Miss Wang Weina, even your cousin won't do!

“Approve it. The enemy is like a rootless duckweed; tactics, equipment, morale, timing, terrain, and manpower are all out of their favor. Even a swift, linear push will solve the problem, only adding unnecessary casualties. Although Theresis's plan has flaws, it won't affect the overall situation under these circumstances. When he returns, Sister Theresia, you can debate with him then.”

“I’m not going to argue with him.” Theresa pouted. “Whenever he talks to me about military matters, we always end up arguing. I usually just tell him, ‘Chairman, you have a brilliant idea.’”

Vina laughed, picked up the stamp on the table, and stamped it.

At 1 PM on January 4, 1093, the operation to eliminate the spies lurking around the deep pools surrounding Londinium officially began.

Chapter Fifty-Six: I really want to tell her in person what she's protecting.

"What does this mean? Surrender or die? Who gave them the audacity to say such a thing?"

Mandela snatched the letter from Ahmoni's hand, and with just a quick glance, he was already enraged, tearing the "letter of surrender" into shreds.

"Damn Victorian nobles, how dare they insult Deeppool like that? Who do they think they are? Ahmoni, give me a hundred men, and I'll burn down their camp, capture their commander, and let those fools of Lontinim see the power of Deeppool!"

Mandra shouted earnestly. In the past, Ahmoni would have already stepped forward, pressed Mandra's head down, and advised her not to act so impulsively and recklessly by this time. But this time, even though Mandra had been shouting loudly in front of her for most of the day, Ahmoni remained silent.

Gradually, Mandela's voice softened as she realized something was amiss. Looking at her obnoxious colleague, Ahmoni's face was grave; she seemed genuinely deep in thought. Only after Mandela ceased her venting outburst did she ask, slowly and deliberately:

Are you serious?

Mandela paused, then asked, "What do you mean?"

“I ask you, were you serious about what you just said, Mandela? I can give you a hundred men. Go ahead, find the enemy camp, and burn it down. Can you do that?”

“I…” Mandela opened her mouth, just showing a hint of hesitation, but upon seeing Ahmoni’s hateful, mocking gaze, she immediately straightened her neck and answered loudly, “Of course, of course I’m serious! Just a bunch of filthy nobles leading Victorian soldiers who can’t even hold a sword properly. I’ve killed countless of them along the way. Besides their sheer numbers, which seem to sprout up from the ground like wheat, what threat do they pose!”

But what ultimately breaks the camel's back is often just a seemingly insignificant straw.

Ahmoni looked at Mandela's stubborn face, which clearly lacked confidence but still stubbornly insisted on showing it, and thought to herself with a hint of amusement.

Moreover, the Royal Victorian Army is stationed in Londinium. They are well-equipped and have advanced tactics. Every year, top students from the Royal Military Academy and the Royal Guard Academy enter the army, adding fresh blood. The Imperial Research Institute and its subordinate Royal Victorian Academy of Science and Technology have been consistently updating the Royal Army's equipment.

The Aslan royal family's recognition as emperors by numerous powerful noble families wasn't solely based on bloodline. Augustus was always one whose army was strong and well-equipped, and the Royal Army possessed the power to intimidate even the most powerful and ruthless. No one understood this better than Ahmoni, a graduate of the Royal Guard Academy.

Even the deeply entrenched noble group behind Deeppool didn't dare to openly declare war on Lentinium before eliminating Wayne and disrupting Aslan's internal affairs.

But Ahmoni did not stop Mandela from what she saw as a suicidal act, because she needed Mandela to go and die.

She needed Mandela to buy her even a minute's time so she could prepare to run away.

"Surrender, or die!" This brief letter of persuasion already hinted at far too much. The use of such drastic language clearly indicated that Lentinium's patience with them had reached its limit; even their very existence had become a price Lentinium was offering them, and refusal meant death.

Considering the silence of the high nobles who had remained silent for so many days, offering no information or instructions, Ahmoni guessed that a shocking upheaval must have occurred within Londinium. The most likely explanation was that Queen Victoria had somehow learned of the nobles' collusion with the Deeppool, and thus, in conjunction with the army, placed all the nobles who had attended the ceremony and the subsequent funeral of Wayne under house arrest, intending to wipe them out before the Deeppool could react.

However, Queen Victoria couldn't possibly have obtained the evidence and the list, so she most likely only knew the information but couldn't verify it. She could only use this method to capture Deeppool, thereby obtaining evidence from him and subsequently arresting the imprisoned nobles. That's why she was in such a hurry.

But this was clearly unsustainable. Ahmoni had great faith in the power of the nobility; once under house arrest, they would inevitably unite to pressure the royal family. Faced with the dangers of rebellion and disunity among the cities, the royal family would have no choice but to compromise, and the coup would thus come to an abrupt end. The nobility's power would also rise further due to the weakening of the royal family's authority.

