Chapter 53: The Weight of Command

Elinox kept her attention on Commander Holtz. "The plan they used was good. I will give them that much. They compromised your relay network before they attacked the station itself, gave you reports that matched what your scouts had already seen, then made sure the people sent to confirm those reports never returned."

Holtz remained silent.

"That explains why you were deceived. It does not mean you can allow the same thing to happen again."

The Gravity spread farther.

Outside, soldiers near the command area began looking down as the ground beneath them trembled.

Elinox placed one hand on the table and looked over the officers gathered around it. "Stop treating different relay points as independent confirmation when they still rely on the same source. Change the routes used by your physical scouts. Change their schedules. If one patrol disappears during an operation of this size, investigate it. If the second disappears, stop trusting the relay reports until you know what happened."

No one interrupted her as she continued speaking.

"The Kingdom of Degenerates already learned enough about your procedures to build an entire operation around them. Find out what else they know before they use it."

Commander Holtz lowered his head. "Understood, High General."

Elinox maintained the pressure emanating from her. "The station I crossed the border to destroy supported the eastern operation. They have lost it now, along with most of the supplies and defensive structures they kept there. They will answer."

Several officers raised their heads slightly.

"The next force they send may include someone carrying the same rank I do. If that happens, stay away from that fight unless I give you an order to enter it."

One of the officers asked where she intended to position herself.

Elinox looked toward the center of the battlefield marked on the map. "I’ll be there."

Her answer was simple enough that nobody misunderstood it.

"I want the western and eastern formations ready for another large attack. If they send a High General, let that person come to me. The one they had at the station was a weakling who spent more time trying to get my attention than protecting his people. I’m not interested in seeing him again."

Commander Holtz had received part of the report before arriving.

The enemy prodigy Elinox referred to was anything but weak by the standards of most soldiers. That stopped mattering when the person judging him was Level 1,510.

Elinox’s gaze passed across the officers again. "I’ve also read what happened on this side of the battlefield."

The hall became quieter.

"The western line held even after several barricades collapsed. Your soldiers continued fighting while the medical stations filled, and the supply units kept moving equipment through areas that were already being attacked. I saw enough wounded people outside to know what that cost."

The pressure around them remained.

"That work is not something I will ignore," she said in a dignified tone. "But this is still a battlefield. People will die here even when the right decisions are made."

Her expression hardened. "If possible, do not add unnecessary deaths to that number."

Nobody moved.

"Recklessness from the people giving orders spreads farther than recklessness from the people receiving them. Every position you lose creates another place someone has to die taking back. Every warning you dismiss can become another casualty report."

She looked toward Holtz again.

"You did not abandon the Eastern Reserve Station. You were deceived while trying to keep two fronts from collapsing at the same time. Learn from how they did it."

The ground beneath the entire command area shook.

"This better not happen again," she said as every military officer present shivered involuntarily.

Commander Holtz lowered his head further. "It won’t happen again, High General."

Elinox nodded. "I will tell the higher-ups not to punish you for it. After all, you’ve already done so much for the Kingdom. It’s only fair we do that for you."

Then, the gravity disappeared.

Several officers took deeper breaths once the weight left their bodies. Holtz straightened while the Lieutenant beside him adjusted one hand against the table, and for a moment, nobody inside the hall said anything.

Then, Elinox looked toward the damaged structures outside.

Her Mana spread through the station.

Zishan had just reached chocolate ganache when Ollie stopped listening.

"Ganache is simpler than the name makes it sound. You mainly need chocolate and cream, then you change the amount depending on whether you’re using it as frosting, filling, or—"

The wooden barricade beside the main road moved.

Ollie turned.

Several broken posts that had been stacked nearby rose from the ground, followed by damaged braces, chunks of stone, and pieces of metal pulled from the defenses after the stampede.

Zishan stopped talking.

"What the fuck?" he cussed. "What the hell is happening?"

More pieces began moving across the western station.

One of the wooden posts turned in the air before returning to a damaged section of the barricade. Loose soil rose beneath it and compressed around the base, holding it in place while broken braces moved toward the same section.

The soldiers nearby stepped away.

Zishan forgot about his injuries and straightened.

