The moment the weight of those words settled into the room, Jeanne stared at the Doctor with an expression that plainly asked: Are you secretly a double agent?
I mean, honestly, is this the kind of strategy a rational, well-adjusted human being designs?
She genuinely couldn't fathom how the strategist had arrived at such a devastating conclusion. It was an absolute blessing that the Doctor had kept this entirely hidden from Kal'tsit; otherwise, Jeanne would probably be attending her memorial service instead of having a conversation tonight!
Despite her profound shock, Jeanne didn't voice a single interruption. She simply gave the robed figure a sharp look that signaled her to keep talking, remaining entirely silent as she evaluated her companion.
Noticing that Jeanne had managed to retain her composure after the massive revelation, the Doctor let out a soft, dry chuckle. Shaking her head in a mix of self-deprecation and grim amusement, she murmured:
"I suppose only someone like you could remain this calm. If Kal'tsit or any of the core Babel vanguard agents had intercepted that statement, I would have been stripped of my rank and thrown into a holding cell by now, wouldn't I?"
The Doctor possessed a perfectly realistic grasp of her current institutional standing. As an individual whose reputation within the ranks was already highly controversial, revealing a blueprint that involved the Queen's demise would instantly invite absolute suspicion.
Actually, it wouldn't matter who voiced it—an idea like that would trigger a massive structural crisis across the entire organization! That single variable was the sole reason she had maintained absolute secrecy, keeping the framework entirely to herself for so long.
She sat across from Jeanne, her internal emotions turning into a complex, tangled mess. It was as though a sudden flood of memories had compromised her focus, causing her to drift into a quiet, heavy trance, halting her explanation entirely.
Jeanne glanced toward the heavy wooden door for a brief moment, ensuring their privacy remained intact. Rather than disrupting the strategist's train of thought, she simply watched the door before offering in a quiet, gentle tone:
"If this burden is weighing too heavily on your spirit tonight, you are perfectly welcome to walk me through it another day. I can plainly see that safeguarding a secret of this magnitude is exerting an immense amount of psychological pressure on you."
Jeanne spoke with genuine empathy, recognizing the agonizing toll the situation was extracting from the Doctor. After all, by any rational standard, concluding that your closest ally needs to die is never a first-choice solution.
"There is no need to delay. I simply allowed myself to drift for a moment," the Doctor replied, refusing the invitation to retreat. It had taken every ounce of her personal courage to finally open up to another human being about this crisis, and she had zero intention of wasting the opportunity.
"You have witnessed the grim reality of Kazdel with your own eyes, so you must understand that this country has reached an absolute breaking point. Continuing this war serves zero structural purpose..."
The Doctor took several deep, ragged breaths, her posture sagging into a state of profound exhaustion.
"No matter how flawlessly I execute our military campaigns, the conflict remains entirely deadlocked. We lack the leverage to force a breakthrough. At the end of the day, Theresis holds the vast majority of the nation's capital, and Babel's overall mass is simply too insignificant to tip the scales."
Jeanne could easily validate that assessment. The disparity in resources didn't imply a lack of strategic capability on the Doctor's part; the fact that she had sustained a defensive front against Theresis's massive royal army for this long using nothing but scrap resources was a spectacular feat.
"To bring a swift end to a war that is systematically destroying the Sarkaz people, there are only two paths available. Either one faction permanently evacuates the borders of Kazdel, or..."
"The supreme leader of one faction faces absolute termination?" Jeanne finished the thought, tracking the underlying logic perfectly. Still, the sheer ruthlessness of the concept left her deeply shaken; it was the kind of absolute resolution that went completely beyond standard human comprehension.
"This plan... it didn't originate from your mind alone, did it? At the very least, it cannot be your personal design. Don't tell me... did Theresa formulate this herself? Did she proactively introduce the idea to you?"
A sudden, stunning realization flashed through Jeanne's mind. Even as the theory took shape, she struggled to believe a ruler could possess that level of terrifying self-sacrifice, yet it was the only piece of the puzzle that made absolute sense of the Doctor's torment.
"Yes," the Doctor whispered, exhaling a long, heavy breath as she confirmed the suspicion. She offered a single, forceful nod, as if trying to violently shake the lingering ghosts from her head.
"The initial proposition... came directly from Theresa. She explicitly stated that she refuses to let this nation remain a living hell simply because two siblings are locked in a struggle for supreme authority."
The words clearly brought the Doctor a massive amount of internal agony. She was drowning in her own perceived inadequacy, bitterly cursing her inability to discover a strategic breakthrough—a failure so absolute it had forced Theresa to look toward her own demise as the ultimate solution to save her people.
"But if she pursues that path... the entire sovereign authority of the nation falls directly into Theresis's hands! Are the two of you truly that confident in his ability to govern Kazdel?"
Jeanne struggled to bridge the logical gap. If the ideological divide between the two factions was gentle enough to permit that level of trust, why on earth had they fought a bloody, multi-year civil war in the first place?
