Theresis sat upon a weathered outcropping in the middle of the barren flats. Gathered around him was a legion of warriors who, even by the fiercely demanding standards of the Sarkaz, would be classified as spectacularly well-equipped. These elite soldiers were the Regent's true trump cards—a vanguard of sheer iron that he had deliberately kept withheld from the active front lines throughout the entire siege.
He had held them back because he understood with absolute clarity that the mysterious external ally Theresa had recruited possessed beasts that defied the natural laws of combat. The airborne monsters were entirely beyond standard military metrics; throwing his finest troops against such catastrophic scale would have resulted in an absolute slaughter with a flat zero percent probability of success.
This calculated evaluation was the precise reason he had abandoned the royal capital. To dig in and defend a static position would have been an exercise in pure futility. Rather than wasting his core strength on a lost cause, it was infinitely wiser to concede this single campaign, retreat cleanly, and reformulate his long-term designs from a safe distance.
The warriors surrounding him were not the type to assume Theresis had lost his edge simply because a single citadel had fallen. Their martial resolve wasn't a fragile thing that could be shattered by a tactical retreat; if anything, this bitter taste of failure only served to render their collective will as hard as solid granite.
"Your Highness, the divisions are assembled. We must move."
The high-ranking Confessor who had anchored his inner circle for decades remained faithfully at his flank. Theresis offered the robed figure a concise glance but uttered no response. He simply stood motionless for a few seconds more, his dark eyes fixed upon the pale twin moons hanging in the night sky.
With a definitive nod, he signaled the march. Under the dense veil of midnight, the elite column began sliding across the flats, fiercely determined to clear the borders of Kazdel before the dawn broke. Remaining within the nation's interior for any extended duration would inevitably invite disaster, as those soaring airborne predators would track them down within days.
Until he discovered a definitive countermeasure to neutralize those colossal beasts—or devised a master stroke to permanently fracture the alliance between Theresa and her mysterious benefactor—the Regent had zero intention of returning to Kazdel soil. The current probability of achieving a military victory there was simply too microscopic.
Their immediate task was a clean extraction from the country. Fortunately, Theresis was far from a desperate outcast fleeing into the wilderness without a destination; even in defeat, a man of his stature still possessed substantial external alliances.
Sure enough, after the column had pressed forward into the borderlands for a few miles, the dark silhouette of a massive landship came into view, parked squarely along the demarcation line of the Kazdel frontier. The leviathan bore the unmistakable architectural hallmarks of a Victorian vessel—the very ally he had been counting on.
Theresis had maintained deep, clandestine ties with certain factions in Victoria for years. Had it not been for those mutual arrangements, his previous joint campaign against Laterano(The one where their forces couldn't find Laterano and died of random incidents in the early chapters) would never have materialized—a venture that had admittedly concluded in a spectacularly bloody failure. Yet, that past setback had done absolutely nothing to derail their ongoing cooperation.
"To think it has been so brief a window since our last assembly, Regent Theresis. I must admit, I never anticipated your domestic affairs would deteriorate to quite this spectacular degree. Permit me to offer my deepest, most sincere condolences for your plight?"
As the landship settled into the dirt, a Liberi aristocrat stepped elegantly down the primary boarding ramp. The nobleman's face was a flawless mask of theatrical sympathy, though the underlying smirk was visible enough to render the performance entirely hollow.
Following closely behind him were several heavily armored Liberi rangers, their hands resting tightly upon advanced composite bows. Their sharp eyes scanned the surrounding Sarkaz warriors with intense vigilance, clearly harboring a persistent dread that a violent skirmish might erupt between the two factions at any second.
"This is merely a temporary breach of etiquette, Excellency," Theresis replied, his voice entirely smooth and level as he met the nobleman's gaze. His commanding posture radiated such absolute authority that an outside observer might easily have mistaken him for the triumphant victor of the civil war, reducing Theresa to the role of the desperate exile.
The Victorian aristocrat blinked, momentarily caught off guard by the Regent's chilling composure. He had assumed that no matter how ironclad Theresis's psychological defenses might be, a catastrophic reversal of this magnitude—being violently unseated from the throne of a nation—would have inflicted a visible blow to his pride.
Over the years, the nobleman had witnessed dozens of powerful figures permanently unravel over setbacks a fraction of this size. Yet, Theresis looked entirely untouched by the defeat.
Furthermore, a swift glance at the surrounding Sarkaz infantry confirmed that the Regent's core military assets had emerged from the civil war completely intact. Viewed from a purely strategic angle, stripped of the administrative nightmare of governing the impoverished wastes of Kazdel, this concentrated warlord faction had actually become a far sharper, more lethal instrument.
The realization forced an immediate shift in the aristocrat's expression. The theatrical pity vanished, replaced by a radiant, deeply enthusiastic smile, as if he were rushing forward to embrace a cherished brother-in-arms after a decade of separation. The speed of his facial transition would have left a master performer feeling thoroughly outclassed.
"But of course, my cherished friend! We remain the most unyielding of allies, do we not? How could I ever harbor the absurd notion that a single setback could strip a man of your caliber of his true strength? A minor defeat in a localized civil war is a triviality to a mind like yours..."
