After returning to Mercury 42, Lu PingAn was anything but idle, even behind the front lines.
On the contrary, he knew his time was extremely precious. Shuichi, Su Shang Jiang at Command HQ—they had both sought him out several times. With his current status and abilities, he could no longer completely ignore his responsibilities to the "clan."
Besides the War Tax, top-tier combatants also had to rotate through frontline duty. That was the newest rule. After all, those suckers on the front lines were starting to buckle under the strain.
Lu PingAn's killing of Barn, the "World Devourer," had earned him an internal assessment of "Tier 8 combat power." Even after he argued every possible angle, with Command HQ backing him up, the internal assessment still rated him as an exceptional Tier 7—capable of threatening some Tier 8s.
Pointing nuclear warheads at each other was something done in peacetime. Now that they were at war, matching soldiers against soldiers and generals against generals was perhaps no more than a luxury. Striking hard whenever an opportunity arose was the norm. To prevent High-Level Professionals from carrying out massacres, it was necessary for combatants of equal, or at least slightly inferior, strength to face one another.
This was no Unspoken Rules. It was simply the brutal reality of the battlefield: without strength, the other side would slaughter you.
"The front lines seem to be holding up."
Lu PingAn had always felt that their side's greatest advantage was actually Shuichi of the Big Horde.
Even though she rarely appeared on the battlefield, the existence of that "chat board" allowed intelligence, interests, and key battlefield issues to be constantly exchanged among the higher-ups. If some big shot directly asked for aid there, that front line was probably close to collapsing.
The passing years had