The underground fortress hummed with the mechanical rhythm of progress—a sound Ruby had grown to love over the years. Steam pipes hissed overhead, carrying heated water through the labyrinthine complex she'd built beneath Osov's industrial district.
The telegraph machines clattered incessantly, their brass keys clicking out morse code messages that arrived from across the kingdom: troop movements, asset positions, confirmation of bribes received, nobles pledging their allegiance to the "reform movement."
Ruby liebe Stalin —though that wasn't the name on any official document, just the one Master had given her during one of his rare moments of what she'd interpreted as profound philosophical naming ceremony but was probably just him being sleepy—sat in her command chair, a modified captain's seat salvaged from a decommissioned airship.
Her red hair was pulled back in a severe bun, though rebellious strands escaped to frame her face. At eighteen, she'd grown into her features: the sharp cheekbones, the calculating crimson eyes that seemed to see through people, the posture of someone who'd spent years transforming herself from a broken thing in a cave into... this.
Around her, the command center buzzed with controlled chaos. Thirty-seven operatives manned various stations—communications, intelligence analysis, financial tracking, military coordination.
Each one had been recruited, trained, and vetted personally. Each one believed they were part of a legitimate reform movement to modernize the Kingdom of Orient and break the stranglehold of the old aristocracy.
None of them knew the full scope.
Only her inner circle understood that "reform" was simply the first stage.
"Ma'am, confirmation from Colonel Hastings," called out Lieutenant Shen from the military coordination desk. "Third and Fifth Mechanized Infantry Battalions have received their new Lancelot units. Pilots are running final diagnostics now."
Ruby allowed herself a small smile.
The Lancelots. God, that had been a project.
She remembered the night seven years ago—she'd been eleven, maybe twelve, still jumpy and prone to panic attacks—when Master had been sketching something in the dirt outside their camp.
She'd asked what it was, and he'd launched into this rambling explanation about "giant robots" and "mobile suits" from something called "anime" in his old world.
"They're like, massive armored knights, but mechanical," he'd said, drawing crude diagrams with a stick. "Powered by some kind of energy source. Pilots sit inside and control them. Very cool. Very impractical, but cool."
"Why impractical?" she'd asked, leaning over his shoulder.
"Well, the square-cube law, for one. The bigger something gets, the more its weight increases relative to its strength. And the power requirements would be insane. Plus, they'd be huge targets. But—"
he'd grinned at her, that lazy grin that meant he was about to say something he thought was clever, "—they look awesome, so who cares about physics?"
She'd cared about physics. She'd cared very much.
It had taken her three years to crack the runic engineering problem. The old Gundams—yes, they'd existed in this world, which had nearly made Master cry with laughter when he'd found out—had required pilots to be master-level runecrafters, capable of channeling and shaping massive amounts of mana through complex runic circuits in real-time.
It was a skill that took decades to master, which meant only the highest nobility and royalty could pilot them. The knowledge was jealously guarded.
But Master had mentioned something off-handedly about "computers" and "processing power" and "delegation of tasks," and she'd had an epiphany.
What if the pilot didn't need to control everything? What if you could create a runic matrix that handled the complex channeling automatically, leaving the pilot to simply provide raw mana and directional intent?
The Core System had been born from that insight.
A crystallized runic processor that cost a fortune to manufacture but reduced the piloting requirements from "master runecaster with thirty years of training" to "anyone with moderate magical capacity and decent spatial awareness."
The implications had been immediate and revolutionary.
Suddenly, the wealthy merchant class—who had money but no access to centuries-old runic knowledge—could pilot military-grade Gundams. Suddenly, second and third sons of noble houses—who'd been passed over for inheritance and advanced training—had value as potential pilots.
Suddenly, the military hierarchy that had remained static for three hundred years was thrown into chaos.
She'd released the technology through carefully constructed shell companies and bribed patent offices, making it impossible to trace back to her.
Within eighteen months, five different manufacturers were producing Core System-compatible Gundams.
Within two years, the military-industrial complex of the Orient Kingdom had been completely transformed.
And she'd made an obscene amount of money in the process, which she'd immediately funneled back into this.
"Ma'am, telegraph from the Western District," called out another operative. "The Chancellor's forces are moving toward the palace. Twelve Gundam units, looks like the Royal Guard's older models."
"Expected," Ruby said, her voice calm. "What's the count on Reform Movement units in position?"
"Forty-seven Lancelots, confirmed ready. Another twenty-three in reserve at the southern barracks. We have numerical and technological superiority."
She nodded. The Chancellor—Lord Reginald von Strausberg, brother-in-law to the declining King Wilhelm III—had been so predictable.
The man was a reformer himself, in his way, trying to curtail noble power and centralize authority in the crown. Noble goal, terrible execution. He'd made enemies of every major aristocratic house while simultaneously alienating the merchant class by imposing heavy regulations on the new industries.
Ruby had simply... accelerated the tensions. A bribe here, a leaked document there, a few strategic assassinations made to look like accidents or rival faction hits. She'd played both sides, funding the Chancellor's reforms publicly through shell corporations while privately bankrolling the "Reform Movement" that opposed him.
The beauty was that everyone thought they were winning. The old aristocrats thought they were defending traditional privileges. The new merchant class thought they were fighting for representation.
The Chancellor thought he was modernizing the kingdom. The King thought he was maintaining stability through his brother-in-law.
None of them understood that the game board had been tilted long ago.
"Status on the infiltration teams?" Ruby asked.
"Seven teams in position," responded her infiltration coordinator, a former intelligence officer she'd recruited from the military. "Palace, Treasury, Arsenal, Telegraph Central Office, Mana Grid Control Station, Royal Archives, and the Chancellor's personal residence. Awaiting go signal."
Ruby glanced at the large mechanical clock mounted on the wall—another piece of technology she'd introduced, based on Master's descriptions of "standardized time" and "synchronized operations." It read 18:47.
Twenty-three minutes until sunset. The traditional hour for coups, apparently. She'd read about it in the histories. Something about the psychological impact of darkness falling as old regimes fell, the symbolism of night giving way to new dawn, blah blah blah. Humans were such predictable creatures, really.
Except for Master.
Master was never predictable.
She felt a flutter of anxiety—rare for her, these days—and immediately pushed it down. The warning had been sent. Raven had delivered it personally, using the code phrases Master himself had taught her. He would understand. He would prepare. He would either approve or disapprove, and she would know by his actions.
Or lack thereof.
That was the thing about Master. He never did anything unnecessarily. Every action was deliberate, every word carefully chosen, every moment of seeming laziness actually a profound lesson in patience and observation.
She remembered when she was thirteen, after they'd taken down a particularly nasty bandit operation that had been running a protection racket on farming villages.
She'd been furious that the bandits had been so stupid, so wasteful with their resources.
"They could've built something sustainable!" she'd ranted, pacing back and forth in their camp while Master cleaned his sword.
"They had fifty men, decent weapons, control over six villages' worth of production. They could've established themselves as a legitimate security company, negotiated fair rates, built loyalty instead of fear. Instead, they just squeezed until the villages had nothing left and now they're all dead and the villages are destitute and nobody wins!"
Master had looked at her with those dark, bottomless eyes and said, simply: "Most people are stupid and short-sighted. If you want to build something that lasts, you need to think in decades, not days."
Decades.
She'd taken that to heart. Every piece of her organization had been built with longevity in mind. Redundant systems, distributed authority, ideological buy-in from operatives who genuinely believed in the cause. Even if she died tomorrow, the Reform Movement would continue.
The Core System technology was already proliferating beyond her control, exactly as intended. The financial networks she'd established were self-sustaining.
Master had taught her that. Master had taught her everything.
The thought was interrupted by a sharp knock on her office door—a partition of reinforced steel that separated her command center from the broader operations floor.
"Enter," she called.
The door opened, and Raven stepped through.
Raven—baptismal name Clarissa Byron, though she'd abandoned that name the day Ruby had pulled her from a slave cage—was a study in controlled intensity. At twenty-one, she'd grown into a lethal competence, all lean muscle and sharp angles. Her dark hair was cut short, practical for fieldwork.
The glasses she wore were purely aesthetic now—, Raven insisted they made her look "more professional."
Currently, those glasses were sliding down her nose as she caught her breath. She'd clearly run here from the ramen stall.
"Report," Ruby said, keeping her voice level despite the anxiety creeping back up.
"Message delivered," Raven said, pushing her glasses up. "Used the proper code phrases. Paid for his meal. No surveillance detected in the area."
"And his reaction?"
Raven hesitated. It was brief, maybe half a second, but Ruby caught it.
"Raven."
"He... didn't react, ma'am." Raven's expression was carefully neutral. "He continued eating. Showed no signs of recognition or concern."
Ruby felt her chest tighten, then immediately relaxed. Of course. Of course Master hadn't reacted. To react would be to show his hand, to reveal that he was aware, to potentially compromise whatever parallel operation he was running.
Master was operating on a level she could barely comprehend. He always had been.
She remembered the first real conversation they'd had, after he'd saved her from that... thing. That flesh-horror the bandit lord had been creating through illegal necromantic fusion.
She'd been barely conscious, barely human after weeks of—
No. Don't think about that. That was the old Ruby. The broken Ruby.
The new Ruby had been forged in the weeks after, when Master had taken her to a safe house (an abandoned monastery in the black Bear Forest) and started teaching her. Not just combat skills or survival tactics, though he'd taught those too. He'd taught her about his old world- she knew it was just metaphor for his enlightened knowledge there was no other worlds at least she hadn't been able to prove it.
Master had taught her everything.
Economics. Banking systems. The concept of compound interest and fiat currency. Military strategy from something called "World War Two." Political theory from philosophers with names like "Machiavelli" and "Sun Tzu." Scientific principles she'd never encountered in this world's primitive natural philosophy.
He'd drawn diagrams in the dirt, sketched organizational charts on cave walls, explained concepts like "supply chain management" and "propaganda" and "asymmetric warfare."
And he'd done it all with that same lazy, half-bored expression, like he was just passing time, not fundamentally restructuring the way she understood reality.
"Master works in ways we cannot always perceive," Ruby said, more to herself than to Raven. "His lack of reaction is itself a reaction. He's telling me to proceed as planned."
Raven's expression flickered—something that might've been doubt, quickly suppressed. "Yes, ma'am."
Ruby narrowed her eyes. "Is there something else, Raven?"
"No, ma'am. Just—" Raven paused, choosing her words carefully. "He seemed very... relaxed. Even for him. Are we certain he understood the gravity—"
"Raven." Ruby's voice was sharp, cutting. "Master is the most observant person I have ever encountered. If he seemed relaxed, it's because he's already accounted for every variable and found them wanting. Do not presume to question his methods."
"I would never—"
"Good." Ruby stood, smoothing her dress—a practical but elegant affair that projected authority without ostentation, another lesson from Master about the importance of appearance in leadership.
"However, you raise a valid point. Master may be executing a counter-operation or observing vectors we haven't considered. I want you on surveillance duty."
Raven blinked.
"Ma'am?"
"Watch him for the next week. Maintain distance—at least fifty meters at all times. Do not engage unless he initiates contact. Document his movements, any meetings, any communications. Master may be coordinating with assets we're not aware of, or testing our adaptability. Either way, we need intelligence."
"What about the Intelligence Directorate? Who will—"
The door opened again without knocking, and Raven's jaw tightened.
Owl glided in—there was no other word for it, the woman didn't walk, she glided—with that insufferable smirk on her perfect face. Seraphina von Astarte, formerly a colonial officer for the Teutonic Empire's southern holdings, currently Ruby's Deputy Director of Intelligence and Raven's bitter rival.
At twenty-two, Owl had the kind of beauty that was almost weaponized: white-blonde hair that fell in perfect waves, red eyes that matched Ruby's own (a quirk of shared magical lineage, nothing more), and a figure that belonged in classical portraiture. The low-cut dress she wore was technically within the organization's dress code but pushed every boundary of propriety.
"Did someone call for competent leadership?" Owl said, her voice like honey laced with arsenic. She turned those red eyes on Raven. "Oh, little sparrow, are you going somewhere? Don't worry, I'll keep your nest nice and warm while you're away."
Raven stood abruptly, her chair scraping against the stone floor.
