Beneath the Red Dragon

Chapter 850: Chapter 147: Kings’ Conclave: In the Name of the Divine_2

In such an atmosphere, six countries of small and medium nobility within the Southern Noble Alliance’s twenty-one nations experienced slave uprisings and rebellions amidst the panic.

Additionally, four countries bordering the Central Continent and the coastline between the Northern Continent began experiencing small-scale exoduses of their inhabitants.

Even Rose City, theoretically the safest place at the southernmost point of the Northern Continent, began seeing a large number of wealthy merchants and noble families fleeing to the Central Continent.

Although these fleeing individuals and rebellious slaves and the poor were quickly suppressed by the great nobles, for the first time, even these ruling great nobles couldn’t help but feel anxious and worried about their future.

A single Golden Empire wasn’t a concern for these Noble Alliances. However, the union of so many kings meant that no great noble maintained their previous confidence.

These nobles even began secretly sending delegations attempting to negotiate with the Golden Empire, hoping to use the Dragon Hunter teams they controlled as leverage, along with substantial wealth compensation, to dissuade the Golden Empire from pursuing its unprecedented idea.

Alliance-building and strategy seem simple, and these nobles are not entirely ignorant.

But in Aikania’s history, there has never been a force like the Golden Empire, arriving with such grandeur and irresistible momentum.

Far-reaching alliances and attacking nearby enemies are strategies not entirely applicable everywhere, just as the rules of the cosmos can take different forms in different worlds, let alone strategies.

And Karon Gogomola’s strategy of allying nearby while attacking distant ones is not just about killing the Southern nobles’ leaders but also destroying the hearts of the Southern nobles.

Hence, the Golden Empire refused the secret requests for negotiations from those Southern nobles.

The nobles, characterized by weakness and compromise, did not receive any response from the Golden Empire and could only prepare their armies with anxiety.

The Marino Duchy, in contact with the Hobis Empire, bore the brunt.

In retaliation, the Marino Duchy united with the adjacent Rosetta Duchy and Dumyat Duchy, mobilizing laborers to build on the border defense line day and night.

As time passed, a defense line, famously named the Marino Defense Line, gradually rose along the Marino Duchy’s border, claiming to be impenetrable by mortal forces, to prepare for the impending war.

However, compared to the chaos within each Southern Noble Alliance country, the interior of the Golden Empire remained largely unaffected by the looming war.

King of Dark Elves Anudale and Lord Shalos, accompanied by the Golden Empire’s Foreign Minister, Red Copper Dragon Alfred, felt the greatest impression of cohesion and vitality through their tour of the Royal Capital, as the entire nation, like the Red Dragon, was like a rising sun.

The second impression was that in this land, magic and knowledge were no longer aloof but served every individual in the Empire.

“Only in this way do magic, technology, knowledge, civilization, and wisdom possess the potential and value for progress,” commented Red Copper Dragon Alfred, adjusting the tortoiseshell magic glasses on his nose with a smirk.

King of Black Dragons Rosani wore the glasses solely because the magic glasses suppressed the overbearing Dragon-eating Phase Mental Suppression Power of the Black Dragon.

In contrast, Red Copper Dragon Alfred, transformed into a young man with brown curly hair, wore glasses purely for pretense.

Among the Golden Empire’s commoners, students and ordinary people, educated at the Imperial Academy, studied diligently to achieve recognition through their abilities.

As a result, many promising students developed nearsightedness, and despite being able to use magic to heal their vision problems once they became successful, wearing glasses had become a widespread image of cultural intellectuals at the Empire’s lower levels.

Red Copper Dragon Alfred emulated those flamboyant individuals who habitually wore glasses even after curing their eyesight, flaunting them all day long to manifest his identity as head of the Imperial Cultural Propaganda Department.

The superiors’ preferences affect their subordinates significantly, but in the case of Alfred, the Red Copper Dragon, it’s a complete reversal.

Nevertheless, given the bizarre character of this Red Copper Dragon, it doesn’t seem out of place.

Anudale and Shalos slightly nodded, gazing at the bustling scene with some emotion.

In the hands of these two lords were not only a few newspapers but also a personal small Magic Screen Projector for each.

The newspapers published by the Golden Empire contained not only entertainment and cultural content but also scholarly exploration topics.

For instance, the Magic Research Department of the Empire published the latest expressible outcomes in the newspaper, teaching some simple magic tricks.

The Magic Alchemy Department also used the newspaper to popularize some alchemy materials that could be encountered commonly in the wild as well as basic alchemy knowledge, etc.

Moreover, with the growing industrialization of magic in the Empire, the Magic Screen Projector had become a small magic device affordable for nearly every household in the Royal Capital.

Under the advice of Steel Dragon Midir, the production organizations for the Magic Screen Projectors collaborated with opera houses and cultural management departments in various cities of the Empire.

Families purchasing the Magic Screen could buy tickets to their favorite opera house performances and watch the real-time performances using the Projector.

They could also browse content from the Imperial Library that was available for public purchase through the Cultural Management Department, albeit not freely replicable or redistributed, as the Empire’s copyright taxation issues had emerged from Steel Dragon Midir’s clever mind.