Ahmonie confidently estimated that this period would not exceed three days. As long as they held out for three days, and the main force of the Deep Pool was not captured by the Queen's army, and most importantly, she herself, who knew the inside story, was not captured, then Vina would have to face the facts.

“Three days. If we can hold out for three days, there will be chaos in Londinium! When we rise up, the nobles will surely respond in droves! Mandra, I want you to take men and go to hold off the Victorian army, buying time for the main force to retreat!”

Ahmoni spoke in a commanding tone. Mandela looked at her incredulously:

"You intend for me to cover the retreat? You intend for Deeppool to retreat? We're only thirty kilometers from Londinium. If we advance for just one more day, we'll be able to see the ravens circling atop Big Ben! And you're ordering us to retreat now? Who gave you that authority? The leader has never given such an order!"

Tsk, this stubborn, foolish cat. What is it about that Draco that makes her so blindly devoted?

A flicker of disgust crossed Ahmoni's brow, but she quickly composed herself and said:

“Mandela, does the leader want us to stay put and wait for her return because she wants us to engage Victoria’s army in a direct confrontation? If our main force encounters Victoria and a battle breaks out, Lentinium will surely realize that the Deep Pool is already so close to them. At that point, with a knife to their throats, even the most foolish Victorian nobles will know to declare martial law in the city. Once the city is under martial law, how can the leader return?”

"Am I disobeying orders, or are you trying to protect your insignificant sense of self-esteem by risking the leader's life?!"

Mandela couldn't argue with Ahmoni at all. She knew something was amiss, but she couldn't find any flaws in Ahmoni's words. Ahmoni was indeed telling the truth, but the purpose behind her truth was to achieve a colossal lie.

Mandela glared angrily at Ahmoni, and stared at her for a full two minutes before finally speaking:

"Let me lead the unicorns."

"Only a leader can lead a two-horned beast."

"Don't think I don't know that the leader entrusted you with command of the unicorns before he left. By not letting me take the unicorns with me and sending me alone with ordinary Deeppool soldiers to cover the retreat, you're sending me to my death. I will not use my life and the lives of my soldiers to pave the way for your withdrawal, no matter how high-sounding your explanations are!"

Mandela threatened,

"Either give me the two-horned beast, or you take men to cover our retreat while I lead the rest of the men to evacuate, or we all stay here. The choice is yours!"

Ahmoni's brow twitched. In terms of physical strength, she was truly no match for the rock sorcerer Mandra.

Well, she's going to die anyway. It's a pity she wasted the unicorn warriors, but it's a necessary sacrifice. As long as we eventually obtain Londinium, mere unicorn soldiers are nothing to worry about.

She nodded reluctantly, pulled a deep-pool triangular pendant necklace from her bosom, tossed it to Mandela, and said:

"Take this and go find the two-horned beasts. They will listen to you."

Mandela nodded, turned around, and quickly left.

Ahmoni watched Mandela's departing figure, her tense expression gradually relaxing. She chuckled, a sarcastic tone escaping her lips:

"What a pitiful creature. Are all domesticated cats this brainless?"

"It's a pity she hated the Victorian aristocracy her whole life. If it weren't for the circumstances, I really wanted to tell her in person before she died what exactly this so-called 'hope' of the Deep Pool that she was so desperate to protect was."

"Hehehehehe—"

Chapter 57 Modern Warfare, Military Spirit

As night fell, the Victoria Legion's deployment was complete. Stretching for dozens of miles along the river and along the route, the Victoria troops were positioned with a land-based warship every five kilometers serving as a communication hub and command center, and a war fortress every ten kilometers providing wide-area information reconnaissance, long-range artillery support, and long-range drone strikes. The entire defensive line resembled an impregnable Great Wall of Steel. Because of the deployment of the war fortresses, even the long supply lines, which should have been a major obstacle to the march, were solved in a lavish, almost extravagant, manner thanks to the fortresses' food reserves, comparable in size to a small mobile city.

Relying on the food reserves of its war fortresses, Victoria's army could sustain combat at full strength for up to a month even if its supply lines were completely cut off. For the Terran nations, who favor blitzkrieg tactics due to resource scarcity and the threat of natural disasters, a month was enough time for a small, poorly defended nation to be wiped out a dozen times over. Moreover, Victoria had no reason to abandon a fully-equipped, clearly deserving-of-rescue army group during that month. A miscalculation could leave the besiegers in a precarious position, surrounded and attacked from both sides.

That's how it is when fighting Victoria; if you're not careful, you can go from being surrounded to being blown apart by the enemy.

