Chapter 156: The Followers Three Years Later

Red stopped typing and removed everything.

Red wasn’t going to look eager. Forgiving an orbital intrusion just because it was strategically convenient was a sign of weakness. If the Iron Arbiter wanted his war machine, the Top 10 Warlord was going to have to play by Red’s rules.

He typed a single, concise response.

[ TRANSMISSION LOG BEGINS ]

If your Vanguard General had asked for a parley instead of demanding my treasury, he would still be breathing.I do not travel for diplomacy. If the Second Continent requires the Vanguard’s artillery for your eastern front, you will negotiate on my terms, in my territory. Send your emissaries to the Seventeenth. I will give them an audience.

[ TRANSMISSION LOG ENDS ]

He hit send. The encrypted block of text dissolved into the digital void.

Red leaned back, scratching Glitch behind the ears as the six-legged fox chewed on its alchemical meat. He didn’t expect a fast response. Summit Warlords were arrogant by nature, often demanding they send their people into an unmapped, newly unified continent to beg for an alliance was a heavy blow to their pride.

Less than two minutes later, the primary console chimed again.

[ SYSTEM ALERT: ENCRYPTED MACRO-SERVER TRANSMISSION DETECTED ]

[ SENDER: RANK 19 – THE IRON ARBITER ]

[ TRANSMISSION LOG BEGINS ]

Terms acceptable.

A diplomatic vessel will depart from our southern ports within the hour. I am sending my most capable tacticians and a High Envoy to draft the alliance. They will be carrying a substantial tribute of high-tier materials as a formal gesture of goodwill, and to properly compensate you for the previous… misunderstanding.

Even with my advanced ships, our vessel will cross your maritime borders in approximately a month. I trust your Supreme Alliance will grant them safe passage, and that your planetary defense grid will not target them once they are within your range.

[ TRANSMISSION LOG ENDS ]

Red read the text, a slow, calculated smile spreading across his face. The Iron Arbiter was desperate. The war against the Radiant Monarch must have been draining the Second Continent heavily for a Rank 19 Warlord to fold that quickly and offer tribute.

Red opened the local comm-link to the Bastion’s command center.

“Sylara,” Red spoke into the feed.

Her avatar materialized on the secondary screen a few seconds later. “Yes?”

“We are expecting guests from the Second Continent in exactly a month,” Red said, swiping the encrypted transmission log over to her terminal so she could read the details. “A diplomatic vessel. No spatial rifts this time it seems. They are taking the ocean route.”

Sylara’s translucent eyes scanned the text rapidly. “You want me to whitelist their mana signature?”

“Calibrate the Planetary Defense Ring to let them through the outer perimeter,” Red instructed. “But make sure the naval mines and the corrosive spore reefs in the Continental Moat remain fully armed. Guide them directly to the Eastern docks of the City of the Spiral. I want them to see exactly what kind of war machine they are trying to hire.”

“Understood. Modifying the coastal targeting parameters now.” Sylara’s fingers danced across her console, adjusting the grid.

Red closed the comm-link. The pieces were finally falling into place. He had three days to prepare a welcome for the Second Continent’s envoys, take their tribute, and secure his legal passage straight into the heart of Aethelgard.

With a month until the Second Continent’s envoys arrived at the eastern docks of the City of Spiral, Red tapped the console, opening his Vanguard leadership roster. Infrastructure and numbers meant nothing if the commanders leading them were dull.

He pulled up the tracking rune for Iron-Scale first. The Kobold was no longer just an Inquisitor and Harbinger. Now, he was the supreme military commander overseeing Red’s nearly one million followers.

The visual feed caught him mid-air in the western sectors, utilizing his clockwork grappling spools to zip across a jagged ravine. Wielding a scythe, he traveled the continent to recruit the most talented fighters and execute Red’s precise assassinations.

Statistically, his military record was flawless. Personally, his record was a footnote in the system logs as three months prior, the supreme commander had become the first follower in the empire’s history to get divorced.

Red shifted the feed to Onyx Hall. Warlord Gorak stood at the center of the deep-core training grounds.

In three years, he had become the most powerful physical entity on the entire continent. Possessing a terrifying, bone-plated exoskeleton and a massive Star-Iron gauntlet, he was an unstoppable juggernaut in melee combat.

Yet, off the battlefield, the warlord was remarkably domesticated. He had married Gulag, and the two were currently raising a two-year-old Troglodyte child within the subterranean fortress.

The camera panned to the southern plains. Old-Shell, the Elder Iron-Back Tortoise, had been officially recognized as the king of all Shell-Kin. He acted as the faction’s primary tank commander. His massive, obsidian-like calcified dome served as an impenetrable living barricade, a siege engine, and a sealed biological transport vehicle.

The feed showed him surrounded by hundreds of younger Shell-Kin, patiently teaching them the rigid, unyielding path of the Spiral.

Red checked the human sector. Elian had evolved drastically. Over the last three years, Elian had been crowned the king of humankind, tasked with carrying out internal diplomatic duties, and had officially reached the rank of Prophet.

However, the current feed showed the Prophet sitting behind a massive desk in his administrative office, his head resting in his hands, staring blankly at a wall.

Red pulled up the localized logistics report. Elian was suffering a severe personal crisis. A woman he was courting kept rejecting him. The absolute humiliation had completely derailed the muscular Prophet, leaving him unable to focus on his worldly or religious duties for an entire week.

Red pinched the bridge of his nose. He dismissed Elian’s feed and opened the final, restricted channel.

The screen switched to the interior of the Tier-7 Alchemical Infirmary.

Inside the mechanized cathedral of glass and Star-Iron, a massive cylindrical vat hummed quietly. The towering Black-Scale Warrior was submerged entirely within the glowing, hyper-concentrated alchemical sludge. His massive greataxe, usually ignited with Red’s holy Violet Flame, rested untouched outside the glass.

Krug.

He was Red’s first Apostle, and the unwavering anchor of the faction’s faith. Three years ago, Red had descended into Krug’s physical body to turn the tide of the continental war.

His body and rank were eligible for descent, but Red’s 100x SSS trait was activated and his descent had become 100x powerful.

The sheer divine pressure had shattered the Kobold from the inside out. The infirmary’s sludge had been continuously repairing the extreme, life-threatening biological trauma ever since.

But it had been three years.

And Krug still hadn’t opened his eyes.

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