Man proposes, God disposes. Man proposes, God disposes. This kind of nonsense had probably been said countless times, but according to the pace of the story's development, anyone who said such a line would probably die very quickly.
No matter how amazing a scheme or plot was, it would fail for all sorts of random reasons if you were unlucky. For example, meeting some brat who just left the village … What, brats aren't scary? Ha, the wheel of fate always spins. Perhaps some brat working as a waiter in a hotel would become the main character of those legendary novels.
After many years of analysis, people had come up with three rules for all schemes to fail. Kill the main character's father, master, or other respected elders, kidnap or steal the main character's beloved girlfriend, find a former genius to break off an engagement, and all three had one thing in common: offend the main character. … Cough cough, it would seem that no matter which world I was in, legendary novels were all quite common.
Yep, I've always been talking about novels.
Although novels were sometimes stranger than reality, most of the time, novels were novels, and reality was reality.
In reality, all schemes had a high success rate. After all, neither the plotters nor the executioners were idiots. Anyone capable of plotting a heaven-defying scheme would probably have a high chance of success since they were already at the execution stage.
In order to ascend to the throne, a certain marquis' family waited for the royal family for a hundred years, assassinated four potential royal members, and finally succeeded in ascending to the throne … Yep, I'm talking about the current San Antonio. Their crown didn't come from the right place at all.
Did the major nobles in San Antonio not know how this crown came about? Did the previous royal family not take precautions? Actually, the royal family had long since known that Marquis Mister was ambitious. They even knew how the other princes had died in accidents. However, back then, the Mister family had military power and the loyalty of one-third of the major nobles, so they could only watch helplessly as they slowly walked towards destruction.
It was common to hear about a brat who saved a princess in distress and finally revived the royal family to become the ruler of a country, but never seen it in action. However, in those stories, the ugly and old "villains" would finally succeed in defeating their superiors, and then marry a princess of the previous generation and have several children with her. There were countless examples of such villains who took over the throne.
There was no other reason other than the fact that the conspirators were usually very powerful. Their ambitions often stemmed from their corresponding influence and strength. The nobles were much more powerful than the royalty, so they naturally had the ambition to replace the royalty. There were very few nobles who still followed the original alliance and remained loyal. As a result, those conspiracies quickly became overt conspiracies. Today's rebels would become the new crowned king of the past tomorrow.
The current civil war in the Sala Dukedom was an example, but it was not an isolated case. In the past few years, there had been so many rebellions, rebellions, assassinations, and civil wars that they could no longer make the headlines. Even though a few super empires were still trying their best to restrain themselves, the smaller the country, the more chaotic it was.
Simply using the Holy War as an explanation for the constant civil wars and rebellions would be far too naive. Judging from the fairies' and the Mist Alliance's information, there were many signs that other species and factions had interfered.
A certain major noble would suddenly obtain a powerful God Equipment, a certain domain lord would suddenly have several powerful archmages from another species under his command, a certain dukedom would suddenly have several beastman tribes join their side, a certain tactician would suddenly appear and greatly expand the military strength of a certain warlord … All of these strange news stories were quite common in the past few years. However, the following developments were even more common. It was either a domain lord who had increased his power due to "the will of the heavens" starting to rebel, or a ruler who felt threatened and started to clean up his own faction.
The "Vultures of War" expansion pack from the game's history had appeared before us in a different form — internal strife and nobles' civil wars.
For the vast majority of countries, civil wars in neighboring countries during this period of time were the most annoying. If you didn't do anything about it, it would spread to you. If you did, you would immediately be accused of interfering with the internal affairs of others and invading others.
Of course, some ambitious kings and dukes actually treated this as a great opportunity. And so, the flames of war kept burning, and the civil wars became international wars.
According to what I knew, several mega empires, including Bardi, Xiluo, and San Antonio, had all secretly profited quite a bit over the past few years. However, this was the internal affairs of other countries, and outsiders were completely unable to interfere.
This would be a calamity for a small country, but would it be a small matter for a major country? No, no matter who it was, this would be a mega problem.
Wars that could only be won and never lost would expand a major country's territory. Not only would the royalty's status become more stable, but it would also benefit the domestic market, major nobles, and military. The major country's citizens would desire even more wars, and the citizens' desires would force the king and nobles to start even more wars … This would be the greatest problem of all.
If this was a scheme of the Chaos Faction, then I had to admit that it was done quite beautifully.
A few powerful individuals in the wild, a group of non-human natives, a few evil cultists, a good weapon, some new technology, and a few bags of gold. As long as they were used well, it would be possible to cause a country to fall into internal strife with little effort. This would be using up the entire mortal plane's strength.
The Sala Dukedom was the most obvious example of this. Internal strife between domain lords wasn't a change in power level. No matter who won in the end, the country's overall power level would be greatly reduced, and its population would be greatly reduced. There would be no such thing as a true victor. From an overall and long-term perspective, everyone would lose.
