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Kara’kuun? If these tremors were coming from the Dulvani capital city, then perhaps he should change tactics here. He’d told Itoya to send a few men to negotiate with the Dulvani directly, but now he was thinking that he should go investigate this other matter himself, anyway.

Interesting.

He didn’t like to act rashly, though. Increasing the number of scouts would be the more prudent thing to do.

Patience, then. As ever.

He’d heard that all his life, from reapers and mentors alike: that his patience was perhaps his greatest strength. How many enemies had he vanquished over the years simply by outlasting them? By waiting for them to make a mistake? By looking for an opening, no matter how long it took to find it?

Though, he’d heard the opposite, too: that he was too slow to act. Too scared of making a wrong step. Too cowardly for an emperor. Morgunov certainly liked to sing that tune. The man had an, at times, paradoxical obsession with the concept of cowardice. But then, that was just one more thing that made the Mad Demon live up to his moniker.

He instructed Natia and Akama to send more scouts to Kara’kuun, and then he retired to his chamber in the heart of the Obsidian Shell, the largest of the mobile fortresses in his entourage. Within its ridged walls slept enough non-nuclear firepower to raze an entire city in less than four hours--and without the need of a single superpowered individual.

There’d once been a time, not even that long ago by his estimation, when he’d thought that taking nuclear warheads along with him on these ventures was a good idea, but he’d since come to the conclusion that they were more trouble than they were worth. Containment and management alone made them logistical headaches, but on top of that, they were almost never needed--and even when they were, they attracted a prohibitively difficult amount of attention from the Vanguard.

Sermung did not often show himself, but the use of nuclear weapons was one thing that had almost always drawn him out. In some ways, that had been a useful tool, being able to both predict and manipulate the Titan’s movements in certain ways.

But that song and dance had lost its luster by now. Eventually, Sermung grew wise to the strategy, and in retaliation, the man had seemingly made it his life’s purpose to make Dozer regret it in a thousand other ways every time he deigned to use a nuke--until eventually, he’d all but bled Dozer dry. Now such weapons were preciously rare for him and certainly not worth risking on lengthy field operations like this one.