The Martial Unity

“Do not make me repeat myself.”

The chillingly fearsome voice of Prime Minister Edward reached the projection of Sage Knight Vermillion.

His eyes were bloodshot with rage.

His expression was crumpled with fury.

“You will return to the Britannian Empire.”

His eyes sharpened menacingly.

“At this very moment.”

Sage Knight Vermilion’s expression darkened.

The projection of her armored body across the large, extravagant table within the Prime Minister’s ostentatious office stiffened.

She was not pleased by the Prime Minister’s manner of addressal.

“Know your place, Edward,” she growled at him. “You are but a human. The Britannian Empire is a Martial nation. Address me not as a superior but like the inferior you are.”

His ego wanted him to push back with the fact that he was appointed by none other than Transcendent Emperor Arthur with full authority, meaning that while he was to express deference to the Sage Knights in his attitude, he did have equal authority.

But this wasn’t the time for such hair-splitting.

From the very moment the Britannian Prime Minister became aware of his old archenemy-turned-friend’s annexation of all Sage-level power across the continent, his highest priority had become to make the Sage Knights of the Britannian Empire return home.

It was by far the most important agenda bar none, including his ego.

“If you have that much of a problem serving inferiors like me,” Prime Minister Edward used her own words against her. “Then don’t surrender all control to the Emperor of Harmony.”

“He does not control us,” Sage Knight Vermilion calmly retorted. “We are in control. With our numbers inside the territory of the Kandrian Empire, he does not dare do anything to anger us.”

“You fool,” the Britannian Prime Minister gritted his teeth. “You have surrendered control of human civilization’s Sage-level power and its allocation. Do you understand how much soft and hard power you have given him? Are you going to become a bureaucrat who scrutinizes his every allocation based on every intelligence report and looks at how they evaluated what the threat level of a particular threat is and how many Martial Sages to allocate?”

“Of course not,” she frowned. “I am a knight. A warrior. A soldier. I fight where directed.”

“Exactly,” the Prime Minister felt like tearing his hair out. “If the Kandrian Empire chooses not to send Martial Sages to the Britannian Empire or not enough Martial Sages to the Britannian Empire, then he can indirectly destroy, or more likely, weaken our nation if we are attacked. Do you understand how much power that gives him? All nations will be beholden to the Kandrian Empire and will have to start pleasing the Emperor of Harmony lest he fail to save us when the time comes!”

She frowned. “But that’s not what the Martial Insurance Contract states. It states that the decision to allocate Martial Sages will be based on the neutral evaluation of the soon-to-come True world Intelligence Organization.”

It was at this moment that the disadvantages of Martial Supremacy started to come up.

Martial Sages were incompetent at politics.

“IT DOESN’T MATTER WHO EVALUATES IT!” Prime Minister Edward roared with frustration. “THE WHOLE WORLD IS BEHOLDEN TO HIM IF YOU MORONS AGREE TO THIS!”

He gritted his teeth, trying to calm down. “There is no such thing as an independent or neutral party once you give him this power. All agencies, all organizations, all nations will know that the Emperor of Harmony could indirectly, or hell, even directly, destroy them. That gives him full control over them. It would be effortless for him to downplay an attack on the Britannian Empire and send fewer than the necessary Martial Sages needed to protect our nation. Just enough to ensure we don’t get destroyed, but enough to ensure that we are weakened.”

His eyes fixed on Sage Vermilion’s with profound, almost maddened, intensity. “And once we are weakened, we will become even more beholden to him, giving him even greater power and control over human civilization!”

He finally stopped, gasping for air as his little outburst came to an end.

She shook her head.

“You speak too ill of the Kandrian Empire.”

The Britannian Prime Minister’s eyes widened with shock as he shook where he sat. “…What did you just say?”

Did a Sage Knight of the Britannian Empire just chide her own Prime Minister to defend the Kandrian Empire?

It was so unfathomable that he was simply stunned speechless.

“The Kandrian Empire is a good leader,” she replied. “I have seen their leadership in the past eleven years and I am confident that they are the best hope for not just human civilization but also our Britannian Empire.”

Prime Minister Edward stared at her with a horrified expression as a chilling realization had dawned on him.

The Emperor of Harmony had anticipated the psychological changes that the Martial Sages had undergone in the past eleven years in the Central Highlands of the Beast Domain.

In hindsight, he should have seen it when going through the reports.

It wasn’t just that their psyche had become more psychologically dependent on the power of unity in the Beast Domain. Indeed, the Central Highlands of the Beast Domain were so dangerous that even the Martial Sages must have felt like regular soldiers.

And soldiers learned the value of sticking together as a survival skill in war.

Especially a war that lasted eleven years of daily, gruesome, and deadly battles.

The Martial Sages were unwilling to break apart from the unity that they had created due to the survival and pscyhological comfort that they had gained.

In their minds, subconsciously, staying together = survival.

It equaled victory. Prosperity. And in general, good things.

There was a powerful subconscious association between being divided and bad things happening. This made them very psychologically extremely unwilling to break apart from a tight group that was constantly alert for threats, as if they were still in the Central Highlands.

The Emperor of Harmony had detected this when reading all their reports over the span of eleven years.

And he made a plan to exploit this.

He offered them a situation where they could stick together.

Stick together in the Kandrian Empire.

This along with other powerful logical and rational reasoning and great incentives and benefits such as absolute protection for their home nations along with peer pressure, of sorts, the Emperor of Harmony had managed to annex all the Martial Sages of human civilization in one fell swoop.

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