By now, Maria’s faction had developed beyond just a faction and into a nation. She had a functioning government, land, people, an army, and a well-developed economy which was precisely what a nation needed. Of course, the only other thing she needed was another nation to acknowledge her sovereignty, but she believed she didn't need that and just ran her faction as she would a country. She planned on usurping the Blood Faction to become the sole nation on the continent, so she didn't need their acknowledgement.
Maria’s nation had a rather peculiar style of government. It was a mix between a modern-day government and a hierarchical government from the medieval era. Since she was the queen and needed to appoint nobles for her quest, the old-style government was needed but the nobles she appointed had very limited authority unlike their actual counterparts from history.
It was a redundant way of ruling that Maria naturally wasn’t going to adopt so the nobles in her faction were quite different. They were essentially just modern-day government employees that held better positions and more responsibilities based on the degree of their nobility. Maria allowed her nobles who had ranks above Count to own a small piece of land anywhere in her country. They could build a house there, a building to start a business, or do whatever the hell they wanted with it as long as the activities they conducted there didn’t violate her nation's laws.
The nobles of her kingdom were dispatched to whatever location Maria’s main helpers like Ash, Carmilla, and Lilah needed them to be. There, they would represent her and rule the people living in those lands by only enforcing her nation's laws and nothing else. If she caught her people trying to enforce other laws or take advantage of her people, she would immediately have them removed and depending on the degree of the felony they committed, the punishment ranged from imprisonment to exile. If the crime was really severe, the felon could even face execution.
At the moment, there was a traitor in their midst who was leaking information to their enemies and this person would definitely receive a very severe punishment. When Carmilla did a complete recall of her queen’s subordinates, she was able to find not just one but 5 vampire nobles who were traitors which was definitely alarming. 2 of them were actually from their central government while the other 3 were originally part of the Red Plains area before Maria had allocated them to a different place.
The fact that 2 of the traitors were from their nation's central government didn't shock Carmilla in the slightest since she had expected it to some degree considering that a lot of important information regarding the troop placement in the Red Plains had been leaked to their enemies which resulted in their soldiers being easily routed. Only those within their nation's central government could have known about such information.
The attacks from their enemies was too swift and too precise that they couldn't even respond to them before their forces were routed. If someone from their side didn't leak the information on the number of soldiers and the locations of their strongholds within the Red Plains to their enemies, there was no way their enemies would've been able to mount such a massive, simultaneous attack on all 3 of the Dire's strongholds with such confidence.
If no information was leaked, the soldiers stationed in those fortresses would've been able to spot the enemy scouts from miles away because it was easy to spot anything out of the ordinary on the plains. This would've given the soldiers in the fortresses plenty of time to prepare for the invasion and notify their higher-ups about it. Ash would've been able to deploy soldiers from the Dire's main force that was stationed in the Bloodrock Mountains ahead of time if he was informed and this would've likely prevented the enemy vampires from even conquering the Red Plains to begin with.
The five vampire traitors only turned on their master because they were upset by the changes Maria implemented when she formally began treating her faction as a proper nation and began handing out noble titles too her subordinates. She had graciously taken them in after defeating them and this was how they repaid her. They secretly stole and bought information about the Dire's future plans, no matter how insignificant they were, and conspired with their enemy against the Dire.
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The news about Maria’s departure was also from these traitors and for those that betrayed the one that had taken them in and fed them when they should have been killed instead, Carmilla passed down her judgment onto them and showed absolutely no mercy. She didn’t kill the traitorous vampires but instead used one of her abilities, [Infinite Illusion], and placed their minds inside an infinite loop of illusions that they could never escape from.
Carmilla made sure to take whatever intelligence she could get from these traitors while subjecting them to life much worse than death. With their minds placed under her illusion, the 5 vampires had essentially become her puppets. Ash and Carmilla thought this was a good opportunity to turn these puppets into double agents which they could use to spy on their enemies while also feeding them false information from time to time. Ash didn’t mind sacrificing a few pieces of information to the enemy as long as they could take much more away from them. He praised his bride for thinking up such a good idea so now, he needed to play his part and fabricate ‘genuine’ information that could be treated as ‘lies’ but viewed by his enemies as the ‘truth’ in order to attack them.
“Husband, how are you going to do that?”
“Simple. I’ll just feed them some truths.”
“Are you planning to sacrifice some of our troops and information?”
“Yes, but it’s a necessary sacrifice to make and it isn’t hard to do.”
Just like Ash said, it really wasn’t anything hard. All he needed to do was give his enemies a few pieces of genuinely true information about the Dire before he slowly mixed them with a few false but ‘true’ information. The way Ash did this was by sacrificing the people from his side. He created artificial patrol routes and warehouses around the mountain range that the enemy could attack and actually placed a few soldiers and trained people there who had volunteered because they wanted to do it for their Queen.
He didn’t just give away those kinds of information but also some genuinely good information about the placements of his army’s soldiers, some minor plans and movement orders along with potential counterattack orders that he did tell his soldiers to do knowing that they would likely be intercepted. Ash naturally warned his troops of what they were getting into but the soldiers were steadfast in their decisions and did whatever they were told as long as it was for the Dire.
It wasn’t only information about the war front. Ash sacrificed information about supply caches, travel routes, and patrol teams to the enemy. He used any information he could to bait his enemies into attacking them or making a move but in return, he would make sure that they bit the short end of the stick every time. All the information he fed to the enemy Ash made sure was inconsequential to their nation. He wasn’t crazy or dumb enough to feed his enemies those very sensitive pieces of info about his Queen’s nation.
His decision to enact this plan was truly ruthless and probably not something that Maria would have allowed him to make since Ash was sacrificing her soldiers and citizens, something she would most likely want to avoid since she saw her NPC citizens as people. However, since she was off-planet, Ash did whatever he could, using any method at his disposal, to take back what belonged to the Dire. He needed to make sure that he reobtained all of the stolen land that their enemies had taken away from them before his queen returned from her off-planet quest, so that he wouldn't be hit by her.
Ash believed with a 100% certainty that he was going to be punished by his Queen if she came back and learned that he had screwed up big-time while she was gone, but at the very least, he wanted to lower the degree of his punishment by amending his mistake. If he just left things as they were, his queen might question his capacity and dole out an even harsher punishment for him.
He ground his teeth in anger at the thought and wanted to end the lives of the 5 traitors that did this to him. Proving himself to his Queen gave him joy and failing her like this extremely angered Ash to the point where he wanted to commit murder. Thankfully, Maria hadn't come back in the time that it took for him to prepare for the real counterattack he had planned for the enemy bastards that were happily occupying the land that was originally his Queen's territory.
“Start the plan. We don’t have a moment to lose. Our Queen could come back at any time once she’s finished with her quest. We don’t want her seeing our blunder even though we will have to report it to her…”
"Yes sir!"
"Kill all of those bastards that invaded the Red Plains. I want every one of them dead for their affront to our Queen's authority! For Her Highness, the Queen!"
"For Her Highness, the Queen!"
"For the Queen!"