The Martial Unity

While the Shionel Confederation scrambled to mitigate the devastating shockwaves that had resulted from the death of Sage Lauren, the rest of the political sphere came up to speed with the situation and everything that had unfolded.

It was beyond shocking to learn that the East Panamic Treaty Alliance had gone so far with the Shionel Confederation to prove a point to all nations that had been seriously considering allying with the Kandrian Empire.

They had dispelled the notion that they were unable to inflict consequences on those that allied with the Kandrian Empire against them. Now, as Rui had feared, nations that had been receptive to the Kandrian Empire’s offers started second-guessing themselves and reconsidering their inclinations.

Nonetheless, the news of the Kandrian Empire’s protection and performance in the war also disseminated throughout East Panama rather swiftly as entire divisions and departments, created for the sole purpose of gathering intelligence on the state of the war, followed up on the battle that had occurred on the outskirts of Shionel territory.

If not for the fact that the Kandrian Empire managed to push back the enemies and staked their own Martial Artists in the battle, the war for allies would have been over then and there. Nobody would have wanted to ally with the Kandrian Empire if something like that had happened.

More importantly, in addition to having protected the Shionel mainland successfully, people paid attention to the outcomes of the battles.

Two dead Sages on both sides.

One side lost two powerful Sages, while the other side lost a peak Sage and a newly ascended Martial Sage. The Kandrian Empire had managed to come out on top simply thanks to the Devil living up to his name and successfully killing one of his counterparts.

This, combined with the fact that Sage Damian had managed to fight another one of his peers—who had been augmented by the healing fruits of the Tree of Healings—to a draw, was even more proof that the Kandrian Empire boasted the strongest Martial Sage in East Panama.

The only untested battle was Sage Vermillion of the Britannian Empire, yet few believed that she would be able to prevail against the Kandrian Devil.

That wasn’t the only shocking detail that truly left everybody stunned.

The fact that Rui fought a peak Master and many other Masters simultaneously was just absurd.

It was a feat that no other Master that they were aware of would be capable of. While they had garnered some misunderstandings of exactly how Rui faced off against all those Masters and the Convergence simultaneously, it still spoke volumes of his tactical value in battle.

The Kandrian Empire harboring yet another Sage on retainer was also surprising.

Failing to protect external infrastructure and letting a Shionel Sage die was a bad look for the Kandrian Empire, but the accomplishments and revelations that came from it also balanced out much of the backlash.

It was not easy to weigh who came out of the war worse.

The geopolitical air in the eastern section of the Panama Continent grew even more electric as many leaders and powers sensed that the war had reached a particularly important milestone.

The Shionel Confederation had been one of the largest truly neutral nations. When it had ultimately chosen to side with the Kandrian Empire, it marked something that sort of resembled a halfway point in terms of the total military and Martial capital that was up for grabs in the war for allies.

The war had already been going on for the better part of a year now, and had accelerated at a pace that was extremely quick by the standards of wars of this scale. Both sides had aggressively prioritized the war at all costs since its inception, leading to things heating up much faster than they otherwise would have.

The biggest point for a massive fast-forwarding of the war had been the defeat of the Sekigahara Confederate, which led to an immediate jump into the war for allies as the East Panamic Treaty Alliance realized that the only thing that it could achieve without allies was a horrific pyrrhic defeat.

And they were right; the assault on the Shionel Confederation revealed that these battles were bound to get extremely bloody, resulting in massive losses on both sides, ultimately leading to a lose-lose situation.

Regardless, the assault on the Shionel Confederation shocked all the undecided potential allies out of the lull that had begun forming in the air during the war for allies. It was very easy for it to have done so when there were no big, flashy battles for the most part, just a large amount of indistinct battles and clashes happening at all Kandrian allies’ borders.

This, however, was the first largest battle since the Kandria-Sekigahara battle. It shook the geopolitical landscape thoroughly. Its consequences could be felt across the entirety of East Panama.

For one, the Shionel Confederation supplied an absolutely enormous amount of goods and services to the entirety of East Panama; thus, the consequences of anything happening to it could be felt everywhere.

It rattled the remaining undecided potential allies in East Panama as they realized that the alliance was very serious about inflicting real consequences for siding with the Kandrian Empire but also for not choosing.

It only increased the amount of pressure that each nation experienced.

The geopolitical state fell into flux once more as what could be the most important phase of the war had begun.

Yet, many political analysts and other experts and pundits foresaw that while it would be the most important, it would not necessarily last very long.

There was simply too much pressure and turmoil for this phase of the war to last long. The tenser a situation was, the quicker it was resolved. And this was easily the tensest moment in the history of East Panama due to the sheer scale of the powers involved.

Human civilization watched with bated breaths as the war raged on. –