Back during the mutiny in Whitestag, most of Storm defected to Prince Hansbach. The remaining naval officers who weren't willing to fight in the civil war fled to the colonies in a dozen warships.
Claude had wanted to form the warships into a coastal patrol fleet to act as the first line of defense against pirate attacks and Shiksan naval harassment, but he was rejected by the navy.
The former Storm officers arrogantly declared that they were the royal navy under the direct jurisdiction of the admiralty and the king's orders.
What right did the theatre have to listen to them when they were only in charge of the local garrison? They even wanted to threaten them when they were in dire straits and demote them from a royal navy to a local patrol fleet.
That was an act of treason that they absolutely wouldn't agree to.
To put it bluntly, the naval officers who came to seek refuge felt that the theatre was poor and didn't have money.
If they were to become a patrol fleet under the direct jurisdiction of the theater of operations, their salaries and welfare subsidies would be much lower than when they were in the Storm Fleet. Especially since they would be cut off from the maritime trade with the kingdom's mainland, it meant that they could no longer smuggle goods for personal profit.
Since the theatre's goodwill was rejected by the navy, they had no choice but to let them stay in Port Cobicus in Tyrrsim. Apart from providing for their daily rations, they were given nothing else.
The navy had once asked the theatre to pay them a salary, but Skri rejected it outright. The reason they gave was that they were the royal navy and weren't under the theatre's jurisdiction, and the theatre couldn't do anything that would offend them.
Although they didn't have to worry about food and drinks in the harbor, they were also short of money. After the theater of operations refused to pay them, they were forced to rely on themselves, such as fishing in the territorial waters, transporting goods, opening offshore shipping, or being hired by merchants to escort their cargo fleets. Sometimes, they were also entrusted by the theater of operations to patrol the coastal waters. As a result, the navy of the kingdom was forced to become a mercenary fleet.
But after the theatre started issuing low-denomination bank notes last year, the economy finally became a little better off.
The remaining naval officers and soldiers of the Storm Fleet actually wrote an application report, requesting for the war zone to allocate funds for them to form a new Storm Fleet.
General Skri once again refused, saying that the Royal Navy was not under the jurisdiction of the war zone, and that the war zone had no right to allocate funds to them.
Now that Claude said that the remnants of Tempest should be allowed to return to the kingdom, Skri was naturally delighted. He couldn't wait to send them away.
It was already good enough that the theater of operations was responsible for providing them with free military rations, but they still wanted the theater of operations to provide them with alcohol and fresh meat.
Originally, these were all purchased by the fleet's specialized personnel. If they didn't have the money, they would have to be responsible for it.
General Skri had never accommodated them. He would still reject what he had to reject, and was only willing to bear the obligations of the war zone.
In any case, they were not directly under the command of the theater of operations, so it did not matter if they were dead or alive.
As a result, there were more and more conflicts between the two sides, and there were even several scuffles between the naval officers and the soldiers of the Monolith Legion stationed in Puerto Rico.
After hearing Claude's words, Bolonik agreed to the suggestion after some consideration. However, he couldn't decide on a suitable person to send as a messenger to the royal capital.
It was then that Borkal volunteered to be the messenger back to the kingdom. Coupled with Claude's recommendation, the matter was settled just like that.
Claude, on the other hand, knew that Borkal was in a hurry to go back to find his family.
Unlike the other officers of the war zone who sent their families back to the colonies, Borkal's family lived in Whitestag. His father was a famous merchant in the area and had branches in the three southwestern prefectures.
That was why Borkal's family wasn't in the war zone. Now that the war was over, Borkal naturally wanted to return to Whitestag to find his family. He didn't know if they were still alive.
The newspapers of the various colonies on the west coast reported that the armies of the first and second princes had fought an intense battle around Whitestag for more than a year and the city had been reduced to rubble.
Just as Eiblont said, the life and death of the first prince and whether he was assassinated had nothing to do with the war zone. He was nothing more than a familiar face in everyone's memories. If one were to look into it, they would still be enemies in reality.
What really bothered the high-ranking officers in the meeting room was that the kingdom hadn't sent any messengers over the past five months. That made them feel rather uncomfortable.