The man unleashed a relentless torrent of smooth, diplomatic falsehoods. Yet, the performance demonstrated that his cognitive reflexes were exceptionally sharp; he was an undeniable genius when it came to reading the wind, even if his underlying disgust for the Sarkaz race was a bit difficult to stomach.
Such petty prejudices were entirely irrelevant to Theresis. He was far too pragmatic a ruler to let personal distaste interfere with a profitable venture, and he would never strip a powerful asset from his ledger simply because the man's manners were unappealing.
"Then I trust our upcoming operations will yield a spectacular harvest for both our houses," Theresis interrupted coldly, cutting through the nobleman's hollow flattery. "We shall proceed precisely as our prior communications dictated—each of us extracting the exact resources required to fulfill our respective ambitions. Is that not the arrangement?"
Loath to waste further breath on idle chatter, the Regent pressed past the nobleman, his long strides carrying him up the ramp. There was a subtle urgency to his movements, as if a spectral hunter were tracking his heels across the flats.
While he calculated a flat zero percent chance that his sister would dispatch an assassination squad across the border—and an even smaller probability that the mysterious Saintess would guide her wyverns into foreign territory—true peace of mind could only be secured once they were entirely clear of the Kazdel sector.
He had personally witnessed the colossal proportions of that ancient mythical beast from a distance, and he possessed a realistic understanding of the staggering chasm in power that separated his legions from such an entity. It was a terrifying reality that could easily drive a lesser commander to absolute despair.
Theresis was fully convinced that even the high walls of Londinium—a grand citadel that boasted a historical record of never having fallen to an invader—would crack like a fragile biscuit under an assault of that magnitude. He remained completely baffled as to how Theresa had managed to unearth such a relic.
"Ah... yes! Of course! May our shared venture bring us absolute glory!" The Gaulish nobleman stammered, his aristocratic composure momentarily shattered by the sheer psychological weight of the Regent's tone. It took him several seconds to collect his wits.
Watching Theresis's retreating cloak disappear into the main deck, the aristocrat was gripped by a sudden, humiliating sensation that the Sarkaz warlord was the true master of this vessel, while he was nothing more than a common grunt executing orders.
The moment he completely regained his bearings, a fierce, burning wave of indignation rushed through his veins. This broken outcast, a literal stray dog driven from his own burning kennel, had managed to completely intimidate him with a single glance!
"Nothing but a pathetic loser... what right does he have to put on such grand airs?"
The Liberi spat the curse silently in the depth of his mind. Had the domestic political landscape within Victoria not deteriorated to such a desperate state, he would never have permitted his house to align with the defiled blood of the Sarkaz. His lineage, after all, traced back to the authentic, high nobility of the true Gaulish Empire!
The foundation of their pact with Theresis was remarkably straightforward. With the grand crown of Victoria currently fractured by internal strife, both factions had converged upon the kingdom like wolves. The Regent carried his own inscrutable designs, while the remnant nobility desired nothing less than the violent resurrection of the Sacred Gaulish Empire, fiercely resolved to restore the ancient majesty of their shattered realm.
It was a spectacularly mad ambition, one that no legitimate global power on Terra would ever dare support. The mere rumor of a Gaulish restoration would instantly ignite a second war of the four emperors, plunging the continent into absolute chaos.
Only the Sarkaz—a race whose entire existence was a desperate, endless struggle for survival—possessed the reckless audacity to wager their lives on so perilous a plot. These two factions, each harboring a distinct web of hidden betrayals, were fully locked in a silent contest to determine how to completely extract every drop of strategic nutrition from the other before discarding them like a hollow husk.
The Gaulish nobleman didn't bother casting a single glance at the common Sarkaz soldiers boarding the lower decks. In his estimation, those grunts didn't possess the clearance to occupy his thoughts; the solitary figure worthy of addressing a true Gaulish aristocrat was Theresis himself.
The Sarkaz infantry offered no arguments, methodically dividing their numbers into two distinct operational columns. The primary vanguard, containing the bulk of their heavy iron, followed the Regent onto the Victorian landship to begin their journey toward the heart of the empire. The remaining units scattered along the frontier, transforming themselves into localized mercenary bands to melt into the Kazdel wildlands.
These border holdouts were composed entirely of seasoned mercenaries who had spent their lifetimes navigating the dark economy of the wastes. Under the oversight of several trusted commanders handpicked by Theresis, they would serve as the Regent's eyes and ears, gathering a spectacular volume of intelligence from the surrounding territories.
As for Theresis himself, his destination was set. For a considerable duration of the coming years, his seat of power would be established within the shadowed avenues of Londinium. A chaotic, fractured metropolis that desperately required external iron was the absolute stage he required—the ultimate furnace from which he would draw the nutrition to rebuild his strength.
Though his overarching plan still lacked several critical components at this current juncture, time was an asset he possessed in abundance. He would patiently bide his time in the dark, methodically assembling his resources until his trap was fully formed. When the hour finally struck, he would force the entire face of Terra to experience the absolute, unmitigated wrath of the Sarkaz race.