"You are operating under a slight misconception. The reason their relationship fractured into open warfare is due to a profound, unyielding disagreement regarding the long-term future of our species. However, Theresis is not a tyrant; he genuinely possesses the capacity to govern this land with absolute dedication."
The Doctor immediately recognized that Jeanne had painted Theresis with the traditional brush of a standard 'Demon King'—a cartoonish villain who ruled through nothing but mindless violence and terror.
The reality of the situation was far more complex. While the Regent's methods lacked Theresa's radiant idealism, he was a deeply calculating leader who spent every waking hour analyzing how to secure survival for the Sarkaz. The tragedy of the civil war stemmed entirely from the fact that the siblings' respective grand designs were fundamentally incompatible.
Jeanne found herself yielding to that logic. After all, if the Regent had been nothing more than a mindless butcher, a legendary veteran like Patriot wouldn't suffer such a complex, agonizing conflict of emotions whenever his name was brought to light.
"I must admit, the sheer volume of your collective resolve is staggering... to sacrifice everything for the sake of a nation..." Jeanne murmured, rubbing her temples as the sheer weight of Theresa's choice settled into her mind.
If a messenger ever approached Jeanne and proved with absolute certainty that her own demise would permanently silence a war, allowing innocent civilians to experience lasting tranquility... Jeanne knew that she, too... would almost certainly make the exact same choice.
Up until this moment, Jeanne had assumed Babel's ultimate backup plan was to simply pack their essential personnel onto the Rhodes Island landship, evacuate the Kazdel frontier entirely, and bide their time until their resources recovered enough to mount a counter-offensive.
Yet, a lingering sense of unease continued to tug at her thoughts. While she couldn't pinpoint the exact flaw in the narrative, her instincts insisted that there were deeper, unmapped motives hidden beneath the surface—and Jeanne was an individual who placed absolute faith in her intuition.
She fixed the strategist with a deeply analytical, suspicious gaze, refusing to voice a direct interrogation but letting her eyes demand the absolute truth from the secret-laden figure across the desk.
The Doctor remained motionless, seemingly weighing the risks of revealing the remaining variables to the Saintess. An intense, heavy silence swallowed the room as the two individuals locked eyes, tracking each other's movements.
The quiet was so absolute that the rustle of a sleeping Fafnir shifting on the mattress sounded incredibly loud. The young dragon rolled over multiple times in her deep slumber, her momentum threatening to send her tumbling straight off the edge of the frame.
Jeanne's reflexes flared; her hand shot out with incredible velocity, cleanly scooping Fafnir out of mid-air and settling her safely back into the center of the cushions before resuming her rigid, focused stare down with the Doctor.
Faced with that unyielding scrutiny, the Doctor let out a long, defeated sigh. Reaching up, she unlatched and removed her heavy polymer helmet, exposing her actual features to the open air. The sheer severity of her physical deterioration was infinitely worse than when Jeanne had last seen her.
"There is one final variable," the Doctor stated, her cadence flat and empty. "My personal lifespan has run its course. Without my calculations anchoring the framework... the probability of Babel maintaining its current defensive line is virtually non-existent."
The face revealed beneath the hood looked tens of times more fragile than before. Jeanne wouldn't have batted an eye if the Doctor had announced she was preparing her own funeral for tomorrow morning; her skin possessed a translucent, terrifying pallor that made a pure-blooded vampire look flush with life. Was there even a single drop of vital fluid left inside this woman's veins?
Jeanne's perspective of the strategist underwent a sudden, massive transformation. She had assumed the Doctor was merely an eccentric commander, never realizing the woman had systematically ground her own physical constitution into a terminal, irreversible state purely to sustain Babel's operations. The figure before her suddenly felt remarkably grand.
Grief and profound sympathy flooded Jeanne's chest as she looked at a companion who was actively drifting toward the grave. Reaching across the space, she gently patted the Doctor's frail shoulder, her voice softening into a solemn vow.
"Do not despair. Once your journey reaches its end, I give you my solemn word that I will watch over this place and safeguard your people. Does anyone else within the command structure know the truth of your condition? Do you require me to maintain absolute security over this secret?"
The Doctor froze, staring blankly at Jeanne's intensely tragic expression. Watching the Saint mentally preparing to adopt her hypothetical widows and orphans, the strategist instantly realized a massive cognitive misfire had occurred.
"You have veered entirely off course," the Doctor corrected, a faint, amused smile returning to her pale lips. "I simply require a specialized medical intervention. The plan demands that I enter a prolonged stasis cycle within a specialized life-support pod located deep within Chernobog. I will likely remain dormant for anywhere from a single year to several years, but my current pathology is nowhere near the threshold of actual termination."
Jeanne's entire posture instantly locked up mid-consolation. Her mind, which had already begun mapping out a grand, respectful funeral arrangement, ground to a painful halt.
Recalling her own tearful sincerity from a split second ago... the sheer volume of awkwardness in the room was absolute!