Dragon Princess Will Do Her Best To Prevent The World's Destruction

Chapter 62: Struggle

"'Happy is the city which in time of peace thinks of war'. Have you heard of that saying?"

A frank reply came in response to the odd question, "No, I haven't. However, I don't see how that saying helps our situation, admiral."

"Well, think of it like this. Do you consider this nation of ours happy?"

The second mate paused, before replying indifferently, "To answer that would be completely outside of my pay grade, admiral."

"Then look at it inversely. Our enemies today are prepared for this conflict. To have such a foresight would mean outsmarting even His Highness. Or, perhaps more terrifyingly, the country has such stability to care about a war that may or may not happen."

"You're overthinking things."

Yes, indeed, perhaps I was. However, one could say overthinking was my job. The admiral, after all, was unlike the other ranks in the military of the Empire. Even admirals could not avoid serving on board a ship along with other sailors. On the front line in the middle of a desolate sea, ranks no longer mattered. If the ship sank, nobody was getting out.

Hence, it was my responsibility to consider even the most appalling possibilities. However, it wasn't so much so conspiracy talk in this situation. How was Eden able to muster forces to immediately face us in combat? Shouldn't they consolidate their border patrol and pull back, in order to muster a defense of the capital? If they chose to give us such a brazen declaration of "an hour, and your lives will be forfeit", then they had an army somewhere.

Still, which country in this world could possible maintain a proper standing army that could match the scale of that the Empire's? Either Eden expected this invasion to arrive, or they had a professional army to begin with. Even so, with the handful of territories that they held, it should be impossible to levy enough troops to supplement a standing army.

Then again, that wasn't my concern. If anything, the brilliant mind leading the vanguard of the invasion force must have likely realized the truth by now. Although he appeared as a harmless man in his middle ages, but he was still the renown strategist of the Hero's party. Not that sham of heroism, but rather, the outsider who truly did save humanity. The one who, in our folly, was...No, never mind. It was best to not recollect about those times.

My primary jurisdiction was simply ensuring the Empire ruled the waves. Or if that failed, at least deny the seas to any power. I wasn't quite sure if it was an easy task this time, since Eden's naval capacity still remained largely unknown. Currently, we've only discovered a single ship that was, without a doubt, a vessel that belonged to Eden's fleet.

Granted, it was a hull type unlike anything this continent has ever seen before. Its size was absurd, to the point where a new classification was considered to be given just to accommodate the sheer hulking mass of the steel plated beast that was docked in Orphelius Bay. However, since nobody had seen it in combat before, we refrained from jumping to an overzealous conclusion. Mass and size didn't matter one bit in naval warfare. What mattered was the efficiency of the ship itself. Dimensions could contribute to that measurement, or not at all.

Even if the warship was unconquerable by any other ship in existence, Eden surely wouldn't head to war with simply just a single trump card, would they? We could simply use a few ships as decoy, while the main force sail past and land at Orphelius with troops. From there, it was simply a matter of time before the Kingdom fell. Eden, after all, was not our main objective of this operation. At least, that was what His Highness claimed. As for his actual plans, I knew naught.

All of my reasoning brought me to the inevitable conclusion of "Eden had a plan". But what? Was it something that we should be worried about? What of the unknown factor we were told to watch out for, the two individuals from Eden who displayed despairingly overwhelming power? Were there more uncertain individuals than those two the Shadows had listed?