In the royal palace, people were disputing whether to surrender or fight to the death against the rebel army. Already half the nobles had escaped with all their riches to start life in a different land, and it seemed to be quite a popular choice.

However, this infuriated Orklarth, who became the Emperor fourteen years ago after he had his brother's whole family murdered, and as the second son, he was next in line. After ascending to the throne, he ruled with an iron fist.

He immediately raised the tax, which led to corruption amongst the noble ranks. He gave away important titles for money, such as the General of his army, to someone who paid 100,000 gold coins, and now he was nowhere to be seen.

He spent his days drinking, hiring high-class prostitutes, and all the most beautiful noble daughters, no matter their age, had to serve him in his chambers at night at least once. He could get anything he wanted now that he had the title of Emperor.

However, everything was falling apart for him. Soldiers were leaving their duties and joining the rebels' side; dragons had appeared and decimated his army twice.

All that he had left was an army of two thousand troops and forced conscripted civilians no matter their age or gender. Against an army of a hundred thousand rebel fighters, it would be seconds before the capital fell, and he would be executed for his atrocious crimes.

That's why he had the two thousand soldiers and forced conscripts to defend whilst he made his escape. He took all the gold jewels and loaded them onto a carriage, along with six of his twenty unofficial wives.

He didn't have an Empress because that would require him to impregnate her and have heirs, but Orklarth was infertile. No matter how many women he tries it with, none of them could get pregnant. Of course, he blames it all on the women, and since none of them wants to die, they accept it as their fault.

They escaped through the secret tunnels a day before the rebels arrived and into the darkness in the dead of night. However, they did not know that someone had been waiting for them this whole time.

⯁ ⯁ ⯁

I was staring in the bathroom mirror in my giant mansion, where I lived alone. Since we expanded by taking down some trees, I had more houses built in their own dedicated area, called the living district.

Now each family had their own houses whilst the children who had no parents lived together in a mansion and were looked after by a volunteering single mother who stayed there with her own son.

All the trees cut down were used to reconstruct places that suffered damage from the apocalypse. The wood apparently was top quality, so all the extras were being sold to purchase other materials.

Sometimes I find that living in a giant mansion by myself is a waste, though I might have a guest who visits me during the night; that's another story. But Ayumi keeps saying that it was necessary to show off my power, but to whom I had no idea.

I sighed to myself as I ruffled through my black hair and then made all sorts of different expressions, some serious and some stupid. I wonder if influential people in my old world ever do such things.

The thought kept running through my head, and I still couldn't believe it. In a few more days, I was going to create my own nation, and I would be its king.

Our current territory was relatively small compared to the other country, and Christina, our newest ally, was cut off from us due to the small amount of land between us. So more troops were going to be sent there just in case.

I took off my shirt and looked at my body. I was considerable tall at the height of 1.80m, and I was slightly underweight according to the medical unit.

I think my age is roughly twenty, but I wasn't sure. In this world, and in my old world, I would seem like someone young and inexperienced in leading a country. But once the civilians know that all these new improvements and support were from me and my small army, they might welcome us with open arms.

When I brought up this same topic, Ayumi and the units mentioned something scary that I had to force myself to forget. I think they wanted to massacre people until they acknowledged me, but who knows, I forgot, okay!

Moving on from the forbidden topic, I needed to name myself. Ever since I came to this world, I'm only known as Supreme Commander, which gives me a dictator feel, which isn't technically wrong.

Ayumi would come up with some absurd names, so asking her was a no. I was left to think of my own name whilst contemplating this new life. Not just that, I also needed to think of a name for my new country.

Whilst I was deep in thought, I didn't notice that someone had entered the bathroom.

"Jeez, have you fallen for yourself now?" she says, which made me chuckle whilst I embraced her.

⯁ ⯁ ⯁

After having breakfast, I parted from my mansion and headed to my office, where Ayumi had a cup of tea and tons of reports for me.

"Good morning Supreme Commander. Here are some reports and documents for you to review and sign."

"Is there anything that needs my immediate attention?" I asked as I sat down.

"Yes, I have placed them at the top in order of priority."

"Perfect," I said as I took a sip of tea whilst reading the first report, which was the status of the war.

It seems that we've managed to place an espionage unit within the servents working within the palace. It gave us a direct pipeline of new intel.

Apparently, the remaining nobles were turning against each other on whether they should surrender or fight. Those loyal wished to fight to the death, while the rest knew they would all die if they stayed.

The Emperor himself was already planning to escape with all his treasure and six of his twenty unofficial wives.

"Ayumi, what do you think our best course of action should be in this case."

"The Emperor can not be allowed to get away, but since we have already announced that we have stopped helping them, we can not directly do anything.

We can, however, send in a unit to intercept them, but that would mean we have to keep his capture a secret. The people who suffered under his rule would want to see him pay for his crime, and us holding him could be a ticking time bomb.

Our best options include slipping the information to the rebel spies, but it will be difficult as their spy network is small. Or we can simply give the information to Christina, who can give it to the rebels since she technically is still working with them. The only problem is that we can not trust Christina just yet.

However, my final solution has the highest chance of success. We'll have the spy unit who has already snuck in to slip the word of the Emperor's escape to the nobles, specifically the opportunistic ones. If they are smart, they will use this opportunity to get on the good side of the rebels by handing over either the information or the Emporer himself."

"That's a good plan, especially if you think it has the highest chance of success, so we will proceed with that. Messengers are not that fast at this time, so it is almost certain that the Emporer will be met with force."

"Understood." saluted Ayumi as she left the room to pass on the order.

I placed the first sheet of paper on the completed pile, turned to the rest, and sighted. It was going to be a long morning.