After the city's remaining hundred-or-so forces gave up without a fight, Kajio found himself in no mood to celebrate.

Kajio threw up into the toilet again, grimly gulping down half a can of sports drink to make up for it. He was one of the Flying Dragon's commanders, he couldn't afford to fall sick or act terrified in front of their guys.

Kajio had personally interviewed every single one of the members that had come along, and he'd brought them through orientation and then the preparations for the Expedition. That was why he knew that a good number of them were unsettled, but most of them were relatively unmoved.

Those who were fine with the carnage they'd seen were all shamans.

'I guess it's true that shamans are raised to be a little crazy,' Kajio thought grimly. The shamans from the other factions had been completely fine for the most part as well.

From what he knew, most of them had never engaged in battle before. Challenges, certainly, but not battles. Those who had battle experience were all higher-ranking commanders. But their attitudes didn't reflect that of a new soldier, but rather someone who had been trained to be desensitized to bloodshed.

Most of the shamans were younger than thirty. A chill went down Kajio's back as he thought about the implications.

Taeyun and Jia Xu had a huge influence on how shamans were trained throughout the country, using their network to control what shamans learned and how they learned it. And both of them had the ambition of reunification since the very start.

'Have they been indoctrinating shamans for the last ten years?'

It was terrifying to even think about.

It wouldn't work too well, obviously. There were too many factors that would chip at their mindset, Kajio's father had seen it happen among both the army and the revolutionaries in Persia, and his mother had seen it happen in Japan as well. Kajio himself had seen it in the refugees that straggled in after a civil war ended somewhere, soldiers with nowhere left to turn but a foreign shore.

Soon enough, the line between soldier and civilian would blur as desperate defenses were mounted in villages, towns, and cities. Shamans would start getting hurt, would probably start to run into other shamans with shoddy training and fearful eyes. Somewhere along the line, there would be a soldier too young, a comrade too broken, and the illusion would fall apart like a shitty construction job.

But by then, the shamans would be in too far to back out again.

Kajio let out another sigh, turning to the sink to wash his face before gulping down the rest of his sports drink. He looked in the mirror, mind slowly calming to a dull hum as he straightened his clothes and gave his reflection a professional smile.

Kajio walked down the hallway of the city hall they'd occupied. A soldier in Flying Dragon robes ran up to him, looking to be a little bit out of breath.

"Operational Director, the Chairman was looking for you," the soldier said breathlessly. "She's calling a meeting in the third floor's conference room."

Kajio nodded. "Got it, I'll head over then," he patted the soldier's arm with a smile. "Good work."

He walked down a flight of stairs and headed for the conference room. Kajio was worried about Selva and Joyce after what they'd seen today. Were the two of them even up to continuing the Expedition? If Selva wanted to back out, it would be a PR nightmare but one of manageable proportions, but if Joyce wanted to back out they'd be in deep shit.

He murmured his thanks as Kiyoko opened the door to let him in.

"Yo, Kajio, you good?" Joyce greeted him cheerfully as he entered. Kajio briefly considered tossing his previous hypothesis in favor of 'all shamans are just born crazy' despite the rush of relief he felt at Joyce's unbothered attitude.

Kiyoko closed the door behind him.

"Fine," Kajio smiled at Joyce, taking in the tired faces around the room. Mohan looked unbothered, Spade was scowling, Selva looked like he'd puked and then sloppily tidied himself, and Joyce was smiling.

For some reason that set off alarm bells in his head. He unsuccessfully tried to exchange glances with Spade for some kind of explanation, the swordsman aptly dodging Kajio's gaze by staring steadfastly at the ceiling.

"So what's this about?" Kajio asked lightly. Joyce clasped her fingers together and leaned forward in her seat to look at them with a suddenly serious face.

"So, guys, that was some fucked up shit today, and I needed to drag y'all here to vent," Joyce began. Spade slowly let out an exasperated sigh.

"Just kidding, guys, no one wants to hear that, this isn't Dr. Phil," Joyce said. "Anyway, so what were your thoughts after what we saw today? Who wants to go first?"

She paused for less than two seconds. "Fine then. Selva, you go first, tell us your intelligent thoughts, Intelligence Director," Joyce said, pointing finger guns at him.

Selva groaned but quickly formed a response. "Our shamans are going to be way less ok in battle," Selva said, "From what I've gathered so far, Feng Xia's First Brigade is above average, but the average for the Shaman Council is still above what we have. Like, we've got a total cheat with Mohan here, that's why ours are even workable," Selva smiled respectfully at Mohan who nodded back.

"And our non-shamans are alright thanks to Spade, and also we recruited a lot of questionable people so we're not too bad off. Honestly, if things broke into melee combat and guerilla warfare shit, our guys would probably take home the prize. But not as a unit or anything. Just as crazy-strong individuals. Like Spade's driver, I thought that girl was a gymnast but she can work a tank like she was born in Russia."

"Not all Russians can drive tanks," Spade said, sounding a little annoyed. Selva flashed an apologetic smile in his direction and continued.

