Chapter 724: Unsalvageable

The best scheme didn’t actually need to be unnoticeable, with no clues left behind.

The best scheme simply needed to perform the “correct” move at a critical moment and then let everything else develop naturally.

“San Antonio is in utter chaos.”

Any bystander, or even a child, would be able to come to such a conclusion right now.

The now deceased Maria’s faction voluntarily reduced the amount of their territory by a great amount. They even gave up the Golden Plains, which was the #1 food producing region in the entire land of Eich, the most precious land in all of San Antonio.

Duke Barrot took command of Maria’s faction. He was the one who gave the order to abandon their own territory in order to improve their defense lines. In just a short two weeks, he mysteriously came to some sort of agreement with the demons and ogres in the Saffey Mountains, reaching a ceasefire on the frontlines here.

Right now, the new Duke Barrot faction was furiously recruiting as many soldiers as it possibly could for battle. However, Duke Barrot’s faction was planning on attacking other humans rather than the demons and ogres.

Meanwhile, Prince Winston who was about to face major battles from two directions was probably so anxious that he could barely sleep. His ally, the Holy Church, also became quite serious about helping him.

Apparently, not only did the Holy Church send two full Holy Knight squadrons, they even sent two Gods.

Wendy, the Goddess of Forgiveness, and Fein, the God of Wheat (Harvest). Although they were both new Gods who were at the weakest level of Low Gods, they had both descended in their true bodies.

They had achieved Godhood 120 and 95 years ago, respectively. They were both Follower Gods of the God of Holy Light.

The fairies’ assessment of their power level was that they were both Level 5, just barely reaching the standard of Low Gods’ power level in their true bodies. Just 10 years ago, they definitely would have been the most powerful existences around here in the mortal plane, with nobody able to defeat them. However, that would be a difficult claim to make now.

The True Gods descending in their true bodies would mean that the battle’s level would be elevated even further. The battle had elevated from mortals’ battles to the Gods directly coming down for personal battles.

Although higher-level powers had also directly participated in battle during the demise of the Moonwheel Capital Elven Empire, that was only because it was a custom at the beginning of the demon wave.

Moreover, it was also said that the Chaos Faction had first used top-level strength, which broke the unwritten rules.

A top-level existence had appeared during Maria’s assassination? Currently, the fairies were spreading everywhere the information that Maria’s real assassin had been Abyss Prince Karwenz. Apart from Duke Barrot who couldn’t support this in order to have his reason to declare a civil war of revenge, most other factions in the land of Eich had recognized this as the official explanation.

In other factions’ opinions, I had already done much in the Holy War already, after all. The Mist Alliance’s existence was the best evidence of whose side I was really on.

Perhaps this was why most human kingdoms were willing to accept the explanation that Karwenz had been the assassin. The Mist Alliance’s importance in the world was constantly increasing, after all.

Bardi, the Mage Country, and Auland were the most exaggerated in giving me their praises. They proclaimed my innocence everywhere, giving me an incredible deal of praise.

Although this sounded slightly moving, I also knew that this was because they were becoming ever closer to the Mist Alliance. Giving such an explanation would be beneficial to themselves as well.

Unfortunately, even though the bystanders could see things quite clearly, the two involved parties couldn’t see anything. One side was pretending not to see, while the other side was unable to explain clearly.

Information was also unearthed about that Duke Barrot. He was Barrot Cais, the current head of the Cais Family which had more than 500 years of history. He was also an incredibly powerful demon warlock as well.

Barrot Cais had previously been an adamant supporter of Maria who also tried to romantically pursue her… When I saw this information about him, I felt that he really must have great tolerance in order to try and pursue someone with Maria’s appearance.

At any rate, it would be the same old cliché: there would always be those who were various nobles, generals, and so on, along with someone who would always take the position of king.

“It seems that San Antonio really will be quite chaotic.”

I thought things over carefully and calculated the resources I had at hand, but finally gave up on the idea of intervening.

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San Antonio could vaguely be considered the strongest human mega empire in the land. Being the strongest would attract a lot of attention. Now that the world was in chaos, it was only natural that San Antonio would be the first to suffer.

The former emperor’s unexpected sudden death, the princess who used the power of the Chaos Abyss, and the emperor’s younger brother who represented traditional knights. These had all helped to sew the seeds of discord beforehand.

This wasn’t a coincidence. It had all been due to San Antonio’s national situation.

