"We are running out of time," Grandmaster Nugar stated after barging inside the room.

"I'd prefer if you waited a bit before informing me," Hassan calmly responded as he stood up from bed, moving his arms gracefully to let the two Loyatan beauties next to him keep sleeping.

At first, he didn't like Loyatan women much, they were too pale for his taste. But with time, Hassan understood the truth of the world: all women should be appreciated. It also helped that this duo in particular were buxom vixens with delightful golden hair and powerful blue eyes.

"We don't have time for this!" Nugar grunted as Hassan donned his clothes.

"You know best that this is training," the cultivator added. "But if I can mix pleasure with work, I would be a fool not to take the chance."

"Bah!" The old assassin stomped out of the room and the young sultanzade followed suit.

It truly had been an important training session. The blonde pair hadn't been prostitutes, but assassins. The reason why he had reaped part of his manpower was because he had personally taught them how to detect vitality and reap it. Yes, he could have taught them how to reap without actually reaping them, but his time was gold, so compensation was to be expected.

The reason why he had chosen women – besides enjoying their company far more than men – was because it was way easier for them to reap. A man offering his body was a pervert and a molester. But a woman? Those were just called whores and left alone and taken advantage of.

Which played into their favor.

"I've gotten scary reports," Nugar informed him as they walked along the installations.

"Is it the Sadina stuff?" He guessed and the assassin nodded. "What now? It was already tiring enough knowing that Aaliyah had given control to my younger sisters. I swear to the heavens, nothing good can come out of it. If Aaliyah is willing to give power away, it means that she's planning something nasty."

"The armies are gathering," the Grandmaster elaborated. "Not just Sadina's or Asina's, but even the southern emirates. Whilst they haven't done much besides public labor, the number of soldiers gathering close to our borders is staggering."

"We already knew this. Rani was planning an invasion in a year's time; we should still have a few months."

Nugar's expression soured. Hassan's statement didn't comfort him in the slightest. "Can you remind me how that intelligence came into your hands?"

"Well, I have good genes." His joke was met by a stern expression. "Being sour will not help your decision-making," Hassan puffed. "It was my half-sister's fault. Naila." He added for clarification as he had a lot of half-sisters. "She is pretty new to the political and subterfuge field, so she hasn't noticed that she had unwittingly added a mole to her inner circle. Got to give it to the Sadina cell, they have facilitated this intelligence gathering."

"So the information is truly verified?" Nugar still presented some skepticism.

"I mean, the one gathering the information is an assassin, so if you do not trust your own people, it is your fault."

"Ours," the Grandmaster corrected.

"What?"

"Ours," he reiterated. "For better or worse, you are now an assassin, even at the level of a Shadow with Enlightenment alone. You are in our brotherhood, remember that."

"I do, I do," Hassan solemnly said.

A joke about being in the brotherhood sprouted in his mind, but he decided not to tell it considering how moody Nugar was. That didn't mean he didn't draw a smile on his visage as he thought about the joke and the women he had just left behind completely spent.

"Let's get started," the ex-emir said after they made it to the war room. He extended a series of maps, most detailing the border between Ydaz and Loyata. "Regardless of Aaliyah's machinations, it is a fact that the sultanzade of Sadina is now in control of the military."

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

He placed several wooden blocks that represented the military force of Ydaz.

"Those are a lot of troops," Nugar commented.

"Indeed," Hassan admitted. "But this can play in our favor." The Grandmaster Assassin frowned but let him continue. "No matter how competent my half-sisters may be, they are young and green. And they are dealing with the personal armies of different emirates, meaning there's no loyalty, no cohesion, no nothing. The only thread that ties all these soldiers together is the word of the sultanah."

"So what do you intend? Generate strife between the soldiers?"

"That would be good, yes, but I must inform you those tactics will have limited success. I expect every independent army to have their emir or imperial scribe with them, meaning they will not get too rowdy. And if they did, the sultanzade leading them would beat some sense into them with flesh. Either with their own or the soldier's."

Nugar's frown intensified at that statement.

"What?" Hassan shrugged. "There are a lot of ways to get the loyalty of men and women, and carnality is a solid one. It is a win-win for both parties."

