"So . . .  what is all this talk about a grand victory about? As far as I am aware, the Verdant Globe was our priority, and we didn't get that."

"Yep. We didn't. But here's the thing, Lev. Our goal was never to get our hands on their Verdant Globe!"

Levro stared at his father, confused. They said it was their goal, but it wasn't their goal? If that wasn't it, then what was? Part of him wanted to believe that his father had simply gotten too drunk to understand what 'victory' really meant, but he knew that his subordinates weren't so foolish.

"What was our goal then? It would have to be a pretty damn important goal if we gave up a Verdant Globe to get it."

"Mhm." His father finished the drink in his mug before slamming it on the table. "Gentlemen! What were our three objectives for this excursion?"

A full mug was now in the arm that pointed to one portion of his audience.

"Trade!"

The mug pointed to the other side of the room.

"Weapons!"

And now to the center.

"Manpower!"

"HeheHA!" Bahn brought the mug up to his gob, draining half of it in three mighty gulps. "Trade, weapons, and manpower. Those were the three things I wanted out of this campaign, and I got all of them."

". . . how though? Isn't that Verdant Globe a massive trading hub?"

"It is, but the total trade traffic of those six 'worthless' worlds we just nabbed is about . . . how much larger?"

"Given that we didn't have to fight a single battle on those planets, we expect the total volume of trade passing through those planets to be almost double that of the Verdant Globe alone." The minister of trade responded to his lord's request for clarification. "We have had our . . . accomplices . . . handle the numbers, and they believe we might be able to get it as high as triple with proper management and tax policies."

"So three times the revenue from trade."

"We also expect merchants to see our kingdom as more open to trade now that we have secured that region, so it is entirely likely that the rest of our territory will experience some benefits as well."

"Oh, yeah, that too. Any word on what those benefits would be?"

"It's hard to say. Until we have a reaction from the market it will be difficult to judge where its headed."

"Hm, yeah, that's not really my wheelhouse. Keep an eye on it I suppose."

"Will do, sir."

Levro had only really studied warfare at the academy, his father told him to, so he didn't exactly know that much about the intricacies of trade. He didn't know anything about taxing it either, but he had to imagine that three times what a Verdant Globe could supply was a pretty good thing. That assumed that the minister and his 'accomplices' were right about it, but even a similar level of trade was worth it really. Trade wasn't an aspect unique to a Verdant Globe, though it certainly had an advantage there.

He took a sip from the tankard he found in his hand, not quite as upset as before, but still not in a good mood.

"Weapons are next." His father looked around the room, trying to find someone who could do a better job of explaining it than he could. "You."

"Uh, well, on one of those planets your father conquered, there is a clan of master smiths. So long as we provide them with the proper materials, materials we have secured from previous conquests, we believe it should be possible to have them produce weapons and armor of a far higher quality than any opponent we might face. Ideally we would be able to equip the entire army with weapons capable of slicing through steel like a ship through the water, but even just equipping our noble knights with better items than their foes will grant us an unparalleled edge."

The man, a mere sailor, looked nervously at his king, fearful that he had messed something up.

"Mhm. Yup, that sounds about right! If I had to give an extreme example, I would say its kind of like the advantage "Wind" gave to Emperor Strauss when he used it during the Malannum tournament. I mean, I wasn't around back then, but we've all heard the stories."

"A blade so heavy it would bend or break everything he hit with it." One of the sailors recounted what he had heard of it

"Strong enough to take a full force blow from the Marshall without so much as a chip in the surface." Another of the men, a knight who had likely been to the Sanctum before.

"I heard it had some kind of ability to interrupt Split Sorcery too!"

"Nah, if what I've heard about that monster is true, then it is far more likely he just cut the sorcery in half."

"Yeah, that does seem like the kind of bullshit he would be able to pull off."

"Bullshit?" Bahn questioned the men before him. "I watched his own damn son do the same thing in front of me with his gods damned hands, multiple times. There ain't no way that technique was bullshit if other people can pull it off. My bet to this day is that he learned how to do it from the Arboreal Maiden or the Marshall. Thompson seemed pretty close to the two of them."

"I heard that 'Wind' was less of a sword and more like an axe." "Really? Some old fart told me he used it like a spear."

The conversation raged on around the hall, not out of disrespect to their King but because he was a part of the conversation. He really was acting like just another dude, a skill Levro had yet to master.

"Alright gentlemen, we are getting distracted. Maybe I'll tell you about some of the stories of -[redacted: I can't have you guys knowing Donovan's title before its reached in the main story, sorry]- I heard from Draco and Thompson later this trip, but for now we have our own prince to worry about." Bahn could still control the room when it came time, though he was very clearly a little bit tipsier than a few minutes prior. "What were we talking about? Weapons, right?"

"Yes sir, the blacksmith clan."

"Yeah, right. Quality weapons make quality troops, quality troops make easy battles, or something like that. Either way I think you get the point, don't ya Lev?"

"I sort of figured that out once we started talking about 'Wind'."

