Chapter 367: Unexpected Visitor

Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav

It was dangerous high up in the air. Small countries would usually have no aerial defenses, but casually entering a major country’s air space would be the same as challenging that country’s air defenses and aerial knights.

But the most dangerous possibility was to accidentally enter a mage tower’s defense zone. Even a dragon could die against a well-prepared mage tower.

High-quality mage towers would be capable of multiplying a mage’s spells’ strength by ten times over. A large-scale, high-circle spell would easily reach the scale of a small forbidden spell. It was quite common for mages to be able to slay dragons. This was also why dragons would still maintain a basic amount of respect for the mages.

To my knowledge, the capital city of each major domain in the Bardi Empire had such anti-air defenses. In fact, the more powerful domain lords would even hire mages to construct anti-air mage towers. Of course, they weren’t necessarily guarding against external threats. Powerful domain lords in a mega-empire would have wealth comparable to that of small countries and could afford to maintain a sizable amount of aerial cavalry.

Just as how royal authority and religious authority were forever at odds with each other, royal authority and domain lord authority would be forever in conflict.

If it was a time when the royalty was very weak, the local domain lords would typically fight amongst themselves, attacking each other’s territory and forcibly kidnapping citizens for population. Perhaps they would use ridiculously flimsy excuses such as “You dared to not invite me when your son was born,” or “Your wife tried to flirt with my uncle.” But if the royalty’s power was at a nadir, then such excuses that not a single person would believe were more than enough.

A weak royal authority meant that internal chaos was unavoidable. If a particular domain lord emerged with the support of more than half of the factions in the country, then a new royalty would likely be established.

Since the newly-born royalty used their concrete power to obtain that position, the new royalty would naturally have great authority. The royalty would thus enter a period of great authority. But no dynasties in any world lasted forever. It would be impossible for a royal family to forever have only just and wise rulers. As long as the feudal system and bloodline hereditary royal authority continued, it would only be a matter of time before the royalty was changed out yet again.

Obviously, this wasn’t exactly a beneficial cycle as this type of society would make war and conflict inevitable. But although ordinary citizens would always suffer when there was war, such a cycle had its contributions to society, too. At the very least, it was a natural opportunity to shake the system and get rid of a foolish or tyrant king.

I had researched about political systems in detail considering probable future developments. However, I had no intentions of starting a “Communist revolution,””attacking the rich and taking their lands,” or anything like that. In fact, I didn’t even intend to bring a revolutionary change to society apart from introducing the Concept of Law. That was because in this world, where lands were wide, production capabilities were low, and wild magical monsters were overly powerful, a seemingly backwards society where domain lords took responsibility for protecting their citizens was actually the best fit.

“Everyone belongs to the royalty? Everyone should listen to the king? Since you all belong to the royalty, then look to the royalty for protection.”

Domain lords owned every part of their territory and their citizens, and were also the main motivation for citizens to organize into militia and protect their own lands. After all, the origin of the knightly spirit was from people swearing loyalty to their domain lord and their land.

Such a noble spirit originated from the ordinary. Protecting one’s possessions was only natural. But as adjustments were made to society over time, stepping slightly over this line could make one into a genius, while stepping over this line even more would make one into an idiot who would be burned at the stake.

If some transmigrator truly arrived and created a major country with centralized authority and provinces instead of domains, exchanging domain lords out for government officials, that transmigrator would never receive a great harvest. All that awaited him would be the collapse of his country.

With centralized authority, one little governmental order might take several years to reach the farther districts in a major country. By the time the order arrived, who knew what it would be changed into? Also, centralized authority meant that the population would be overly concentrated into denser areas. With the current generation’s technological level, that would be impossible to support.

Too many people gathering in a single place would cause plagues or famines, problems difficult to solve in this day and age. It would be easy to come to a conclusion that densely populated cities were actually a bad thing here. This would be a common example of doing something bad with good intentions.

Of course, smaller countries like ours could try this on a smaller scale if their technology had developed to a certain extent—slowly developing the size of cities and modernizing them with gradual improvements to health care, communication, transportation, agriculture, and industry. All these fields would be raised by several levels as magical engineering brought about an industrial revolution. Society would naturally change even if I didn’t do anything… Oops, I might have accidentally revealed my plans here. Yep, I admit I had indeed wanted to make such drastic changes. But overhauling the feudal society for an entire world wouldn’t happen overnight.