The Royal Army, having completed its preparations and established its sentry posts, peacefully entered their rest period. The soldiers had ample food rations, and in the evenings, they could even rotate shifts by battalion to nearby landships or war fortresses for recreational activities. Therese, who had never seen such a battlefield in her life, initially had some reservations:

"The Royal Army seems to lack any combat vigilance. The troop rotation is too lax. There are some positions where the enemy could be lying in ambush, but they haven't even bothered to scout them. What if the enemy launches a night attack through these passages?"

His secretary simply waved his hand dismissively, indicating that Therese need not worry:

"Your Excellency Chairman, such concerns are unnecessary. In places you cannot see, the Victorian army's defenses have never been relaxed. The war fortress has completely blocked all unauthorized radio signals in the surrounding area, and the drone force, under the control of the newly developed central control system, is conducting a carpet search of all the wasteland within two kilometers of us. Before we were stationed, the mobile reconnaissance teams of the scout force had already deployed military cameras and light-sensitive alarms to all target points and strategic points on the map. Once there is any abnormality, the guards on duty 24 hours a day in the monitoring room will immediately issue an alarm. Even if the monitoring personnel are negligent, the light-sensitive alarms will use technical means to identify unidentified persons and directly alert the entire war fortress."

The secretary paused, then handed Theresis a steaming cup of warm black tea and announced happily:

"This is true next-generation warfare, us noble Victorians and Ursus who only know how to fight on the front lines with machetes... cough cough cough," the secretary coughed violently a few times, revealing an awkward but polite smile, "Your Excellency Chairman, please forgive my slip of the tongue. Ursus is our ally, and I absolutely did not slander the valiant Ursus soldiers. I mean, we are not like those barbarians in Kazimir who still consider an army group to be just infantrymen wearing a set of seemingly high-tech armor, carrying a lance, and forming a triangular formation."

"Their commerce has developed, but their civilization remains extremely backward. Their armor and lances look incredibly high-tech, but their essence hasn't changed at all. As His Highness Wayne commented, they couldn't even think of adding a cannon muzzle to the tip of their lances. At long range, they'd just open the muzzle and use it as a cannon for suppressive fire; at close range, they'd close the muzzle and charge. That's backward thinking. If technology is the crutch of the Victorian gentlemen, then the Kazimierz are a lame fat man. Not to mention that those two legs are constantly thinking about cutting off the other one."

After Theresis accepted the black tea, the secretary brewed himself a cup as well. Warming his hands, he raised his cup to Theresis, and proudly said:

"To the future."

Therese responded with a complicated expression. He felt a slight bitterness in his heart and wanted to complain that he was exactly the kind of "barbarian who dared to go to war with just a lance" that his secretary had described. He was even slightly inferior to the barbarians his secretary had described. Their armor and swords didn't even have a sense of technology; they were the kind of works of classical aesthetics that could be buried in the ground for two weeks and then dug up and sent to a museum as artifacts.

But this bitterness quickly faded, because he now controlled the most modern army on Terra, and the master of this army was none other than his brother-in-law. As long as Theresa put in the effort, secured her position, and remained obedient to Wayne, wouldn't this army practically be his?

Congratulations! Congratulations!

Therese cleared his throat, concealing his "wolf-like ambitions." Of course, to save face as commander, he still changed the subject:

"So, how was my prediction? Has Deeppool surrendered?"

The secretary paused, then shook his head. "They didn't surrender. Your prediction was undoubtedly correct." But I really couldn't understand why. In a war we had no chance of winning, we mercifully gave them the option to avoid harm, but they refused to accept it.

"Because there are some things that even the most advanced technology and equipment cannot make up for."

Theresis pointed to her brain.

That is thought.

"An army that merely possesses equipment and technology that are ahead of its time can only be called powerful. But only a powerful army with a firm ideology can truly be invincible. This is what is called the soul of an army."

"Kazdel was destroyed by fire three times, and rebuilt each time. The Sarkaz were looked down upon by everyone on the land, their status second only to the Mineral Patients. Before Theresa and I restored our kingdom, the Sarkaz were merely rootless vagrants on the land. Yet, the Sarkaz army was still able to repel the Lateran Papal Crusades several times after the restoration. Even the Qazimirs, whom you looked down upon, persevered ten times in the face of the Ursus Empire's all-out war, a war that even Victoria had defeated, and have yet to be destroyed. This is the power of thought, or rather, the power of military spirit."

In Theresis's view, the current Victorian army lacks this kind of military spirit. The nobility has just been wiped out by Wayne, and a large number of Victorian troops have lost the goals they once served. Even the Londinium Legion and the Royal Army, which are directly under the command of the royal family, are mostly lost at this moment. Although such an army is currently unmatched due to its impeccable technological advantages, once it loses those advantages, it will become just another ordinary army.

