Chapter 10: Zorzal Seize the Throne of Saderia Empire

(Note: I write too fast for this part becaues less stuff happen and more explanation than actions.)

At night, Ray sneaks out of the inn after waiting for Cheshire to fall asleep. Yao stays behind to guard Cheshire while he is away.

Ray went into the Hub Marketplace to buy a few vehicles for his little trip to visit those traitorous vassals that dare to conspire against him and the worst is to have Cheshire kidnapped. A silent motorcycle to get far away from Rondel and a one passenger helicopter to cover the rest of the trip. All cost only less than 13k points that he was barely able to pay because he had been skipping on Mission grinding again.

While he is on the helicopter, he uses 4 more operator slots to get two Heavy and Assault operators each. This brings him to a total of 9 operators with 6 Assault, 2 Heavy and 1 Medic. The other 5 operators remain stationed in Italica.

He also equipped his recently acquired weapon that will be vital for his act of revenge tonight. He acquired T-101 Feldhaubitz last week and although it holds no augment or decent augment slots and levels, the weapon is enough for him.

When he arrived at his first target, he summoned his operators that he just obtained and gave them orders to grab all the vassal's family members and drag them out of their mansion. I also tell their servants to flee or die in the mansion before destroying it with the Feldhaubitz rocket launcher. Then followed with constant rain of Aerial bombardment from me and the two other Heavy class operators.

When the whole mansion turns into dust by the non stop bombardment, I drag the vassal who already pissed his pants. I leave them a final parting word.

"Cross me again and you have the same thing coming for you and your families until I exterminate your entire bloodline." Well the entire bloodline thing is greatly exaggerated but the vassal nodded his head like a chicken pecking the floor, desperate pleading for mercy.

For the entire night I repeat this 4 more times until I finish visiting all those nobles. I could only hope this will deter them to think thrice before daring to cross my path again.

When I returned to the inn, it's already near daybreak when the sun was rising from the horizon which I saw from the helicopter. Seeing Cheshire happy sleeping face made all the effort worth it. I dismissed Yao from guard duty and let the operators replace her and then I joined Cheshire for a quick nap before the sun fully rose.

…

Next morning, I feel that I fell asleep for too long. When I check the ever present screen in my vision, I see that it's 8:49 am and almost 9 am. The sleep must have been too comfortable for me to sleep this long since a 3 hour nap is usually enough for me.

When I was about to rise from my bed, I felt something heavy and warm on my chest which was hidden under the blanket. Look too small to be Yao trying to sneak under the sheet.

Tearing away the blanket, I found Cheshire curled up like a cat and still in her sweet dream, sucking her thumb while grinning in her sleep. Since I didn't want to wake her up yet, I continued my nap but set an alarm on my PD like an implant to wake me up in another hour.

(Note: PD is a personal device or Augmented Reality version of smartphone that is a norm when brain implant technology had matured in this Ray original world before death.)

…

Yao woke up around 8 and left the dining room on the ground floor. She didn't need to worry about her master's and apostle's safety because the summons are there to guard them. She wanted to try crawling under her master's bed because he might be sleep heavy this time after a tiring whole night but she was bested by Cheshire who already claimed Ray's body before her.

She begrudgingly left and started her morning with beer to wash away her frustration because her master never seems to be interested in her body. She remove the theory that her master is uninterested with sexual stuff because he does relief himself on his own from time to time. She can detect by simply smelling the musky smell in the private bathroom that her master likes to use for his sessions when they are still in Italica.

After finishing her breakfast, she suddenly hears a woman who looks like a mage from Magic Academy is asking the receptionist to meet her master. Yao went and greeted her. She already got a notice from Ray that someone named Arpeggio El Lalena might find him today.

…

With the JSDF, they made great progress interacting with the locals of the Special Region and even managed to establish contact with Princess Piña thanks to Itami Youji of the Third Recon team. They meet each other during one of the operations where they are gathering information in the Imperial capital.

The JSDF, while more focused on finding natural resources to bring back to Japan, also conducted political relationships with almost all nearby political power since they have laws to follow and cannot simply enter any sovereign territory without permission. The JSDF also has a mission to seek out people that have been kidnapped during the attack on Ginza.

This led Itami to ask Princess Piña if she could provide information about any citizens of Japan that were brought into the Special Region during the invasion. Itami also informed Princess Piña that his leaders are willing to exchange that information for important nobles that are being imprisoned in Japan.

Princess Piña is elated when she finds out that many nobles of the Empire are being held as hostages instead of being outright killed. She is willing to assist the JSDF in this regard and form a cooperation to benefit both sides.

This led Japan to bring Princess Piña to Japan for negotiation and to meet their diplomat for 3 days before the princess returned with those diplomats to meet the nobles to form a relationship. Those nobles seek to save their families while Japan can benefit politically while also saving their citizens and get access to information about local resources.

