Chapter 396
2-in-1-chapter
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Instead, they turned their attention to the executives who had stayed neutral—those who had kept their forces at home and refrained from attacking anyone.
As mentioned earlier, those neutral executives had kept a clear head.
They knew that infighting would only weaken the group and benefit outsiders.
But the problem was, they weren't willing to relinquish power or territory. They didn't leave Bolivia. And that, to the three aggressive factions, made them look like opportunists waiting to pick a side.
And the three were not weak. If they turned on one another again, the fight would be fierce.
If, during such a stalemate, one of the neutral factions decided to strike from behind…
People think differently.
No matter how much you declare your intentions, if someone believes you're a threat, then you are.
Sometimes it doesn't matter what you think—it matters what others think you think.
Truth might matter, but not always.
The neutral executives likely racked their brains trying to understand it, but never imagined…
That despite never raising a hand against anyone, they would still be attacked.
They hadn't yet tasted the fire of war, and they lacked the strength of the top three.
They were defeated in short order.
Those who didn't submit were killed outright.
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Another month passed.
The territories once controlled by the Shining Group were scarred and brutalized by war. The damage was impossible to ignore.
At last, after a month of relentless conflict, there were no more fence-sitters, no more neutrals.
Only three ambitious but exhausted executives remained.
Their losses were staggering.
Half of their original mercenaries were dead or missing.
They had already sent contracts to European and American PMCs, but reinforcements would take time to arrive.
Meanwhile, the forced laborers who had been exploited by the Shining Group saw their chance—while the guards were off fighting, many escaped.
Even those who remained were now far fewer in number.
Losing the workers wasn't the worst part. Once the infighting ended, new ones could be captured or lured in with the promise of cash.
There were always ways.
But what came next posed a far greater crisis. The widespread destruction of coca plantations had caused massive financial losses.
Though uneducated, these executives understood basic principles of warfare—scorched earth, total war.
In that month of chaos, any plantation that wasn't under their control was burned down, no questions asked.
And even when a plantation was on their own land, if it couldn't be held, they torched it rather than let the enemy take it.
In the end, the three leaders looked around and realized…
All that fighting, all that blood, all that destruction—they had achieved nothing.
Even if all their competitors were ultimately eliminated, what awaited them would be nothing but scorched earth.
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While the three most powerful upper-level leaders of the Shining Group were racking their brains on how to break the current deadlock, they all simultaneously received two pieces of news—one good, one bad.
The bad news was that during the more than one month they had spent in internal strife, Aurora PMC had already delivered a crushing defeat to the anti-government forces. Most of the insurgent leadership had fled across the border into neighboring countries. Though some scattered militia units remained within Bolivia, they were disorganized and fragmented, and it was only a matter of time before they were completely wiped out.
Moreover, Bolivia's civilian population now stood firmly on Aurora PMC's side. The remaining insurgents, hiding deep in the mountains and relying on guerrilla tactics, could not show themselves in populated areas without being immediately reported to the nearest Aurora outpost.
Even if they chose to live like wild men in the wilderness, that too would not last. Once Aurora fully consolidated its hold over the territory, they would be free to turn their attention to exterminating the remnants.
This was not the 2000s anymore; you simply could not hide even within the dense jungles of Bolivia with modern technology. The only thing that mattered was weather does wanitng to find you were willing to spend some money.
To the Shining Group, this was catastrophic.
Previously, Bolivia had existed in a tenuous tripolar balance: the government forces, the insurgents, and the Shining Group. Regardless of the conflict between the other two, the Shining Group had quietly continued cultivating coca in peace. Even when Aurora PMC replaced the former government forces, the tripartite equilibrium remained—until now.
With the insurgents driven out, Aurora PMC stood alone in dominance. Meanwhile, the Shining Group had weakened itself severely through violent infighting over the group's leadership.
That alone would have been bad enough.
But the good news was that Aurora PMC had sent three encrypted communications—each nearly identical—to the three major factions within the Shining Group.
The content was simple and direct.
Aurora PMC's prior deal with "Gustavo" would not be nullified due to recent changes in the Shining Group's leadership. They were still willing to cooperate.
Moreover, given the internal "difficulties" currently faced by the Shining Group, Aurora PMC expressed a willingness to assist—offering to help eliminate rival factions and bring an end to the infighting.
Aside from the difference in addressee, the three messages were otherwise identical.
Each of the three leaders, upon receiving the communication, was visibly delighted. They each believed it was their own strength and competence that had impressed Aurora PMC and prompted the company to choose them as the new point of contact.
Without hesitation, each of them sent back detailed intelligence on the other factions, hoping to use Aurora's hand to remove their rivals.
This was also a kind of test.
None of the three were foolish. They all suspected that Aurora PMC's offer might just be words—meant to manipulate them without any real action. So they sent intelligence not just as a gift, but as a way to gauge Aurora's sincerity.
If Aurora actually acted on the intelligence and struck their enemies hard, it would mean they were serious.
The logic was sound.
But what none of them accounted for was that Aurora PMC had sent all three messages simultaneously, not to support any one of them, but to bait them all.
Each leader, believing they alone had been contacted, gave away full dossiers on their rivals—unknowingly feeding Aurora a complete picture of the group's internal structure, assets, hideouts, and weaknesses.
In gaming terms, while the three leaders still had a fog-of-war over the map, Aurora was playing with full vision, clearly seeing every move, every unit, every vulnerability.
And even worse—none of the three knew they'd been exposed.
Thanks to the combined intelligence, Aurora launched a rapid strike, deploying troops with surgical precision to the mountainous regions where the three leaders were hiding. Each was eliminated through decapitation tactics—targeted strikes that wiped out the leadership instantly.
Then, while their remaining forces fell into chaos, Aurora followed up using the intel to dismantle one base after another, liberating laborers who had been enslaved under the Shining Group's rule.
The campaign went even more smoothly than the special operations against the anti-government militias.
The Shining Group had already been internally fractured and weakened.
Now, with its heads cut off and its structure fully mapped, Aurora dismantled them with ease.
The remaining forces barely put up resistance.
And most of the muscle behind the Shining Group had always been mercenaries—fighters driven by paychecks, not loyalty.
With their employers dead and no one left to issue orders, most chose to flee rather than fight.
Without their hired guns, the remnants collapsed instantly.
Just like that, the Shining Group—an entrenched power in Bolivia for decades, long a thorn in the side of every government that had ruled the country—was completely uprooted.
The Shining Group had lasted so long for good reason. Presidents who came to power through elections—even those with genuine reformist intentions—could be easily discredited through smear campaigns funded by the group's bribes and connections. No violence was needed. A few headlines, a few scandals, and the political threat would be neutralized.
During Bolivia's periods of military rule, the group adapted. Bribes didn't always work with generals, but the military regimes were often fiscally incompetent. Budgets ran dry, and with little ability to govern or fund enforcement, the junta had no choice but to cooperate with the Shining Group to maintain control.
But Aurora PMC was unlike any government Bolivia had ever seen.
They hadn't come to power by election—so they had no opposition parties to sabotage them.
Leo had invested heavily in recruiting individuals of real ability—those who had been passed over or suppressed due to lack of connections or political backing.
With those people at the core, Aurora was a private military company that could govern. They had real administrative capacity, supported by a stable revenue stream from bulk arms sales on the international market.
The profits from those sales were reinvested directly into infrastructure and public welfare—benefiting both the nation and its people.
With no corruption to exploit, and no bureaucracy to bribe, the Shining Group had no leverage.
And so, against Aurora PMC, the Shining Group suffered a total and irreversible defeat.
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