Leonel's approach to war hadn't changed much over the years, only because he never officially learned battle tactics. What he was good at was understanding people and guessing how they would react before even they were aware.
In a situation like this one, where he had limited understanding of the parties involved and the environments the battle would take place on, relying on cleverness was a hard pass.
Rather than spending time wracking his brain to find clever schemes, the best path forward was absolute power.
But that was a problem in and of itself.
Not only was his power limited due to the Regulator, even if it wasn't, he didn't have the luxury of just suddenly going all out to defend the Sea Gods, because that would expose him much earlier than he wanted.
To make matters worse, he couldn't rely on the humans either because they were much too weak. If they had absolute power to rely on, they would have used it already and they wouldn't be in this situation to begin with.
This meant one thing: Leonel not only had to find a method of using strength to overwhelm his enemies, at least the very least until he had gathered enough information to use cleverness. He also had to somehow do so while keeping it within an acceptable range.
If he pushed it too far, it would be obvious that one of the participants in this race to claim the Sea God Incomplete World had taken the side of the humans.
And if he didn't go hard enough... well, that result was obvious. The humans would be finished.
Threading this needle would probably be one of the hardest things that Leonel had ever done, but there was really only one path forward.
He had to rely on the strengths the humans did have, maximize them, and ride the wave to victory.
By the time his enemies realized he was here, it would be too late.
What Leonel didn't know was that his oddity had been sensed before he even had a chance to do anything.
He hadn't realized that the reason the Sea Gods were so lax wasn't because they were baiting the humans to return. Even if he was on his way back the security would have been just as easy to get through.
The real reason they were so relaxed was because they had an infallible confidence in Wise Sea Order.
'You fucking bitch. Why don't you go confess to someone you like and see how confident you are then?'
Even after he had this thought, he didn't look toward the fierce Sea Goddess. Knowing her, rather than confessing, she'd probably drag him out of bed by the balls. So maybe that wasn't the best example.
The young Sea God cleared his throat again and looked toward Sashae for an answer.
"Okay."
To his surprise, the young Sea Goddess stood and walked toward him.
Soon, they were walking away. Let alone the ladies, even the young Sea God's friends, were in shock. Their ruckus had died down, and they watched them disappear with open mouths.
Even the young Sea God himself felt like he was watching all this happen from the sky. His soul had left his body, and he was completely on autopilot.
He almost didn't realize that it was Sashae who was following him until they had long left the encampment.
"Are you going to make me walk much further?"
There seemed to be a hint of a smile in her voice that almost made him faint.
The young Sea God froze and finally remembered that he was the man in this situation. No, he was the one who invited her, but he hadn't thought he'd get this far. He knew nothing about this planet. Where the hell was he even going?
He quickly looked around, and his heart leapt into his throat.
There was nothing romantic about this place at all, and the sun was still too high in the skies for the atmosphere to be ambiguous. It just felt...