Chapter 170 - 170: Suspicious Man on a Ghost Ship
High above the world in his sanctuary, a blaring crimson notification flashed across Red's main monitor.
[ ALERT: VANGUARD EXPEDITIONARY FORCE HAS ENCOUNTERED AN ACTIVE APOSTLE. DIVINITY SIGNATURE INDICATES RIVAL DEITY ORIGIN. ]
A secondary prompt immediately hovered in the center of his vision, offering a direct neural link.
[ INITIATE DIRECT COMMUNICATION WITH RULING DEITY OF THE ELEVENTH CONTINENT? ]
[ YES / NO ]
'Initiating contact first in a divine standoff is a rookie mistake,' Red thought, staring at the glowing text. 'It screams desperation and surrenders the psychological high ground. I know exactly what my war machine is capable of, and I trust my commanders to handle the situation. If not… I will just send Glitch.'
Casually swiping the prompt away, he settled back into his hovering chair and opened the audio feed to listen to the confrontation.
Down on the lavish quarterdeck of the ghost ship, the tension had reached a boiling point. Iron-Scale tightened his grip on his sleek sword, completely refusing to be extorted by a lone man sitting in a chair.
'I will not be bullied by a stranger, Apostle or not,' Iron-Scale thought, calculating the exact distance between his blade and Silas's throat. "The Vanguard does not buy protection," he hissed. "If your god wants our resources, they will have to pry them from our dead hands. Let us see if an Apostle bleeds just like a mortal."
Beside him, Gulag let out a deep, rumbling battle cry. 'Finally, some actual combat to break the boredom,' she thought, her blood pumping as she raised her massive spiked club high. Her dense bone armor shifted noisily as she braced her heavy legs to rush the smiling man.
Silas merely sighed. 'Such aggressive little monsters,' he mused with a hint of boredom, his metallic cards glowing with a blinding white light as he casually prepared to deflect their combined assault.
Right as Iron-Scale bent his knees to lunge forward, a commanding voice echoed from the main doorway.
"Stand down, Commander."
Syra stepped elegantly into the tense cabin, having crossed the high-tensile grappling lines from the flagship. 'Brute force is mathematically inefficient here,' she calculated quickly, her slitted eyes sweeping over the glowing cards. 'We risk taking heavy flagship casualties before we even reach the actual war zone.'
Carrying her polished star-iron staff and a deeply unimpressed expression, she completely ignored the blinding light in Silas's hands and walked right between the readied weapons of her own Vanguard warlords.
"We are on a strict timetable, and fighting an Apostle over a simple toll is a massive waste of our energy," Syra stated coldly, using the tip of her staff to gently but firmly push Iron-Scale's sword toward the floor boards.
She then turned her gaze toward Silas, who raised a single eyebrow, clearly amused by the sudden shift in the room's dynamic.
"I am Elder Syra, the Minister of Intelligence for the Sovereign," she introduced herself smoothly. "My commanders are built to shatter fortresses, not negotiate trade routes. You mentioned a toll, Silas. However, hauling raw alchemical grain and star-iron between ships is heavy and tedious in the middle of a dense fog. I propose a different transaction."
Silas lowered his glowing cards and leaned forward in his leather chair. "I am always open to creative proposals, Elder. What exactly is the Vanguard offering?"
"Intelligence and strategic leverage," Syra countered without missing a beat. "You claim the Fourteenth Continent is highly hostile and will attack us regardless of your protection. If you grant us free passage through this strait, we will use our fifty thousand troops to completely obliterate their naval blockade on our way through. We reach our destination without paying a material toll, and your god gets a permanently cleared border without risking a single drop of Eleventh Continent blood."
Silas paused, the metallic cards going entirely still in his fingers. 'Now that is a fascinating proposition,' he thought, a genuine spark of interest flashing in his eyes as he processed the sheer audacity of her offer. 'However…'
He slowly shook his head, and the glowing metallic cards vanished seamlessly into the sleeve of his white coat.
'A tempting offer on the surface,' Silas thought as he casually laced his silver-ringed fingers together. 'But entirely hollow in the grand scheme.'
"Obliterating their naval blockade is a highly entertaining thought, Elder Syra," Silas replied. "However, it is a terrible long-term investment. Let us say your heavy infantry shatters their ships and clears the strait today. What happens next year? Ships are merely crafted from wood and iron. The Fourteenth Continent will simply rebuild their fleets and lock down the waters all over again."
He stood up from his leather chair and walked over to the cabin window to gaze out at the swirling grey fog.
"And when your massive army is long gone, fighting your holy war oceans away, who do you think the Fourteenth will blame for the sudden breach?" Silas asked, glancing over his shoulder with a sharp, calculating smile. "They will blame the Eleventh. We will be the ones to suffer their retaliation and endless border skirmishes. Your hit-and-run tactics would ultimately leave my god to clean up the mess."
Syra narrowed her slitted eyes. 'His logic is mathematically sound and incredibly frustrating,' she admitted to herself. 'He understands the geopolitical fallout of our actions far better than a simple toll collector should. And he is much smarter than our Prophet who can't deal with his feelings and emotions.'
"My god does not deal in temporary strategic favors or empty promises of violence," Silas concluded firmly. He turned his back to the window to face the Vanguard commanders. "We demand tangible tribute. We want raw resources, alchemical grain, or high-tier artifacts. You must provide something that directly and permanently enriches the Eleventh Continent today, or your fleet does not pass."
Iron-Scale gritted his teeth. His patience was completely evaporating under the Apostle's smug demeanor. 'I should just sever his smiling head from his neck and be done with it,' the supreme commander thought angrily, his fingers twitching near the hilt of his sword.
Gulag let out a dangerous rumble from the back of her throat, clearly sharing the Kobold's violent sentiment.
Syra tapped her star-iron staff lightly against the wooden floorboards to keep her warlords in check. She needed to formulate a secondary compromise immediately before her commanders lost their fragile restraint and triggered a catastrophic battle with a rival god's champion.