then there’s the fact that the Void Prince somehow broke through to the Master Realm at half the youngest age.”

As a nation with a deeply Martial culture, the Void Prince’s rate of growth was even more shocking than the return of the Emperor of Harmony.

Ever since the Britannian Empire mellowed out ninety years ago with the breakthrough of the Transcendent Emperor, the Sekigahara Confederate had considered itself to undisputedly have the highest quality of Martial Artists. The miraculous growth trajectory of the Void Prince stung at their pride.

He made their most vaunted prodigies and geniuses look rather ordinary in comparison. His growth put into question whether the Sekigahara Confederate had the greatest Martial generation and development system in East Panama.

Regardless, their hostility towards Kandria only continued rising. They would be lying if they said they weren’t itching for war, looking for a sound reason or trigger to put Kandria in its place and suppress its disgusting philosophy from regaining prominence.