The Martial Unity

Prime Minister Edward studied the ongoing battle between Suneater and the Omni-Martial with sharpened eyes.

“She’s doing well to keep a top-ten powerhouse busy. But… the question is who will give out first?”

It wasn’t even a question when the answer was obvious.

“Her stamina is surely great, but it doesn’t compare to that of giants.”

Giants were known to have extraordinary stamina due to all the calories they had packed in their entire bodies. Their stamina was second only to that of the elves, who could draw upon virtually infinite resources across the battle through the power of nature.

He knew that it was only a matter of time before Amare ran out of stamina to hold off the most powerful giant in the world. When she did, Suneater would no longer be held up.

He would move straight towards the Kandrian Empire in that event.

“Let us hope that three Transcendent Candidates will be enough to take on the Suneater, else…”

Over the past year, Blood Lord Vrukshus had managed to cross the threshold of peak Martial Sage and become a Transcendent Candidate. It was the only saving grace of the outcomes of the war, considering that they had lost three peak Martial Sages in combat, a truly painful loss.

Even if the high-grade Martial Sages had grown stronger, with a few reaching peak Sage as well, it was still a highly undesirable outcome for the Panamic Alliance, for each peak Sage was a potential Transcendent Candidate. The many years of accumulation that they had gone through to slowly make their way to becoming a candidate for Transcendence were all gone.

Once Amare was done, he would have to redeploy Bodhisattva Maitreyi, Sage Jinryong, and Blood Lord Vrukshus away from other battlefields and have them fight off the Suneater for a while.

Then, he could have Amare recuperate in the manifold before returning her to fight the Suneater when she was done and have the Transcendent Candidates return to their original battlefield.

“This… this will be truly difficult to manage. Each battlefront where our Transcendent Candidates are fighting is already an extremely tough and tight battlefield. We can deploy extra units to bolster them temporarily, but…”

He clenched his fists tightly. “…We’d be stretching ourselves to the absolute thinnest with no forces on standby to deal with the unexpected.”

Prime Minister Edward had lived long enough and had waged enough wars to know that there was always the unexpected. Nothing could be predicted perfectly, not even with the vaunted prophecy of the Silas Clan. That was why it was always important to reserve power with the expectation that something would go wrong.

This recent development was one of them, although it wasn’t unpredictable, considering that they had a year’s worth of warning. Prime Minister Edward had known that the Suneater would return and likely attack the Panamic Alliance; that was why he had Lord Vakratunda take over the Kiriket Battlefield and had Amare return to the Panama Continent shortly before the Suneater was due to return.

He had ensured that, either through the Kandrian manifold, the beasts and monsters of the Panama Continent, or through a clever allocation of siege weapons, that Amare would not have any commitments in the war that would demand her presence, so that she could singlemindedly dedicate everything to the battle with the Suneater.

Yet, while his plan had succeeded, he couldn’t help but feel the tingle of danger.

Like something was about to happen.

His intuition had been honed by many years of war, and he had learned to trust it.

“I hope you can win over some defectors, Rael, otherwise things might get rough.”

He gritted his teeth as he thought about Rui Quarrier, who was promised to need only one year in the manifold. “Once he comes out, there needs to be some kind of reckoning. Tsk, throwing us all into war and then merrily going into personal training. Why I oughtta…”

He huffed lightly, shaking his head.

Even with his annoying tendencies, it was an undeniable fact that the Dawnbringer was an overwhelming net positive. The sheer gains that the Panama Continent made with him were so great that they vastly outweighed his spurious selfishness, like forcing the entire continent to deal with the consequences of his actions while disappearing.

However, this would change if the war took a disastrous turn. No matter how many benefits he brought to the Panama Continent, it was simply not worth losing an existential war.

What was especially infuriating to the Britannian Prime Minister was the fact that he was the only one who controlled the sea monsters. Meaning that they couldn’t bring back the sea monsters even if they wanted to, which forced them to continue a war whether they liked it or not!

It made the Britannian prime minister want to strangle the Martial Sage, even if it meant earning the enmity of the entirety of the continent’s population. It was why not a single nation dared to criticize the Dawnbringer much, if at all, for their own people would turn against them.

Even the citizens of the Britannian Empire, who used to hate anything to do with the Kandrian Empire, loved the Dawnbringer because he had saved them during the Age of Darkness when they needed it the most.

“As long as he comes in time, everything will be fine. I just hope that nothing happens before then—”

BZZZT BZZZT!

An emergency call rang over his comm device, earning a darkened expression, as he accepted the call.

“Your Excellency! We have detected troubling signs in the North Acherialis battlefront! Something… something is wrong with the sentinels!”

Prime Minister Edward’s expression grew ashen as he quickly skimmed over the data sent over by his subordinates.

His eyes widened with shock. “This… the sentinels… they are…”

They were marching towards the Panama Continent in lock step with tekvore reinforcements!

“NO!” The Britannian Prime Minister grew horrified at this development. “This this cannot be happening! Not now! Not now of all times!”

And yet, reality begged to differ.

An army of sentinels and the tekvores they were fighting charged towards the Kandrian Empire even as he stared at the satellite data with terror.