Chapter 310: Delegates

Although Tristan did not really expect much, unfortunately, the discussion with the Arcadian elites brought no viable result. 

From the Arcadian senior mages, ministers, and even to the Kingblade's commanders, none of them had ever even thought of a situation at this scale, much less personally go through one. Some of them could not even follow the discussion about the enemy coming from space.

They had no idea how big the world was beyond the blue sky. Due to this, they could not come up with an idea on how they should handle the upcoming situation.

And just when Tristan thought it could not get any worse, more bad news arrived as Tobias returned empty-handed. He failed to find the man with the major rank.

The man could even escape from a wizard as strong as Tobias despite being injured from the explosion. This meant that on top of their current predicament of no solution, they now had a dangerous fugitive on the run; someone with a skill level that only a few people in Arcadia could match. 

This could be disastrous. For all he knew, the man could already be planning a way to release the prisoners or trying to assassinate him. Nothing was beyond imagination since he had no information whatsoever about the man.

With his imagination gone wild, Tristan looked at the dozens of Arcadian elites in front of him.

"We need to increase the kingdom's status to DEFCON 1," Tristan said after deep contemplation. Tristan was about to continue speaking, but realization dawned on him as he saw the confused faces of the people around him.

Ah.

These Arcadians had no way of knowing what DEFCON meant. With that realization, explaining what it meant became the first step he had to take to reach his goal.

Defense Readiness Condition. Abbreviated as DEFCON, it is a term used by the United States to prescribe levels of the state's alertness. It certainly could not be copied to Arcadia, but Tristan could relate it with the current condition of the kingdom.

Although Siegfried stated that it would take a month or two before the empire's space knights arrived, he believed that everyone in Arcadia needed to be on high alert with the assumption that the space knights could arrive at any given time. 

With this in mind, Tristan told the ministers to at least come up with ways to react, a step-by-step response procedure in case the first signs of trouble show up. 

Unfortunately, no matter how much more advanced Earth was in terms of management, this was not and had never been his forte, so at the moment, he currently did not have the time to come up with a system to manage 25 whole cities and a population of over 500,000 in weeks.

Hence, again, he needed to do what a ruler should do best: delegate.

Tristan began explaining to them what he hoped to achieve as soon as possible.

First of all, they needed to increase the communication between the 25 Arcadian cities and come up with the fastest task force responder. 

The communication's tone was just not good enough. He needed all 25 mayors to be integrated with the outlander communication system, one with a fast two-way communication voice and even better video. Information was king after all.

Second, they needed to create their first responder team. A fly-ready team using either Firefly or the flying eagles, whichever one was the fastest to reach any emergencies. Of course, the task force would need to be led by someone powerful enough to handle most matters, so after some discussion, Wizard Faros was chosen.

And last but not least, the whole upgrade of technology and weaponry for the Arcadian defense system. The elites could not agree more about this as they had experienced first-hand how the space cruiser was able to attack them without any means to respond.

Fortunately, the fastest solution would be the space cruiser that crashed south of the city. A complete salvage operation of the space cruiser was a priority.

For this operation, the task of leading it could not be given to anyone other than Professor Emmet.

After careful consideration, Tristan turned to look at Professor Emmet and said,

"Professor, You can pick anyone and any number you want to help you."

Hearing Tristan's words, the thin old man with weird hair responded with excitement, "Yes, my king!"

A space cruiser from a higher realm. Previously, Professor Emmet could not even think of catching a glimpse of one, but now, the opportunity to observe it first-hand was right in front of him! Not only that, but he was even given the chance to study its construction to look for a way to salvage it!

"Our first priority at the moment is to find a way to make the ship able to fly again. If you can't do it within a week, then I want all the weapons in the ship to be scrapped and integrated into Arcadian technology, Turrets, guns, radars, anything and everything. Loot all the walls clean if you have to."

Tristan's words filled Professor Emmet with even more excitement. He was elated with how the new ruler understood how important the matter of technology was to their kingdom.

Being alert and having better technology would definitely help them quite tremendously, but it was still far from enough. Tristan needed more manpower. As of this day, the number of people that he knew could actually help him was less than the fingers he had on one hand.

Hence his next priority was to gather all of Arcadia's strongest people to work together.

"Any words from Callan?" Tristan asked Tobias.

"No, my king, no words at all," Tobias regrettably informed.

If it were before, Tristan would be happy that there was no news about him. The longer he was gone, the better it would be for him. But with their current predicament, as much as Tristan hated the guy, now that their objectives intertwined, Tristan could use the help of someone as strong as him.

"Do you have any idea what he wanted to do with the High Elves?" Tristan thought for a while before asking.

The old wizard only shook his head in response. Although it seemed that the old wizard had no doubt about the authenticity of his response, Tristan did not believe it for even a second. After all, there was no way someone like Callan would leave his people, the Arcadians, on their own without a word.

Even so, Tristan believed that the old wizard had his reason for hiding it from him.

He needed to find out why, and he would probably need to at this meeting.

"So, Tobias, we'll need to start gathering as many allies as soon as possible. Who do you think we should start with?"

When talking about allies, there was nobody other than the Wood Elves. The Vanyar and the Forlorn Elves were pretty much already under his wing. Tristan needed to meet with the Ithilien and Mirkwood Elves to brief the situation.

Knowing that Callan was currently contacting the kingdom of the High Elves, Tristan asked, "What about the kingdoms of the other elves? How about the Dark Elves?"

Hearing Tristan mention the matter, Tobias became slightly anxious.

"My king, the High Elves have always closed themselves without any concern for what happens in the outside words. If even Callan cannot bring back results, then it's most likely that no one can… As for the Dark Elves... they are definitely not allies to our Arcadia Kingdom. In fact, the Dark Elves have been at war with Arcadia for a very long time, bringing countless problems to the northern cities of our kingdom. It's best we don't make any contact with them, lest they decide to make our situation worse," Tobias explained.

After listening to him, Tristan decided to ignore Tobias' advice.

"I'm sure today's situation is different. Don't you agree?" Without waiting for Tobias to reply, Tristan continued, "I wish to talk to them as well. Prepare the meeting."

To put it simply, the space knights' threat was not only to the people of Arcadia, but to every living species on this planet. It was time for these people to set aside their differences and work together to fight their common enemies.

With this line of thinking, Tristan thought of a much more ambitious plan.

"Tobias, while you're at it, contact the Asgardian as well, let's see what they have to say about this!"

The idea of bringing the kingdom's number one enemy brought concern to everyone in the room. This was especially the case for Tobias, who was tasked to make it happen.

"All right, you all have important things to do, so get on it!" Tristan said before looking toward Commander Cecilia.

"As for you, Commander Cecilia, come with me. I'm going to need your help for the next matter."

The next thing was to interrogate Captain Jenkins and his men.