Shen was pleased when he got two new messages a few minutes later.

| Marzia Martino (D): Fine. But we really need to talk.

| World Government (B): Czarina Martino has declared martial law. The Czarina and key government figures will go to Samir-33. All E-ranks and below will accompany them. Shen, our Human Rising Star, Minister of Defense, and General of the Army, has reached C-rank and will command and train the remaining D-ranks in La'sing-2. Acting Minister of Defense Williams, Head Inspector Winter, and Special Forces Commander Mallik will act as aides and facilitators, serving directly under General of the Army Shen. In La'sing-2, the General of the Army's words will be absolute and carry the same weight as you Czarina's. Obey him in all matters.

Czarina, was it? Marzia had certainly gotten herself a cool title. Shen was glad that it wasn't "queen" because Samir-33 already had the Queen of Spring and Autumn, and high elves were a proud race. He didn't think the Queen would take well to a D-rank subordinate claiming to have the same title as her.

Not that Czarina was perfect, of course. Czars were emperors, not mere kings. But at least it wasn't the same title.

As for him being Earth's Minister of Defense and General of the Army, it seemed he and Marzia indeed needed to talk. It made political sense to name him such, of course. Yet the fact remained that he should've been asked about it first.

Then again, he was part of the human race, wasn't he? The World Government had been established and was internally considered a B-tier force despite only having Marzia, a D-rank. Until Shen reached B-rank himself, he was beholden to it according to Alliance law. Whether his government decided he was a general or a clown, he could only obey.

Unless, of course, he was willing to kill Marzia and have her replaced, but he wasn't—yet.

He was glad that Head Inspector Winter and Special Forces Commander Mallik would be there with him. So, Alicia and Sai had reached D-rank. That was great.

Acting Minister of Defense Williams might be Mark Williams. It had been a very long while since Shen last saw or even thought of the guy. He was a bit curious about what had happened to him after he healed himself.

The issue was that if it was him, Marzia had clearly not cared about people's low age when she created her government. That might have been a mistake. While a higher rank meant a broader mind and let one buy the learning ability upgrade, there was no substitute for experience. Unless older people had at least become aides with voice in the government, he expected it to make many mistakes in the future.

Not that he blamed Marzia for any potential mistake. He had all but forgone Earth. It had been for Earth's safety, but he hadn't even tried to send a message to anyone. He had no right to point fingers. At most, he would give his opinion when they talked and try to help when needed.

Said conversation wouldn't take long to occur, either. Shen had a B-rank teleportation privilege. He could still teleport to Samir-33 and back. The only reason he didn't teleport to Earth now to talk to Marzia was that he was a Pioneer. If he set foot on Earth, it would become a C-tier planet. That had a few meanings, including making C-rank rifts likely to appear and lowering the restrictions for other races' C-ranks to get to the world.

The Cultivator Association hadn't made any moves on him yet, at least not that he knew about. However, their probable interest in the antidron was still a blade hanging over humankind's neck. Changing Earth to C-tier would be suicide before humankind allied itself with stronger forces.

Anyway, Marzia had let Shen go to La'sing-2. He had already wasted 2 of his 5 messages to talk to Marzia. Now, he sent another to Carl Jones.

"Tell Carl Jones that I'll go to La'sing-2."

| Message sent

The Immortal Emperor didn't reply. Shen didn't blame the man. This was a chaotic time, and the Grand Senator had more things to worry about.

Shen double-checked his equipment in his spatial ring. Everything looked good. Pushing them inside ended up with him having to remove some D-rank equipment. He had previously looted the ogres he killed on Earth but hadn't been able to sell them. They should come in handy on the front lines, especially with the new store limits. He stored them in his inventory.

Spatial rings were safer than Inventories, especially on the front lines, because the latter depended on the Guardian System. When the system was slowed down or absent, no item in the Inventory could be taken out. Shen should consider getting himself another spatial ring when he had the chance.

