The Amber Sword

The news of Jorgendigan's invasion of the Empire was somewhat overwhelming, and everyone needed some time to digest it. After the departure of the four knights of the inner court, the others also separated. Metisa, Charles and others prepared for the battle they might face. The rest of the members of the mission were persuaded by Brando to go back. Utah was the only one who stayed with him. The head of the maid corps was the commander of the White Lion Guard who accompanied the mission and needed to stay until Brando ordered.

Beyond that, however, there were two uninteresting visitors, with the exception of Chiaras, who remained on the sidelines with great interest, and the Duke Kim did not seem to intend to leave.

After everyone left, Chiara asked, "Hey, what are you up to? ”

Brando looked at the little girl and said, "What are you doing here? ”

“Why can't I stay here?” 'You haven't answered my question yet,' said Chiara. ”

“To solve problems, of course. Didn't I tell you? ”

“Well, if you don't tell me, I can guess,” the little girl replied proudly, "but are you really going to stand by the Cruz?” She weighs Brando curiously because of her sparse Cruz lineage, her eyes are naturally pale blue and transparent as glass.

“Now that we have a common interest, why not?” Brando replied.

“That's true, but it doesn't match your style of action. ”

Brando sounded funny and couldn't help but squeeze her deliberately: “Madame Chiara, I've been with you for less than a month, and I spent more than half of my time hiding in the carriage. What style of action do I have, so you know exactly what I'm doing? ”

Chiara glanced at the Duke's golden glance: “Arbitrary, self-serving...”

“Stop!” Brando looked at the Duke's golden mouth moving, seemed to want to talk, hurried to stop, he was already one of the first two.

Chiara giggled: “What's the matter, I don't know why, but I always thought you hated the Empire, at least you wouldn't say that big, hard word —— what a loyal ally of the Empire, even among other nobles, it's just a saying, I don't believe in your bullshit. ”

Brando looked at this little girl from the West Fah family with some surprise. She was not much smaller than Grand Duke Goran-Elson's little gold, but the two of them compare as if one was already an adult and one was a real Lori. Of course, Kiara still had the naivety of a teenager, but compared to the latter, which was at least the difference between heaven and earth, he didn't think that the other person had really been watching him, and he said an eighty-nine to ten. If the person who asked was familiar with him, or someone who was as sensitive to observing as his sister, then he might not be surprised, but the one who was biased was a little.

“How's that, freaking out?” Chiara looks at him: “Actually, it's no big deal. Your guy's capital is written on his face. It's not difficult at all. In fact, I still have a lot of things to do. How about making a deal with me?” She looked at Brando and replied, “You must not have come to the Empire for jihad, at least not only, you don't have to lie to me, I won't believe you. Anyway, what you're going to do must be a bit of a hassle, and you guys have a lot of judgment on the big picture, but the brain is too mundane, the layout and the closing of the checkers are equally important things, even the latter often decide to succeed or lose. If you ask me, maybe I'll be kind enough to help you. ”

Brando looked at this arrogant man: “Well, I'd really like to thank you. ”

“Actually, you don't have to. You're stubborn enough to ask Miss Ben," Chiara said. "But we can make an exchange. Why don't you tell me about the Buga heritage and I'll help you plan it? ”

It's not the first time Brando looks at this little Lori revealing her fox tail and can't help shaking her head. The other party seems to have gained knowledge of his vain Buga. But now he's not in the mood to tell this little girl a bedside story, and he just has to say, “The Buga people's knowledge isn't going to be over for a while. Their knowledge can be covered in white towers. I'm afraid when we leave the empire, I haven't finished telling you the beginning. The deal is fair. I won't make an unfair deal. ”

“It's okay!” Chiara said, “I'm going to stay with you for a long time anyway. ”

“Hmm?” Brando looked at the guy somehow.

Little Laurie patted her cheek gently and hurried to change her mouth: “I mean, I can stay with you for a while. Why, don't you welcome a lady? ”

Brando looked at the little girl from head to toe and didn't see how this arrogant maniac really made contact with the lady.

And at this time, a true lady, Grand Duke Vieiro's grand gold, finally waited for the opportunity to interrupt the conversation between the two of them without nutrition, and said, "Count, did you know about Jorgendigan? ”

“What is it?” Brando noticed the Duke's mysterious gaze, slightly stunned.

