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Someone had to make the first move in diplomacy. This wasn’t in question. The Ertalonese had sent a delegation over, naturally for the purpose of peace talks. In that sense, they had already lost the advantage.

There was no diplomacy to be had for weaker nations, this was especially true now that Ertalon was significantly weaker compared to Andassis. As the delegates of such a country, they had better be prepared for a frosty reception, at best.

Honestly, I had already expected such a move from Ertalon. After all, if they were to remain silent after all that had transpired, Andassis was very likely to just invade.

Other than suing for peace, another aim of this delegate team was probably to settle the question of those defeated soldiers stuck in the north. The amount of these insects worming their way around the north was likely over 100000. Camping out in the wilderness somewhere, starving, killing, robbing, pillaging…

Regardless of whatever activities they were indulging in, they were difficult to pin down. Why else were there so many nobles taking advantage of this situation by falsifying their reports? Because it was risky to catch these defeated soldiers, of course!

As for why these soldiers weren’t trying to return in the first place… because the closest land to Ertalon was Kesek… my territory…

I had the utmost confidence that my magitek knights would be able to patrol the lands easily. And I highly doubt those soldiers had any form of stealth.

Furthermore, according to the testimony of some recently captured soldiers, I was now a three meter tall, green-skinned, fanged monster that loved eating humans.

I doubt there were many sane people who would think of traversing the lands of a monster, were there?

These defeated soldiers were a blight to Andassis, but to Ertalon, they were soldiers that must be retrieved. After all, the commanders of their army were included in those 100,000, and these were usually nobles – very rarely commoners of skill.

There were a multitude of factors at play here, but the end result was that these soldiers had to be retrieved, or ransomed back.

Thus, the Ertalonese sent a delegate team over, even if they knew that these delegates were basically sheep to tiger’s den.

Diplomats aside, preparations in Andassis were progressing at a blistering pace. Andassis the Seventh would constantly funnel huge shipments of supplies to us. Amori was the one managing these goods, within the land which I had specifically set aside for research and production of the second-generation magitek knight armors.

These second-generation knight armors not only boasted a greater psychic resistance, they came equipped with four newly-developed floaters.

These floaters were roughly 35 cm in length, black, and tapered to a sharp point on both ends. They would be installed into the thighs of each armor, hidden within their own compartments. Unless someone knew of these floaters prior, these were the perfect surprise weapon.

The pilot within could control these floaters to perform high-speed revolutions, akin to a drill attack.

Rather than the floating cannons in Gaia, these were more like floating drills.

The effective range of control for these contraptions was 500m, anything above that and there might be signal issues.

Naturally, these were modeled after my Heavensbreak system, though, the lack of materials meant that they were destined to be inferior replicas.

Also, Heavensbreak was more of a slicing weapon.

Furthermore, Heavensbreak was capable of a wider range of offensive attacks, along with defensive maneuvers; the replicas were only capable of simple piercing attacks.

With their limited numbers, weaker opponents were still manageable, but against tougher enemies, these were more of a harassment tool.

These weapons were also prodigiously hard to control. Multi-tasking was required to a high degree, meaning most pilots would probably be unable to utilize this system.

In the second month of the delegates’ visit, I bore witness with my own eyes the exceptional abilities of Otto the grand merchant. He was, without a doubt, a most capable subordinate, the kind I could delegate difficult tasks to.

Now… the only question was whether he would abuse the broad authority I gave to him…

Fortunately, my little fib meant that Ansom did not trust Otto fully. Thus, any likelihood of the man harming my interests were low. After all, my young adjutant would often pay visits to Otto, the unfriendly kind. Even the other kids in the corp were cold towards the merchant…

Thankfully, their antics were limited to just minor inconveniences like surveillance. Otto’s stellar performance earned the begrudging admiration of Ansom and the other kids, thus they kept a respectful distance. And with Otto’s intelligence, he could easily handle Ansom’s antics anyway.

When put beside each other, Otto was the mature, trustworthy subordinate. Ansom was more like the kid brother who didn’t know better.

Too bad for Ansom, Otto wasn’t going anywhere – he was just that good.

He managed to perfectfully handle the case of those fourteen corrupt fools, reaping huge benefits for me in the process. Not only were coins gathered, he managed to crack open the vaults of several noble houses, procuring high level magical tools for me, priceless paintings, and various magical materials. In total, he probably earned me a million gold coins worth of goods.

All in all, he managed to teach the nobles of this land a painful lesson, without ever drawing hatred to me. In fact, some of them became noticeably amenable to me, given that they hated Otto a lot more…

Other than that, he did even greater work in suppressing the immoral activities of the merchants. All thanks to his wealth of knowledge in the field. He was, at the end of the day, a merchant first, and noble second.

One by one, he used the authority given to him to swallow up those misbehaving merchant guilds. As promised, he handed all the proceeds to me, along with 100,000 slaves. While I myself did not fancy these slaves, being a modern earthling, letting them just go free wasn’t going to work either. Such a thoughtless move might trigger a series of unintended consequences.