"Why have you bothered me with this stupid, pointless call in the first place?" a woman wearing an eye patch said bluntly, without any care in the world for diplomacy or politeness.
"It's painfully clear you're scheming something behind the scenes. This isn't one of those ridiculous TV shows where we would stupidly play along with your manipulative games. Try some shit with me, and I will go down fighting. I would at least ensure you're severely weakened for the others to take a huge bite out of your territory." She said with a somewhat crazy smirk.
"..." Zero's smile remained fixed on his face, though he paused for a long moment, visibly taking time to collect his thoughts and reassess his approach.
His main reason and goal for orchestrating all of this was to carefully read everyone's reactions and capabilities, to gather intelligence. But now he deliberately turned his full attention to the only person who had not said anything at all yet—the individual with the most land out of all of them present, controlling territory more than double the size of what any of the others possessed.
"Well, I want to say that I already know all three of you possess SSS-tier talents," Zero said with a confident smile spreading across his face. "It pleases me greatly to confirm that North America has a total of 4 SSS tier talents currently operating within its borders. That means the remaining 10 SSS tier talents are distributed across Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, and South America."
"But we're facing some significant troubles that need to be addressed," Zero continued, his expression growing more serious. "Sooner or later, we would inevitably need to unite our forces together to defeat Miss Quiet over here. That's something which I personally don't want to happen, due to the obvious fact that we would all be left severely weakened afterwards, regardless of who wins. But we also can't simply ignore the fact that she is immensely powerful, because if we do nothing, we would be constantly playing catch-up to her expansion. And we might fail to ever close that gap."
Zero finished speaking with that same calculated smile, causing the other two overlords to shift their attention towards Chu Yin's screen. Her ice clone stood there completely disinterested, casually scrolling through her phone as if this diplomatic meeting was beneath her notice entirely.
They all looked towards her expectantly, saying absolutely nothing and waiting for her response. The silence stretched on until she was finally forced to look up at all three of them staring at her. She studied each of their faces carefully for some time before finally speaking.
"Since you're all SSS tier talents like myself, I shall graciously give you all the chance to merge your empires with mine and serve under me," she stated flatly, her tone leaving no room for negotiation. "Failure to accept this offer will result in one of two things for each of you. Death, or enslavement. Those are your only options. If you think you can successfully unite your forces and attack me together, then go ahead and try. I highly doubt a pathetic coward who has to use this kind of small, manipulative trick to plant seeds of fear in everyone else is worthy of my attention or respect. In fact, I shall be officially declaring war on you going forward. Your childish games have thoroughly annoyed me."
With those cold, decisive words, Zero's confident smile froze completely on his face. He had not been expecting this kind of aggressive, direct response at all.
He quickly looked towards the other two overlords, wanting to see if either of them would step in to stop her or voice opposition to her declaration. But why would they intervene when they could simply step aside and watch the conflict unfold, looking for the perfect opportunity to join the battle at precisely the right moment to gain the best possible advantage from the chaos?
"Then come and try," Zero said coldly, his tone shifting to match her hostility. "I would very much like to see how you would actually face me and my forces. At most, you're tier 2 with a combat power of around 700 thousand. You would lose far more in this battle than I would."
His words caused Chu Yin's eyes to turn absolutely chilly with barely contained rage. Although she technically wasn't tier 2 yet, she did currently possess a combat power of 700 thousand thanks to all the monster crystals she had consumed and absorbed. In just a few more weeks of dedicated training and absorption, she would reach her absolute limit at tier 1—that being an impressive 1.2 million combat power.
"Good, you're back to using your common sense at least," Zero said with visible relief, mentally reminding himself not to carelessly poke or provoke the two women present in this meeting. One was clearly willing to go completely all out and mutually destroy the other without hesitation, and the other had almost started a full-scale war simply because she was mildly annoyed by his tactics.
"In exactly 5 months from today, I alone shall personally attack your empire," Chu Yin said calmly, her voice carrying absolute certainty and finality.
Seth would be returning in 5 months, according to their agreement, so she could simply throw all of her current administrative responsibilities onto Seth the moment he got back. Then she would be free to personally march to this arrogant man's empire and show him exactly why dragons couldn't be toyed with or manipulated.
