Extra's Sign In System: The Hero's an Idiot!

Chapter 238: Chapter 238: The General Who Did Not Know

Chapter 238: The General Who Did Not Know

General Hadrian Kest stood in his opulent office in Bastion One. He looked out the wide, reinforced glass window toward the southern horizon.

He felt a deep, genuine sense of satisfaction.

Three weeks had passed since he had ordered the Capital fleet to drop anchor and enforce a total grain blockade on Bastion Seven. Three weeks of tense, quiet political warfare.

And he had been entirely right.

The blockade was working. Intelligence reports from the neutral Bastions confirmed it. Lord Commander Helion Goldmane’s city was starving.

Their rapid expansion program meant nothing. They could build a hundred clearing towers, but towers could not grow winter wheat fast enough to stop a famine.

Kest had looked at the brutal mathematics and made the correct call. He had talked the war-hungry Hawks in the Senate out of launching a preemptive strike.

Not a single Capital soldier had died. Seven contractors had, out on that plain, and he had signed the notifications himself and sent the money to their families.

He had prevented a continental civil war, and he was winning anyway. He was starving an anomalous threat into submission.

From inside his head, the logic was flawless. He was an honest man doing a terrible job because it had to be done.

But there was one specific thing Kest could not stop thinking about.

He walked back to his heavy oak desk. He tapped a runic key, activating the Vanguard projection terminal.

For the eleventh time that week, he played the recorded broadcast from Bastion Seven.

The blue light flickered. Strike Team Zero stood behind Helion. And there, resting on the table, were the nine heavy iron cages stamped with the golden seal of Bastion One.

Kest did not flinch at the cages. They were his. He had authorized the transfer of Capital assets to clear a dead zone. He had never denied the order to himself. It was a black-ops mission, standard for his rank.

But he stared at the haggard, bleeding Cult Priest kneeling in the dirt beside the cages.

Kest paused the projection. He zoomed in on the priest’s corrupted face.

Kest was an honest Hawk. He despised the Cult of the Eternal Eclipse. He had never taken a single black-market coin. He had never lied to the Senate.

He specifically remembered reviewing the handler roster for the Dead Zone operation. He had signed it personally. There were nine Vanguard specialists assigned to drop the cages. Nine trained soldiers.

He could not account for the Cultist.

Kest stood up. He walked over to his secure physical filing cabinet.

He did not ignore the discrepancy. He did not bury the uncomfortable feeling in his gut. He was a soldier, and a soldier investigated his own command.

He pulled the heavy requisition file. He placed it under the bright runic lamp on his desk.

The paperwork was clean. The ink was dry. His signature at the bottom of the page was completely genuine.

Kest ran his finger down the list of nine names.

He stopped at the bottom.

His eyes narrowed.

Two of the names listed on the official roster were Vanguard handlers. But Kest had a flawless memory for military deployments. He had not read those two names when he signed the document.

He checked the meta-data stamped on the back of the parchment by the magical scribing tool.

The signature was his. But the final two names had been added to the roster exactly two days after he had signed it.

The operation launched four days after that.

They had used the same ink protocol. They had used his personal clearance code. They had entered the modification directly through the secure Vanguard terminal in his own office.

Someone with high-level access to his authority had used it to slip Cult operatives into his strike team.

Kest closed the file. His heart hammered a slow, heavy rhythm against his ribs.

Only four people in the entire Bastion possessed the necessary security clearance to bypass his terminal.

He listed them mentally. The Supreme Commander. The Chief Arch-Mage. The Head of Vanguard Intelligence.

And Senator Aurelio Vast.

The same Senator who had smiled and thanked Envoy Corwyn on the Senate floor when he thought Strike Team Zero was dead.

Kest did not hesitate. He did not draft a polite letter. He grabbed his heavy Vanguard coat and walked straight out of his office.

Ten minutes later, he threw open the heavy wooden doors to Senator Vast’s private chambers.

Vast sat behind an ornate desk, sipping a glass of imported elven wine. The Senator looked up, entirely unbothered by the sudden intrusion.

"General Kest," Vast greeted warmly. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Kest slammed the requisition file directly onto the Senator’s desk.

