The Martial Unity

Rui’s initial deliberations with President Amelia went nowhere.

She was stubborn and entirely unable to change.

Part of it came from the fact that she was the President, not some random person he got into a debate with. She couldn’t afford to say that she and her administration were wrong and that he was right. People with as much authority as her could not allow themselves to be as influenced.

“Enough, Prince Rui. This is going nowhere. Let us end this negotiation session right here. It has been a long day for you after your long travels. Why don’t we continue this tomorrow after you have gotten some rest and refreshed yourself?”

This was the first thing she had said that he agreed with. He was tired, especially when dealing with a stubborn nation and a stubborn leader. On the way to his luxury quarters, he gazed out of the window down below at the vast expanse of cityscape in all directions.

It truly was a remarkable nation, which, in turn, put into perspective how remarkable the Kandrian Empire was in being able to take on all three powerhouses and almost emerge victorious.

By the time he was led to his rooms and was able to unwind and relax, he had already fallen deep into thought about the predicament.

The Republic of Gorteau needed to participate in the unified Sage-level taskforce. He couldn’t allow for any Sage-level powerhouse to get away with not participating. It would undermine the mission and the unity of humanity.

At the same time, he had already tried leveraging the breakthroughs and Hellbringer embedding.

Neither of them worked, and he understood why.

The Republic of Gorteau had not reached the kind of desperation that the Britannian Empire and the Sekigahara Confederate were in.

The Britannian Empire lost millions of people and lost an entire chunk of its territories. Even if the Sages stabilized the situation, it created an air of despair and grief that needed to be urgently ameliorated.

The Sekigahara Confederate had lost more than a hundred Masters over the scope of the war. This alone made them more desperate than perhaps any Sage-level powerhouse in the world. The Republic of Gorteau was not without its own fair share of losses, such as the loss of its peak Sage at the hands of the Devil. However, it was still very much stable in the short and long term. That, in addition to wanting to not be perceived as deceitful and hypocritical liars, caused them to strongly resist joining the unified Sage-level taskforce.

“I need to negate this factor and somehow get it to deploy its Sages.”

That was his goal. He knew that this goal ran contrary to the intentions of the Amelia Administration, but it meant that he would need to achieve it despite their resistance.

“There are several possibilities.”

His powerful mind has already leaped into action, conjuring a myriad of possible paths he could try to achieve his goal. Out of all the ideas he thought of, several ideas stood out.

“Pro-war propaganda.”

If the citizens of the Republic of Gorteau were highly averse to war and Martial deployments, then a pro-war propaganda operation could be run to eventually warm them to both of those concepts.

In fact, President Raymond successfully executed pro-war propaganda to rally his base to vote for him on his campaign promises to destroy the Kandrian Empire. So, not only was it possible, but it had been done before.

He could even leverage the Beggar’s Sect’s help. It was clear that they were highly motivated to get all nations on board, after all. It may even have been that they had already started pro- military propaganda in the nation.

Unfortunately, this idea had several crucial flaws that negated its effectiveness as a strategy.

“Propaganda takes too long to work for my needs,” Rui muttered. “Not to mention, the citizens of this nation hate war for extremely real, valid, and sound reasons. Propaganda has an extremely uphill task to try and manipulate people into liking active overseas wars when countless people in the Republic of Gorteau had suffered as a direct or indirect result of the war.”

Propaganda took longer periods of time to work. It took a long time to change a person’s mind through continued exposure to a particular kind of messaging. If Rui had years to spend in the Republic of Gorteau, he could most certainly accomplish his goal.

However, he didn’t have years to spend.

He was actually hoping to get to leave by today if he successfully convinced them, signed the contract, and quickly conducted all the breakthroughs and Hellbringer embedding.

The Panama Continent was absolutely gigantic, and he really needed to be quick.

Thus, he ruled out pro-war propaganda as a solution.

There were other promising ideas, though very few were without their flaws.

“I could threaten them, I suppose.”

This was more risky, but the idea was to threaten them with something even worse than losing an election.

“Them not willing to take on their fair share of quasi-Transcendent beasts is something that harms other Sage-level powerhouses, like the Britannian Empire and the Gen Temple,” Rui realized. “I could start mounting pressure on them by leveraging this fact.”

The issue was that two Sage-level powerhouses were too few to pressure another Sage-level powerhouse in the Era of Darkness. The reason was that Sages were busy handling the defensive line.

Even more were on standby in case of an emergency or a sudden unexpected surge of Sage- level beasts in one particular beast tide. Thus, most nations needed to have most of their Martial Sages on hand at all times. The days were the Britannian Empire or the Sekigahara Confederate could send almost all its Martial Sages to attack the Kandrian Empire were gone. Additionally, the Era of Darkness had severed convenient communication. The only way that he could communicate with the Britannian Empire and the Gen Temple was through the Republic of Gorteau.

It was not impossible to go through with this plan of action, but it was too cumbersome and tedious to appeal to Rui.