Of course, Therese had no intention of overstepping his bounds and helping Victoria choose a military leader. That was a task for Wayne and Vina; his current mission was to eliminate the ants that threatened the stability of the country.

"Your Excellency Chairman!"

Suddenly, the messenger at the door knocked on the command post door, delivering the latest reconnaissance intelligence:

“Our cameras spotted the Deep Pool leader, Mandra, upstream on the Wettin River.”

Theresis's face lit up with joy. He hadn't even made a move, and the enemy had already delivered themselves to his doorstep?

"The two forces surrounding the upper reaches of the Weiting River are feigning weakness to lure the enemy deeper into their territory. My guards, follow me to the scene immediately. We must capture the enemy leader alive!"

P.S.: There will be another chapter tonight. Tomorrow I'm going to buy a new computer, probably an HP Omen 6, but I haven't completely decided yet. I'll go check it out in person tomorrow. But I definitely won't buy the one I'm thinking of. No matter how good it is, I won't buy it.

P.S.: Are there any readers who play Tower of Fantasy? A lot of authors in our author group have been playing it these past few days. If you see them asking for leave, please don't believe them; they're just playing the game together!

Ahem, of course not. My computer's broken, haha ​​(pretending not to know Tower of Fantasy is a mobile game).

Chapter 58 One shot scares Mandela away

It is located on the upper reaches of the Wettin River, three kilometers from the Victoria Camp.

Mandra raised his hand, signaling the unicorn troops behind him to stop.

Just as Aslan's side in Victoria had the support of the unicorns, the Drak's side also had its own immortal allies. Aslan controlled Victoria through authority and order, requiring a sophisticated intelligence system; therefore, the unicorns excelled at intelligence work, and wherever the Clock Tower went, no conspiracy or trickery could escape their eyes. The Drak, on the other hand, relied on force to conquer cities, enjoying spreading terror to build their authority and instill fear in people so they dared not resist. Their allies, the two-horned beasts, were a group of incredibly powerful warriors. They possessed astonishing brute strength; an adult two-horned beast could easily overturn a heavy armored vehicle, and a single punch could leave a complete fist mark on a meter-thick alloy steel plate. Even warriors wearing steam armor, without scientific methods of deflecting force, would instantly lose their fighting ability if struck by a sudden, heavy blow.

Although there has never been a recorded battle, the two-horned beast has always claimed that its strong physique is no less than that of the Sarkaz war behemoth Wendigo and the scavengers of the muscle-bound cities, and that it can even fight against the Agor from the deep sea—the Deepsea Hunters.

On paper, the alliance between Aslan and the Unicorns seemed no match for the alliance between the Draks and the Two-Horned Beasts. However, the reality was quite different. Aslan became the long-reigning monarch of Victoria, and the Unicorns became the most powerful force in Victoria's shadow. In contrast, only two pure-blooded Draks remained, and the true Londinium Drak bloodline was practically extinct, leaving only the half-blooded Talulah servants. The Two-Horned Beasts completely withdrew from Victoria's political stage. Aside from the Unicorns and the Aslan royal family, who controlled the Royal Archives, almost no one knew that Victoria had once possessed such a powerful race.

In a way, this can be seen as a typical victory of wisdom over violence.

But Mandra, now leading the unicorn army, clearly didn't think so. With the unicorn army at her disposal, she was brimming with confidence. Even with the towering signal tower of the Victoria War Fortress visible in the distance, there was no sign of fear on her face. Instead, she began to confidently explain her plan:

"Listen up, everyone! Our objective is simple: a surprise attack. We'll set fire to Victoria's camp, kill a few soldiers, create a commotion, and then leave immediately. Don't linger! Understand?"

Mandela wasn't brainless; she explained earnestly:

"The Victorian army is numerous. Compared to them, our troops, though elite, are far too few. Even ants can kill an elephant. If a hundred steam-armored soldiers were to fight a single unicorn warrior, could you handle it? So remember, our objective is not to annihilate the Victorian army here, but to create chaos and cover the retreat of the main force. As for the day to destroy Aslan and their army, we'll talk about that when the leader returns from Londinium! Do you understand?"

The two-horned beast silently stared at Mandela, neither nodding nor shaking its head. Its eyes, behind the spiral-patterned mask, were like a stagnant pool, or perhaps it simply seemed to disregard Felin entirely. Mandela felt a surge of anger rising within her, but she had to suppress it.

That's just how bicorns are; they won't listen to anyone except their chieftain and leader. But as long as they have a command token, they will obediently carry out the orders given to them—that's beyond doubt.

Although it was unpleasant to be completely ignored, at least their loyalty was beyond question. Mandela forced himself to turn his head away, ignoring their annoying attitude, and gave the order: