The Mech Touch novel Chapter 7139

Chapter 7139: The Patient Builder

Receiving a visit from the department head of the Enforcement Department was a big deal.

The Enforcement Department played the same role as its counterpart in the Red Association.

It was the military arm of the Red Collective.

Every department of the RC fielded its own troops, but the Enforcement Department was special because it organized all of the real military units and made important strategic decisions.

Its department head was a big deal.

The Red Collective was set up as a decentralized superorganization courtesy of Ves, so it explicitly lacked a single absolute leader or a small group of people who held all of the reins of power.

Even so, the department heads held much of the power of the RC by virtue of their executive authority.

Unlike the councilors who could only exercise their power indirectly by voting on different bills, the department heads could decide how to implement the acts that the two councils had passed.

Even if they had to abide by their directives, they had so much leeway on how to follow the new laws and directives that they could pursue their own agenda much more than other collies.

It was therefore extremely vital that the collies chose the right leader to take charge of the Enforcement Department.

Due to the heavily fractured power structure of the Red Collective, it was nearly impossible to get enough groups to agree on a single candidate.

It was far too easy to find flaws that would cause a candidate to become unviable in the eyes of different interest groups.

This was why a former high marshal of the Kromo Republic managed to score this top job.

Demetrius Sol Klavia was a 200 year old man who once served as a mech officer, a mech general until he finally presided over the armed forces of a first-rate colonial state.

During his long years of service, he never really managed to excel in anything flashy. He was not a brilliant mech commander like Casella Ingvar. He was not a leader who inspired worship like Ark Larkinson. He was not even known as a particularly brilliant strategist.

What he excelled at was the boring stuff. He was a numbers guy. He prioritized logistics above everything else. His favorite strategy was to build up infrastructure and spend lots of time training troops.

His goal was never to start a fair fight.

It was to build up military capabilities so much that by the time a conflict finally erupted, he had already won because his forces were so much better prepared for battle compared to the enemy!

It was not for nothing that Demetrius Sol Klavia earned the moniker of the Patient Builder, though he preferred not to make use of it himself.

Although a man known as the Patient Builder very clearly lacked energy, excitement and charisma, he did not lack vision.

He had a very clear understanding that the Red Collective was just a new superorganization. It took time and effort to build up all of the infrastructure and to raise military units that were ready to participate in total war.

An added complication was that raising armies of qi cultivators was not like raising armies composed of mechs.

Mechs usually started off at full strength as soon as they rolled off the production lines. A mech corps comprising 50,000 mechs had a predictable amount of combat power so long as its numbers stayed the same.

The same could not be said for cultivators. Gathering 50,000 of them, and they would start off severely underpowered and lacking in experience.

Give them a few years of preparation, and their cultivation advanced by varying degrees depending on the complexity of their cultivation methods, their average talent and their access to elixirs and other assisting tools.

In short, the RC’s armed forces needed to spend as much time as possible on training and preparation in order to unleash greater strength on the frontlines as possible.

This was the general reason why the Patient Builder led the Enforcement Department. He had no hunger for glory and would steadfastly stick to his slow strategy in order to guarantee that the RC would be able to make a strong showing once it finally unleashed its full might on the battlefield.

While Ves had heard plenty of hearsay about Demetrius Sol Klavia over the months, he decided to ask the opinions of those who met the old department head in person.

"I know much about the head of the Enforcement Department, but it is not my place to share them with you." Zariel-775 plainly told Ves. "We are called secret keepers for good reason. We come across a large amount of classified and sensitive information. We can start wars, provoke conflicts, break friendships and shatter alliances if we freely shared what we know to the wrong ears. I will not explain the specifics to you, but I am restricted from divulging information that is not critical and will break the confidence of a protected individual."

That... sounded disappointing, but Ves should feel grateful for the integrity of the secret keepers. These guys were the real deal.

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