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Why is the empire recognized by many as the strongest country in the world? The main reasons include its population, dominant economy, and advanced weapons. However, though powerful, it's not to the point where it can fight several countries at one time.

The empire has a combined 1 million troops on its southern, western, and eastern borders. Not all those troops are controlled by the kampaku; in fact, the primary defenders of the border territories are noble armies.

The emperor's troops all add up to just over 1 million; that means that, without counting nobles, the Kampaku can directly order an army of 1 million. That does not count reservists, which could be activated at any time.

But even though the empire has a standing army of over a million, it cannot just draw units from its other borders to defend against the kingdom in the north; after all, it also has to guard against other neighboring countries.

In addition, nobles, even those appointed by the Kampaku, always become very stingy when it comes to sending troops.

As for reserves, Kanpaku has already ordered their activation, but it takes months, maybe a year, for them to be trained, armed, and ready to fight.

...

By Kampaku's order, 200,000 were taken off the northern lines and started marching toward Jack.

That left the northern border with only 175,000 troops, up against over 500,000 from the North Kingdom's side. Still, the North Kingdom didn't have detailed information about castles and cities beyond the northern border, so even with such a huge numerical advantage, it couldn't conquer the front-line defenses of the empire as easily.

In the meantime, Kampaku has warned all nobles that if they don't help him in this situation, after the war, they and their whole families will be slaughtered. This threat was effective, as nobody thought the kingdom could destroy the empire.

With this, nobles started preparing troops to send; Kampaku expected to gather 300,000 more troops in 1-2 months.

Until then, however, he has only 400,000.

Kampaku has other units he can use, such as 50,000 musketeer and cannon units he keeps in the capital; but he cares about his own safety the most; he would not use them to defend some faraway land.

He also has to guard against surprise attacks from other kingdoms; what would happen if someone attacked while musketeers were far away?

...

Inazuma was appointed as the commander of the army attacking Jack.

As a peak human and peak skill, he was extremely powerful and had talent in commanding troops and strategizing war. It would have been very difficult for Jack to win with such a numerical advantage. That was if everything went according to Kampaku's plan, which it didn't.

...

Jack knew Inazuma was not an easy opponent; he wasn't even considering fighting 200,000 troops who had a great commander with only 100,000 newbie soldiers.

Fighting and winning against stronger armies may happen when the enemy has a bad commander; against Inazuma, Jack could not get any advantage.

Therefore, Jack asked for help; he sent a letter to Commander Chumon of the Northern Kingdom.

Commander Chumon was also a peak human and skill, a very good strategist; he could see how Jack's mere existence unsettled Kampaku.

Therefore, he wasn't going to let Jack die this easily.

He ordered his troops to conquer the Purple Flower City in the southwest; with that city under the control of the Northern Kingdom, Jack could retreat whenever he wanted.

Northern kingdom's troops attacked and besieged the city; conquering it would take time, but a siege was enough to allow Jack to pass without being attacked.

Then, Chumon turned around and ordered an all-out assault on the empire's northern defenses. They couldn't hold out for long with only 175,000 troops.

...

On the other hand, Inazuma was paying close attention to what was happening on the front lines.

"Purple Flower City? There is no point in engaging with Jack if that city is under siege! Take 30,000 troops and attack the kingdom's besieging forces!" Inazuma ordered.

He was responsible for capturing Jack and had the authority to order anything that helped with that.

At the same time, Inazuma sent his cavalry to intercept roads that lead to Purple Flower City, to prevent Jack from running away.

...

"He thinks we are running away?" Jack laughed. He will not run away at all; he will use this chaos to kill Kampaku and complete the task.

The first task is killing Kampaku; once completed, the world would be promoted to rank 10. Once promoted, the next task would be conquering the whole world.

Once rank 10, the world's scale would expand by hundreds of times; conquering the whole world would become extremely difficult.

...

The Republic was the most democratic country in the vicinity, where men over the age of 24 could vote for their president. It also considered itself the most powerful country.

It had musketeers and cannons. And its biggest disadvantage was its borders. It had a land border with the empire; the Republic's western border touched the wild mountains, leading to the far east, where barbarians lived.

Because of its position, it could not trade with other countries; the empire allowed it to trade only if it paid unreasonable taxes.

With all that, the two powerhouses didn't ever go to war with each other. That was until Jack sent Lucy to the Republic's capital.

