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After the Assassination Attempt on Molt Sol Augustus, Zorzal El Caesar uses the poisoning as an excuse to seize power in place of the severely ill emperor. Zorzal announces his coup with a public announcement of the curfew placed on Sadera, as well as a speech in which he states that he intends to resume war with Japan, in spite of the overwhelming technological superiority of the Japan Self-Defense Forces. Zorzal's first act is to order his forces to enforce a curfew in the city, as well as to blockade the city entrances, stranding the JSDF forces in Akusho and at the Jade Palace, though he does not violate the treaty and enter either JSDF positions. Zorzal orders that anyone found violating the curfew to be summarily executed.
The blockading of Akusho is met with riots among the inhabitants, who throw stones and other objects at the Imperial soldiers. The Imperials respond by shutting the gates to Akusho, with the intent to starve the population, as well as the JSDF consolate, in to submission. However, Zorzal and his pro-war senators naively don't realize they had made enemy out of the Crime Lords of Akusho and the entire citizen, which proves fatal during the Siege of Jade Palace. Furthermore, they also not realize that the JSDF had already utilized a large tunnel beneath their base in Akusho built by Crime Lords for shady outside businesses to supply the Japanese envoy and Akusho citizens with foods and supplies from outside the capital. Furuta also smuggled some foods to his comrade under Zorzal's nose. In order to successfully rescue the pro-peace senators from prison, they pay huge sum of cash to the Crime Lords to supply them with cartridges to transport the senators to Italica.
Meanwhile, Zorzal El Caesar discusses strategy with his lieutenants. Among the tactics discussed are deploying raiders from goblin vassal states to attack villages around Alnus as a scorch earth tactic, as well as conducting similar attacks on villages with Imperial troops in the guise of JSDF personnel. Although the presented strategies show a lot of logic flaws and tactical blunders since the scorch earth tactic employed earlier by Molt was already useless against JSDF's highly efficient logistics and the disguised Imperial troops know nothing about a single Japanese word or what a gun really is, Zorzal and his cohorts still moronically see these inane strategies as brilliance. Finally, Zorzal discusses assassinating Lelei La Lelena to eliminate an Imperial citizen sympathetic to the JSDF cause as well as out of pure jealousy for her fame of killing the Flame Dragon proclaimed by Molt.
Unwilling to let Zorzal and his deluded pro-war senators self-destruct the Empire through a hopeless war, Pina Co Lada pledged Diabo for help but he rejected her from the fear of getting purged by Zorzal. Diabo stated that he also grieved for the Empire's ruined future and intended to get rid of Zorzal using ''foreign power'', much to Pina's horror as she realized Diabo was trying to let the Superpowers into the Special Region. Consequently, Pina tired to persuaded Diabo to stop his attempt of letting the Empire from being conquered by much more terrified forces, only for Diabo to push her off and assure her that she already had the JSDF to weed out Zorzal.
In order to shut Pina up, Diabo used Yao's example of begging and making sexual advance toward Itami and the JSDF to get rid of the Flame Dragon to discourage her. However, Pina was willing to go through much to Diabo's chagrin. This caused Diabo to pretend to let his sister satisfied him in bed, only to sneak out of the palace to go to Alnus behind her back. His departure depressed Pina as she knew that the Empire would collapse soon.
Zorzal and his goons also confiscated all pro-peace senators asserts to fund their war effort, leaving some of them like Cicero broke and had to borrow money from crime lords of Akusho as well as prostitutes like Tyuwa.
At the same time, Zorzal's Oprichnina lay seige to the Jade Palace in an attempt to arrest pro-peace dissident Marquis Casel and daughter of pro-peace activists Sherry Tyueli. After the Oprichnina are repelled by the Rose-Order of Knights and the Jade Palace guards, Zorzal orders the Oprichnina leader, Gimlet executed and deploys 1000 Imperial army troops to attack the Palace. At the same time, after discovering the involvement of his sister Piña Co Lada's Rose Knights, Zorzal orders the princess arrested.
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