However an accident happened which surprised almost everyone. 5 nobles suddenly attacked and soon vanished from the public eyes without reason. No one knew what the reasons were but as the Princess, Piña soon discovered that his brother, Prince Zorzal, despite being forbidden by his father, Emperor Molt. Prince Zorzal antagonized the current ruler of Italica city using nobles under his influence.

In retaliation, the ruler of Italica nicknamed the Butcher because of his fear of killing thousands of well trained elite soldiers like eating breakfast, went and set things right. He threaten those 5 former vassals of Italica and force them to cough up the name of the mastermind which lead to the important noble who supposed to be Zorzal's main supporter being faced with the same fate but instead of giving warning, the whole home belong to that noble was bombed to dust which stopped only when its almost daybreak.

This is a big slap in Zorzal's face and he lost a lot of his supporters that came along with his status as the First Prince or Crown Prince. The most humiliating one however was the Emperor Molt didn't even pay mind to it and stayed silent. The Emperor is smart and knows that he has no military force to spare on cleaning up his first son's mess. The empire is now weak, very weak that they could only passively defend themselves.

The invasion on Japan and battle on Alnus Hill had finished his disposable military forces and his allies and vassal state already lost trust in him for his act on the Alnus Hill battle. This led to him being very passive and a justification for Zorzal to seize the throne because the Emperor already became useless and incapable of leading the empire again.

His first order after becoming Emperor of Saderia is to start conscription to bolster the army to invade Italica. When he seized the throne, he poisoned the emperor and blamed it on the ruler of Italica. Since Ray recently acted on the nobles, he became the prime suspect which makes the convincing part very easy.

The current empire is splitted with the majority joining Zorzal while a small portion support the second and third born. The neutral one is also quite sizable with the majority of them being peace supporting senate members who oppose those warmonger senate members that currently all join under Zorzal's banner.

Princess Piña is worried but even she thinks that their losses might not be big since no matter how strong Italica and its ruler are, they cannot win against 200k soldiers that Zorzal amassed and is still growing in number. She shared this information with her allies, the Japan diplomat and by extension, JSDF.

However her imagination shattered when JSDF showed her something disturbing and nightmare inducing.

JSDF attempts to establish their communication network and to use some weapons. In their successful attempt to bring up a low orbit satellite showed them another satellite which they know belongs to Ray. They been monitoring the satellite and during the event of attack on the few nobles, JSDF satellite recorded the other satellite launching orbital bombing.

She just discovered that if he wanted, Ray could kill them in their sleep and they would not notice it at all until it's too late when they heard the weird whistle sound.

Princess Pina asks the JSDF for help but they unfortunately cannot interfere with military strife of other sovereignty unless they are the one attacked. Piña and Japan could only wait and see the results. Japan was also curious about Ray's military force under his command. The Japanese government is secretly happy with this progress since this will also weaken the Saderia Empire which will allow them to easily progress their operations in the future.

…

"*Yawn* Oh morning Yao. Oh, and Arpeggio. Glad that you accepted my offer." Ray said after he moved to a seated position that caused Cheshire to roll down to his lap and inevitably wake up with a good, long stretch but only to fall lifelessly again on his lap lazily.

"Please refrain from eating the ration bar, first thing in the morning. It's unhealthy. Here is your breakfast, master." Yao brought two servings of breakfast with her. One for Ray while another one for Cheshire.

"This ration bar has all the daily nutrition that I need . Why is it unhealthy?" Ray retorted but still accepted the breakfast that Yao offered. He eats on the bed because there is no place to sit down and eat other than the bed.

Unless I can see how it is made, I will not believe that that one flimsy bar of food contains the nutrition from meat, vegetables and fruits. You cannot even tell me how it was made." Yao made a comeback with their verbal fight.

"Many times, I tell you, they were made using industrial machinery in large quantities and added with all the nutrition in their pure form extracted from other foods. This bar contains all the nutrition I would require for 8 hours which means 3 bars a day will fulfill all my nutritional needs. It's also fulfilling to the stomach." Ray answered her and offered her the bar.

"Yuck, I'd rather eat wild grass like a cow than put that abomination of a food in my mouth. I will not budge even if you ordered me to do it."

Meanwhile Arpeggio feels like a sword is put between her neck because there are 4 people that wear weird armor and weapons that keep focusing on her every act. Perhaps those four are Ray's bodyguards since he is a lord after all.

She could only look at Ray and wait until he finished eating and also feeding the girl that wore a maid outfit and ribbons that looked like cat ears.

Ray wakes up Cheshire and helps wipe her face with a wet tower that Yao provided him before feeding Cheshire her breakfast. She eats quite messily and he would rather not dirty the bed because of that.

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2k words.