Limiting the scale of internal strife? If a war really broke out, it wouldn't be so easy to stop.
Not only that, it would be quite difficult to stop such actions. Ambitious individuals were quite common, and it all depended on whether or not they had enough power to support them. Were we supposed to inspect the domain lords' advisors and subordinates one by one? Were we supposed to stop the domain lords from working hard to increase their own power level? Considering the fact that the current feudal nobles had complete autonomy, this was something that even their own country's royalty wouldn't be able to accomplish.
This wasn't the demons' style, as they would immediately start fighting. Instead, they were more like devils that specialized in disgusting people. It wouldn't be possible to see any results in a short period of time, but as time dragged on, it would actually weaken the entire human species.
Perhaps it was the betrayal of some Devil Lords and the departure of the will of the Chaos Abyss that caused the remaining Devil Lords to change their usual neutral stance in the Holy War. They were now eager to show off their own standpoint and abilities.
Alright then, this was the other main Quest that I had chosen to stay in the Sala Dukedom. I had originally intended to see who was behind that Marquis and see if I could find out anything. Although it was highly unlikely that I would be able to catch the mastermind, I could at least try. At the very least, I needed to know that it was those bastards from the lower planes who were causing trouble.
"Tsk, my plans were all messed up, and I actually met with such a situation. Am I really the legendary Death God? Whenever I go, something happens. Why am I so unlucky? "
"The one who should be complaining about being unlucky is that Sky Tower Spirit. He almost succeeded in becoming the Undead Tower Spirit. If it wasn't for you, his hundred years of planning would have been for nothing."
From this angle, the creator of the Sky Tower Spirit could be considered an incredible schemer. He had started planning several hundred years ago and patiently waited until the Holy War began before taking action. He had used adventurers to take away the most important chess pieces, and then started the Undead War to kill the most important chess pieces, thus obtaining the independence of the entire species.
But from the moment that an accident occurred, the Undead Emperor and Sky Tower Spirit's scheme was destined to fail.
"The only mistake they made was that they offended the main character! Me! "
"… Are you certain that it was your main character's luck that caused this, and not your Calamity Halo? Those 'reinforcements' seem to have all been sent here to capture you. "
I was rendered speechless. The Undead Calamity, which would have caused a terrifying disaster, had been stopped. The most important thing was that Amelia had arrived with the wood spirits. And, it was all thanks to Renée that the adventuring team had been able to deal with the Undead Calamity.
"Silly cat, will you really die if you don't comment on this?"
"I will!"
While the silly cat and I were staring at each other, someone finally couldn't bear to watch any longer.
"Everyone, be serious! We're at war!"
Even though I kept reminding myself that this was a battlefield, I was unable to be serious.
The tunnel leading downwards was opened up, and the demons indeed came up. However, Renée blocked the way. She danced with her silver sword and her spear, and then … there was nothing else. Blood, flesh, and swords flew everywhere. Even now, I had yet to see a single complete demon.
"Renée has such fighting spirit. She's showing off her improvement. Right, did you teach her sword techniques?"
"Tsk, only a gorilla would use such sword techniques. I didn't teach her."
I wasn't blind, so how could I not see through the style of this sword technique? Indeed, I had taught Reyne fighting styles and techniques before. However, this sword technique that was so honest in both horizontal and vertical strokes, which used instinct and perception more than reason, was something only someone as simple and crude as Karwenz would use.
Although Renée's explosive power level was quite surprising, I doubted that the demons would be a threat to Renée. I could also take this opportunity to slack off and plan for the future.
Yep, I planned for the future. I planned for the future of this ruin, as well as the future of this tremendous inheritance.
In my opinion, since Amelia and her fleet had arrived, and we had gotten rid of the most troublesome Conservation, I doubted that anyone would be able to let go of this opportunity unless two more Main Gods suddenly appeared.
There weren't any treasures or gold coins here that would make adventurers go crazy over them. However, the trash we encountered along the way was actually hundreds of times more valuable than gold coins.
Perhaps I wasn't a good engineer, but at the very least, I was able to infer a civilization's level of evolution from their creations and tools.
Autonomous machines, artificial souls, all sorts of machine designs and structures that I'd never seen before, half-machine and half-undead creations, and spiritual creatures that were capable of mimicking other people's soul wavelengths. This was far more than all of the Haletdam generation's excavations combined. It could be called a mega harvest.
Just this special dimension that allowed us to communicate with other dimensions would be incredibly valuable to the Chaos Faction. Naturally, it would be valuable to us as well.
If this information was leaked, it would definitely cause an even more intense civil war in the Sala Dukedom. Perhaps some major country would find an excuse to invade the Sala Dukedom. If we didn't think of a good method to deal with this, it would be too late by the time news spread.
"Perhaps it would be safer to keep this door open and have this ruin always remain in a state of 'war'."
While I was still hesitating over all these ridiculous ideas, the true owner of this ruin, Catalina, walked up to me as if she wanted to say something.
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