Chapter 536 - Dawn
Chapter 536: Dawn
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Kurisu
Aerial troops filled the sky above Starwood City. Ten minutes ago, all the aerial undead had been completely vanquished.
Although Conservation had been trapped in my personal world of Hell, the battle still wasn’t over. The number of undead that could be contained in my Hell world right before I used my Salo’s Crystal nuclear bomb was limited. The great majority of undead had still been in the mortal plane, and now that their master lost control over them, the undead instinctively started attacking the living once more.
However, Starwood City was now encased in an ice castle with excellent defenses. Plus, the mega airship Mother and the wood spirits were reinforcing the human defenders. The undead had just lost their leader, and any possibility of reinforcements for them had been cut off. Defeating all the undead now seemed to only be a matter of time.
The wood spirit aerial troops had an absolute advantage in battle because they ruled the skies. Not only that, the fortified Starwood City blocked the only path out of the mountains leading to the wide-open plains. Even if the undead somehow managed to conquer Starwood City, they would surely suffer serious losses. And, Conservation going missing meant that many Undead Lords and mid-level undead commanders had received their freedom, meaning that they would start having rebellious thoughts.
It wasn’t only human commanders that would rebel against their leaders. Undead Lords were far more practical than humans, and these Undead Lords could no longer sense the existence of their master. They had watched so much undead cannon fodder die already. The sudden Holy Light explosion earlier and the now missing Undead Emperor proved that the undead’s enemies here were no pushovers. And, since Conservation was now missing, yet the Undead Lords could still sense Yongye’s existence, that seemed to be the best evidence of who had won in the battle between Undead Emperors. Some “smart” Undead Lords were already beginning to retreat.
In that void-like realm of mine, Conservation was still busy enjoying that “beautiful” taste of the aura of death. She could faintly feel like she was about to increase her power level yet again. As long as she consumed all of the negative energy within this realm, she would become even stronger.
But right now, I wasn’t worried about her.
“Dawn Plan? What’s that?”
“What I’m trying to say is that I actually left for serious matters, not to flirt with girls or to act pretentiously.”
I tried my best to explain my plan and goals, but all I obtained were doubting looks cast in my direction as if all I wanted was to make everyone work overtime.
“My Dawn Plan is an alliance agreement spanning the entire world of Eich. The core of this plan is to establish a military alliance between all countries and all species. With that as the foundation, forces from every country will join together to create an international organization and troops for the purpose of assisting all the member countries’ military needs.”
Did this sound familiar? This sounded like the United Nations and their peacekeeping forces, you say? If I had to describe it, the system I had in mind was closer to the Axis or Allies helping each other out during World War II. I wasn’t creating such an alliance here because I was bored or because I suddenly became so ambitious. It was all in order to make up for current insufficiencies in the world order.
In the game’s history, when this Holy War reached its peak, the human countries had acted as the leadership for the Order forces... well, technically, the leadership had been the Holy Church, which was now greatly diminished in influence compared to the game’s history.
In the early stages of the Holy War in the game, the Holy Church made every possible mistake as a garbage teammate leader, such as sacrificing friendly forces, having Cardinals inexperienced in military matters take command, trying to issue ridiculous commands from half a continent away, using the war to try and suppress other churches, and so on. All the blood and sacrifices from the cruel war ended up teaching the Holy Church that the only path to survival was to trust those who were the most skilled, but that didn’t happen until more than twenty years later. At that time, many heroes had risen through the ranks, with the most capable reaching the top of the chain of command. The useless armchair generals like the Cardinals had all either died or been kicked out from their positions. Order’s allied forces still managed to accomplish many things after they reformed their command system.
And in this world that had gone off track from the game’s history, the Holy Church had suffered many great hits to their reputation, making them far weaker than in the game at this time. Plus, there was the major incident of the new Pure Holy Light faction appearing with my Southern Sect. Even maintaining their current level of power was difficult now for the Holy Church, so how could they possibly become the overall leader for the human countries?
“No matter how terrible the commander, it’s still better than everyone fighting for themselves.” I would never say such an idiotic thing. That was because I had seen many times already how an idiotic commander was capable of losing a battle that should absolutely have been won. If the leader was far too idiotic, even an all-out attack without a plan would sometimes be better.
However, if there was an overall command system for organizing military forces, and an elite troop set up to act as support for allied member countries’ critical battles, perhaps all these forces would act as a snowball effect to constantly enlarge itself to the point where they could affect the entire world situation.
