Cassio Tagge was indeed riding high, convinced that he was at the pinnacle of his life.
He was an outstanding graduate of the Republic Military Academy, and behind him stood the renowned Tagge family. As an emerging power, the Tagge family possessed considerable strength, but its foundations were still lacking. To expand the family's influence in various fields, Cassio Tagge had entered the military under the arrangements of his mother, Sanya Tagge.
At the military academy, he displayed his talent and proved that he truly was a military genius. He ranked first in every subject, an achievement rare even in the academy's long history.
During his two years of advanced study, he broke numerous academy records, graduated with exceptional results, and also became acquainted with an influential figure like Dunn Vesex. Because they were close in age, they got along well. Dunn also hoped to deepen his ties with the Tagge family through Cassio Tagge.
Cassio Tagge's mother had secretly used the family's influence to make substantial investments in Dunn Vesex. Returning the favor, Dunn naturally arranged for Cassio to carry out missions such as suppressing space pirates, maintaining public order, and escorting merchant convoys. These assignments might have seemed unremarkable, but with Dunn Vesex's assistance, Cassio was always given opportunities to command the escort fleets during those missions.
Such opportunities were treatment that even a military academy graduate would never dare dream of! Even an escort fleet would generally include several Light Cruisers and dozens of frigates. Leaving aside everything else, the crews of all those ships alone numbered ten or twenty thousand people! That was the power of family influence.
But Cassio Tagge truly lived up to expectations. He completed every mission flawlessly. Once, an escort fleet encountered pirates with superior numbers, yet under Cassio Tagge's command, the