The moment Jeanne followed the trio into the briefing room, she instantly detected a bizarre friction in the air. The dynamic between the three of them felt incredibly off today, though she couldn't quite pinpoint the exact source of the tension.
Left with zero context, Jeanne simply sat in her designated seat, shifting her gaze back and forth to analyze their expressions. Yet, on the surface, none of them appeared to be doing anything out of the ordinary.
Perhaps she simply lacked a deep enough understanding of their personal quirks? Surveying the highly unusual atmosphere gripping the room, Jeanne let out a soft, deliberate cough to break the silence and addressed them directly:
"I appreciate you bringing me into the discussion today... but what exactly is the core objective?"
The previous evening, the Doctor had merely tossed a vague hint her way before vanishing down the corridor like a fugitive, acting as though she was terrified of further interrogation—or perhaps fleeing from an invisible assassin snapping at her heels.
Upon hearing that Jeanne was still entirely in the dark regarding the day's agenda, both Theresa and Kal'tsit immediately pivoted their gaze toward the strategist. Their locked eyes practically screamed: Did you seriously fail to brief her on the basic details?
Under the crushing weight of their combined scrutiny, the Doctor froze, her mind spinning into absolute chaos. Did I say something last night? Did I omit the details? What exactly did I communicate? Why is my memory completely failing me? Good grief, am I sliding into premature cognitive decline...
"Our primary objective is to secure your personal strength to safeguard the Rhodes Island landship during its physical transit phase," Theresa explained gently. Recognizing that the Doctor had drifted into a spiral of wild internal monologues, the Demon King bypassed her entirely to address the Saintess. "The mercenary cohorts we managed to muster are far too light to guarantee a safe passage."
"You failed to secure an adequate force?" Jeanne raised an eyebrow, genuinely perplexed. During her travels across the Kazdel frontier, the most frequent rumor she encountered involved entire local mercenary bands vanishing overnight, leaving the rural settlements terrified that a massive military storm was about to breach their borders.
Under those conditions, how could Babel possibly fail to harvest a sufficient volume of fighters? Jeanne internally questioned the efficiency of their recruitment divisions. Are you people simply filing empty paperwork to pad your numbers? she wondered.
Of course, whether managing mercenary recruitment fell under the strict jurisdiction of the human resources division was something Jeanne didn't fully comprehend, but she figured it was close enough.
Faced with the logical inquiry, Theresa found herself momentarily at a loss for words. By all standard military conventions, Jeanne's assessment was flawless, but reality had a habit of completely disregarding conventional logic.
"The initial mobilization... proceeded flawlessly," Theresa clarified, her cadence laced with a touch of diplomatic reservation. "However, we did not anticipate the Regent's faction responding with massive financial incentives coupled with targeted structural violence to forcibly integrate the independent cohorts. Consequently, the remaining neutral mercenaries have chosen to submerge themselves in hiding, waiting out the active conflict before resurfacing."
Though the Demon King's explanation was wrapped in highly polite prose, Jeanne decoded the raw mechanics instantly. Theresis and his command structure had simply presented the local fighters with two absolute options.
Either pledge allegiance to the royal guard and collect a massive payout, or face summary execution on the spot. Even by the brutal metrics of the Sarkaz, such a methodology was terrifyingly blunt and aggressively direct.
"People actually yielded to that level of coercion?" Jeanne murmured, surprised by the sheer ruthlessness of the strategy. She hadn't expected the local population to fall in line so easily under a blunt threat.
After all, a campaign built entirely on terror would inflict massive damage on an organizer's historical legacy. The specific commander tasked with executing those threats would likely find their personal reputation completely ruined once the ashes settled.
"It caught our strategists entirely off guard as well," the Doctor added, her voice dripping with pure annoyance. The current reality was undeniable: Theresis had mapped their exact location, and his vanguard was likely moving to execute a comprehensive sweep to eliminate Babel entirely.
The spectacular display Jeanne had unleashed when summoning Fafnir had generated entirely too much noise. With the Regent's intelligence network already focused on the Rim Billiton border, a simple analysis of the local communications would reveal Kal'tsit managing the perimeter alongside several very familiar faces from the past.
"In that case, what is my specific assignment? Do you require this little one to make a grand entrance?" Jeanne asked, gently stroking Fafnir's head. Hearing that her personal output might be required, the young dragon instantly felt a massive surge of self-importance, her tail beginning to thump rhythmically against the chair.
The moment the option was voiced, the Doctor felt an overwhelming impulse to simply say yes. Utilizing a living calamity to clear the path would ensure the landship's journey was completely effortless, saving an immense number of her own remaining brain cells.
Yet, she forcefully suppressed the urge. Deploying a legendary dragon of Fafnir's magnitude merely to escort a physical hull across the plains was a classic case of overkill. The creature's grand reveal belonged on a far more critical stage.
An absolute trump card of that caliber shouldn't be wasted on an opening skirmish; her deployment needed to occur in a theatrical setting designed to shock the entire consciousness of the nation!
