"…."

Caesar did not blink.

He simply continued watching as the Special Forces tore through the battlefield—moving with frightening coordination, as if every motion was part of a rehearsed symphony of slaughter. Formations broke like brittle glass before them. Shields, armor, and bodies were crushed beneath strikes executed with ruthless precision.

The screams below echoed through the smoke-filled air.

The ground trembled, and the air smelled like ash and death.

And still—Caesar stood motionless.

The bodies piled up fast—far too fast for any army of ordinary men.

Every swing, thrust, or blast from one of the four thousand elites resulted in at least one kill… often two, sometimes entire clusters of soldiers collapsing in a single synchronized wave of death.

To any observer, this would look like victory.

A spectacle of overwhelming dominance.

But Caesar's expression didn't reflect triumph.

There was no pride.

No relief.

Only irritation tightening across his jaw… slowly hardening into anger.

"…So."

A voice broke the silence behind him.

"Did you receive my message now?"

Peon's tone was calm—almost conversational—but dripping with the unmistakable sharpness of someone who knew he was right long before the consequences arrived.

He walked forward leisurely, arms folded across his chest, as if the world beneath him wasn't collapsing into chaos.

"I'm not in the mood for this right now, Peon."

Caesar's voice was low—dangerously low. His fists clenched so hard the bones creaked.

"If you're here to gloat—wait until later."

Peon didn't even look at him. "I'll say it anyway."

He stopped beside Caesar, posture relaxed, gaze fixed on the carnage below.

"I warned you."

Silence.

Caesar's jaw tightened.

Because the worst part was— Peon wasn't wrong.

He had warned Caesar repeatedly: that deploying forces across wide operational fronts was no longer effective… that the Rotational Retreat Doctrine —once the backbone of their expansion— had already been studied, countered, and rendered obsolete.

That no matter how many soldiers they recruited or how much firepower they added, the tactic was already dead.

But Caesar had refused to accept it.

He believed the only flaw was inadequate aerial dominance.

So—he acted.

He ordered Theo to acquire retired fleets. Dozens.

He reorganized the Note Fleets, elevating the Note of Destruction to a mothership of symbolic and strategic weight—surrounding it with newly-integrated craft formations like a moving fortress.

The result was staggering:

The Empire of the Cradle nearly doubled its operational war fleets.

He expanded the army too—pulling in massive numbers from conquered worlds during the early decades of his campaign.

The military budget strained. Supplies stretched thin. Logistics buckled.

But on paper—it worked.

More troops.

More fleets.

More sky coverage.

The Rotational Retreat Doctrine should have thrived.

But it didn't.

Instead, the failures became louder—more frequent—more brutal.

So Caesar looked elsewhere for a solution.

He requested emergency strategic arrays from Sky Opining City.

What he received sounded promising:

Stone-energy fortress arrays.

Wind cyclone repulsion arrays.

A layered defensive system meant to buy time—precious minutes—during battlefield rotation.

Today was their first frontline execution.

And they lasted mere seconds.

Not minutes.

Seconds.

"What is this supposed to tell us?"

Caesar's voice finally broke—quiet but edged like a drawn blade.

He pointed downward—not at the battlefield, but at the pattern.

"This isn't about numbers anymore. Or air superiority. Or the speed of our rotations."

His eyes narrowed—burning with the rage of someone watching years of dominance dissolve into inevitability.

"This is a flaw in the foundation of our war doctrine. We've been completely exposed."

The Army of the Cradle Empire had once been called a miracle—an unstoppable force reshaping the balance of power across the Mid Sector 100.

But no miracle remained miraculous once its rules were understood.

Every maneuver.

Every trigger.

Every timing.

Every adaptive response.

All of it had been studied—documented—taught.

Soon, even innovations—fresh ideas—became predictable, because the structure behind them never changed.

And once the enemy understood the pattern, the rest became simple.

One rule defined the flaw:

After two to four hours of continuous battle, the Cradle Army must retreat.

It had never changed.

Not once.

So now—the Coalition of Planetary Emperors and the Stellar Field Alliance needed only one unified strategy:

Relentless pressure. Prevent the retreat. Break the cycle.

It took them a century to solve the puzzle.

Then another to refine the solution.

Eventually—there were counters to every counter.

And five years ago—the final blow landed.

During a moment of distraction—while the Empire waged war elsewhere—its enemies distributed everything:

Tactical breakdowns.

Battle recordings.

Psychological assessments.

Training patterns.

Doctrine weaknesses.

Full structural analysis.

