When Theresa's legions finally marched past the heavy bulkheads, it marked the definitive moment this settlement passed securely into Babel's hands. The shattered remnants of the loyalist garrison possessed zero leverage to mount a counter-offensive and reclaim the lost sectors.
The report of the successful capture rippled back to the main base, kindling a brilliant blaze of enthusiasm among the rank-and-file fighters. Witnessing such a massive victory infused the troops with a profound, unshakeable confidence in the grand future their leadership promised!
Virtually every corner of the camp hummed with excited talk about the triumph. Naturally, the message eventually reached the ears of the other royal sibling. Yet, when the Regent Theresis received the intelligence within his private sanctuary, his countenance remained entirely flat, betraying not a single flicker of surprise.
The sovereign simply remained seated at his heavy desk, methodically reviewing stacks of administrative records without a single pause in his movements, as if the dry parchment before him possessed some hypnotic, all-consuming appeal.
According to the quiet discussions among his subordinates, however, it was becoming increasingly obvious that the Regent was growing detached from the immediate domestic affairs of Kazdel. This perceived apathy sent a distinct shiver of unease through the high-ranking officers who remained fiercely loyal to his crown.
On multiple occasions, senior commanders had marched into the palace intent on offering earnest counsel, yet the moment they stood before the steps of the grand throne, a strange weight would press down upon them, leaving them entirely speechless. A deeply unsettling atmosphere had draped itself over the capital, so thick that even Babel's covert intelligence operatives monitoring the streets could sense the shift.
Babel's scouts were desperate to smuggle reports of these bizarre internal developments back to their handlers. Unfortunately, the Regent had recently initiated an exceptionally aggressive clampdown on all external transit and civilian communications, enforcing a security net so tight it was nearly impossible to slip past the checkpoints.
As a result, transmitting any actionable intelligence out of the city had become a harrowing gamble. A few operatives who had failed their escape attempts even began to harbor dark suspicions that their covers had been blown from the start—yet, peculiarly, the crown had taken zero steps to execute or detain them.
This calculated inaction bred profound self-doubt among the spies. Was Theresis subtly manipulating their movements through vectors they couldn't see, or was there some vast, hidden machinery operating behind the scenes that they simply lacked the clearance to comprehend?
Bound by tactical caution, the operatives ultimately chose to suspend all outbound dispatches to Babel. They harbored deep concerns that their minds might already be warping under the influence of some enemy caster's hex, and they refused to risk drawing their comrades into a lethal trap. The entire seat of power remained blanketed in this eerie, stagnant fog.
Across multiple municipal blocks, the frenetic pulse of the war machine began to stutter and grind to a halt, as if the massive, blood-soaked engine of the city were slowly holding its breath.
Babel's high command remained entirely blind to these developments. While Theresa and her inner circle had undoubtedly noted the capital's unnatural silence, they possessed no means of guessing what was truly unfolding behind those grand walls; they could only press forward and uncover the truth when their legions finally breached the capital gates.
At this very moment, Theresa was already on-site within the newly captured platform, personally overseeing the massive administrative transition. Her immediate focus was to stabilize the shattered infrastructure within the shortest possible window, ensuring the sectors could maintain basic order during the occupation.
When she stepped out onto the grand balcony overlooking the central square, the gathered Sarkaz populace offered a wave of genuine excitement at the sight of their true Monarch. Yet, beneath that initial surge of energy, the general demeanor of the crowd remained noticeably reserved.
To these exhausted families, it mattered very little which royal figurehead claimed ultimate dominion over the foundry decks. So long as they were no longer driven like animals to the brink of collapse within the iron frames of the machinery, they would offer their quiet compliance to whoever granted them a reprieve.
Though their common opinions carried very little political weight due to the harsh realities of Terra's power structures—and the previous administration had certainly never bothered to look down and acknowledge their silent protests—the change in leadership was palpable.
Theresa's governance naturally possessed a warmth that Theresis's cold efficiency entirely lacked. At the very least, the grueling, endless double-shifts that had defined their daily lives under the Regent were permanently abolished, a single gesture that left the local residents feeling immensely grateful to their new overseer.
"Are you absolutely certain you wish to remain entirely anonymous in the official records?" Theresa inquired, turning her gaze toward Jeanne. "Strictly speaking, the individual who pulled these families from the jaws of that nightmare wasn't our vanguard—it was you."
Following the conclusion of the skirmish, the young woman had explicitly requested that her martial contributions be kept entirely quiet, preferring that her presence in the sector be omitted from the public declarations altogether.
To Theresa, such an arrangement felt deeply unfair. Jeanne had carried the absolute heaviest burden during the entire infiltration, and erasing her name from the victory roll felt excessively ungenerous.
