- Main Road towards the Castle, Ersten, The Capital of the Kingdom of Apollyon–

- Around 10.30 am -

Achiles and the group are currently on their way back to the castle as they’re escorting the envoy from Earth with the carriages that have been sent to the port to transport them, which are 4 marine guards, one of the participating scientists, and Jeanne herself. Though, Inside one of the carriages, the seat placement for the group made it awkward as Jeanne, Achiles and Aurora were being put in the same carriage, alongside Conrad. The Prince wondered why the aura between them has this sort of friction between Achiles and Jeanne and cleared his throat to gather both of their attention.

“them… so uhh… both of you are siblings right?”

The two of them nodded in sync, though they still have either frustration or dejection painted on their face while thoughts flow through their muse as both of them look outside each of the carriage’s windows. The creaks of the wooden suspension returned as the silence came again, and the prince sighed again in their attitude.

“for goodness sake… this unreasonable silence is very uncomfortable in a certain way,” he thought to himself. Though, unlike him who wanted to know better about the otherworlder, his sister was rather trying to be inconspicuous as she still felt guilty for earlier. “Sis, you are rather quiet today, it’s very unusual”

“I do also have my moments of silence you know, besides…” she glanced at Jeanne who was now looking at a rectangular object in her hands, swiping it from left to right while it was shining brightly on her side, and then back towards her brother while leaning to his ears. “I think I prompted upsetting memories of their past”

“I could see that, but still, this meeting will turn the tide of the history of this world. We can’t have them being like this, especially the female commander, she has quite a frightening face right now”

“both of you realize that I could hear you right?” Jeanne has a slight death glare at both of them, especially towards Aurora, she clicked her tongue and proceeded to look at the device again. but as she was tapping on it, Jaeger took the rectangular device from her. “Hey! Give that back! I’m checking on my research progress!”

“I told you, you’re being too hostile to these two, also… stop fiddling with this tablet, will you? Can’t you have a proper conversation here with them? it's not like they have done anything bad”

“Oh, sure… now you’re acting like a white knight now in front of a pretty girl huh? Looks like that s**tty part of yours is still there”

“I am not acting like one, it’s basic manners you know?”

“That's what Aurelia would also say”

“she has nothing to do with this!”

“hmph, [she has nothing to do with this] my ass... “

The two broke into silence again as which ended up until they reached the castle. Although, during the time of their trip there, Conrad did give some explanation whenever Jeanne asked about something about the Kingdom. Her inner self might be still intrigued by the existence of magic and everything around the kingdom itself.

Later on, as they arrived, Aurora permissioned herself as she has something else to do and headed elsewhere inside the castle, leaving the three. On the other hand, Jeanne switched her attitude just like a businesswoman as she showed utter respect and professionalism to most of the people she met, which made Conrad's mouth agape as she fluently talks about things regarding technology & culture sharing which he didn’t bring up during the trip there to His Majesty the King and some of his retainers as they met. The meeting only took a couple of hours which is fairly fast regarding their standards yet it brought fruition as both parties agreed with the term that Jaeger brought up yesterday, with additional terms such as lend-lease of weaponries by ABEL’s side along with providing new knowledge about combined arms while the Kingdom allowed them to have research facilities that cooperate with them in the area of their expertise, Magic and the unknown minerals that aren’t from the earth which is Adamantium and mithril. But even so, they need to be proven trustworthy as the king himself requested to have ABEL’s PMC legion be the spearhead of their fighting force eradicating their true enemy, The Archbishop of the Church of Light.

The three and Miss Clarisa who’s escorting them are now walking in the corridor of the castle, leading them to the guest's waiting chamber where someone is waiting for them with information about the mission. though, on their way, Conrad had something in his mind. “Commander Jeanne, provided that your people have the equipment and supplies to do this quest, how do you even commence such a large-scale investigation inside the enemy territory with the time given by his majesty?? Wouldn’t it be taking more than a couple of months? Surely you can use those [Jets] but wouldn’t it be too… ostentatious?”

Jeanne quickly opened her tablet and showed him a file containing something unusual for Conrad to see, “this is the transport that we’ll be using during this mission, VCAD type D, codename [Condor] in its scout variant, a dropship with a range over 8.700km combat radius within the atmospheric influence. Equipped with Optical Camoflague and has its own onboard passive defence systems such as forcefields and an assortment of offensive armaments. The craft could carry up to 40 troops and a single armoured vehicle, though, since this mission needed them to have a hefty amount of supplies, most of the room will be filled with supplies instead” She explains as she also shows how to operate the tablet to him, zooming in and out to the model of the Dropship and tapping on the side table statistics of it. Conrad was also quite surprised that the transport is also capable of flying around a thousand kilometres per hour.

