Despite everyone being fully aware of how fragile the strategist's physical constitution had become, Jeanne never anticipated that the Doctor's mandatory clinical confinement would stretch onward for nearly two whole months. It was only after that exhaustive period that Kal'tsit finally released her patient, granting her permission to engage in a strictly limited amount of daily paperwork.
The ancient physician had been utterly unyielding this time. Jeanne had watched the doctor completely ignore the commander's dramatic pleading, theatrical pouting, and mournful wails, remaining entirely expressionless as she consistently barred her from leaving the recovery wing to submerge herself back into the war effort.
In truth, Jeanne still couldn't entirely decipher the precise nature of the bond between those two. The dynamic between them felt as endlessly layered as a complex pastry, a dense tapestry of deep affection, bitter historical grievances, and shared destiny that locked them permanently into each other's orbits!
Yet, listening to their daily arguments gave Jeanne a profound sense of a modern workplace paradox: a fanatically dedicated employee desperately begging to pull overtime, while a highly conscientious director used every ounce of her authority to hold them down, flatly refusing to let the workaholic break her own body.
Then again, the Doctor was technically one of the foundational architects of Babel itself. Characterizing her as a mere employee didn't feel entirely accurate; at the very least, she was a primary partner in the entire endeavor.
As for the staggering mountain of administrative duties that accumulated during the Doctor's prolonged absence, the entire load had naturally been transferred onto Theresa and her inner circle of advisers. The single complication was that the volume of work proved to be somewhat astronomical.
Jeanne reached this conclusion while observing Theresa, noting that the vibrant light in the monarch's brilliant eyes had grown slightly dim from sheer exhaustion. Over the past two months, the sovereign had easily been the busiest individual across the landship. Jeanne felt as though she were catching an early glimpse of what the ruler's life would look like once she formally reclaimed the throne.
She couldn't help but wonder: if a Sarkaz Lord succumbed to extreme overwork, would her hair begin to thin? Jeanne found her imagination drifting toward a comical vision of a sparse-haired Theresa ruling from the capital years down the line—a mental image so absurd it made her suppress a sudden urge to burst out laughing.
Noticing the faint amusement dancing across Jeanne's features, Theresa looked up from her documents, a flicker of genuine confusion crossing her face. She wondered what delightful thought had crossed the Saintess's mind to bring such a bright expression to her face in the middle of a quiet room.
Since Jeanne showed zero inclination to volunteer an explanation, the monarch merely tilted her head in quiet contemplation for a moment before returning her undivided attention to directing the advancing front lines.
Even though the Doctor's physical breakdown had sidelined her from active strategizing, Babel's steady acquisition of territorial strongholds hadn't ground to a halt. The legions continued to march forward in perfect alignment with their broader campaign projections.
During this period, Theresa demonstrated her own exceptional tactical capabilities directly before Jeanne. While the Saintess didn't spend every waking hour analyzing the command desk, lingering in the war room granted her a deep appreciation for the monarch's intellect.
To be perfectly fair, Theresa's raw grasp of grand strategy fell a fraction short of the Doctor's terrifying brilliance, but the gap wasn't a massive chasm. It felt more like the difference between a spectacular ninety-point performance and an impossible one-hundred-and-twenty-point masterpiece.
In any event, Jeanne recognized that the monarch's innate grasp of troop movements vastly exceeded her own. Left to her own devices, Jeanne relied far too heavily on her divine Revelation to navigate crises—though she had to admit, having a cosmic cheat code was incredibly convenient.
Under Theresa's steady guidance over the past two months, Theresis's sovereign domain had collapsed at an unprecedented rate, losing nearly half of the municipal centers he once controlled. The Regent's influence across Kazdel had withered to an all-time low.
Jeanne even received word that several outlying settlements possessed zero defending infantry. The moment Babel's standard appeared on the horizon, the local militias immediately surrendered the keys to the city gates. To the common populace, survival was the only metric that mattered; what difference did it make which royal sibling was collecting the taxes?
This passivity left even the ancient members of the Royal Court completely baffled. None of the elder Sarkaz lords could decipher what dark, unvoiced agenda the Regent was pursuing. Was the man truly prepared to simply abdicate his supreme authority and hand the ancient throne over to his sister without a fight?
Though such a surrender felt entirely antithetical to his character, Theresis maintained an attitude of absolute composure through every devastating territorial loss. He carried himself like a man who possessed perfect clarity regarding the unfolding situation and already held the solution in his palm, making it look as though his sister were the one blindly stumbling into a snare.
Throughout this aggressive advance, Babel's divisions did engage in sporadic skirmishes, but none of the encounters presented a genuine challenge. It was becoming glaringly obvious that the forces Theresis deployed to the front lines were nothing more than token conscripts meant to stage a superficial resistance.
