The intelligence room could be said to be the most populous and largest institution in the First Army's General Headquarters. To screen and store the massive amounts of information, Lian and Fran had separately opened up an underground space dedicated to the use of the General Staff, with nearly 70% of the two hundred staff members working here.
It was also the office with the highest consumption of resources, equipped not only with the rather rare luminous magic stones but also with free Chaos drinks for refreshment late at night, a perk that made other departments extremely envious.
However, those inside the intelligence room often complained incessantly.
Since the Northern Pearl proposed the spy program, results had gradually begun to appear. The secret letters flowing in from Eternal Winter and Wolfheart had increased from two or three a week at the beginning to nearly a hundred a day.
Although analyzing intelligence was its primary function from the very beginning, most of the information at that time came from reconnaissance and battle reports, which were not only well-organized and concise but also mostly traceable. However, these hundred or so messages every day were all incoherent fragments, with even the wording and sentence construction posing problems. Just figuring out their true meaning took a lot of time, making the screening process like a tedious jigsaw puzzle.
Of course, that wasn't the worst part.
Compared to reading analysis, dealing with secret letters was the most troublesome task.
Theoretically, the constantly increasing number of messages was quite contrary to common sense. After all, the devils were now sealing off the Red Mist border, making it not so easy to transmit intelligence. However, after Hilfox took over as the head of espionage, the means of transmitting intelligence became much more diverse.
For example, tattooing it inside animal skins, or packing it into the interlayer of carrying poles, or simply stuffing it into the belly of salted fish... As long as the nobles in those occupied areas did not stop trading, it was impossible to block the flow of information from enemy-occupied territories. Even most of the time, the messengers did not know that they had become part of the intelligence chain.
However, precisely because of this, the secret letters were quite diverse. For example, the feeling of personally taking a silk strip out of a fish's belly was definitely not good, not to mention having to endure the fishy smell to clean it before viewing it.
If the daily work changed from leisurely sipping afternoon tea while writing reports to rummaging through a pile of garbage for diverse letters and then restoring them into usable intelligence, anyone would feel resentment.
However, even so, despite the complaints, no one dared to slack off—after all, this department was also the one that Edith and Iron Axe valued the most, and delaying work in front of them was undoubtedly courting death.
Walking into the intelligence room, Northern Pearl saw Iron Axe talking with Hilfox about something, while dozens of paper strips were placed in front of the table in the center of the room, obviously intelligence that had been re-copied by the staff.
She glanced over them and found that most of these messages came from the Kingdom of Eternal Winter.
A large part of them were fragmented messages such as "Another devil troop entered a certain city north today," "A certain nobleman died inexplicably, and his title was taken over by someone," and "A huge living stone monster appeared in the border direction," which were difficult to extract much valuable information from.
However, this was not surprising. The reason why the spy program had progressed so quickly was due to the contribution of Hil and also inseparable from black money.
Since she suggested actively contacting the black card sender, the person behind the scenes also came to the forefront—although it was just an agent, they still frankly stated their willingness to help Graycastle. This organization originated in Dawn, and also had some influence in Wolfheart and Eternal Winter. Of course, this influence was mainly manifested in the underground black market and rats.
Since the intelligence collected by the rats was naturally not of high quality, perhaps there were many street rumors and fallacies among them, but no matter how inefficient, it was much better than the previous complete ignorance.
In addition, there were a few that caught her attention, which were the messages of "forcible conscription of boatmen" appearing in several places.
"What do you think?" Iron Axe also noticed the arrival of Northern Pearl and asked proactively.
"If I remember correctly, Third Princess Garcia brought a large number of sea ships when attacking Eternal Winter." Edith pondered for a moment, "If the church didn't destroy those ships, they are probably still somewhere in Eternal Winter."
"It seems you also care about this."
"Compared to other intelligence, this message can at least be verified from multiple sources, and the credibility is higher." She spread her hands, "The role that sea ships can play is nothing more than transportation. Either the devils have a large number of troops that need to be transferred, or they plan to launch an attack from the sea. However, I think the possibility of the second point is unlikely."
"Why?" Iron Axe asked.
"After fighting for so long, the devils have no reason not to know the power of artillery. Whether attacking Great Duke Island or Sunken Pond Bay on sailing ships, they will be subjected to fierce shelling before landing. At the speed of sailing ships, it's no different from sending them to their deaths." Edith explained, "As for secretly bypassing Wolfheart Harbor and going directly into Dawn and other places, they would face the dilemma of insufficient Red Mist. So I am more inclined to the former—for war purposes, the devils need to gather their troops to the front line more quickly, and land and water are the most reasonable choice."
After she finished speaking, she looked at Hil, "What do you think?"
Hil bowed slightly to Edith, "Madam, analyzing the battle situation is not my forte, so I cannot conclude which approach the enemy will take. Compiling these clues and handing them over to the General Staff is the only thing I can do."
He's quite a talent.
Edith thought to herself that being able to cautiously judge one's own talents and know the limits was obviously more valuable than blindly agreeing with oneself. No wonder His Majesty would appoint him to be responsible for the spy program.
"Since even you can't see any more clues, then there's probably no way." Iron Axe said helplessly, "So we only know that the devils are mobilizing their troops, but we don't know their specific distribution and strategic goals. It's really tormenting."
"The main thing is that the evacuation of Wolfheart was relatively thorough, which deprived Hil of the opportunity to install spies on the front line. If you didn't evacuate the residents, we might have caught the devils' whereabouts long ago." Edith joked.
"I wouldn't dare to disobey His Majesty's orders." Iron Axe shook his head, "Besides... the First Army cannot place all its hopes on the rats."
"The intelligence won't continue to be so fragmented, sir." Hilfox suddenly said.
Iron Axe raised his eyebrows, "You mean these messages will become more and more complete?"
"That's right," he replied, "The most important thing I learned from spending so long in the Dawn Circus is that as long as it is planned reasonably, the intelligence line will expand automatically."
"Oh? Can you explain in detail?" Edith asked with interest.