The young lady was speaking to a handsome, imposing middle-aged man projected by her communication terminal. He wore the moon-white uniform of a general in the Alliance's Internal Security Forces. He was none other than General Finn Berenkest, director of the Alliance Military Intelligence Bureau—and the young lady's own uncle.
Hearing his niece's complaint, he merely shrugged and smiled. "If you wanted the war to drag on, why did you have that Belmont boy deliver the item? Why did you even alert the old man? Yani, wasn't all of this your design?"
"Uncle, are you saying I predicted that the Serpent Around the World would set up a defense using a large-scale astral illusion array, that Yu Lian would personally take part in the assault, and even that the Prophetess and the Lady of the Present might both appear at the scene? And so I sent Yu Lian the pages of the Sun God's Book engraved with a disintegration array and a void anchor. In the end, the allied forces on the front lines successfully broke through the Marauders' defenses, while we suffered almost no losses and got what we wanted. You're saying I planned all of it?" Yamiida looked surprised.
Wasn't that exactly what had happened? Finn Berenkest nodded expressionlessly. He knew it sounded utterly implausible, but when it involved his niece, who was so clever she seemed almost supernatural, it all felt perfectly reasonable.
"Then is it possible that, even though I knew it would be better for us if the war continued, I also guessed that once the Empire committed a third of its mobile forces and even began limited mobilization, the Marauders wouldn't be able to hold out for long? So I simply went along with the situation?"
"Is that what happened?" General Finn Berenkest looked