"It's a directorate, not a nest, and I'm not a—"
"Enough." Ruby's voice cracked like a whip. Both women immediately fell silent, though the tension radiating between them was palpable.
"Raven, you have your assignment. Owl, you'll assume temporary command of Intelligence operations during her absence. I expect daily reports from both of you. If I have to referee your personal rivalry one more time during a coup, I will reassign both of you to latrine duty in the barracks. Am I understood?"
"Yes, ma'am," they chorused, though Raven's scowl and Owl's smirk suggested the war was merely postponed.
Raven gathered her equipment—a leather satchel containing surveillance tools, coded documents, and a slim dagger that Ruby knew concealed at least six different poisons—and headed for the door. She paused at the threshold, looking back.
"Ma'am... if I may ask. Why are you so certain he understood? He didn't give any signal."
Ruby considered the question. How could she explain? How could she possibly convey the absolute certainty she felt?
She thought back to three years ago, when she'd been fifteen and cocky and convinced she'd figured out everything.
She'd developed an early prototype of the Core System and had burst into Master's dormitory at three in the morning—she'd never understood why he insisted on living in that tiny academy room when she could've set him up in a mansion—to show him the breakthrough.
He'd listened to her babbling explanation about runic matrices and mana channeling efficiency, nodding occasionally, his eyes half-closed like he was falling asleep.
Then, when she'd finally wound down, he'd patted her head—patted her head like she was a child—and said: "That's nice, Ruby. Very creative. Maybe focus on graduating primary school first?"
She'd been furious and scowling at the time. Dismissed! Her greatest invention, and he'd treated it like a crayon drawing!
But later, much later, she'd realized: he'd already known. Of course he'd known. He'd probably known the moment he'd off-handedly mentioned "distributed processing" years earlier. He'd been guiding her toward that revelation, teaching her without teaching, letting her discover it "herself" so she'd truly understand it.
That was Master's way. Subtle. Indirect. Operating on levels that only became apparent in retrospect.
"Master once told me," Ruby said slowly, "that the greatest wisdom appears as foolishness to those who haven't achieved it yet. His lack of reaction isn't confusion, Raven. It's complete understanding so profound that he doesn't need to react. He's already three moves ahead."
Raven looked like she wanted to argue, to point out that maybe, just maybe, the teenage boy eating ramen in a cheap stall hadn't actually been playing 4D chess but had simply been hungry and tired.
But Raven was loyal, and smart enough to know when to keep her doubts to herself.
"Understood, ma'am. I'll begin surveillance immediately."
She left, and Owl immediately moved to the main Intelligence desk, settling into the chair like she'd been born to it. She pulled up several reports, her eyes scanning quickly, fingers already flying across the telegraph key to send new orders.
Say what you would about Owl's personality—and Ruby had said plenty, most of it through Exasperation—but the woman was ruthlessly competent.
Ruby turned back to the command center. The large strategic map on the wall showed Osov in miniature: colored pins indicating friendly forces, enemy positions, key infrastructure, civilian populations.
It was beautiful, in its way. Orderly. Controlled.
Master had taught her to see the world like this. As a system to be understood, analyzed, optimized.
She wondered what he was doing right now. Probably already moving, already adjusting his own plans to account for hers, or perhaps executing some grander strategy that made her coup look like a sideshow.
The thought was simultaneously humbling and exhilarating.
"Ma'am," called out Lieutenant Shen. "Sunset in fifteen minutes. Final confirmation: do we execute?"
Ruby looked at the map. At the pieces she'd spent seven years positioning. At the future she'd built from the ashes of the girl who'd died in that cave.
She thought about Master's lazy smile, his cryptic lessons, his absolute certainty even when he appeared uncertain.
"Execute," she said. "Signal all units. Operation Crimson Dawn is go."
The telegraph machines erupted in a cacophony of clicking keys as orders went out simultaneously to forty-seven different locations across Osov.
On the map, the colored pins began to move.
Ruby allowed herself a small smile.
Thank you, Master, for everything you've taught me. I hope this makes you proud.
_____
Somewhere across the city, Charlemagne sneezed and wondered if he was coming down with a cold.
He should probably head back to the academy soon. Maybe see if Maria had any more of that chicken left over.