Babel's uninterrupted string of victories sent shockwaves through the neighboring world powers. The foreign regimes of Terra harbored zero desire to witness a unified, peaceful Kazdel; in their geopolitical calculations, a fractured, self-destructive wasteland was exactly how the Sarkaz nation should remain.
A collective of foreign dignitaries began reaching out through covert channels, offering substantial military backing to Theresis. Yet, when their envoys approached the Regent, the stubborn ruler flatly refused to accept any form of foreign intervention, choosing to receive nothing but basic material provisions.
Then again, could raw material aid even be classified as official wartime backing? To the eyes of the Terran courts, those shipments were merely standard tokens of 'diplomatic goodwill' extended to a neighboring state—a physical manifestation of international friendship, nothing more...
Of course, Theresis's current policy—gladly absorbing foreign funds, rations, weapons, and fuel while resolutely refusing to deploy his core legions to engage Theresa in a decisive battle—left those manipulative foreign courts in a state of absolute panic.
"In all honesty, I am profoundly curious about the underlying dynamic between you and your brother," Jeanne remarked one afternoon, initiating a casual conversation. Following the Doctor's return to active duty, Theresa had finally secured a rare pocket of leisure time, allowing her to sit quietly in her private chambers and converse without a looming deadline.
Though Jeanne had never personally looked upon the legendary Regent, the accounts she gathered from veteran mercenaries painted a vivid picture of Babel's greatest adversary. He simply wasn't the type of warrior who would ever concede defeat willingly.
"He... under normal circumstances, he is indeed an individual who would fight to his absolute breath before abandoning his convictions," Theresa murmured, her eyes clouding with an intricate mix of emotions as her thoughts drifted to her brother. The brilliant light in her gaze softened into a somber reflection.
It was difficult to tell whether she was mourning the ancient eras when they fought side-by-side as a seamless unit, or if she was contemplating the profound weight of his recent betrayal when he dispatched assassins to end her life. Perhaps it was a heavy combination of both.
Yet, his current passivity remained an absolute puzzle even to her. What possible variable could convince that proud warrior to avoid a face-to-face confrontation for this long? If his only concern was the presence of Fafnir, it shouldn't have driven him to such extreme avoidance.
"Could that man be planning a total retreat from the region?" Jeanne blurted out suddenly, the wild theory slipping past her lips before she could censor it. From her perspective, it looked as though Theresis recognized his position was thoroughly shattered and was systematically preparing to flee the country.
"No, that is entirely impossible," Jeanne muttered a second later, shaking her head to dismiss her own erratic speculation. What on earth had possessed her to assume a figure like the Regent would flee? One only had to look at the surrounding Terran nations to realize that not a single sovereign state would ever dare offer permanent sanctuary to the leader of the Sarkaz legions.
Theresa's analytical track ran parallel to Jeanne's. She similarly refused to believe her brother would ever consider abandoning his homeland; his towering royal pride would never allow him to survive as a common mercenary captain in exile.
Still, the monarch tucked the thought away. While Jeanne's offhand comment lacked a solid foundation, it technically represented a logical possibility, however remote.
Ultimately, sitting in a quiet office spinning hypotheses wasn't going to uncover the truth. They simply lacked the data to deduce Theresis's true machinations, especially since Babel's deep-cover intelligence operatives inside the royal capital had fallen entirely silent for several weeks.
Jeanne spent the following days lounging about the landship, listening to a steady stream of reports detail their unhindered advance across the barrens. According to Theresa, these standard territorial maneuvers required zero divine intervention; the domestic forces of Babel were more than capable of managing the local garrisons.
This arrangement left Jeanne with an abundance of free time, reducing her daily routine to casually walking her young dragon through the corridors. She privately felt as though she had slipped into an early retirement the moment her alliance with Babel began, a peaceful status quo that seemed destined to endure until the vanguard officially breached the capital gates.
Furthermore, with Theresa's triumphant return to the helm, a palpable shift swept through Babel's personnel and the civilian refugees alike. The oppressive shadow of war began to lift, replaced by vibrant, hopeful discussions regarding the reconstruction era.
People were openly anticipating the historic day their monarch would march back into the royal capital. A dream that had once been dismissed as a hollow, impossible fantasy had suddenly transformed into an imminent reality.
However, this tranquil routine fractured the moment Babel's vanguard encountered a massive mobile city straddling the central highway. Leveraging the formidable automated defenses and dense armor plating of the nomadic structure, the local loyalist forces successfully halted the advance, forcing Babel's rapid progression to a grinding halt.
Faced with a sudden, frustrating bottleneck, Jeanne found herself receiving an urgent request from the newly recovered Doctor. The strategist implored the Saintess to personally intervene and see if her unique talents could dismantle the city's defenses as quickly as possible—after all, to Babel's current campaign, time was the most precious resource they possessed.