Chapter 197: The Oblivious Ones [BONUS CHAPTER]

The presidential palace, Esparia.

Inside the situation room, the President of Esparia, Samuel, could be seen quietly sitting, eagerly waiting for the reports of their ongoing invasion on Eden, and from his expressions, it could be said that he didn't seem to be worried about anything going bad at all.

"Do we still have the radio problem?" He asked the Esparias Military General, who was with him, along with several other high-level members of the government and among them there was a person who didn't have any of such lofty position in the government and yet was allowed in the room and was, in fact, even given a chair right next to the President, he was the spokesperson sent by the Morgan's after the first visitor from them had observed the situation and returned back to report to them.

"We suspect that the other side is trying to disrupt the rhythm of our operation, but you don't have to worry, Mister President. We are confident of winning this fight with a landslide victory," answered the general, trying to make it so that the President doesn't later try to undermine his glory.

The president looked at the representative of the Morgans and just as he was about to start his conversation with him, a secure phone line started ringing, causing the president to stop and glance at it as the general picked up the phone and put it on loudspeaker since he didn't want to repeat what the conversation might be about.

"Go on," the general said, allowing the caller to start speaking.

[Good evening, Mr Samuel and the rest of the members] Athena's feminine voice greeted from the other side of the phone, causing the people in the room to tilt their heads in confusion and make them wonder if a soldier was messing with them despite knowing that he could be punished for such an act?

"You do know that you will be heavily punished for not following the military protocol, right?" the general stated in an intimidating tone, trying to make the soldier know the weight of what he had just done, "I will ask the President to forgive you under the assumption that you were too excited for the good news you were about to present to us. So, go on and say it without wasting our time," he added.

Athena, who had been quiet throughout the reprimanding words of the general, answered while saying, [Had I been a soldier of your country, that would have been something scary and reassuring to hear from you. Unfortunately, I'm not one of them. I'm calling from the secure phone the currently dead commanding structure had in their planning tent to inform you that we have all of your remaining soldiers under our temporary prison, as prisoners of war] She said in a serious tone, making the members hearing her words to subconsciously believe that whatever she was saying was no longer a joke since no one was dumb enough to play such a foolish prank on them given the current situation.

"You seem to have lucked out and managed to gain connection to our encrypted communication, planning to play a game of minds with us in the hope that we stop our invasion. But you're barking up the wrong tree, you should have used this chance to beg for the conditions of surrender," Samuel said after realizing the caller was indeed from Eden's military.

[I really can't be bothered to give further explanation. Call this number after you are informed, I don't think it should take long] Athena said before ending the call since she had enough time to play mind games with them.

"Logan, do you think she is serious about what she said?" Samuel asked the general after taking a short moment to ponder whether their enemies were serious or just bluffing.

"They must be bluffing, Mister President. Through all of our simulation, we are sure that there is not even a slim possibility of them ending up as the winners in this fight," Logan answered with a pride tone, showing how confident he was of winning the fight, to the point of not even considering the chance of the call being real.

At the same time, he started disconnecting all the power cords to the phones in the room to prevent any chance of eaves droppings happening through the infiltrated secure communication lines. Not taking any chances.

"Then how do you explain about the radio being jammed moments after we crossed the border and not receiving any report through any other channels for the past 20 minutes since the war started?" asked the representative of the Morgan's, opening his mouth for the first time since the start of the operation.

They only knew him as the representative, because that's what he had introduced himself as and hadn't even given them his name.

"Due to having a problem with funding allocation, we haven't upgraded the radio of all the soldiers. So they might have the ability to jam them but that doesn't mean that they have won the war. We can explain all of it if they might have got help from the telecommunication giant, CONNECT," Logan said, trying to give an explanation on how the jamming might have been made possible.

"If they are that powerful, why did they fail to stop us from disturbing their government infrastructure and almost their whole internet infrastructure, slowing down the internet and even removing access to their government websites?" asked the representative from the Morgan family.

"Our communication infrastructure is not as advanced as yours, which allowed you to make them suffer. But their communication juggernaut of a company should at least have the capability of blocking certain radio signals. Despite being outdated, if they were to use CONNECT's infrastructure, they should still be a few generations ahead of the most prevalent communication system we have.

So, it should be easy for them to do that. Nonetheless, that doesn't stop us from bulldozing them, all we have to do is bomb their base and kill or capture the rest of them," Logan retorted back, finding that the situation he was in right now was quite embarrassing since he was defending the enemy's capabilities by explaining how they could do such a thing, yet at the same time, also try to show the man that he was confident of them winning this fight despite the other side having the advantage of information infrastructure.

"Why don't we just send a helicopter to the war theater so that it can bring back information on whether everything is going as planned or not?" suggested Logan, trying to end the discussion as the more he discussed this, the more uneasy he started to become. He found the reasoning made by the people in the room was logical, the only discrepancy here being that the Eden's military couldn't have gained so much expertise in such a short period of time.

"That makes the most sense. Go on and order for a helicopter to be sent there and bring back the information as soon as possible," Samuel said, trying to mediate and prevent the two people from starting an argument and also in order to make sure that his second batch of payment would be delivered to him upon receiving the news of the successful start of the operation.

Logan immediately called for his assistant and gave him the order, avoiding the use of phones in the room since they were already infiltrated.