Chapter 45: The Duke who knew Too Much.

It was the first time Rassett saw the faces of the generals in person. Considering his position as the Commander-in-Chief’s adjutant, it should have happened long ago, but the Duke had been excluded from operational meetings, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.

What Rassett saw at the first meeting of stars he attended was a mess.

Only three of the generals who came with the 1st Expeditionary Force kept their positions.

The rest had to hand over their seats to those who came with the 2nd Expeditionary Force and return home. He had heard news that they were reprimanded and forced out of the military altogether.

The newly appointed ones had been on a winning streak all along.

However, it couldn’t be said they turned the tide of the war by achieving merits. It just happened as a result; they merely shared the fruits. The high-ups in the home country wouldn’t believe that improvements in field hospitals and camouflage combat uniforms allowed them to occupy the mines, so the work must have been very easy for them.

Rassett didn’t think everything was thanks to the Duke either. Although his strategies were the foundation, he didn’t directly control the direction of the battle as Commander-in-Chief. It was a result of everything luckily falling into place.

Now that luck seemed to have run out.

“We cannot withdraw the front line! Give up the mine entrance to those bastards again? Absolutely not, absolutely!”

This time it was Major General Dewey.

His words, spoken as if vomiting blood, were a premise everyone agreed with. Retreating the front line again instead of driving Petan out of the New Continent? It was absolutely unthinkable.

The problem was that there was no alternative. In the battle resumed in the open field after leaving the jungle, the Henian army was helpless.

Camouflage combat uniforms still showed excellent optical illusion effects, but Petan responded with a numbers offensive.

Even if they killed the blue bastards over and over, they came endlessly. When conducting guerrilla warfare in the jungle, their numbers weren’t scary. Because it wasn’t an environment a large army could penetrate.

But the blue color clearly visible against the vast ocher plain was an object of fear. Petan’s potential, having occupied ports much earlier than Henia and built up capabilities, crushed the friendly forces.

If they return to the jungle, they won’t fail like this time. But they won’t succeed either.

The faces of those who belonged to the 1st Expeditionary Force, handed over their seats to them, and were purged came to mind. Those losers who bowed their heads knowing their fate when the 2nd Expeditionary Force arrived.

Their own future becoming like them.

“We must devise countermeasures!”

The generals who had been pleading to Spes Umbra turned their gazes all at once. Rassett unconsciously took a step to the side. Their eyes were looking at the Duke.

“Are you telling me to devise countermeasures?”

The Duke asked, leaning his back against the chair.

“Isn’t it natural? If not the Commander-in-Chief, then who…!”

“Right, I am the Commander-in-Chief.”

Lieutenant General Tre’s irritated voice, flaring up, was blocked by the Duke’s relaxed answer. The attempt to burden the Duke with responsibility became words acknowledging his position.

“Do you have countermeasures?”

Spes Umbra asked with a stiff face. His eyes were glaring at Lieutenant General Tre standing awkwardly, speechless.

Lieutenant General Tre, who was already a discard card, seemed to have been stamped as truly hopeless.

“Listening to what you say, it seems the fundamental problem is the lack of friendly forces, but I can’t do anything about that part.”

The Duke’s slow tone even sounded playful. Rassett barely suppressed the desire to take another step back.

Because he received the gazes of the adjutants standing behind each general all at once. Those who couldn’t dare glare at the Commander-in-Chief as company-grade officers made Rassett a sacrifice instead.

“Not only the enemy forces more than double ours, but their new magic cannons are also a big problem.”

Major General Populus, one of the three from the 1st Expeditionary Force who had been quiet until now, spoke in a low voice. Although his voice wasn’t loud, everyone in the meeting room couldn’t ignore his words.

Rassett also had heard about Petan’s new magic cannons. More precisely, he had seen a mercenary mentally traumatized by the power of those magic cannons.

The mercenary, who usually bragged quite a bit about his strength, had become a coward stuck in the corner of the hospital bed trembling.

When he first saw that, Rassett mocked the guy. The guy, who was his unit member before being selected as the Duke’s adjutant, was the biggest obstacle in Rassett commanding the unit.

The guy’s catchphrase was ‘The Lieutenant doesn’t know anything.’ What made Rassett angrier was that there was nothing wrong in what the guy said while picking fights like that.

The guy’s battlefield experience was incomparable to the novice Second Lieutenant Rassett.