“I am honestly still impressed with how your world progressed this advanced, travelling with such distance with this craft this fast.”

“Our world is rather old than this world to be fair, more than thousands of years of many discoveries, despair and joy that led to us, ABEL, being formed. That being said, this world could mature easily with our help, but we’ll keep track of how this world progresses your highness as I don’t want another hellish landscape being painted in the far future because of human greed…”

The prince agreed with her sentiment, as he know that his country is now holding the key to exploring beyond the skies above him and below, an ally that was overwhelmingly powerful in knowledge. “I can see why… it must’ve been hard to live in a world full of conflicts…”

“Well… humans are like that anyways; it can’t be helped. People won’t change easily; every era will always have that one single bastard that wanted to have it all. But don’t worry, this conflict is an exception, as we’ll keep our promise on returning your nation’s honour as per request”.

“that’s quite reassuring to hear… ah- pardon me for interjecting you, your Highness and also, Miss Jeanne, Sir Achilles, I hope our alliance will bring great fortune upon us” Clarisa interjected, using her formal tone, which kind of surprised Conrad. “You can change the way you talk?? That’s new”

“Your Highness… even though I’m an easygoing person around you, doesn’t mean I can’t be formal”.

“… you made a good point”.

“But then again, these two are technically still delegates from another country, so my mannerisms are reasonable”.

They soon arrive at the room which isn’t the guest room that Jaeger knew, and Clarisa opens the door for them, several people are already waiting, including Christina herself. though, Clarisa didn’t mention Christina being Jaeger’s lost mother, yet. The female aide introduced them one by one to Jeanne, on which each single one of them are the general of the army and military-oriented nobles. Right after the greetings, Christina went straight to the point and scattered around some of her old notes which surprisingly has detailed imagery about the thing that they were supposed to do on which they can’t.

“Right, I’ll get straight to the point, disregard how these notes are more than two decades old. I kept these in secret until the time has come to counter that bastard. The archbishop secretly conducted experiments with human souls to gain [ascension] status into [God] which is virtually impossible to do. And about the world gate dissipating, yes, it is true. This spell only lasted 200 years until the day I sent my husband back to his world, which is nearing its date.” She had a sigh as she explains. Reminiscing again. In the meantime, Jeanne raised her hand as she had questions.

“Yes, miss commander?”

“What is this [World Gate] in the first place? We’ve tried to scan about it but all it does is disrupt space-time around the radius of the continent that’s influenced by it. Does it have an impact on whether it suddenly disappears or…?”

“that’s quite a great question, the world gate isn’t just there to stop them from trying to invade this country, it also distorts time, which is why most of the people there are probably the same age as me, 2 decades old and their perception about time is rather slow even though the skies cycle the same as ours”.

“… my logic can’t comprehend how that work…”

“don’t worry, neither do I, Hehe~”

As one of the generals finished reading the notes, he has an expression questioning her actions, “Why would you keep these from us for generations? These are horrible news to us! We could’ve sent some troops back then to these churches, dear goddess…”

The atmosphere was rather heavy for them, however for Jeanne, she didn’t know what they were talking about as she can’t read the letters on the notes. “Uhh… what’s written in the notes if I may ask?”

“Eh? You can’t read the notes?” Jaeger raised his eyebrow, wondering what she meant or rather confused about what she meant as she could converse properly with the others.

“Wait, you could? How? You never saw these letters before”.

“But it's in English right?”

“Ha? No, it’s not, it's unknown letters, how can I even read this while you could?”

And as they nearly started a debate amongst themselves, Christina, tapped Jeanne’s shoulders and chanted a spell, which surprised her as two bright sigils hovered in front of her eyes blinding her briefly. “There, you should be able to read our language, sorry I didn’t pay attention to this since I remembered how some people who were summoned here can’t read our language yet they could speak them.”

And as she said that, Jeanne’s eyes widen as she saw the letters on the note that she was holding quickly had their writings rearranged themselves into letters she know. She let out a small laugh in the middle of that, amused. “What the heck… Magic is so convenient, why don’t we have this in our world, I wouldn’t need to develop a massive database for translation devices in the first place if this exist”.

“Oh, the thing you failed to make and ended up making a stand-up comedy speech in front of the late French senator??”