"You used my clearance code," Kest stated. His voice was a low, dangerous rumble.

"You altered a classified Vanguard deployment roster to embed Cult of the Eclipse operatives into my strike team. You gave humanity’s worst enemy access to Capital assets."

Vast looked down at the file. He took another sip of wine.

He did not deny it. He did not look panicked. He looked delighted that someone had finally brought it up.

"I did," Vast admitted freely. "And I am glad you found it, Hadrian. I was hoping to explain the logic to you."

Kest stared at him in horror. "Logic?"

"The Church of the Eternal Eclipse wants humanity culled and controlled," Vast explained smoothly, setting his glass down. "The Capital wants humanity unified and controlled under our banner. We both agree that rogue Bastions like Seven are a threat to order."

"They opened a rift under Bastion Six," Kest said flatly.

"They did. And we closed it, and the Bastion swore to us harder afterward than it ever had before." Vast leaned forward, resting his hands on the desk. "You are thinking about it as an alliance. It is not. It is a supply arrangement."

He spread his hands.

"For a very narrow stretch of policy, those two positions want the exact same outcome. I am not a traitor, General. I am a pragmatist. I found a supplier who was willing to do the dirty work we could not do publicly. We both win."

Kest stood perfectly still.

The words sickened him. He had ordered civilians killed. He knew that. He had dropped those cages knowing innocent people would die in the crossfire. He had never once pretended otherwise to himself.

But he had done it because he genuinely believed it was the only way to save humanity from itself.

The Eclipse wanted humanity dead. They worshipped the void. They tortured children and worshipped monsters. There was no arithmetic where the Capital and the Cult cooperated.

"You are a monster, Aurelio," Kest said quietly.

Vast frowned. "I am a realist. You are winning the war because of my pragmatism."

"I am reporting this," Kest stated, turning away from the desk. "I am taking this file directly to the full Senate floor tomorrow morning. You will hang for treason."

"Hadrian, wait," Vast called out, a genuine note of warning in his voice.

Kest ignored him. He walked out of the office and slammed the door shut.

Kest marched down the grand marble hallway of the Senate building. His mind was racing. He was already drafting the formal accusation in his head. He would expose Vast. He would purge the rot from the Hawks.

As he reached the bottom of the grand staircase, a strange sensation hit him.

He felt a microscopic, dull throb at the base of his skull.

He stopped walking. He rubbed the back of his neck. It did not hurt. It did not speak to him. He was completely unaware that a microscopic, highly advanced Cult parasite was currently resting against his spinal cord.

The dull throb faded instantly.

But suddenly, Kest felt incredibly tired.

The thought of drafting a massive, formal accusation against a sitting Senator felt exhausting. It was going to require hundreds of pages of documentation. It was going to require weeks of political maneuvering.

’It is just one more procedural burden,’ Kest thought with a heavy sigh. ’It has been a long week. The file is secure. I will handle it tomorrow.’

The fierce, burning righteous anger he had felt in Vast’s office evaporated, replaced by a deep, hollow lethargy.

He turned away from the Senate floor. He walked out the front doors and headed home to sleep.

He filed it tomorrow.

He did not know why he filed it. He was completely unaware that his own mind had just been subtly, flawlessly overwritten by the parasite.

---

High above the marble courtyard, Elder Isolde Renwick stood on a secluded balcony.

The cold, calculating Elder had been watching General Kest for weeks. She knew he was the only genuinely honest Hawk in the Vanguard high command.

She had watched him storm into Senator Vast’s office holding a physical file. She had watched him storm out three minutes later, looking ready to burn the building down.

Then she had watched him stop at the bottom of the stairs.

She saw his posture physically deflate. She saw the sudden, unnatural lethargy wash over him.

Isolde waited three days.

General Kest did not speak to the Senate. He did not file an accusation. He simply returned to managing the blockade as if the confrontation had never happened.

Isolde understood exactly what she had just witnessed.

Kest was infected. The rot went vastly deeper than she had calculated. The Hawks were not just arrogant; they were actively compromised.

Isolde turned away from the balcony. She walked back into her secure, soundproofed chambers.

She reached into her desk drawer. She pulled out a small, flawless black communication crystal.

It was time to make the second call.

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