The Martial Unity

Emperor Rael heaved a sigh.

“What do you want, Shinken?”

The Martial Sage sharpened his gaze. “For you to set the Sekigahara Confederate free!”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” the Emperor of Harmony continued with a calm and composed tone. “The Sekigahara Mandate is under the control of the Kandrian Empire and will be under the control of the Kandrian Empire for some time until we have completed all the reforms that we need to complete.”

“Sekigahara doesn’t need your reforms!” the Martial Sage snarled with anger.

“Does it truly not?” the Emperor of Harmony raised an eyebrow. “Do you truly believe that it is a perfect nation despite the fact that it was the only nation that has failed to protect its citizens among the powerhouses and would have been wiped off the map if not for Kandria?”

The Martial Sage gritted his teeth with grave severity.

“Would you like me to remind everybody of the sheer depth of tragedy that happened that day?” he fiddled with a commpad, accessing the little remote classified footage that occurred in the Sekigahara Confederate, projecting it behind him.

BOOOM!

“ROOOAAARRR!”

“RAWWWRRR!”

“KRRRIIIEEEKKK!”

BOOM BOOM BOOM!

The projection highlighted the sheer destruction that the beasts and monsters spread across the Sekigahara Confederate.

It was the first time that Sage Shinken had borne witness to it.

His expression crumbled with horror as his eyes darkened with despair.

BZZZT

The Emperor of Harmony tactfully ended the projection, having made his point.

“The Sekigahara Confederate was a defunct state, in my opinion, as an experienced statesman,” the Emperor of Harmony continued with a calm and composed tone. “Quality of life and living standards were centuries behind contemporary Sage-level powerhouses. There was a rigid hierarchical structure that imposed its will on the majority of people of the nation and extracted any and all value from them, destroying any incentive for productive pursuit and development of human capital. All the technology you had was imported from the Esocline Federation, with whom you were fortunate enough to be relatively close to.”

His powerful golden eyes remained fixed on the Martial Sage. “This is, in the world of politics, what we call a failed state. Your leaders intuitively knew that, but they were humans who had managed to get their hands on some power as clan leaders and were unwilling to let go of it.”

He continued with a tone of finality. “This nation, which failed its citizens with the most basic duty of a nation, which is protection from external threats, does not deserve to exist and indeed would not exist without the Kandrian Empire. Do you deny that? Do you deny that former Patriarch Shinken, now director of the Sekigahara Confederate, swore an oath in the name of not just Sekigahara but his own clan name to adhere to the agreement? Do you want to violate that oath? Are you someone who has so little honor?”

The Emperor of Harmony cleverly framed it as a matter of honor, making him honor-bound so that he would not be able to violate the current agreement very easily. While they used to have little care for diplomacy, the Sekigahara Confederate were people who were deeply committed to concepts such as honor, which include maintaining one’s word and oath.

Sage Shinken gritted his teeth with indecision.

On one hand, he hated the Kandrian administration and control over the Sekigahara ‘Mandate’ from the bottom of his heart. He hated every inch of it and would love to have restored the previous confederate.

On the other hand, the process had, much to his dismay, occurred very legally and properly. He wasn’t able to find any evidence of deceit and deception. In fact, if not for the fact that the Kandrian Empire was occupying the Sekigahara Confederate, he would have expressed his undying gratitude to the Emperor of Harmony for protecting his people.

He simply couldn’t bring himself to accept that the nation that he was proud of was under the control of the Kandrian Empire.

And this was something that Emperor Rael understood.

This issue could destroy his plan to annex all Martial Sages and become the Emperor of essentially all of human civilization.

Controlling the Sekigahara Mandate was not that important to Emperor Rael compared to his ambitious strategy to gain control over all power on the continent.

He heaved a sigh. “Alright, I’ll give you an option out of this.”

Sage Shinken’s eyes lit up as his expression grew desperate. “What do you have in mind?”

“I will return Sekigahara to you under two conditions,” the Emperor of Harmony continued. “First…”

He raised a finger. “You will do for human civilization what I have done for Sekigahara Confederate.”

Sage Shinken’s eyes widened. “You mean…”

“You will protect human civilization in its time of need for as many seconds as I have protected Sekigahara Confederate in its time of need,” Emperor Rael continued with a calm tone. “I have given protection to Sekigahara, without which it would have been destroyed, for every second for a year, so about…”

He stirred for a second, quickly calculating the number. “… thirty-one million seconds.”

His gaze returned to the peak Martial Sage. “…That is how many seconds each of you Sekigahara Martial Sages will have to dedicate to protecting human civilization. Once you have done that, I will return the Sekigahara Mandate to you.”

It was a long, long time.

However, if the threats from the true world were as dire as he expected, then it could be that Martial Sages of the Sekigahara Confederate would finish it in just a year.

“Deal!” Sage Shinken immediately snapped with great determination. “What’s the second condition.

The Emperor of Harmony smiled wryly. “The second condition is that you cannot undo the Democratic Confederation that I have already instated in the Sekigahara Mandate. You can’t undo the political and economic institutions that I have paintstakingly created to address all the failures of the former Sage-level powerhouse, am I clear?”

Sage Shinken gritted his teeth.

This was not as easy to accept.

And yet, what choice did he have?

“Deal…” he heaved a deep breath. “I’ll get started by remaining on standby, please deploy us Martial Sages from the Sekigahara Confederate first if there is any issue.”

And with that, he departed from the Royal Office, leaving the Emperor of Harmony with the other Martial Sages.