Across every academy, every battalion, every war council—knowledge of how to fight the Cradle Army became public.

And now—every battle was no longer a confrontation.

It was a trial of survival.

Planning had become a trap.

Adaptation had become predictable.

Strategy had become a liability.

"Well… on the bright side—"

Peon tilted his head slightly, lips curling in a lazy smile,

"—we still have the Special Forces."

Caesar slowly turned his head.

The stare he gave wasn't merely annoyance.

It was the look of a man holding himself back from violence.

Peon met the stare without flinching—because he knew exactly what he was doing.

And Caesar knew it too.

Peon wasn't just stating facts.

He was enjoying this.

Mocking him.

The Special Forces were unstoppable—a force of nature wrapped in armor—but even they carried flaws sharp enough to bleed an empire.

Their first flaw was the most fundamental:

They were irreplaceable.

Finding new recruits wasn't merely difficult—

it was close to impossible.

Dual-affinity individuals were already immensely rare:

Metal and Plants.

Wind and Poison.

Fire and gas.

Water and Lightning.

Combinations so temperamental that most carriers died young, overwhelmed by conflict between their own cores.

But rarer still were the exceptions—the monsters—those who could study, refine, and wield a merged law, capable of aligning with either element without losing stability.

Such people weren't soldiers.

They were natural disasters wearing human skin.

Caesar could summon a hundred million soldiers without blinking, but despite decades of recruitment, refinement, and screening, the total number of elite dual-law soldiers across the empire had never surpassed sixty thousand, scattered across strategic hotspots like jewels buried under pressure.

Then came the second flaw—

the flaw that made Caesar's jaw clench every time he watched them fight:

Their power was borrowed.

Their affinity-enhancement elixirs were precision-based, fragile, and dangerously unstable— a miracle that lasted only moments.

Sky Opining City—despite its towering reputation—had failed to produce a mass-stable version.

Dual-law stabilizers were so volatile that most formulas bordered on alchemical explosives rather than medicine.

As a result:

Most Special Forces operatives would burn through their enhancement in under fifteen minutes—and not gracefully.

At the fourteen-minute mark, power began to fracture.

At fifteen, their organs strained.

At sixteen, combat effectiveness collapsed.

Only the most monstrous prodigies—the ones with minds sharp enough to calculate thousands of micro-adjustments per heartbeat—could maintain stability past that window.

But even they were eventually forced to retreat to shield the rest.

Meaning:

That breathtaking display of overwhelming dominance—

that godlike blitz that tore through formations like wildfire—

was a timed illusion.

Temporary.

Measured.

Finite.

And when the power finally drained?

The real nightmare began.

The main army—fresh from being rotated off the front—would still be wounded, exhausted, and disorganized. Reforming ranks required healing time, mana recalibration, and positional reorientation.

Every extra second the Special Forces fought to buy breathing room meant another dead elite.

Another irreplaceable weapon gone.

And Caesar's philosophy had never changed:

One elite was worth a thousand ordinary soldiers.

Sacrifice was not an option—not anymore.

"…I've seen enough." Caesar finally exhaled, voice low but heavy enough to silence even the battlefield wind. "Fine, Peon. You win. Halt all expansion operations. We hold the borders. Temporarily."

"Temporarily?"

Peon turned, eyebrow lifting with exaggerated disbelief.

"I don't KNOW, Peon!" Caesar snapped—voice sharp enough to cut steel. "I'll contact Sky Opening City—maybe they'll develop stronger arrays or longer-lasting elixirs —or gods damn it— anything at all!"

His expression hardened as he ran a hand through his hair.

"And I'll speak with Theo. Maybe he can acquire something useful for once."

"We could deploy the planetary-class armaments Father left us," Peon suggested carefully.

There was no mockery in his tone this time—only quiet resignation.

"Not yet."

Caesar's refusal was immediate.

"We only have thirty planetary weapons. They must remain hidden until the moment the circumstances forces our hand." His gaze sharpened—molten fury behind his eyes. "They are our final secret—our last unburnt card."

Then his expression twisted, frustration becoming anger.

"And tell me—what are the Shadow Swords doing? Instead of acquiring more planetary weaponry, they're off playing covert games in Mid-Sector 101?!"

"…"

Peon nodded slowly, expression unreadable.

"I trust Theo blindly. And I trust the Shadow Swords even when I don't understand them."

He sighed. "But even I don't know what they're doing out there. And now every new Note fleet is being redirected to Sector 101."

His voice dropped to a whisper—so soft only Caesar could hear:

"…I just hope he isn't making a mistake we can't afford."

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