"Mm, okay. And the last one was manpower, right?" A chorus of affirmation was returned. Apparently everybody knew about this plan but Levro. "I think I can handle this one."

One of the men in the back had clearly been wanting an opportunity to shine here, and looked slightly disappointed that no delegation had taken place this time.

"SO, you mentioned earlier about how we lost a few men, didn't you?"

"That I did, yes. And I wouldn't say that ten thousand is a 'few' men."

"Hm, yeah, but I think you are still too stuck up on what you've been hearing about and experiencing at the academy. In a battle between armies of nobles, a one in twenty casualty rate for a single battle might seem pretty harsh, but for the rank and file? Hell, a soldier who only has a one in twenty chance of dying for an entire campaign is a damn good deal. Remember, kid, you only got back home in time for the last battle we fought here, and I had overseen twenty more just like them in your absence. We had way fewer casualties than I was expecting."

"But the soldiers who are retiring-"

"Will spread the word about how good life is on campaign and show off their shiny medals and weapons to their children and grandchildren, and show off their generous severance packages to the neighbors." Levro suddenly had an epiphany. Was his father actually a genius disguised as a hapless idiot? "Those kids are going to grow up thinking that the army is the best place to hit it rich, while the towns those soldiers go back to get an economic boost from the sudden influx of cash. Remember, Lev, Thompson wasn't my only mentor. I had Draco there teaching me the ropes of economics and how to manipulate people. I still don't have a clue how trade works though. Draco graduated before he could teach me the rest."

Bahn silently toasted to his ministers, the people he trusted most to make up for his deficiencies. They were the whiskers of his father's power to which Levro was the heir.

"That's . . . " Levro struggled to find words fit to address what his father had revealed to him. If this was true, and he had no reason to suspect that anyone in the room was lying to him, then they had picked up the equivalent of the Verdant Globe without actually having a Verdant Globe. They wouldn't be seen as nearly as large of a threat or a target because of it. Coupling that with the fact that, to the casual observer, they actually failed in their conquest, had his father pulled off one of the best mind tricks in history? ". . . incredible."

A moment's look at history would show that this wasn't even close to the biggest or most complex act of political trickery that had happened in recent memory. People were still trying to figure out exactly what the Dove had done to gather such a large coalition of nations that were ostensibly rivals to handle an emerging threat, but for a man of Bahn's caliber and perceived intellect this was a frankly astonishing feat.

"How did you do it?"

"I owe it all to two people, people who died a long time ago. Terrans, actually."

"Who?" At this point Levro was hardly surprised that the Terrans were at the heart of this. Every time there was controversy nowadays they and their Nekh friends tended to be at the heart of it.

"I believe their names were Sueson and Donal Drump. They were readings assigned to me by Draco and Thompson, Draco told me to read through and understand Donal Drump's book, 'The Art of the Deal', while Thompson told me to read Sueson's 'The Art of War'. Apparently one of them is loosely based on the other, but with how little I know of the language I wouldn't be able to tell you how."

"And? That still didn't answer my question."

"I'm getting to it!" Bahn took yet another swig. His cheeks were becoming dangerously rosy. "Anyways, Sueson's advice was mostly stuff I used out in the field. Looking out for enemy movements, deciding where and when to fight, figuring out how to turn an offensive battle on unfavorable terrain into a defensive battle on favorable terrain - all that boring shit you are better than me at. How I managed to pull off this is that Donal guy's advice. See, he has this concept called . . . called . . . um, the Big Ass! That's what it is, 'the Big Ass'. Basically, the first offer you should make to someone is a really unfavorable deal. It can't be too unreasonable or they won't take you seriously, but just big enough that it makes you seem like a real asshole."

"Like a Big Ass."

"Exactly." His father started nodding, Levro could see where this was going. "Then, once you've established that they absolutely can't give you that, and that is what you are there for in the first place, you start to knock it down a notch or two. Shave a bit off the top, so to speak. At the end of it, you've got most of if not all of what you wanted plus whatever else you managed to haggle out of it, and the other guy thinks he's swindled you and gotten the deal of a lifetime. It's why those idiots left the room so full of themselves, they thought they got off scot free, when in reality they gave me everything I wanted and more."

"More?"

"Yep. The peace treaty is only five years long. Once that time is up and I've finished expanding our army, we'll be back for the rest of their territory. It ain't exactly goin' anywhere."

Levro looked down over the map tale they were currently drinking over. It was an old table, with many a border drawn, erased, and redrawn, so it was going to be replaced soon anyways. On it he could clearly make out the 'local' area, including their conquest and the rest of the nation they had fought. In the next war they were absolutely going to take that Verdant Globe, but without it that nation would quickly fall to their neighbors. It was likely that they would rather accept vassalization from a enemy that had proven to not only be strong, but 'generous' with their terms in the previous conflict than to be cut up piecemeal between neighbors likely to keep warring.

"That's pretty cool." Levro then turned his focus to other problems. "Would you mind telling me how any of this is gonna get me a wife?"