Chapter 7139: The Patient Builder Receiving a visit from the department head of the Enforcement Department was a big deal. The Enforcement Department played the same role as its counterpart in the Red Association. It was the military arm of the Red Collective. Every department of the RC fielded its own troops, but the Enforcement Department was special because it organized all of the real military units and made important strategic decisions. Its department head was a big deal. The Red Collective was set up as a decentralized superorganization courtesy of Ves, so it explicitly lacked a single absolute leader or a small group of people who held all of the reins of power. Even so, the department heads held much of the power of the RC by virtue of their executive authority. Unlike the councilors who could only exercise their power indirectly by voting on different bills, the department heads could decide how to implement the acts that the two councils had passed. Even if they had to abide by their directives, they had so much leeway on how to follow the new laws and directives that they could pursue their own agenda much more than other collies. It was therefore extremely vital that the collies chose the right leader to take charge of the Enforcement Department. Due to the heavily fractured power structure of the Red Collective, it was nearly impossible to get enough groups to agree on a single candidate. It was far too easy to find flaws that would cause a candidate to become unviable in the eyes of different interest groups. This was why a former high marshal of the Kromo Republic managed to score this top job. Demetrius Sol Klavia was a 200 year old man who once served as a mech officer, a mech general until he finally presided over the armed forces of a first-rate colonial state. During his long years of service, he never really managed to excel in anything flashy. He was not a brilliant mech commander like Casella Ingvar. He was not a leader who inspired worship like Ark Larkinson. He was not even known as a particularly brilliant strategist. What he excelled at was the boring stuff. He was a numbers guy. He prioritized logistics above everything else. His favorite strategy was to build up infrastructure and spend lots of time training troops. His goal was never to start a fair fight. It was to build up military capabilities so much that by the time a conflict finally erupted, he had already won because his forces were so much better prepared for battle compared to the enemy! It was not for nothing that Demetrius Sol Klavia earned the moniker of the Patient Builder, though he preferred not to make use of it himself. Although a man known as the Patient Builder very clearly lacked energy, excitement and charisma, he did not lack vision. He had a very clear understanding that the Red Collective was just a new superorganization. It took time and effort to build up all of the infrastructure and to raise military units that were ready to participate in total war. An added complication was that raising armies of qi cultivators was not like raising armies composed of mechs. Mechs usually started off at full strength as soon as they rolled off the production lines. A mech corps comprising 50,000 mechs had a predictable amount of combat power so long as its numbers stayed the same. The same could not be said for cultivators. Gathering 50,000 of them, and they would start off severely underpowered and lacking in experience. Give them a few years of preparation, and their cultivation advanced by varying degrees depending on the complexity of their cultivation methods, their average talent and their access to elixirs and other assisting tools. In short, the RC’s armed forces needed to spend as much time as possible on training and preparation in order to unleash greater strength on the frontlines as possible. This was the general reason why the Patient Builder led the Enforcement Department. He had no hunger for glory and would steadfastly stick to his slow strategy in order to guarantee that the RC would be able to make a strong showing once it finally unleashed its full might on the battlefield. While Ves had heard plenty of hearsay about Demetrius Sol Klavia over the months, he decided to ask the opinions of those who met the old department head in person. "I know much about the head of the Enforcement Department, but it is not my place to share them with you." Zariel-775 plainly told Ves. "We are called secret keepers for good reason. We come across a large amount of classified and sensitive information. We can start wars, provoke conflicts, break friendships and shatter alliances if we freely shared what we know to the wrong ears. I will not explain the specifics to you, but I am restricted from divulging information that is not critical and will break the confidence of a protected individual." That... sounded disappointing, but Ves should feel grateful for the integrity of the secret keepers. These guys were the real deal. They likely knew a lot of secrets about Ves as well, and he would appreciate it that they did not carelessly leak them on the galactic net. "Can you share with me information about the incoming department head that does not violate your vow of secrecy that I should know in order to ensure a more productive meeting?" That was a difficult request. The collie spy had to pause for a dozen or so seconds before he opened his mouth again. "The reason why he has dropped all of his appointments and has left the Astral Octagon to travel all the way out here is because he wants to convey the sincerity of the Red Collective. You do not have to question his honesty because this affair is of great importance to us all. The intelligence gathered by Lucky has confirmed one of our greatest fears. It is one thing for the Phase Lord Department to fall victim to a collective delusion and declare independence so that they can live on as part of a new giant race. It is another thing for them to outright defect to the Red Cabal and