Silence. The briefing room, now occupied by only two people, was swallowed by an absolute, heavy quiet. The only sound cutting through the stillness was the thick, ragged breathing of Kal'tsit, whose internal emotional storm had finally broken through her composure, while the Demon King sat nearby, watching her with an unreadable expression.
They remained seated across from each other, tracking every micro-movement. Both Theresa and Kal'tsit held the other's gaze, as if waiting to see who would crack first and utter the initial word.
Theresa's eyes were perfectly tranquil, while Kal'tsit's burned with absolute fury. Theresa could swear that in all the long centuries of their personal acquaintance, she had never witnessed the ancient feline this spectacularly enraged.
Was Kal'tsit angry? She was poised to explode! The fact that she had managed to return to her private quarters the previous evening after intercepting the conversation between the Saintess and the Doctor, without tearing the corridor apart, was a massive testament to the emotional control she had forged over a lifetime of crisis.
In reality, Kal'tsit hadn't closed her eyes for a single second last night. Her fury wasn't merely sparked by Theresa's willingness to surrender her life to halt the civil war; it was driven by the crushing realization that the two strategists had systematically frozen her out of the entire design!
Babel's supreme command structure consisted of precisely three individuals. Yet, two of them had engineered a world-altering conspiracy behind her back. If the Saintess hadn't intervened, Kal'tsit would have been left entirely in the dark until the moment of Theresa's demise, forced to pick up the broken pieces and blindly execute the remaining phases of their plan!
And what about the two architects of this scheme? One would be resting in a grave, and the other would be sealed away in a high-tech coffin for a few years. If Kal'tsit was expected to maintain a pleasant disposition under those parameters, it would be a literal miracle.
"So," Kal'tsit began, her voice dropping into an icy, measured cadence as she broke the silence, staring intently at the pink-haired ruler across the desk. "Do you possess any remaining secrets regarding this enterprise that you care to share with me?"
"Regarding the omission... I truly offer my most sincere apologies," Theresa offered, her tone laced with a distinct lack of confidence. She knew she had zero leverage to justify the deception. "But... you understand the variables as well as I do, Kal'tsit. If we had integrated you into the discussion from the beginning, this strategy could never have been set into motion."
Theresa felt thoroughly guilty, given that they had explicitly calculated the deception to last until the very day the plan concluded, planning to leave behind a series of delayed messages to walk Kal'tsit through the aftermath.
She knew with absolute certainty that if Kal'tsit had intercepted the plans prior to execution, the medical officer would have deployed every resource at her disposal to systematically dismantle the operation.
"Could never have been set into motion?" Kal'tsit let out a harsh, dry chuckle, thoroughly pushed past her limits. "If you are entirely consumed by a desire to perish, what supernatural capability do I possess to restrain you? If you have truly grown weary of existence, you need only provide a formal notice. Who knows, perhaps I could have negotiated a handsome bounty from Theresis for your delivery."
Kal'tsit felt entirely pushed toward a state of hysterical amusement. She understood the internal logic driving Theresa's choices, but to abandon everything they had fought for after reaching this stage of the campaign? If absolute surrender was the ultimate destination, what did that make the sacrifices of every single soldier who had perished under Babel's banner?
"You must analyze the structural context," Theresa replied, shaking her head gently. "Prior to our alliance with Jeanne, the Doctor's physical collapse meant we possessed zero probability of maintaining a defensive stalemate against Theresis."
"Then you should have simply marched into his camp and surrendered your authority directly!" Kal'tsit slammed her hand onto the surface of the table, rising to her feet in a single, fluid motion. The underlying fury in her chest erupted into an open flame.
"If I hadn't verified your signature myself, I would be questioning whether a Sarkaz Damazti had integrated itself into your skin! You summoned me to this frontier with a personal missive all those years ago, and now you stand before me delivering this..."
The medical officer unleashed a relentless torrent of words, refusing to grant Theresa a single window to mount a counter-argument. Her rapid-fire delivery slammed down like a heavy artillery barrage.
She fully recognized the terrifying precarity of their situation. Acknowledging that losing the Doctor's strategic calculations would leave Babel entirely incapable of maintaining its current position was something Kal'tsit would readily concede.
Finding a replacement strategist capable of matching the Doctor's caliber was a mathematical impossibility. Even if they discovered an individual with the necessary intellectual capacity, they would never command the absolute loyalty of the remaining vanguard.
But that realization offered zero justification for handing an absolute victory to Theresis on a silver platter! If their defensive line failed, they could easily embark onto the Rhodes Island landship, evacuate the Kazdel theater entirely, and bide their time in neutral territory until a viable counter-strategy manifested.
Of course, Kal'tsit also knew Theresa would immediately counter with a wave of idealistic objections—claiming that if the Demon King abandoned the borders, it would trigger an even more catastrophic wave of violence across the territories.
The desire to continue the argument gradually faded from Kal'tsit's expression. She sank back into her seat, staring blankly at the deeply apologetic ruler before her, completely drained of words.
