"Can you afford to give me that?"
When Yas's declaration, brimming with supreme ambition and absolute dominance, thundered through the deathly silent, top-secret conference room, even the Five Elders, whose cunning ran as deep as the sea, wore expressions of horror together for the first time!
Madness!
This man had absolutely lost his mind!
Did he even know what he was saying?!
Answer to no one?
Command all Marine resources?
Establish a "Judgment" force belonging to him alone?
Make his will the new "justice"?!
This was no longer simply asking for a reward! This was naked, undisguised power-seeking! He wanted to build his own "state within a state" inside the machinery of violence that represented the World Government's absolute rule!
"You're dreaming!"
The flat-capped Elder could no longer maintain his outward composure and let out a shrill roar!
"The Marines are the World Government's army! The cornerstone of world order! They will never become your private soldiers! That is an absolute red line!"
"Yas, your demands go too far."
The blond Elder also dropped his false smile, his voice turning exceedingly grave. "We cannot grant you that kind of power. It would shake the foundations of the Marines and even the entire World Government!"
They stared fixedly at Yas, trying to find the slightest hint of wavering or bluffing on his face.
But there was none.
Yas's face remained a motionless sea of ice.
As though he had anticipated their reaction all along, he simply asked a faint, utterly emotionless question in return.
"Is that so?"
Just three words.
But the icy will behind those words-if you won't give it to me, I'll take it myself-pressed heavily against the Five Elders' hearts once again, like two invisible divine mountains.
The conference room sank into suffocating silence once more.
The five