"A very good proposal, but I refuse!"
Seeing Meyer's expression suddenly freeze, John instead revealed a faint smile. Without waiting for her to ask, he spoke directly.
"If I'm not mistaken, the two hostages you're trying to obtain are Ian Grant and Selvia Reinhart, correct?"
Hearing John directly expose her true objective, Meyer's pupils contracted sharply, her heart filled with disbelief.
In her view, John, who had only recently become a Lieutenant General of the Empire, should not have been so familiar with those two people.
Even if some unknown change had caused Selvia's assassination attempt on John to fail and led to her capture, allowing him to infer one of Meyer's objectives from the information she had provided earlier.
There was no reason for him to know about Ian, who at this point should have been nothing more than an ordinary second lieutenant.
After all, in her memory, Ian had displayed no ability whatsoever during the battle that destroyed the Third Navy. He had nearly died on that battlefield instead.
If he had not later been discovered, rescued, and brought back to the Brown Kingdom by an ocean-going fishing vessel from the Brown Kingdom, he might already have died somewhere in the southern ocean.
"Wait, something seems wrong. In this Fauken Campaign, it seems the Empire won?"
"And the Third Navy was not destroyed. Instead, it miraculously achieved an unprecedented victory?"
But without reinforcements, even if John had somehow joined the Empire and become one of its commanders, with his abilities, he might have won the ground war through exceptional command.
Yet in a naval battle, he should have had no solution whatsoever.
Unless...
"Unless he found Ian within the Third Navy, someone whose talent should not have surfaced at this point, and brought his abilities into this naval