Timeless Assassin

(Juxta Military Base, Officer's War Hall)

Over the next seven days, Leo discovered that despite his usually unserious personality, Charles was actually a very good teacher of military strategies.

Not in the poetic sense, nor in the way of a traditional lecturer standing before a class, but in the practical, clear-cut manner that only someone who had bled through hundreds of battles could pass on.

When he spoke, he completely skipped through fluff and theatrics, only passing on what he truly believed to be useful.

The first lesson he had drilled into Leo had been simple: As a Commander, he didn't need to know 90% of the grunt work. That wasn't his job.

He had no need to memorize the topographical map symbols, or learn all the on-field hand signs and quick calls used by low-ranking officers.

Whatever he said was automatically going to be translated and relayed down the chain of command by people who had trained their whole lives to do just that, so he did not need to micromanage that.

Instead, he needed to be the mind behind every assault.

"Remember boy, men under your command will march until their legs break and fight for you until their bones snap, but if you don't feed them, their morale will plunge like sand through your fingers," Charles lectured, while dragging Leo through the supply corridors of Juxta's logistics wing.

As per his experience in the military, the men did not mind being cold, did not mind being tired and did not mind being hungry, but they could only do one of those three at once.

If they were going to fight from dawn to dusk, they expected a proper meal and a warm bed to sleep at the end, and it was Leo's job to ensure that they got at least that.

"Food and Water… that's the spine of your army. Not fancy speeches or made up war cries," Charles said as he introduced him to the army cooks, before showing him how the army stored food and water.

Here, ration inventories were sorted by caloric value.

And water-purification talismans were used to purify any sort of muddy or mildly toxic water that they could find.

Next came energy.

The Cult's smaller crafts, destroyer-class ships, even their heavy artillery cannons nearly all of them ran on processed high density mana stones.

And so, Charles walked him through the fuel depot's reserve vaults and taught him how each stone had to be cut, smoothed, and slotted precisely into core reactors to keep the war machines running.

"If you ever run out of energy on foreign soil, you will need to find a natural mana vein on the planet.

Every planet has a few of them, and usually it'll be an active mining site operated by the locals.

To sustain your army's logistics, you might need to go in there, find high grade mana stones, then purify them, process them, and shape them into the proper size, Or your fleet will become as useless as scrap metal."

"Of-course you don't need to do the mining yourself, men under your command will do it for you. But these are stuff you need to take care of as Commander.

There's only so much payload you can carry while travelling.

So if you run out of energy mid operations on a foreign planet, you must know how to secure fresh energy cores for your fleet." Charles said as Leo nodded in understanding.

Most of what Charles had taught him had followed that same pattern—lessons in general knowledge, rather than deep mastery.

Enough for him to understand when something was about to go wrong and how to avoid it.

Things like who to call upon for what problem, and how long it would take to fix them.

Still, some of it had been interesting.

One such moment had come during a lazy lunch in the officer's mess, where Charles had broken down the actual structure of the Cult's army.

"Seventy percent of all active recruits are at the Master tier," Charles had said, slicing through a slab of meat while speaking casually. "Those are your foot soldiers. The ones holding the frontlines. Medics. Common Engineers. They fight. They die. They follow orders. Simple as that."

Leo nodded.

"Another twenty-five percent? Grandmasters. These are your Captains, Sergeants, Lieutenants. Occasionally a General. They're your battle leaders. They hold the formations together when chaos breaks out."

"And the rest?" Leo asked.

Charles took a bite before replying. "Four percent? Non-combatants. Cooks. Quartermasters. Logistics rats. Administrators. They're the ones making sure the war machine keeps turning while the warriors spill blood."

"And the top?"

Charles had tapped his finger twice on the metal table.

"Point zero one five percent. That's your Transcendent tier warriors. The real monsters. Either they're Generals or Legion Commanders. They are the top brass that you deal with directly and the one's responsible to bring your vision to reality"

"Finally, the rest are your aircraft pilots and highly skilled ship technicians, their only job being aerial warfare."

Leo leaned back, eyes narrowed, absorbing it all.

The Cult army only had about twelve thousand Transcendent Tier warriors in active military service, while about twelve thousand more served the private sector.

In terms of ratio, the Cult army had more Transcendent Tier warriors per soldier when compared to the Universal Government's army.

But the sheer size difference between both sides was incomparable.

"Truth is boy, we are not equipped to handle more planets with the Cult's current army size.

I'd say, at best we can take a couple more before stretching our forces any thinner becomes a problem.

But those idiots in the Elders Council won't understand that.

Nor will the common masses.

The ideal our Cult chases is a return to universal domination and our glory days.

But back then, we used to have a Monarch serving as a Galactic General in every sector. With 12 or so planets under his protection. And about a couple hundred Monarch level warriors serving within the Cult in total.

Back then both Kaelith and Soron were Demi-Gods that could handle large scale conflict with ease. While the name of the Timeless Assassin was enough to send most enemy gods scrambling in fear.

But we are no longer that same organisation.

It took the Timeless Assassin 1000 years to grow the Cult from just Ixtal to covering the entire universe, and it will take us a minimum of 500 more to repeat that same success.

Such changes can't happen overnight, and we must have patience until we are ready to handle the expansion—" Charles said, as he let out a disappointed sigh.

"Don't get drunk on success, boy," he continued, his voice quieter now, almost thoughtful. "Even if you take two planets, five, or ten… don't start thinking you've made it."

Leo glanced his way, sensing the shift in tone.

"Don't do what Noah did. He thought his early victories meant that the Cult was ready for a rapid expansion. He thought that the righteous faction was weak and that we just needed the courage to take back what was rightfully ours."

Charles tapped the table once, firm but not harsh.

"Empires aren't built in a day. They're forged over decades, through discipline, patience, and decisions that no one claps for. Remember that."