Early morning, Imperial Grand Hotel.
After breakfast, John, as usual, drank coffee while casually reading the Imperial morning paper, intending to get an overview of the current state of negotiations and the Empire's latest affairs.
Just as he had expected, the peace talks had reached a deadlock on the very first day. During the opening negotiations, the delegation sent by the Allied Forces demanded that the Empire return the five towns it had previously seized.
Naturally, the negotiating delegation led by the Empire's Foreign Minister Arias could not agree to such a demand. Instead, citing the Empire's current advantage on both fronts, they demanded that the other side cede six towns along the border between the Saga Kingdom and the Loran Kingdom. Otherwise, they would dispatch the Mage Corps to carry out heavy bombing against the Allied Forces.
Of course, both sides knew that final threat would never actually be carried out. A strategy that maximized losses served no purpose for either side. The reason both parties had maintained such a forceful stance in the initial negotiations was merely to preserve their respective nations' dignity, allowing them to praise their own delegations for daring to stand up to the enemy and fight for national interests while further boosting their citizens' confidence in their countries.
With that unspoken understanding, the first day's negotiations ending in a stalemate had been inevitable.
However, compared to the artistically embellished front-page report praising their delegation for verbally tearing into the Allied Forces and portraying the opposing delegates as greedy incompetents, a report below it caught his attention.
Judging from the Imperial paper's layout, this report belonged to the breaking-news section.
According to the report, Count Zeke Ementraut had, driven by personal ambition, carefully orchestrated a plot against Lieutenant General John Maslow in an attempt to