Seeing the guy who acted like a veteran warrior screaming and having a seizure just hearing thunder gave Rassett a sense of euphoria. Also a sense of achievement that he was the one who adapted to this war eventually.

It was the same emotion as the pleasure he felt when he learned that the noble son who mocked Rassett’s poverty in childhood ended up unable to manifest as either Alpha or Omega and had to live as a Beta.

However, the superiority Rassett felt didn’t last long. Because Alphas showing symptoms like that big Beta mercenary appeared one after another.

Alphas who barely survived Petan’s bombardment but showed signs of delirium were now invalids incapable of daily life, not brave Henian officers.

The analysis that the reason they had seizures was because their brains were shaken by massive continuous bombardment never seen or imagined before planted anxiety in Rassett’s heart.

Anxiety about what to do if he also becomes an invalid like them.

At that moment, he considered it fortunate to be the adjutant of the Duke whom everyone shunned. Because all generals would oppose him engaging in direct combat even to prevent the Duke from achieving merits.

So he would stay in the rear until this war ended. With the Duke.

But at this moment, Rassett felt his expectation twisting greatly.

“In short, you mean what our forces lack is firepower?”

At the Duke’s completely un-soldier-like tone, everyone gathered nodded.

“That is correct. Although I haven’t seen it myself, I heard the Commander-in-Chief neutralized Petan’s coastal batteries on the way here. Twice at that.”

“They say I did that?”

“Yes.”

As the questions and answers between the Duke and Major General Populus continued, Rassett’s anxiety grew. Especially at the answer affirming the Duke’s performance, his heart seemed to drop with a thud.

“How can you be so sure even though it’s a story about something you haven’t seen, General?”

The Duke tilted his head to one side.

Rassett also heard mercenaries blabbering about the Duke’s magic, but he considered it their characteristic exaggeration.

It was inevitable. The exploits of the Duke they described were stories suitable for fairy tales. Or anecdotes of the founding king described in Henia’s founding history.

The stories of the founding era, already 600 years past, were closer to myths than history now. It meant the mercenaries’ boasting was never reliable.

“All generals who traveled the same journey as Your Excellency the Commander-in-Chief say the same thing. How can I not believe it? They are people who absolutely do not wish for Your Excellency’s merits to rise.”

“General Populus!”

This time too, it was Lieutenant General Tre. Bang! The chair pushed back because he stood up hurriedly rolled on the floor making a loud noise. But if his deeply reddened complexion were expressed as sound, a much louder sound would have resonated.

“Am I wrong?”

General Populus asked in a calm tone despite Lieutenant General Tre’s furious momentum.

“That is…!”

General Tre couldn’t answer.

Rassett gulped down saliva. Surely all those absurd stories aren’t true? No, no. Still unbelievable. It was more credible to say they saw a dragon breathing fire. Mercenaries were things that knew only bluffing that much. So it was right to believe only half of what the bastards babbled.

Conversely speaking, half of the bluff was still worth believing. The Duke’s skills might really be outstanding.

Maybe even greater than that Spes Umbra.

Rassett rolled only his eyes to steal a glance at Spes Umbra. He looked extremely angry. Much more than Lieutenant General Tre who was still standing unable to sit down.

Spes Umbra, clenching his jaw so hard that blood vessels on his neck stood out, however, raised no objection to Major General Populus’s words. Even though he must have seen the Duke’s magic from the closest place.

Rassett swallowed saliva again.

“So, what exactly do you want from me?”

A young man’s playfulness was hidden in the Duke’s voice. It didn’t match the atmosphere of the meeting room full of tense tension at all.

“We wish for Your Excellency the Commander-in-Chief to lead the battle.”

“Do you mean to approve the operation plan? I am already doing that.”

An operation plan without the Commander-in-Chief’s seal couldn’t be executed. So the Duke wasn’t wrong. But until now, the Duke’s role was just stamping the seal.

Although he read the operation plans himself, he never rejected a plan submitted under Spes Umbra’s name.

Even Rassett had stamped the seal on behalf of the Duke several times.

Rassett standing behind the Duke couldn’t see his expression, but he could still be sure the Duke was smiling right now.

It was evident just seeing Lieutenant General Tre’s well-groomed mustache trembling.

That hot-tempered Lieutenant General clearly thought the Duke was mocking the generals.

And his guess would likely be an undeniable fact.

Rassett, who previously thought this aspect of the Duke was possible because he was an immature young master, corrected his thought.

He considered it an action taken not because the Duke knew nothing, but because he knew too much.