“is what's happening right now, didn't you already know?” The Duke has been watching Brando closely, and she has wanted to ask this question for a long time - when Brando and Rogers and others spoke that statement, she remembered the promise of Brando in the first place - that, despite his previous vices with the Cruz, everything he had done before would not cause him any trouble if he could help to recover the situation at this time, but would instead become his glorious emblem, a noblem that would neither yield to the power of the Empire, nor render justice and undivided by personal vendetta, and that, together with his performance in this war, could imagine how prestigious and prestigious it would be for him, both in the Empire and in the Kingdom.

But what starts this Duke to feel a little scared inside is, how did he guess all this? How did you expect Jorgen Diggan's attack? How did you expect the Empire to be in trouble?

If this is a pre-arranged layout, it's too scary.

Brando glanced at Ernie, as if he thought to himself, and just nodded: "Yes, Miss Ernie, I actually contacted Jorgen Deegan to make alliances between the underground people and the Lions of Tokenin, and told them to attack the Empire, you know, I have a sword of the earth that is broken, but still works. I saw them in the rings of the wind earlier, and they cried out for me to be their chief, and they said they were going to marry me, but I refused them in good faith, based on the principle that there was no marriage between different species, and by the way —— have you seen them? ”

The Duke looked at the Count with his eyes wide open, but the more he listened, the more he finally realized that the other party was just moaning himself: “You...” Finally, she could only grunt with hatred, knowing that this guy would never tell the truth to herself.

And when Yuta heard Brando speak of the Lion's Virgin, she finally couldn't help laughing. She thought that her lord was really not serious. Those words were just going to be passed on to the Lion's ears, only that the enemies of Tomorrow's Toquinine of Golden Horn were not the Empire, but Eruin's new head of mission. She chuckled and led Brando to look this way too. He had not seen the beautiful child mercenary leader of his own. Yuta realized his faults almost immediately, hurried to converge his mind and bowed his head to complain about his lord.

Brando's words, though absurd, did not in fact deny the challenge raised by Owney, the Duke thought a little and understood what it meant. She had been scared for days, and the situation at hand, though it seemed worse, gave her more or less a glimmer of dawn - at least it didn't look so unreliable that their chief of mission, how many people said he was crazy, but how many people expected him to be today?

She was silent for a moment and seemed a little confident: "Count, is it true what you said to the Cruz people? ”

“I've spoken a lot to them, inevitably with some nonsense," replied Brando. “But what passage are you asking? ”

The Duke whispered to him, “Are you kidding me? ”

“Not entirely,” replied Brando, "Miss O'Neill, this is the beginning of a great war in which there is very little that we can do about it, and seriously, at least until now, without us, the outcome of this war will not be much different. ”

The Duke opened his eyes once again, and she understood diplomatic etiquette, but she knew nothing about military things: “But you said that to them? ”

Chiara listened to the conversation and couldn't help laughing.

“Miss O'Neill,” she replied, "that's the cunning thing about this guy, that any factor in a war has an impact on the outcome of the war, but the question is how much. Of course he can fix the situation, but the key is to what extent, which is not to say that no one is a god in heaven and can vote for such a thing. ”

“So you're lying to them?” Duke Kim feels he's retracting his previous thoughts. That's the Empire's inner knight, the royal agent. What's the difference between lying in front of the Empire's supreme man?

“Nor can we call it deception. We can indeed walk away, but I am just trying to give them a little confidence - after all, defending the Empire is their duty, not ours, and it is already benevolent for us to stay and help them.” Brando replied, "Don't worry, nobody knows how bad the situation is going to end up, or how good it is, we really don't need to beat Jorgendigo, but just do it better than everyone else, and it depends on what we say. ”

The Duke Kim finally got a little bit of a clue, which doesn't seem to be any different from diplomatic affairs, because it's all the same: “Count, what are you going to do next, put the mission in danger? ”

Brando shook his head this time, and he was unable to answer that question, as Nimatis said, history had brought everyone back to the same starting line, and Jorgendigan's participation in the war had completely changed the history he was familiar with. Geoghendigan is not really a country, perhaps it can only be called a kingdom. It is a unified name for the underground world. In the dark, only lords, city owners, patriarchs, different ethnic groups gather together to form large, small and scattered forces. Now he is not sure which one or more lords are connected to the Lions of Tokenin, but Brando has a hunch that this invasion is not easy.