San Antonio’s territory was vast, and it had abundant resources. However, this would mean requiring sufficient strength to protect such a country.

Eich was a world where communication was normally slow. Military command would have to depend on the regional leadership. Sending a single message from San Antonio’s capital to its border would likely take two months by normal means.

It would be impossible for the capital to normally command the border. Thus, San Antonio had a very rigid knight hierarchy, which was displayed quite purely by the princes who guarded the border.

Since someone needed to be in command at the border, why not have it be a member of the royal family instead of an outsider? All of San Antonio’s border fortresses were the princes’ territories.

There was a total of 12 princes in San Antonio’s current generation. Most of them had begun as younger sons or concubines’ sons. They had then developed themselves in the border territories until now.

It would be easy to assign princehood. However, demoting a prince would make things difficult. In this feudal age, the eldest son of the noble inheriting everything was the foundation of how society worked. Even the king couldn’t make a prince’s descendants give up on their father’s territory.

Over the years, the San Antonio royalty had noticed this problem, and stopped assigning princehood. However, it was already too late.

Knights were pure military personnel. They would want to have military achievements. In order to get military achievements on the border, they would need to have a close relationship with the princes rather than the royalty in the capital.

As time went on, it was only natural for a fracture to appear between the royalty and the princes who held power on the borders. However, San Antonio was an incredibly large and stable country. The royalty had been dealing with this issue carefully, so no major problems had occurred up until now.

At the very least, the princes themselves would also keep each other in check. The main royalty would also be the strongest feudal lord in San Antonio, so unless the royalty went overboard with something, nobody would be foolish enough to be the first to rebel.

But, over the several recent generations, the royalty had few children, so the princes all became tempted.

Things were still barely at peace during the previous emperor’s generation. However, the princes were already plotting for their ambitions. According to the rules of noble hierarchy, if the main royal bloodline died out, it would only be natural to search for a successor amongst the branch bloodlines.

This was why Maria’s only younger brother also died unexpectedly only two months after the old emperor’s unexpected death.

Prince Winston was the leader of the princes. He was also the representative of all the knights and feudal lords.

Meanwhile, Princess Maria represented the venerated royal authority. Those who were loyal to the royalty would naturally gather by her side. However, Maria had done many things to suppress her ambitious uncles in order to strengthen royal authority.

Maria’s faction included mages, knights who were commoners by birth with military achievements, small-time merchants, demon warlocks and other dark magic users who were considered evil by most others, and so on. Maria was the type who wouldn’t care about your birth status as long as you were loyal to her and the royalty.

Any new type of faction would naturally be incompatible with a traditionalist faction. A conflict arising between them was only a matter of time.

The death of the previous emperor was simply a catalyst to start the conflict.

Only the Holy War had caused the two factions to barely manage to come to a ceasefire. But now that Maria was dead, the temporary peace and ceasefire would be completely torn apart.

The new faction cobbled together would lose all meaning without the idea of taking revenge for their previous leader. As the members of this faction were all San Antonio citizens, they should submit to the new ruler of San Antonio.

Maybe the meaning behind all this sounded quite empty and vague, but the meaning would indeed influence people’s motivation and loyalty.

Maria’s faction had originally only been kept intact by her leadership. The faction would soon collapse without her. However, it was evident that some in her faction weren’t willing to accept such a result after finally changing their own fate.

Maria’s faction’s members would be executed as traitors if they surrendered to Prince Winston, or they could try and fight and perhaps become the new leaders of San Antonio. Which decision they should make for themselves was obvious.

Duke Barrot was still busy preparing for battle. I didn’t know which day exactly the San Antonio civil war would start, but I already knew which day it would end—it would only end when both sides had lost all their blood, when the cities were all demolished, and when everyone from commoner to ambitious schemer had suffered severe losses. Only when everyone was no longer able to bear the pains of war would they sit back down together at the negotiation table.

Additionally, Duke Barrot’s alliance with the Chaos Faction made the truth even more obscured as everything became rather hazy.

It would be impossible for anyone to calculate just how many schemes were currently ongoing in this matter right now. Still, those who were the strongest would always attract attention. San Antonio’s current situation was probably the result of multiple different factions’ simultaneous schemes against it.

Perhaps the other major human countries in Eich were busy having celebration parties at San Antonio’s imminent demise rather than wanting to save San Antonio right now.

“There’s no saving San Antonio anymore…”