"No, no, no! Unleashing Fafnir's raw power here would be a massive waste of leverage," the Doctor clarified hastily. "If I recall correctly, you possess the unique capability to manifest... lesser draconic entities? Wyverns and drakes, correct? Would it be possible to field a cohort of those creatures for defensive deployment?"
The incoming interception forces were, at their core, nothing more than a disorganized collection of mercenaries. Even when massed into a single frontline, they remained an ill-equipped rabble lacking standardized heavy gear. A modest deployment of lesser drakes would be more than enough to shatter their advance.
"Lesser drakes... yes, that is well within my capabilities," Jeanne murmured, turning the concept over in her mind. "However, orchestrating a manifestation cycle requires a substantial expenditure of personal energy. To gauge the exact requirements, I need a clear baseline of the combat output you are expecting. Furthermore, the necessary Originium chunks for the catalyst must be supplied entirely from your own stores."
Jeanne analyzed the numbers internally. If she blindly agreed to the contract without mapping the parameters, she could easily drain her personal mana reserves to absolute zero without even generating enough entities to cover the perimeter.
Glare...
The moment Fafnir processed that the strategist didn't require her supreme power, opting instead to rely on much weaker, lesser creatures, her entire draconic pride took a massive hit. She puffed out her cheeks, staring at the Doctor with an expression of pure, unadulterated hostility.
Fafnir's Internal Monologue: A perfect opportunity to smash some bad guys, and this masked lady completely ruined it! She is a thoroughly terrible person!
Fortunately, the Doctor's subsequent praise regarding her catastrophic power managed to soothe the young dragon's ego, reducing her active hostility to a silent, unblinking stare.
"What is the maximum threshold of combat power you can manifest in a single entity?" the Doctor pressed, completely focused on the logistics. "The catalyst supply will not be an issue; we have secured a substantial reserve of raw Originium ore that can be processed directly within the landship's fabrication workshops."
If they were securing auxiliary units, it only made sense to benchmark the absolute highest tier of performance available.
"I can manifest an entity capable of systematically dismantling three Sanguinarchs simultaneously—perhaps even stronger if the parameters align. However, if you require a high volume of units at that specific tier, the catalyst requirements will easily bankrupt your entire treasury," Jeanne stated evenly.
Deep down, she couldn't help but wonder why her mind had automatically selected the Sanguinarch as a universal standard of combat measurement. Was that ancient vampire simply a convenient yardstick for violence?
It made sense when she thought about it. The moment she needed to benchmark a high-tier threat, the memory of that massive bat instantly surfaced. He was highly durable, possessed substantial offensive output, and served as the absolute perfect unit of measurement for raw destruction.
"Uh, there is absolutely no need to invoke that level of horror!" the Doctor sputtered, her visor shifting slightly as she recalculated. "A standard asset capable of managing... say, half a Sanguinarch would be more than sufficient. Or if we want to secure the line, perhaps three-quarters of a Sanguinarch?"
The Doctor adopted the bizarre metric with remarkable ease. In her estimation, the Sanguinarch must have severely crossed Jeanne during his last excursion into Ursus to warrant being transformed into a literal math equation for violence.
She could only wonder how the ancient vampire lord would react if he ever discovered his sacred lineage had been reduced to a baseline decimal point for mercenary contracts. Would the sheer volume of insult cause his lungs to violently rupture?
From there, the assembly drifted into an intense, hyper-detailed debate regarding the exact performance metrics of the drakes. The sheer density of the variables quickly left the Doctor's head spinning.
They weren't merely negotiating for a pair of entities; the tactical deployment required anywhere from a dozen to several dozen units. Every point they shaved off the metric directly preserved their precious stores of raw Originium ore.
"Why don't we simply assign a few vanguard elites to conduct a field evaluation of the entities before we lock in the final contract?" Jeanne suggested, her thoughts thoroughly scrambled by the endless back-and-forth. The analytical discussion had been violently fluctuating between three full Sanguinarchs and one-fifth of a Sanguinarch for the past hour.
The Doctor nodded slowly; it was an excellent compromise. Speculating on abstract decimals of a vampire lord was yielding zero practical consensus anyway.
"That seems like the most rational path forward. I will leave the organization of the evaluation field to the Doctor and Jeanne," Theresa agreed, her warm cadence bringing the formal segment to a close.
As for Kal'tsit... the medical officer offered zero verbal input, merely delivering a single, sharp nod from her seat.
With the direction established, the Doctor, Jeanne, and Fafnir vacated the briefing room. The instant the heavy doors sealed shut behind them, Theresa turned her gaze toward the remaining feline, her tone dropping into a serious register:
"Kal'tsit... I presume you intercepted the plan the Doctor and I were analyzing last night?"
"Do you honestly possess the audacity to label that brainless, idiotic exercise a plan?" Kal'tsit replied, breaking her day-long silence. Her delivery was laced with a cold, terrifying undercurrent of absolute fury. "I am entirely uncertain whether your terminal oripathy has compromised your neural pathways, or if that robed charlatan is simply engineering a convenient exit strategy to abandon the organization!"
The absolute rage vibrating through her words made it glaringly obvious that she harbored zero desire to sit and discuss logistics; her primary instinct was to track down the strategist and deliver a severe physical correction.