Jeanne merely sat on a nearby crate, gently cradling Fafnir. She had noticed that after their brief separation, the young dragon had become exceptionally attached to her, shadowing her every footstep over the past few days and stubbornly refusing to leave her side for even a minute.
Hearing the Monarch's gentle protest, Jeanne offered a crisp shake of her head, completely dismissing the notion of public praise. She possessed zero desire to have her name echoed across the residential blocks.
Her reluctance stemmed largely from her total lack of interest in political prestige. Furthermore, she recognized that Theresa required the glorious reputation far more than she did right now, especially since Jeanne had no intention of making a permanent home within the borders of Kazdel.
Besides, whenever she imagined a historical chronicle recording how a Saintess of Laterano had marched into the heart of the barrens to liberate oppressed Sarkaz factory workers, she couldn't help but shudder. It sounded like a bizarre twist that even a writer of cheap, pulp novels wouldn't have the nerve to put on paper.
Seeing Jeanne decline the honor with such fluid finality, Theresa could only sigh softly, a flicker of regret passing through her eyes. While she fully respected the Saintess's humble nature, she genuinely wished the common folk could know the true identity of the hero who had delivered them.
Nevertheless, since Jeanne insisted on remaining backstage, Theresa resolved to tuck the secret away for the future; perhaps when the nation was finally whole and peaceful, an opportunity would arise to share the truth with the people.
"Just how vital is this specific platform to your campaign?" Jeanne inquired, changing the subject. "Over the past few days, I've watched your staff celebrate the capture as if a spectacular stroke of cosmic fortune had dropped straight out of the sky and struck them on the head."
Recalling the sheer, unbridled joy she had witnessed across the logistics units, Jeanne felt thoroughly puzzled. She couldn't quite fathom why a single municipal block was causing such an immense stir among the veterans.
The ecstatic reactions made it seem less like they had captured a common industrial section and more like they had just secured the supreme right of succession for the entire realm... though that phrasing wasn't quite accurate, considering the true legitimate ruler was currently standing right beside her!
In any case, the atmosphere felt entirely detached from a standard territorial capture; it felt as though the final outcome of the entire civil war had already been decided, and all that remained was to march upon the capital and cleanly take Theresis's head.
"It is monumentally vital," Theresa affirmed, her tone shifting into a deeply earnest register that she only used during their quiet, private exchanges. "Both to my cause and to my brother's layout."
"As you've already noted, this mobile section was covertly salvaged from the Ursus frontiers years ago. But we didn't merely drag back an empty chassis; we secured a vast array of intact manufacturing decks along with it."
A nostalgic smile touched Theresa's lips as she recalled the immense surprise of that early salvage operation. At the time, her engineers hadn't anticipated the sheer scale of the windfall; though the machinery was undeniably antiquated, the primary industrial matrices were remarkably whole.
"While a significant portion of the advanced machinery was long ago dismantled and integrated into the capital's main foundations, this specific city remained a primary production hub for Kazdel. For our current campaign, its manufacturing output carries immense strategic weight."
Even without further explanation, Jeanne understood the underlying picture. She was well aware that Babel continuously grappled with severe supply deficits, and fabricating basic military hardware was a constant, grueling struggle for their logistics teams; this captured city would go a long way toward patching that massive vulnerability.
Granted, by the standards of advanced nations like Ursus or Yan, the technological level of these factories was pitifully outdated. The fact that machinery several centuries old was still chugging along under such heavy loads was a minor miracle; in any other corner of Terra, such relics would be locked away inside a historical museum.
This marked the first time Jeanne truly appreciated the sheer, staggering disparity in technology across this world. To think that a glittering metropolis like Lungmen, the advanced mobile plates of Chernobog, and this crumbling industrial relic all shared the exact same crust—the gap between them was truly spectacular.
Of course, Jeanne's perspective was still limited, as she had no idea that certain territories on Terra existed where electrical lighting was completely unheard of, forcing entire populations to rely strictly on common wax candles. Had she known that, she undoubtedly would have questioned what the local rulers could possibly be thinking.
The two continued their casual, drifting conversation for a while longer, though Theresa's available time was naturally brief. The Monarch was completely buried under a mountain of administrative tasks, fiercely determined to steer the city's vital systems back onto a healthy track.
It was proving to be a grueling undertaking. To sustain his campaigns, Theresis had driven the local populace through a massive, unrelenting cycle of overwork for months, showing zero concern for how many laborers dropped dead from sheer physical exhaustion.
Decompressing a traumatized workforce and restoring their confidence so they could return to the assembly lines willingly was no simple task; at least from a near-term perspective, the path forward looked far more complicated than her staff had anticipated.
As for the exact administrative measures required or how deeply they would need to restructure the local departments? That was a puzzle for Theresa and her trusted advisors to solve over long nights. Jeanne, for one, was perfectly content to stay far away from the headache of statecraft.