But after deciding to send Borkal as a war zone emissary to test the royal capital's reaction, Bolonik lost interest in investigating the assassination of the first prince. He ordered Skri to send someone to contact the Storm fleet in Port Cobicus to inform them that they could return to the royal capital. After giving Borkal seven days to prepare, he announced the end of the meeting.
Claude brought Borkal back to his new manor and told him to stay there for the next seven nights instead of going to the military camp.
Even though Borkal was a colonel, he belonged to the war zone's intelligence department and didn't have any soldiers with him. He was only given a small dormitory in the camp of the war zone's security forces.
Borkal rarely stayed there and only used the dormitory as a storeroom.
Claude decided to write a letter to Maria and have Borkal use it as an excuse to find out what the royal capital thought about the war zone.
Even though it had been a few years since they last contacted each other, Claude believed that with his status as a lieutenant general, he would be able to rekindle their relationship.
So, he wrote quite a bit about his family and his sister's situation in the letter and had Kefnie pick a few exquisite gifts for Borkal to bring to Maria.
Borkal only set off for the kingdom after half a month. He brought a platoon of soldiers with him, mainly because he had too many things with him.
Apart from a batch of precious gifts for Prince Wedrick, Stellin XI, the five generals also asked Colonel Bokal to send gifts and letters to their connections in the royal capital so that he could smoothly establish a connection in the royal capital.
Another reason was that Skri didn't have a smooth communication with the Storm fleet. When they heard that Whitestag had been reclaimed by Reddragon, they weren't in a hurry to set sail. Instead, they tried to blackmail the war zone, saying that their warships hadn't been used for three years and needed to be repaired. They asked for a large sum of money and resources.
Skri rejected their request without hesitation and warned them that they wouldn't be provided with free food for the next month. If they continued to stay there, they would be waiting to be accepted by the war zone as they were no longer fit to be part of the kingdom's navy.
The war zone also didn't recognize them as Storm's fleet and treated them as deserters.
In the end, it was Bolonik who mediated the situation and had the war zone's finance department give them a sum of money, as well as food and water for the voyage.
The Storm Fleet's naval officers used the money to purchase a large batch of local specialties from various merchants in the colonies before setting sail back to the kingdom's mainland.
Claude headed to Port Vebator's barracks to train the new recruits. He didn't think that he would receive an urgent eagle message from the war zone half a month later, requesting him to return to the war zone command center.
This time, however, it wasn't the war zone that received the news. Instead, it was the arrival of a nikancha envoy.
They made a proposal to hand over the entire northern coastal mountainous area and the eastern mountainous area to the theater of operations, but they demanded that the theater of operations exchange for three thousand new rifles …
Bolonik and Skri couldn't make the decision, so they could only send another eagle message to Claude to return to Lanu for further discussion.
The nikancha are up to something again. Eiblont, who had followed Claude all the way back, had been cursing the nikancha non-stop. Ever since he saw the messenger from HQ, he was furious. He wouldn't allow the nikancha to hand over the new rifles that they weren't even fully equipped with to the army for the sake of territory.
After returning to the war zone command center, Claude found that Bolonik wanted to agree to the nikancha's condition. Bicklin didn't say anything and Skri didn't say anything.
General Bolonik believed that giving the new rifles to the nikancha in exchange for this large piece of land would give the theatre another colony. It was a good deal.
As Claude had said before, the rifles weren't that important. What was important was the supply of bullets. Even if each rifle was equipped with a hundred bullets, the nikancha would have to buy more from the theatre after they ran out of bullets. That way, the theatre would be able to use bullets to control the nikancha and sell them at a high price to reap huge profits from them.
Perhaps General Bolonik used this reason to convince General Skri in exchange for General Skri's attitude of not supporting or opposing it.
At the same time, the deal meant that he would be rewarded for expanding the kingdom's territory. Even if the royal capital were to punish the five generals of the war zone in the future, he would be treated better because of that. No kingdom would mistreat a general who expanded their territory. Otherwise, they would be called a fatuous ruler and their names would be recorded in history.
However, Bolonik chose the wrong method. Claude coldly said, "I object!