Once there, Lucy, using connections from the secret organization, was allowed to meet with the president.

The president, Kashu, was elected 4 months ago in the election.

In the meeting with Lucy, the two sides exchanged information; in the end, the president ordered the start of the invasion.

There are many advantages to democracy, but there are also disadvantages. One disadvantage is the ability of foreign forces to influence the president's election.

In the last 12 months, Jack's subordinates, Gabriel and Lucy specifically, were laser-focused on helping a war hawk party to win.

Kashu, from a fringe party named Supremes, was not considered a serious contender but actually won this election.

The Republic had two main parties; in the last 100 years, presidents were always from one of the two centrist parties.

The two parties had simple and generalized names, one was the Left Republic Party, the other was the Right Republic Party.

On the surface, they had many policy differences, but the fact was that both centrist parties were essentially the same; they only disagreed on unimportant social issues, while core policies were all the same. After all, social policies are often used as tricks to deceive people and divert attention from things that really matter.

However, the Supremes party was different; they were not an establishment party and had radical views; Kashu openly advocated for a war with the empire.

He won 53 percent of the vote, defeating major parties.

Actually, interfering in the Republic's elections was done often; the empire always spent tons of money, making sure the Republic always chose pacifist leaders; this was one of the main reasons that despite all the wrongs the empire did to the Republic, the two sides never fought.

But, in this election, Jack's secret organization, managed by Gabriel and funded by Raphael, managed to elect its candidate of choice.

After the election, the two main parties screamed 'foreign interference,' trying to delegitimize the new president. It was very ironic for the main parties to say that, as they themselves have, for many years, been bribed by the empire.

Kampaku was also outraged, but in his heart, he didn't think Kashu was crazy enough to invade the empire. He just issued a strongly worded statement and condemned the Republic's new president.

...

"Repeat again?" Kampaku looked with wide eyes.

"Republic has invaded our western border!" This time, there was no letter; the Minister of Truth came personally to deliver the news.

"What? You … aren't you Minister of Truth? Why didn't I hear of anything until now? If they invaded, they must have been preparing. Why didn't your damn spies deliver anything in advance?" Kampaku asked, slowly unsheathing his sword.

"Kampaku, I don't know ...!" the minister said with a gloomy and sweaty face. They had many spies there, and the two centrist parties would also send such news of war preparations, but strangely, nothing was delivered to them.

"Incompetent." Kampaku crushed the minister's head with one powerful strike, reducing it to meat paste. Brain matter splashed, dirtying the ground.

"Send orders, nobles must start conscripting young men! If I don't see an army of a million in a month, I'm going to kill you all!" Kampaku shouted, warning his ministers.

...

The Republic's army invaded the empire's border cities and conquered them in a matter of days. Border cities directly surrendered when they saw the size of the invading army.

As always, empire's military commanders, especially those sent to faraway crises, were not loyal to the country; they were appointed because of their loyalty to Kampaku. However, it's not easy to find truly loyal people. These commanders' 'loyalty' was because of benefits, not because they loved Kampaku. In the first place, Kampaku would not send anyone truly loyal to faraway border cities; he would keep them and use them in the capital.

Dying for a cause is not easy; people like these commanders, who only saw money, wouldn't ever fight until the last breath.

As such, the empire's western cities fell like flies, one after another; in two weeks, the entire western border was lost.

Fortunately for the empire, It had many military stations and 300,000 troops in that area; adding nobles' forces, they could fight against the Republic's 800,000 army for some time; even though border cities were lost, the republic's forces didn't infiltrate deeper for now.

The empire lost a lot, but in the end, it only lost border cities; be it the Northern Kingdom's invasion or the Republic's invasion, none actually reached the empire's main parts.

...

Jack and his crew were far from the western border and quite close to the front lines of the northern invasion.

The invasion of the Republic, a massive morale hit to the empire, didn't really affect Jack's ground situation.

Fortunately, Purple Flower City's commander surrendered a while ago, and thus, Jack's retreat was secured.

Inazuma's siege-breaking forces were also defeated. After all, the kingdom had a numerical advantage, so when it was revealed that the empire wanted to break the city's siege, the kingdom just sent more troops to defend.

With Jack having a retreat route, Inazuma hesitated to attack. It was not rational to attack an enemy that could run at any time; using these troops to defend castles was the rational choice.

But Inazuma didn't dare ignore Kampaku's order, so he ignored his judgment and attacked Jack.