Using the inventory was simple enough. He only had to say what he was putting or removing from it. Alternatively, he could just think about it while not trying to hide his brain waves or soul ripples. The system would read his intentions and do what he wanted.

The Alliance rules against mind reading were actually against mind invasion. If someone didn't care to hide their thoughts from anyone merely looking at them—or didn't know how—that was their problem. That's how Liya had kept guessing his thoughts while training him.

Finally, he said, "I want to be deployed as a human."

| Deployment race set: Earthen Human

Shen guessed that this was it. He was ready. However, he still had over six Standard minutes remaining.

So, he sat down on the ground and meditated, centering himself the best he could, preparing his mind and heart for a conscription order that had no estimated end. He could be there for days or hundreds of years. It depended on when the S-ranks would finish the war.

He also prepared himself to lose. Shen sought omnipotence, but he was very, very far from it. Liya had said the Alliance would shrink, and she was right. B-ranks and higher were needed to protect against the Void, but some would be elsewhere. The math was simple enough. The Void would win.

It wouldn't be a single victory, either. B-ranks and higher would likely die in the Calamity, too. The Alliance would come out weaker and feel their absence in the future.

It wasn't lost on Shen that this was before a Purge was supposed to be coming, either. Theoretically, the Primordial Bridge was helping the Alliance sort its mess so the Purge didn't have to happen. But would it be enough? Or was the Alliance only weakening itself at the worst possible moment?

Shen thought of all that and calmed himself.

When a minute remained to the deployment, he got a new message.

| Luthdel Elafir (C): Heart Sage! I received permission to take you as my master! Where are you going? Let me help you! You won't regret it, I swear!

Shen didn't have to overthink it. Luthdel wasn't the most pleasant company, but he was a C-rank first-class talent. He would accept the high elf's help to lead and train humanity's D-ranks.

Luthdel had friends in high places to get the queen to Baptize Shen, then getting the high elves to use one of their three deployment opportunities to get Luthdel to stay with Shen. Then again, the high-elven queen would likely bring everyone to the place she was already at, Samir-33. Sacrificing a slot shouldn't have been that difficult.

Shen wondered what the high-elven queen was plotting by letting Luthdel come with him, but he would cross that bridge when it came to it.

He sent Luthdel a message saying he was going to La'sing-2 and went back to meditating. No one else interrupted him until the system teleported him away.

Shen stood in endless white for a few minutes, then materialized before a massive cubic metal building. Massive as in city-massive. It had countless doors on ground level and beside windows on higher stories.

Another similar structure could be seen on the horizon on both sides. There was no other geographical feature in sight, man-made or natural. The floor in every direction was made of C-tier sandstone blocks.

The skies were blue and filled with red clouds. The yellow sun was directly above Shen's head.

Shen wasn't alone. He had materialized high beside Luthdel and five other C-ranks. Luthdel wore white and golden plate armor from head to toe and wielded a similarly colored giant sword. Shen hadn't seen him clad like that, but the system's inspection automatically identified everyone on sight. It also gave him their military rank instead of their HP.

| Luthdel Elafir (C) — Corporal

All seven C-ranks stood in a row and were Corporals, including Shen—he could look up to see his name, rank, and Ractial Title. They were also all humanoids, as Liya had said. He was the only C-rank with a title of any kind among them.

He wasn't the only cultivator, though.

Shen was in the middle of the row. Three cultivators were to his left. The Guardians were to his right.

Unlike him, the three cultivators wore proper cultivator robes. Each was slightly different from the other, not to mention from what Shen had worn in the Eternal Empire, but they were unmistakable even if he couldn't feel the qi inside the three people.

This was the first time he felt and saw cultivators since ranking up, and it was a unique experience. He had noticed how every Guardian differed from him, and contrasting them to the cultivators only made the differences more pronounced. The cultivators were like Shen: their Idealized Path was reflected in how their bodies and souls were their Paths. Each cultivator's Path's Laws were intertwined with each other in unique ways, part of their intrinsic existence. Shen hadn't looked at an A-rank with his Law vision, but no B-rank Guardian or lower was like that.