Tell those nikancha envoys to scram back to where they came from. "
"You …" Bolonik was furious, but he kept his temper in check. He sighed and frowned before asking, "Claude, why do you object?"
Claude strode to the wall with the map of the nikancha nation and patted it. "You should understand why the nikancha handed over the northern and eastern mountains to us, right?"
General Birkin laughed and said, "Isn't it their special envoy who came to complain that we didn't treat their armed young men as our own, and that we lost nearly 60,000 of the 100,000 armed young men of the nikancha who were handed over to us in the battle?
That number of casualties is enough to scare the nikancha elders and chiefs out of their wits. We've only wiped out three Shiksan corps. They still have seven standing corps and 400,000 men left.
The nikancha envoys want us to give them an explanation for the sixty thousand casualties. They believe that continuing to fight the Shiksans will only bring disaster to their nikancha nation.
Based on that ratio, they'll have to pay at least two hundred thousand casualties to defeat the seven Shiksan corps. That's a price they can't afford to pay.
That's why they want to hand over the two mountainous regions to us so that we can stop the next Shiksan attack for them.
Our soldiers will be bleeding at the frontlines while the nikancha live a comfortable life at the back.
However, they can't bear to part with the two territories they gave us for free, so they came up with the idea of us exchanging our new rifles with them. "
Eiblont snorted. "Wishful thinking. They want us to guard their gates and fight the Shiksans to the death, and they want us to give them the new rifles.
Do we have to apologize to them and compensate for the casualties of the nearly 60,000 armed nikancha men?
Don't the nikancha have any self-awareness?
They disobeyed orders and disobeyed orders, causing us so much trouble. "
"That's not all. They also want us to take responsibility for the two thousand nikancha deserters who were punished for killing one out of ten. They want me, the commander of the defence line, to be punished," Birkin said in a strange tone. It seemed like he was very dissatisfied.
Bolonik smiled bitterly. "Piccolo, I've already rejected the nikancha envoys' request. I've also explained to them that it's a necessary punishment. Otherwise, the second defence line won't be able to hold."
"Explain? Why do you need to explain to these nikancha?" Claude yelled impatiently. "What's there to explain?
What right do these nikancha people have to ask us to give them an explanation?
We're the ones who should be asking for an explanation!
Aaron, tell the nikancha that we don't want their territory nor do we want to negotiate with them.
Also, tell them that the last three Shiksan corps will arrive at Cape Loducus in a month or so. Their next attack will likely be at the end of May or the beginning of June.
Tell the nikancha to eat well and have fun, because they only have two to three months left before they die.
Due to the unreliability of their nikancha youths in the previous battle and the trouble they brought to our troops, our theatre has decided to stop working with them to prevent them from affecting the safety of our colonies.
That's why we're only going to defend the northern mountains. We won't leave a single soldier in the eastern mountains.
In other words, we'll give up on the eastern defensive line. "
Claude wasn't going to accept the nikancha's request to hand over their territory. Instead, he was going to give up on the entire eastern mountains.
If the Shiksans found out that the eastern front was empty, they would definitely march in. By then, the nikancha who had retreated to Shiksan territory would be in big trouble.
"Alright, I'll go talk to the nikancha and tell them to scram as soon as possible," said Eiblont with a smile and prepared to leave the meeting room.
However, he was stopped by Bolonik. "Claude, don't cause trouble. You have to understand that the nikancha gave these two territories to us willingly. We didn't take them from them by force. It's like we have one more colony in the war theatre.
And they're only asking for 3,000 new rifles. I think it's a good deal. "
Claude shook his head. "I won't give them a single rifle. Also, they're only handing over the northern and eastern mountains to us. They don't have any sincerity at all.
Look at the map. Those two territories are only connected at two corners. There's only one small gold mine and two small silver mines. It's not worth it for us to trade our precious warriors' lives for those two small territories. "
"If you want to expand the kingdom's territory, you can wait until the Shiksans take over the nikancha territory before attacking. We're at war with the Shiksans anyway, so it's only reasonable for us to take over their territory.
As for the nikancha, refusing to work with them means we're no longer allies. Do you think they'll take back their territory after the war? "