At the very least, she could take comfort in the fact that she had successfully integrated the Saintess into their ranks, ensuring this ridiculous tragedy would never leap from the pages of the Doctor's notes into reality. With a heavy sigh, Kal'tsit turned on her heel, preparing to vacate the room before her temper flared again.
"Where do you intend to go?" Theresa called out, watching her departure with a trace of anxiety. She was genuinely concerned that the feline was moving to deliver a physical correction to the Doctor, whose fragile constitution would absolutely shatter under Kal'tsit's wrath.
"Back to my office. There are administrative backlogs requiring my attention," Kal'tsit replied coldly. She desperately required a solitary space to recalibrate her emotional baseline.
The only reason she hadn't completely upended the facility was the knowledge that the Doctor had already officially abandoned the self-sacrificial strategy. Had the project still been active, her response would have been infinitely more severe.
Theresa watched the heavy doors seal shut and let out a long, shuddering breath. Given that Kal'tsit had chosen to isolate herself rather than launch an immediate confrontation, it meant the worst of her fury had already burned itself out.
The Demon King leaned back in her chair, staring up at the stark ceiling illumination, her internal thoughts a thoroughly complicated mess. She had fully prepared herself to face absolute termination, only for a spectacular miracle to rewrite the entire script in the blink of an eye.
How could one even classify this sensation? It felt remarkably like a patient diagnosed with a terminal illness who had meticulously drafted her final testament and quietly embraced her impending demise, only for the physician to jog back into the room to announce it was all a minor diagnostic error.
The sudden shift was a massive shock to the human psyche. Theresa could only offer a quiet prayer of thanks that she hadn't gone out and secured any massive personal loans prior to the miracle; otherwise, her financial reality moving forward would have been spectacularly entertaining.
Meanwhile, across the base, the Doctor had successfully mapped out an isolated testing ground. She had gathered a small assembly of elite vanguard agents who happened to have a free window in their schedules, intending to benchmark the exact combat tier of the Saintess's draconic manifestations.
The vanguard cohort, led by Ace, arrived at the perimeter looking thoroughly perplexed. The Doctor's initial summons had merely requested their presence for a standard performance evaluation, offering zero additional context.
Yet, as they surveyed the empty testing field, they found nothing but the Saintess standing alongside little Fafnir. A few of the operators wondered if they were expected to trade blows with the mother-daughter duo. (Fafnir: We'll beat you!!)
"Splendid, everyone has arrived!" the Doctor chirped, her voice echoing through her heavy visor. "I believe this individual requires no formal introduction. Moving forward, Miss Jeanne and our young friend Fafnir here will be operating alongside us as core tactical partners."
Clap, clap, clap, clap...
Despite their underlying confusion regarding the specific nature of the assignment, the operators immediately offered a warm, rhythmic round of applause to welcome their new colleagues.
As for whether deploying a child of Fafnir's physical proportions violated standard labor conventions? The veterans collectively decided that the current environment wasn't the right place to voice such sensitive inquiries. They would simply find an opportunity to quietly ask the Saintess about it later over rations.
Still, the veterans couldn't help but wonder what kind of leverage the Doctor had deployed to convince a mother to field her own child in an active war zone. The Saintess certainly didn't look like the type of individual who would exploit a youth for military gain.
The Saintess offered a polite nod of appreciation to the assembled elites, while Fafnir maintained an aura of absolute, frosty indifference. The young dragon consistently adopted this unblinking mask whenever she was surrounded by unfamiliar faces.
"Excellent, let's bring the pleasantries to a close. The primary driver behind today's mobilization is to thoroughly evaluate the combat mechanics of... a few highly specialized biological entities!"
With that, the Doctor delivered a clear hand signal to the Saintess, who responded with a knowing nod. With a casual flick of her wrist, Jeanne initiated a manifestation cycle, summoning her primary mode of transit from the past few days—a massive, heavily armored draconic beast.
The moment the elite operators locked eyes with the towering creature, which easily breached five meters in height, the entire line fell into absolute silence. They were completely at a loss as to how the Doctor intended to structure this test.
Were they supposed to engage the beast in a sequence of solitary duels, or were they expected to execute a coordinated group assault? More importantly, if their tactical outputs spiked too high, what would happen if they accidentally terminated the Saintess's pet?
"The specific parameters of the engagement are entirely at your discretion," the Doctor clarified, stepping back to safety. "Our core objective is simply to ascertain which combat tier this classification of entity populates."
The moment the explanation concluded, the elite vanguard began conducting a highly focused visual analysis of the massive beast, mentally mapping out their opening tactical formations.
"The two of us will establish the frontline," Ace announced, adjusting his massive tower shield as he stepped forward alongside Logos, the young Banshee caster. "Let's see what this big fellow is truly capable of."
Jeanne surveyed the classic defender-and-caster vanguard pairing and internally winced. She possessed a strong suspicion that the two gentlemen were about to endure an incredibly grueling afternoon.
Yet, before she could utter a single word of caution, the encounter commenced. The two elite operators moved to engage the lesser drake.
Or more accurately, the lesser drake moved to systematically dismantle them.