The make-up of Jorgendigo's forces determines that its lords rarely carry out large-scale military operations, but if the current situation is as he expected, it is a rare move in the underground world, and it probably does not include the actions of just a few lords, but Brando finds the idea somewhat absurd and unacceptable even to himself.

There was also a thick mist in front of him that awaited him, and his knowledge of history was being quietly dissolved, leaving him with only two generations of experience.

Brando whispered, "I have a vague idea, but I have to wait for confirmation; until then, we try to minimize conflicts with them, but we still focus on breakthroughs, and if we accidentally fall into the circle of those underground creatures, we can't do anything. ”

“Breaking through,” Duke Qianjin asked, "in what direction? ”

“It is best to break out in the direction of the inland sea. ”

“Inland Sea? ”

Brando nodded.

Snow melts over the high mountains of Anzeruta to form rivers that flow west through numerous principalities, into the sea of the Dead Moon, into Eruin's territory to the south, and eventually into the sea of sparkle, while rivers to the north form inland rivers that pass north of Anzlova and gradually wash out a hilly area, today's floating cloud hills. One of the most famous of these is the galaxy, which crosses Anzlova and opens up the silver valley, known south of the valley as the Vargus area, which includes small and large towns such as Vargus and Tieshen Town, while to the north is the Bear Lake area, where the river forms a lake on the hilltop and then flows east, blocked by the Short Mountains, into a huge inland lake.

And this lake is what Brando calls the inner sea —— the imperial sea.

The imperial sea, also known as the sublime inland sea, is itself a huge inland lake, but it spans dozens of areas and is extremely salty, so it is not too much to say that it is the sea. The lofty Inner Sea begins with a cloak bay to the west, north to the Mets area, east to the Short Mountains, immediately adjacent to the Changqing corridor, and south to the end of the Rokozy Plateau, a rich alluvial plain. The entire sublime inner sea almost divides the empire from east to west and from south to north, but it breeds the most glorious civilization of the Krutz. The countless ports and cities situated along the star points have closely linked this vast empire over the past 1,000 years. In the course of a long river, the entire inner sea is surrounded by almost the most prosperous and concentrated areas of the empire, the ever-growing southern plains, the bustling cape bay, the shipbuilding town of Banderon, and the heart of the empire - the Violet Valley.

Even to be blunt, if the whole empire is a sophisticated magic machine, the noble inner sea is the magic core of this machine, which provides the empire with a constant abundance of motivation and energy, material, manpower and money, even from the central decrees of the empire, which pass through this inner sea to all corners of the empire.

And the lofty Inland Sea, to the west of the cloudy hills, at the entrance to the galaxy, reveals a corner. Brando knows that there is a port there called Rune, which is not famous, but stands north and south of Asa, south of the Changqing corridor. If Asa fails, then this port will be the last springboard for the empire to counterattack Anzlova in the future. Of course, it is impossible for Jogentigan to let go of the port, but the problem is that Brando can be certain that the centre of gravity of the attack will definitely be Asa, not Rune, because there are numerous local regiments in the Violet Valley west of the Changqing corridor and in the flower leaf collar north, not to mention the Red Legion of the Four Realms, and if they fail to take Asa in the shortest possible time, even the Golden Lion of Tokenin will be blocked in Vargas by imperial regiments from every aspect of the news rush to seize Asa again, I'm afraid, at a terrible price.

And the other way around, after taking Asa, is to deal with the small port of Rune, which is the catching in the urn. Even if the Cruz reacted, it would never be possible for the army of the Violet Valley to swim across the lofty inner sea to support Rune?

By the time Rune collapsed, the Imperial Navy had lost its point of entry, the centre of the war had to return to Asa and the Empire had to break through the land route, which was clearly what the underground people of Jorgendigan wanted most.

The Duke seemed to have understood Brando's thoughts, but her eyes fell on the map, from Vargas to Rune, and there were at least three areas between them, and it was obvious that the journey would not be too smooth, nor would she have to go through any breakthroughs.

“It's not a very good road to go," Chiara said directly, unlike the silence of Duke Kim. "Jorgen Deokan is already ahead of us. Are you sure you're going to break through their blockade? ”

Brando shook his head gently and built his grip on a definite message, yet at this point all they could do was wait —— believe it, very soon, the exact message would come back. From Vargas to the Bear Lake region, where the Jogentigan army had advanced during the day, and whether or not the local Imperial Army, especially the private armies of the noblemen, had resisted, or even fled, was the information he needed.

……