“Achilles, don’t remind me of that…”

Their discussion went on. Nevertheless, at the same time… deep inside the castle, several people are gathered inside a room illuminated by a single massive chandelier, having a massive round stone table in a shape of an O in the middle, having intricate carvings here and there around the top of the table. The room itself isn’t that bright, and oddly enough the illumination didn’t light up their faces as if they needed it to remain hidden. They were waiting for someone to come and as they were starting to get impatient, the only door connecting the room outside creaked open, and His Majesty came with his unusual stoic look. “Took you long enough, how did everything go with that otherworlder, Somnus Your Majesty??” one of them said in a slightly bright tone as he came.

Somnus sat on his seat across the door he came from, chin on his left palm. He looked around, checking if everyone he knew is inside the room. “As expected, the representative is quite an interesting fellow, though, what’s concerning is that she’s too far focused on the ending of this and its profits. Just like how adventurers and bounty hunters do their job in our world.”

“Soldiers of fortune huh… but to think that they have the knowledge to create such a massive vessel to travel between stars…” one of them remarked, “I assume they wanted profits from us?”

“Didn't I say that I already made an agreement with the young man earlier on? All of you were present when he opposed Duke Judas’s judgment regarding this conflict were you not?” the whole member in the room nodded in unison. “I won’t pull my decision, as of now, I have an impression that the young lad will be a valuable asset to this country, just like his father.”

Some of them hummed in agreement while some didn’t, and one of them had her questioning the king’s decision. “Your Majesty, not that I doubt your decision but why are you very certain that young Wolfenford became this country’s asset? Didn’t he say that he’s also a soldier of fortune? What if he betrayed your expectations and those otherworlders’ ships are practically untouchable by our current power… start to commence an invasion towards us just because he changed his mind?”

“I’ve been clarified by the lass that her organization will search for other countries to form an [Intergalactic alliance] if we rejected their offer”.

“… it is reassuring that it’s said by themselves but is it the truth…? Their intentions are very ambiguous…”

The room started to be filled with murmurs of debates between the pros and cons of being allied with ABEL’s expedition fleet, and at a point there were now two factions of it, flinging opinion after opinion to one another yet didn’t bring any progress as they feel the anxiety rising each second they discuss. Somnus who saw the meeting unfold, slams his hand on the table, quieting them down. It's rare for them to see him showing his aura as a ruler, and yet when he does, the feeling of high authority from the members were blown away by the lazy genius. The echo of his slam resided seconds later; his eyes were glaring daggers at everyone in the room.

“Our Kingdom won’t fall, not when I’m still in reign. Which is why this council was formed in secrecy with my own hands… all of you are the fortresses of this country, the noble houses that made us thrive for 3 generations of this war, the 12 Nobles of the round table.” He stopped briefly, looking at each one of them while saying; “each one of you had your speciality and I trust you all more than him. which is why…” he stopped his gaze at someone he knew he would succeed.

“Marquis Jordan, I hereby declare that I have you monitor young Wolfenford throughout the first stage of the planned offensive campaign. From your military background, I have high expectations that you could assess him better than me. Go join their meeting, I’ll appoint you as the newest 3rd army battalion General, formal appointment will be done later”.

With that said, the marquis stood up from his seat and bowed at Somnus. His appearance is still in his human form, a massively built man in his 40s. if he was compared to the King, Somnus would be looking like a chubby teenager to the Marquis. “As you command your highness,” he said, his slightly Germanic deep voice slightly echoing in the room as it was silent. He then left the room, heading towards where the Noble Generals and the otherworlders were.

“Great! That aside, one of you will have some of your subordinates participate in the quest I’ve given to them, won’t be that hard to choose right?”. One of the Council members raised his hand, “The quest that you mentioned that needed to be done in 3 months? Wouldn’t be needed to be longer for such a mission??”. Somnus nodded, agreeing with the council member that remarked, yet he chuckled right after. “Hilariously, the young lass said something interesting about her finishing it in…”

- back in the meeting room on the upper floor –

“This operation will be done in 45 days or lesser since the intel provided is quite intricate. I’ll have a forward operating base set up several tenths of kilometres from the capital. This operation will be called [Operation 7th Trumpet] and will be broadcasted via projectors to the members present here. Anything else?” Jeanne concluded. the Generals were astonished at her and Jaeger’s planning yet they still has some hint of doubts about whether it will go smoothly or not as they never knew Earth’s way of warfare. Regardless, they didn’t ask further questions.

“Great, Lt. Col Jaeger, recall your Valiant to the Yukikaze, briefing will be conducted in 1400hrs.”