None of them shared Laws with him, but one felt like he used something from the Laws of Wind, and another the Laws of Lightning. He could also tell at a glance that two had three Laws in their Paths while the third had five. Figuring out how many Laws a Guardian had wasn't as easy, but it wasn't much more challenging, either. A Guardian had mana, and their mana had greater amounts of their Path's Laws. With enough experience, Shen would likely be capable of telling exactly which Laws someone had and prepare for them.

The three cultivators had slightly red skin and blue hair, but everything else had human proportions. They looked in their mid to late twenties and were beautiful enough, a muscular man, a thin one, and a well-endowed woman. The inspection wasn't displaying their race, likely for a sense of unity in the front lines.

Just as he was looking at them, they were staring at him. They could also feel the qi in his body and probably see his Idealized Path. However, he was the only one with mana equipment, and they made sure to let him know what they thought of it by looking derisively at him from head to toe.

It seemed like they looked at his armor before looking at his Path. A moment later, the muscular male's eyes widened, the thin man looked positively scared, and the woman gave him a calculative look.

Their stare-off came to an ending when someone clapped. The perpetrator was a C-rank humanoid who stood between the row of C-ranks and the massive building.

He was short, a few inches above five feet, but among the most muscular beings Shen had ever seen. He looked like a well-built middle-aged goblin with two long curved horns pointing up, one of which was cut off in the middle, and spiky protrusions under the skin of his bald head. His ears were three times as big as a human's, and he wore three silver piercings on his long nose and seven golden ones on his left ear. He had seven fingers on each hand, with two opposing thumbs, one on each side.

| Zyn (C) — First Sergeant

| Rising Star

Zyn wore leather armor with inlaid metal pieces. Only his head was visible; every other inch of his skin was covered. Two scimitars rested on his back, and two hung from his waist.

To Shen's surprise, he was also a cultivator. He felt confused looking at Zyn's Idealized Path until he understood it had only one Law. That Law also had much more depth than what he could see in the cultivators beside him, and he took it to mean that either the man had mastered his Law or was very close.

"I am First Sergeant Zyn," he said. He didn't raise his voice, which sounded purposeful but calm. Shen immediately felt like not even the end of the world could upset the guy. "You are now my responsibility. You will refer to me as First Sergeant at all times. You must always add my name when there's another First Sergeant around. Is that clear?"

"Yes, First Sergeant!" a Guardian and the female cultivator yelled in unison.

The green man nodded. "Some of you received tips before coming. Usually, that would give you some advantages, but not this time. You are all four-limbed biped C-ranks of similar size. Neither of you has previous Alliance-level military experience. All of you exchanged a system favor for the B-rank teleportation privilege and chose to come to the La'sing Node. You will be treated the same because we don't have personnel to treat you differently. You can try to call mama and papa to change things to your benefit, but I don't recommend it. It might've worked at different times, but as I said, not this time. You are too weak to understand what this Calamity means but make no mistake, it is a Calamity. Do you understand?"

This time, Shen and others who hadn't said, "Yes, First Sergeant!" the first time joined the chorus.

Luthdel was one of the few who didn't. The high elf had come to become Shen's subordinate, interview pending, so the cultivator elbowed him. Luthdel took a moment to understand what Shen meant and said, "Yes, sir!"

Zyn's eyes came to Luthdel. "Not 'sir,' First Sergeant."

Silence. Shen rolled his eyes and elbowed Luthdel again, who said, "Yes, First Sergeant!"

"I will train you for two Standard days in the tedious military bureaucracy," Zyn said. "That's how long the rest of your battalion will take to arrive. At the end of these two days, you will become Sergeants. Then, you'll have the unenviable task of helping me train the new arrivals in the same thing I'll teach you. Said training will take five Standard days. After that, we'll establish squads for the remainder of the training, which will take seven to twelve days, depending on factors I'll disclose later. Do you understand?"

"Yes, First Sergeant!" everyone said—except Shen.

"No, First Sergeant!" he replied instead.