"In that case, I will join her in the attack," the woman with the eye patch said coldly, her voice carrying equal conviction. "I don't like your stupid, manipulative tricks either. I don't want to waste valuable brain power constantly thinking about what schemes you're plotting in the background. Better to just eliminate the problem directly."
Her sudden declaration left Zero completely speechless, his carefully constructed plans crumbling before his eyes.
"You with the blonde hair," Zero said quickly, turning desperately to the last remaining neutral party. "You can't just let them do this without opposition. Think about it logically—if they can successfully unite together to destroy me first, what's stopping them from turning on you immediately afterwards?"
His urgent words made the blonde-haired man frown deeply in contemplation, because Zero did have a legitimate point worth considering. Getting used to this ruthless, calculating line of political thinking was going to be extremely difficult for everyone involved. But Zero, for some unknown reason, seemed to have already adapted quickly to this new world order and its brutal politics.
His only critical mistake was failing to understand that people of the modern world simply didn't care about elaborate schemes and long-term political maneuvering. They preferred direct, immediate action over complex games.
"Let's all take a moment to think carefully about everything that would actually happen if you all went through with that aggressive plan," the blonde-haired man said, his voice calm and measured as he attempted to bring reason to the heated discussion.
"The monsters scattered across this continent are growing stronger with every single day that passes. We should be focusing our combined attention on systematically erasing all of the monster territories before we ever consider turning our blades against each other. You all must remember that places like Africa, South America, and Australia might already be completely overrun with powerful monsters, with very few humans left alive to effectively kill them and reclaim that land."
He paused to let his words sink in before continuing.
"Let's minimize our future troubles by first ensuring that no region in North America remains filled with dangerous monster populations."
His pragmatic argument caused the two women to throw him a skeptical look, clearly not trusting his motives entirely. But after a moment of consideration, they both nodded slowly in reluctant agreement with his logic.
"Monsters for some reason seem to easily unite with each other under strong leadership," the blonde-haired man continued softly, sharing intelligence he had gathered.
"My men have reported personally witnessing a group of Wolfmen and Snakemen uniting their forces together after their two regional bosses clashed in combat. The winner of that battle simply took complete leadership over the combined group without any resistance. My main worry is actually quite simple to understand—South America, for example, has an entire massive rainforest that remains largely untouched by human civilization. Regions like that, where monsters can grow and multiply freely without anyone being able to slow down their development or thin their numbers, are genuinely terrifying to consider."
He let the weight of that concern settle over the group before addressing an even larger threat.
"The ocean is even scarier than any landmass," he said grimly. "It only grew exponentially larger along with Earth's logic-defying growth and expansion. So we can reasonably expect countless powerful sea monsters lurking beneath the water's surface, breeding and evolving without any human interference whatsoever. And who knows what horrors are developing down there—a sea king could eventually appear and successfully unite all of the world's seas under a single banner."
His gaze shifted directly to Chu Yin's screen, meeting her clone's eyes without flinching.
"If you, the strongest amongst all of us gathered here, were actually smarter and more composed, and if I had come to know more about your true character and leadership style, I would have willingly merged our two empires together without hesitation or resistance. But you're not what I hoped for. You're hot-tempered and reactive, something I firmly don't believe a proper ruler should ever be. Emotions cloud judgment and lead to costly mistakes."
His blunt assessment caused Chu Yin's eyes to turn dangerously cold, though she said nothing in response yet.
"You with the eye patch," the blonde-haired man continued, turning his criticism to the next overlord. "The same fundamental problem applies to you as well. You're too impulsive and quick to violence."
Then he shifted his attention to the red-haired schemer.
"And you with the red hair—you're far too scheming and manipulative for anyone to ever trust. A snake constantly trying to play the friendly role of an ally while plotting everyone's downfall behind closed doors."
The blonde-haired man rose from his seat, clearly preparing to leave the call entirely.
"Let us all unite our forces against the monsters before we clash amongst ourselves," he said as a final statement, his tone carrying a note of resignation. "I honestly don't see any of us actually getting along in the long term, but survival should come first."
He was about to end his connection to the call and leave the meeting entirely, but he paused mid-motion when Chu Yin suddenly spoke up.
[A/N: Just a heads up, even if one head monster crystal before working out and such, they can still work out to increase their combat power, it's just that it would be far slower than if they were to work out first. Then again, SSS tier talents are cheats and could ignore this... yet MC can't.]