Of course, there were rare exceptions, such as extremely small countries, theocracies where religious and royal authority were unified, or countries always at war with their neighbors. For these and various other reasons, few exceptions had excellent political stability that lasted over one thousand years.

Couch—cough—let us stop discussing political systems. After being in a feudal system for so long, what did it matter if it remained for a while longer? I had no intentions of spreading philosophies like “All men are created equal” or “Wealth should be equally distributed amongst everyone.” Nor did I have any intentions of creating something like a Communist Party in this world. Doing something like that would only make me into public enemy number one. I could only do what I could and focus on the present.

The Bardi Empire was in a zenith of royal authority. So of course the local domain lords wouldn’t fight amongst each other; instead, it was the opposite. They would team up and work together against royal authority. Since absolutely centralized authority was impossible in this society, the conflict between royal and domain lord authority was destined to be eternal and unending, which would reset only each time a new royalty was born.

The current Bardi Empire’s royal authority was the strongest it had ever been in its long history. Orloss was even capable of forcing his domain lords to hand over their eldest sons to come over to the capital for “education.” He even strictly controlled the amount of soldiers permitted in the domain lords’ private armies. But making every domain lord obedient would require several centuries without internal or external chaos. That would be impossible for anyone unless they were some sort of undying main character with an incredible cheat.

Although the Bardi Empire was only one country in name, technically speaking it was more like each individual domain was a smaller country. Calculating a country’s overall combat strength would typically refer to the royal army and royal knights. But for any large scale warfare, one would have to include the domain lords’ private armies. It was only normal that answering their king’s summons and sending out their private armies to participate in national warfare would be one of the most basic duties of a domain lord.

Don’t underestimate the domain lords’ private armies. Their training techniques and equipment would be passed down from generation to generation. Certain specialized equipment and troop types would often become local specialties. There were plenty of private armies even stronger than the royal army. Since the royalty restricted the number of soldiers allowed in the domain lords’ armies, the major nobles focused on the quality of their troops. It was actually quite common that an individual soldier in a domain lord’s army would be far stronger than the average soldier in the royal knights.

The number of troops permitted to a domain lord would typically be related to that domain lord’s noble rank. But there were still ways to circumvent the numbers limitations, such as village militias, reserve troops, and so on. Although none of the domain lords had as many troops as the royal army, adding them together would typically be a huge amount of soldiers several times the size of the royal army. Only that would help them to be able to restrain the royalty from running amok. From a certain standpoint, in a feudal society, the royalty themselves were basically the strongest domain lord of the country.

Well, this was the situation for ordinary domain lords. As for the major domain lords of border domains, it would be impractical and impossible to restrict the number of soldiers they possessed. These major nobles were usually the ones who found it easiest to become a new royalty dynasty.

On our way, I witnessed just how truly amazing the Bardi Empire’s foundational strength was.

In just about every district, aerial knights would follow after us. They would either be Griffin Knights or Pegasus Knights, and I even saw a single Dragon Knight. There was even a mage riding a Manticore. Sometimes, they would appear in small squads or multiple small squadrons. Ordinary countries wouldn’t be capable of affording aerial knights, while aerial knights were one of the most basic units in the Bardi domain lords’ armies. I even saw two faintly concealed towers among the clouds.

Even when they saw that Archduke Halent’s Blue Dragon was at the forefront, they didn’t leave. They followed us in silence until we left their domain. And whenever we entered a new domain, new aerial cavalry would arrive as well, treating us with the same attitude. This polite yet distant attitude wasn’t only targeted at us outsiders. Not a single person greeted the well-known Dragon Knight Archduke, which was definitely unusual.

Dragon Knights belonged in-name only to the royalty, so they had the freedom to freely travel through each domain. But these silently following aerial knights represented a certain attitude, even if they couldn’t stop the Dragon Knights from doing anything: “This place is ours. You can come if you like, but you must remain under our surveillance.”

This was obviously a show of disrespect to the royal authority, and it was quite different from what I had heard previously on how Orloss ruled with an iron grip. It would seem that since the domain lords were under the impression that Orloss would soon die, they now had other ideas about royal authority.