serve the aliens as gods who have an absolute right to rule over mortals. If the latter scenario unfolds... it can potentially unmake the Red Collective." The secret keeper may be a little dramatic with his words, but he was not wrong. The worst case scenario could inflict so much damage to the RC’s legitimacy that it may very well break up afterwards. Nobody could trust it to serve the best interest of red humanity when there was solid proof that it had far too little control over its own cultivators. One of the main reasons why the Red Collective existed was to regulate cultivators and prevent them from doing any harm to human society! For the enforcers of human order to actually degenerate into its own enemies was too absurd for people to accept! Given the potentially catastrophic consequences, it sounded a lot more logical for one of the most powerful leaders of the Red Collective to drop by and appeal to Ves. Ves did not want to disrespect such an important figure by refusing to meet with him. He originally intended to visit the Astral Octagon to build new relations and form friendships within the superorganization. This was a great opportunity to form a connection with one of the key figures who held a lot of power and authority. So long as the head of the Enforcement Department was on his side, Ves was sure his place in the Red Collective would remain secure! Since the department head chose to travel to the Tarrasque under lighter-than-usual escorts and with fast vessels only, he arrived remarkably quickly. Ves, Zariel-775 and Eliza Mo Ragadan met the department head in one of the small conference rooms of the flagship of the Bluejay Fleet. The Farseer and several other collies of the Moloch Squadron requested to attend this meeting as well, but Ves rejected it because he did not want to turn this into a spectacle. "Head." Everyone rose from their seats as soon as the head of the Enforcement Department entered the compartment. The man wore a predominantly silver uniform across his slender body. He maintained a stoic and dignified posture. He was not a man that people would recognize as a strong leader, but he possessed a quiet bearing that subtly indicated that he was anything but average. "Chief councilor." The older gentleman greeted Ves by his position within the RC. "It is a pleasure to meet with you. I have come to address a crisis that is threatening to spill out of control." "Is that truly the case?" Ves asked as he moved right past the small talk. "I mean, even if I don’t lift a finger, you guys definitely have plenty of contingency plans in store. No matter how powerful these human phase lords may be, I don’t think that any of them are greater phase lords, which limits their strength. You don’t even need to call over a god pilot to subjugate them by force. A single superdimensional ace mech should be able to do the job. If you guys don’t have access to one, I am sure our clan can loan one out to you guys for a price." The Patient Builder did not appear appreciative of the offer. "We do have contingency plans, but so does the Phase Lord Department. They are humans as well. As much as they are trying to deny their origins, the ’Ascended Giants’ are still similar to us in thought. They know that we may chose to respond to their actions with force, so they have preemptively dispersed the bulk of their Ascended Giants across many different locations. We have not been able to track their coordinates. If the compromised personnel are intelligent enough, then they will deliberately not record or remember the locations so that we can never retrieve it. If we move to conquer the headquarters of the Phase Lord Department, then the rebels will transmit a signal that will command all of these hidden human phase lords to flee and possibly join the Red Cabal." It was impossible to catch all of these Ascended Giants. They were enormous and difficult to lose track of, but they could still do so by passing through lots of uninhabited star systems. They had a much higher chance of getting rid of any tails if they crossed the border and entered alien space in advance! Aside from that, they could still shrink their bodies to human scale, so that made them even harder to track if they truly wanted to hide. They could land on any planet and live in an underground base while waiting for a signal from headquarters. Letting any of these human traitors go would inflict a huge blow to the Red Collective! The more Ascended Giants joined the native aliens, the more severe the consequences. This was why it was in the chief enforcer’s best interest to ensure that zero Ascended Giants defected to the Red Cabal. The only way to do that was for Ves to win the leadership challenge and take over the Phase Lord Department. "I am earnestly requesting you to fight for the good of all red humans." The Patient Builder sincerely requested. "You should have a rough understanding of what is at stake. Do not let all of the phasewater, resources and manpower we have spent on raising 361 phase lords go to waste, or worse, benefit our enemies. From the moment an Ascended Giant steps onto the battlefield to fight against red humans, the Red Cabal will receive so much recrimination from the public that we will lose much of our support and legitimacy." "So what?" Ves skeptically pushed back. "It won’t be pleasant, but becoming unpopular is hardly a deathknell to the RC. Why not lay low for a decade before you reintroduce yourselves to the public?" "That will not work. We need heavy infusions of funding and resources to ramp up our operations. Many of our plans rely heavily on goodwill and strategic partnerships. All of that will become ruined if we lose our broad support, thereby leading to the diminishment or collapse of our great project. Systematic cultivation will no longer become regulated as well as before. Many more people will go on to abuse flawed cultivation methods and either kill themselves or turn mad in a similar manner as the Ascended Giants."