"I see…" The old assassin realized the hidden meaning behind the sultanzade's words, though Ydaz's uncommon tactics and societal structure still unsettled him. "The sultanzade will copulate with their own soldiers to boost discipline whilst they boost their individual strength."

Hassan's answer was a smirk. "It is commonly not recommended to weaken one's manpower, but they will have limitless soldiers at their disposal. If I have to take a wild guess, Rani will use this as a recruitment effort. 'The best night of your life if you join our ranks' or something like that. Men will fold easily over such tactics, women though… Rani's probably the only one who can recruit them that way."

"Is this sister of yours this… charismatic?"

"Not really," Hassan admitted. "But Rani's charm stance is on par – kind of – with Aaliyah's, even if there is an order of magnitude between their vitality reserves. Manpower will not be an issue for Ydaz, the bottleneck will be at the supply lines."

"Yes," Nugar lurched on the map. "The Qiraji is a harsh place, and beyond the established roads, it's impossible to survive out there. Especially with a marching army. Do you think they will maintain a defensive position?"

"No," the emir hastily replied without thinking it once. "Aaliyah will forbid them from playing defensive. We are already taxing them with guerrillas, skirmishes, and the embargo. They will attack."

"So should we play defensively?"

Hassan's smile turned into a djnnish one. "No."

Nugar let out a sigh, already fed up with the young man's convoluted way of words. "Explain yourself."

"The assassins have a greater advantage with their hit-and-run tactics the more difficult the terrain is. And defending a fort is, obviously, not running." He pointed at the forests next to the border north of Sadina with a stick. "A forest will remove the line of sight for the Ydazi soldiers, but that's all. It's not exactly hard terrain, even if they are not used to it. Now," he moved the stick south to the desert, "sand is hard to fight on. The softer the sand, the harder it is. Peyote is also more effective on sand and rock than soil, so there is a solid balance between the territorial advantage and the tactical one."

"Do you intend to attack Sadina? Are you crazy?" Nugar slapped the table.

"Oops, should have been more conscious of what I pointed at." Hassan moved his stick to the west. "No, we cannot attack Sadina. Attacking any emirate bordering Asina is a death sentence. And besides, the Qiraji is not the harshest terrain at our disposal."

Nugar noticed where the cultivator was pointing at now. The Ridged Highlands and the Whistling Sands.

"Higher elevation and difficult terrain are optimal for shadow stepping and disadvantageous for common soldiers, even sultanzade, to a degree." Hassan elaborated.

"But what about the Whistling Sands?" Nugar pressed. "Even your claim of difficult terrain is relative."

"Actually, I don't intend to use the Whistling Sands as a trap, but as a base." Nugar was tired by now of arching his brows, so he simply waited for the cultivator to continue. "It is the most deserted desert of Ydaz. Pun not intended. There are no people, only monsters. And even then, few of them. I do not intend to use monsters as part of our war machine as they are too frightful, but they are a deterrent enough that any invasion on the Whistling Sands will take weeks if not months. Soldiers are creatures of superstition, if they feel like they are bound to perish when they are doing something, they will not do it, even if it is the sensible option."

"So we form our main base in their own territory?"

"Exactly," Hassan pointed at him with the stick, which Nugar pushed down the tip with a hint of frustration. "For that, though," the cultivator continued unruffled by the gesture, "we need to be the first to attack with our armies whilst they are still building theirs. East and north will maintain a defensive position, focusing on guerrilla attacks against any pushing army, whilst we attack from the west and take the Ridged Highlands and the Whistling Sands."

"You are confident with your strategy," Nugar remarked.

"Well, I have been taught the most advanced military strategies and I know all the weaknesses and strengths of each side. And I know one thing, if we march our army and we take the west of Ydaz before they can react, my dear sister will panic, and my mother will be infuriated."

"Isn't the whole strategy dependent on the inexperience of the leading sultanzade of Sadina?" The old assassin crossed his arms.

"You’ve got it wrong, Nugar." Hassan started laughing and hitting the table. "That is not the strategy at all. There is only one way to win this war, and that fostering the hate that has been brewing for decades and fulfilling the wish of every sultanzade." The cultivator-assassin grabbed a wooden piece bigger than all others and placed it right on their planned battlefield. "We need to assassinate Aaliyah-al-Ydaz."