Even though I hadn’t reached the capital, I could guess at what was going on. It was probably due to the fact that Orloss had far too many adopted princes, making internal conflict amongst the princes’ factions inevitable. But once the internal conflicts started, no matter which prince won out in the end and became the next emperor, royal authority would be greatly diminished. It would seem that the generation of forty years ago, when the domain lords suppressed the royalty, would return.

Their attitude towards the Dragon Knight Archduke Halent wasn’t only a political attitude—there were probably concrete reasons to it as well.

“Who knows? Maybe you’re here to record our terrain and military status in order to prepare for future possible combat.”

As for us outsiders? We weren’t stopped or asked any questions at all. Halent was leading us, so we were viewed as members of the Dragon Knights. Our new companion also traveled alongside us without any hindrance.

New companion? Didn’t I mention how there was a sudden tornado? It was a familiar figure, the Wind Elemental God Camdian—truly a coincidence.

“Your Highness Roland, I came here all the way to meet you. There’s something very important that I’d like to discuss with you in detail.”

After killing off Emordilorcan, Camdian ran for his life—I meant left in a hurry. But he had now appeared before me of his own volition—he obviously had something important to discuss. And unlike before, when he would address me as “puny worm” or “foolish mortal,” his demeanor was much humbler.

Ancient existences like Camdian were the practical type. If you couldn’t prove you were equal to their level, they wouldn’t even look you in the eye.

Of course, I was delighted to see Camdian. After all, I was looking for top-level wind elemental items along with the other elements. If I killed him—er—I meant asked him, perhaps I would receive a harvest.

Yet I could only helplessly abandon thoughts of killing him when I took a closer look at Camdian. Only his incarnation had appeared before me. They could be self-destructed at will by the original master, and it would be nigh impossible to obtain useful elemental items from an incarnation. Who would want to fight against a video game boss who was both ridiculously difficult to defeat and wouldn’t even offer a single good item?

But now, we were currently flying in midair—not the best time to have a chat. So I simply told him to follow along. However, he was strangely in a hurry to talk to me, so I asked him what it was about. Upon doing so, he was visibly delighted and directly asked me:

“Your Highness, I’d like to discuss the Desecration Priest and Antiholy Knight you created in Auland who have the ability to dispel divine power…”

“What? Desecration Priest? Antiholy Knight?”

******

When Roland and the True Gods were engaged in battle with the Titan Giants in the southwest of Bardi, the sea battle at Auland had ended with an astonishing result.

The cooperation between Auland’s “Fleet of Death” and Reyne’s Four Elemental Swordcasters obtained impressive achievements. The battleships drove across the seas, breaking the Sea Tribe’s formations. Then, the Swordcasters’ three squadrons divided and conquered the Sea Tribe that had been split up, making the result obvious.

Actually, this small scale tactical cooperation between the Swordcasters and the battleship fleet was created for the sake of the Borealis, and the seven Big Dipper airships intended to go along with it. This was simply a perfect time to bring out such a strategy.

Now that this strategy was used in actual combat, various problems were exposed. For instance, the Swordcasters had overly weak power levels, meaning they couldn’t fight against the Sea Tribe in extended battles. Construction techniques for certain equipment parts were still insufficient, so water leakage, mana leakage and other such problems occurred.

Yet Reyne had quite competently commanded over the situation. The Aurora Knights, who had much higher average power levels than the Swordcasters, acted well as support and protection. East Mist’s combat achievements were excellent. Although some equipment had been lost or destroyed, they had very few casualties.

Even though the Sea Tribe’s reinforcements had arrived, they were unable to block the black Fleet of Death’s slow, inexorable advance. Both sides locked themselves in meat-grinder style attrition combat. However, the Auland humans were waging everything on this battle, while the Sea Tribe lacked the will to fight and were unwilling to sacrifice themselves. The Sea Tribe’s repeated losses and retreats were only natural.

This wasn’t a piece of cake for the Auland humans, though— they, too, had lost a significant number in this battle. Yet they managed to accomplish their primary strategic goal: to reach the docks district where the underwater base was located.

Upon reaching this location, the fleet arranged its ships in a circle and took up a defensive formation. Divers were in the midst of preparing for an underwater descent when something completely unexpected overturned the battlefield’s situation. It was this that spurred Camdian into seeking out Roland. That was because what was shown in this battle was of momentous import to an ancient Elemental God like him.

“The Dark Elves entered combat! They turned around the entire battle!”

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