For instance, if Country A needed reinforcements, the price for obtaining reinforcements might be that Country A would be required to send reinforcements to their neighbor Country B afterwards. Even if Country A and Country B had grudges against each other, Country A would first have to sign a contract in order to obtain the reinforcements from the overall command. And, one reinforcement troop could be used twice, thrice, or even ten times or more. This was how so-called international assistance and military alliances worked.
Of course, I had selfish goals as well. Nobody was an idiot. As warfare constantly escalated in this Holy War, an overall command system would be established sooner or later regardless of what I did. This was something that was almost only natural in world wars.
Without the Holy Church’s interference, the human mega empires had much less to worry about. Perhaps an overall alliance would be established even faster than in the game’s history. In that case, it would be best if I acted as quickly as possible and was the one who set it up first. Being the first to suggest an overall alliance would look good and give us the right to be proactive. That would be nothing but benefits.
As for the specific benefits... well, for that, you could indeed reference certain alliances from my original world of Earth. Anyone that the alliance declared to be evil would be thought of as evil. There would always be volunteers to be cannon fodder when forming the alliance army, and during times of war, the alliance could print more paper money or military currency that the whole world would have to use. As a result, others would become poorer and poorer as they fought war against the alliance, while the alliance would become “richer and richer.” Cough, cough, of course I wouldn’t go that overboard, but at the very least I could prevent someone else from starting an alliance and behaving so ridiculously overboard.
And to accomplish all this, I would have to meet a minimum of three conditions. The first would be to have a good relationship with all the mega empire human countries. An international alliance that didn’t have all the mega empires’ approval would be nothing more than a useless piece of scrap paper. The second would be to have enough military forces. Without enough military might, even the nicest-sounding alliance would be nothing but empty. The third would be to have a loud enough voice on the international platform. Otherwise, all our hard work would become useless or taken advantage of by others, which would truly be such a joke.
I just happened to have a highly special and unique relationship with the Bardi Empire, Auland, Mage Country, Mist Alliance, and Xiluo Empire. With these five countries supporting me, I would have a much better starting point than anyone else. As for all the neutral forces at my disposal, I already had an idea for this since long ago. I could use all those bastards from the Gentlemen Alliance, since their status as mercenaries could lessen the other countries’ resistance against an alliance interfering with other countries’ internal affairs. That would mean even greater advantages for us.
My dreamed of Silver Dawn Squadron (name not set in stone yet) seemed to be about to become reality. I was already at the stage of trying to recruit an excellent commander like Old Barton... Alright, I admit that I intended to leave all the responsibility to others, as there were many other things that I still wanted to do.
But, before I could hand all the responsibility over to others, I would need an appropriate candidate to handle all the responsibilities. Any overall commander who had too close a relationship with any specific country would easily cause controversy as well as change the intended nature of the Dawn Squadron in the first place. From a certain standpoint, Barton had the perfect background for this as he was also a mercenary. The rest would depend on his own abilities and determination. Allowing Barton to lead the adventuring team into the ruins this time was also my test for him regarding his abilities as well as luck. This was basically like a final graduation exam for him.
I had now achieved two out of the three required conditions, leaving just the advertising and international platform. The Southern Sect, which controlled many fairies’ news agencies and a now significant portion of the total belief in Holy Light, had already secretly promised me that they would give me their full support.
“The rest just needs a glorious victory as the starting point. That’s why, if we can obtain the final victory here, Barton who successfully ambushed the enemy’s main camp with only a small strike force will become renowned due to being the leader of the team. He will receive unmeasurable glory and reputation, becoming known as a heroic leader and a wise commander. This will give him the opportunity to meet with various countries’ royalty.”
When I finished explaining my plan, I didn’t receive anything like everyone’s idolization. Instead, Amelia even seemed to look at me as if she pitied me, just as if I had suffered greatly with all this.
“A sudden unexpected battle ended up being taken advantage of by you like this. Words like calculating or scheming can’t even begin to describe how hard you work. Aren’t you tired after scheming so much all by yourself?”
I had originally started talking about such a serious topic in order to get Amelia to forget about her anger towards me. But, when she asked me with such concern, I paused in surprise for a moment, and then felt rather awkward afterwards. Although I hadn’t said a single lie about anything, some things were also quite far from the real truth.
“I’m not that tired. I only came up with this idea recently, and then I happened to discover that Barton had excellent talent, so I did this along the way. Before that, I had been slacking off on vacation, so why would I be tired?”
Upon hearing this, Amelia suddenly smiled brightly and beautifully as if she was a blooming flower despite the fact that she had such a sympathetic expression earlier.
“Ha. Half an hour ago, you said that you ran away for serious matters, but now you immediately just went against your own claim. Your words don’t match up at all. It would seem that you’re becoming senile in your old age. Should I try my best to help cure you?”