"But overall, our shamans are at a lower level than the others, whether in strength, coordination, or numbers. Even with the guys we left in Canton, we won't be doing well. And we're taking some of the easy battles now, but once we start fighting the scary people we're going to be in deep trouble," Selva finished.

Eventually, all of the Flying Dragon's shamans would enter combat outside of Canton. Joyce had surprisingly prepared it so that they wouldn't need to hold on to their base there, through a series of headache-inducing plans that each only had one-step. But even so, they would still be in a lot of trouble.

Joyce nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, yikes. Teacher, your thoughts?"

"That's completely fine, our ranks will grow as the war drags on," Mohan said in a confident manner. "Once their ideology starts crumbling, I expect defectors to turn to the only faction that doesn't want their heads."

Kajio raised his eyebrows. It seemed that his hypothesis wasn't wrong after all.

"In addition," Mohan paused to look at Joyce meaningfully. "I don't mean to sound boastful, but I am worth a thousand shamans."

It did sound pretty boastful, but it was more-or-less true from what Kajio knew of Mohan's powers. The shaman was contracted to the Vermillion Bird; even if Mohan had said two thousand it would've been pretty modest if you looked at it objectively.

"Not to mention that Joyce is powerful enough to bend regions to her will, even alone. Since Spade is now proven to be capable of channeling energy in the same way that you do, we can double that, or at least count your abilities at 1.5 times the original," Mohan added, nodding in satisfaction.

"Awesome, great," Joyce said, raising her eyebrows in a way that suggested she did not find the information awesome or great. "Kajio, you're up."

Kajio looked at her with a start. He'd almost forgotten that he also had to talk, and was startled into saying the words that popped into his mind.

"We're going to have one hell of a problem when their mindsets start crumbling," Kajio said. "It's not a pretty picture when you have a bunch of superpowered soldiers having mental meltdowns."

"You think it'll happen all at once?" Joyce sounded a little surprised.

"I certainly hope not, but I suspect that given the strong bonds between many of the shamans, one breakdown's going to trigger several more," Kajio said bluntly. "We have a lot to watch out for."

"How many years do you think the Northern Expedition will take?" Joyce asked, switching gears so quickly she resembled a race car in a drifting race.

"Several," Kajio said in bewilderment. "At least."

"How long before we take everything up to Nanjing then?" Joyce asked.

Kajio did a brief run-through in his mind. "Anywhere from half a year to three years," he said seriously. "Unless they want to seriously go down the extermination route."

"We," Joyce corrected. "So how long before the breakdowns start?"

"At least several months," Spade cut in. "For that level of indoctrination, that long at the very least. Some of the newer recruits will snap sooner, but they likely won't cause much of a ripple."

Joyce seemed to be mulling something over in her head.

"Alright, keep going, Kajio."

Kajio sighed. "What the hell is the country going to look like by then?" he asked wearily. "There will be a group of highly lethal and traumatized shamans running this show. It's going to be terrible."

Joyce and Mohan nodded at the same time.

"Alright, Spade," Joyce reached over to elbow the swordsman. He shot her a baleful glare.

"This isn't a good excuse to not take your ginseng supplements," he began, ignoring her reflexive whining. Spade sighed and got onto the topic at hand.

"This will be brutal as fuck, no way around that. We have to take the higher road, but that means we can only take the higher road, and I think we all know how annoying it is to purposefully ignore shortcuts." He looked around at the nods of agreement.

Spade seemed to be trying to ignore that Joyce was nodding the most enthusiastically.

"So I think we will be using Joyce's plans a lot," Spade said. "It's not a shortcut, it's taking off with a bomber plane. But we won't avoid a huge amount of casualties either way."

Spade glanced at Joyce with a concerned look, trailing off as his worried-parent aura intensified.

Joyce didn't seem all that bothered. "There are huge casualties all the time. The warlords are always fighting," she said calmly.

"I know you guys might be worried because I've never killed anyone before, but you shouldn't worry that much, I might be a mess but I get that we gotta do what we gotta do."

She grinned at their looks of disbelief.

"Honestly, guys, my country was such a militarized clusterfuck that my pancakes paid for shooting random people, okay? It's not like I have no blood on my hands. And that's already discounting the stabbing party I've got with my dude here," Joyce patted Spade's arm in a fond action.

"I'm not going to play the saint," Joyce said. The air in the room seemed to grow heavier as Joyce's aura intensified. Kajio watched her intently, sensing that she was about to say something important.

"I've decided something," Joyce said. She looked around with a serious expression, sounding off alarm bells in Kajio's head.

"I want to take Nanjing within six months. And I want to speed up the shamans' meltdowns to happen before then." She smiled angelically. "Let's work hard, everyone."

The sound of Spade slapping a hand into his face was drowned out by the others' groans. Kajio dropped his head to the table with a sigh, ignoring the echoing thump as he stared down the dark brown wood grain.

Just why had he signed up for this again?