Ku Yu saw through it but did not mock him excessively. Instead, he took the initiative to bring up the subject. "The merits assessment will be finalized soon. How are you planning to use yours?"
This was exactly the kind of exchange Dimon wanted. Without any pretense, he asked directly, "Give me some advice. I'm not part of your circle, so I really can't figure it out."
Ku Yu greatly enjoyed the phrase "your circle," even though he knew perfectly well that he was still on the very fringe of it. Yet even this position at the edge of the circle gave him access to information ordinary civilians found difficult to obtain and allowed him to leverage certain resources. He turned to Dimon. "Military merits will definitely have the greatest effect within the military system. The problem is that you're already discharged, and your status... well, it's rather delicate. It's impossible for you to rejoin the Red Silicon Guard or anything like that. If you truly want to maximize your benefits, you can currently move toward the Reserve Force."
"But I'm already in the Reserve Force. I was automatically assigned to it after being discharged."
"How can ordinary Reserve Force service compare with Reserve Force personnel carrying out military missions? Different assignments come with vastly different benefits, all right?" Ku Yu did not mind giving Dimon a lesson, but after thinking it over, he figured Dimon probably understood that much already and merely lacked a clearer direction. So he did not waste more words and went straight to the most valuable piece of intelligence. "I heard that a Reserve Force unit will be undergoing a large-scale rotation soon, and it'll be an interstellar deployment... The conditions may be fairly harsh, but the allowances are on an entirely different level from