Another part of the defensive line started rebuilding farther away.

Broken sections of the wall lifted from the ground and returned to their original places. The pieces pressed together under enough force that the cracks between them narrowed, while damaged supports straightened before sinking deeper into the ground.

Ollie stared across the road. "Is this the High General’s power? There can only be one person who could do this in the entire Kingdom at the moment..."

Zishan remembered what the Lieutenant had told him about Gravity Mana Affinity earlier.

Increasing weight. Changing the direction of gravitational force. Controlling movement. He had imagined crushing enemies or throwing things around.

But he did not imagine this!

The damaged parts of the western station continued moving while Elinox remained somewhere inside the command area. Timber, stone, earth, and metal traveled through the air toward places that still showed damage from the stampede.

It almost looked like the station itself was recovering.

Zishan watched a section of collapsed wall rise from the ground, separate into several pieces, then fit itself back together. Magic spread through the structure once everything aligned, reinforcing the damaged areas while Gravity kept the materials compressed.

The wall stood again.

Several soldiers near it did not know what to say.

Neither did Ollie.

Zishan eventually found something. "Fuck."

Another stretch of barricade rose several feet and shifted into a better position before settling into the earth. His neon-green eyes followed it the entire way.

"This Gravity Mana Affinity is fucking cool! How can I get it?!"

Ollie barely heard him.

The repairs were spreading too far across the station for him to pay attention to anything else. Defensive posts that engineers had expected to spend hours rebuilding returned to their places within minutes. Damaged earthworks became thicker after Elinox compressed more soil into them, while several weak sections of stone were reinforced rather than simply restored to their previous condition.

Zishan could not understand how she was controlling that many things at the same time.

Before, he had already thought five Mana Affinities were unfair. Now, he was beginning to think Gravity alone was unfair. ’What do you mean it could do all this cool stuff?! It’s like time is recovering the place itself to its original state! Damn!’

The last nearby barricade settled back into position, and the movements around the station gradually stopped.

Engineers approached the repaired structures as soon as they were certain nothing else would start floating. One of them struck the side of a restored wall several times before calling another person over, while soldiers farther away were already inspecting sections that had been damaged since the previous day.

Zishan remained beside the wagon. The whole thing had been ridiculous. Fucking ridiculous and abnormal to his knowledge!

He looked at the rebuilt barricade for several more seconds. Then, he remembered Ollie still did not know enough about cupcakes.

"Anyway, ganache."

Ollie finally looked at him.

Zishan continued before he could complain. "You can make it thicker if you’re using it as filling. If you’re putting it on top, you can leave it softer or whip it after it cools. Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate ganache are good, though that can become too much if the cake is already really rich. That’s where you have to know what you’re doing."

Ollie listened again, though his eyes kept returning to the defenses that had just rebuilt themselves.

Zishan didn’t care.

He had somehow moved from ganache into whipped cream frosting, then started explaining why cream cheese frosting worked better with certain cakes. His explanation became much longer when Ollie admitted he had never eaten red velvet before, as he had never known of that flavor as well.

That revelation offended him enough that he forgot his abdomen was hurting for several minutes. "You haven’t eaten red velvet either? What the hell do bakeries here actually make?"

"My aunt doesn’t let me eat everything she makes."

"Your aunt works at a bakery. You had access to a bakery this entire time and never abused it?"

Ollie tilted his head to the side. "Why would I abuse a bakery, sir? That seems odd?"

Zishan looked at him as though the answer should have been obvious, then continued explaining red velvet while Ollie decided not to ask.

The station around them slowly returned to normal.

Officers began leaving the command area. Soldiers went back to moving supplies, and the magic engineers continued inspecting everything Elinox had repaired.

Ollie noticed the officers first.

Zishan was too busy explaining that frosting was supposed to complement the cake instead of burying it under enough sugar to erase every other flavor.

"If the cupcake itself already tastes good, you don’t need a fucking mountain on top. That’s what people get wrong. You should still taste the cake, then the frosting adds something to it. And depending on what you made, you could use vanilla buttercream, cream cheese, chocolate ganache, whipped—"

"Are you talking about cupcakes?" A woman’s voice came from beside him. "I heard you babbling about them."

Zishan froze.