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Chapter 664: Northern Divine Battlefront Alliance

To be more specific, Glina had successfully established a retinue of excellent government and military officials who were capable enough that Glina didn’t have to personally take care of everything… Of course, Glina mostly set up such a skilled retinue so that she could make more time for her personal engineering research. Apparently, she had indeed made significant progress over the past few years. Northlands explosives engineer Glina Caso was now one of the most famous explosives experts in the entire world. In a way, Glina was more like me with how she preferred to use her brain and her own hands, while Reyne was more like a certain monkey who had muscles for brains.

Still, perhaps it was always the stupider child that would cause more trouble, thus also receiving more care and attention from the worrying parent. Looking back, I’d indeed worried about Reyne far more than Glina. I always felt like Glina was someone I didn’t need to worry about, but I always ignored her emotional needs. With so many years of separation, I also ignored my duties as a father, which gave me a heartache…

“…Um, Glina, I don’t mind that you’re pretending to narrate for me, and I also completely agree that Karwenz is a monkey with muscles for brains, but just look over there. The other monkey is about to explode…”

Glina—who had been right by my side, pretending to narrate for me—turned around, only to see that Reyne was smiling while unsheathing her sword. It seemed that Reyne had decided to properly deal with this older sister of hers that she hadn’t seen in so long.

Indeed, Glina was the older sister. I had almost forgotten due to Glina’s young appearance, but she was actually one and a half years older than Reyne!

Then, the seemingly young Glina started running instantly, making funny faces as she ran.

“…Come catch me, monkey sister! Show off your muscles in front of my adopted father!”

“As you wish!”

Oh my? Sword energy? Even Reyne had become a Sword Saint? She was chasing down her own sister with sword energy? This really was such a familiar scene.

I could only exclaim as I watched sword energy and explosions appear everywhere. These sisters that instantly started fighting each other when they saw each other for a holiday were so close to each other! I couldn’t help but recall the past—when my entire family would finally get together over a holiday, I also toyed with my monkey of a brother like this, but the result was that I was always beaten up in the end… Cough, ahem, time was valuable, so I should probably stop discussing my dark history.

Still, Glina wasn’t just making everything she said up. As a queen, she was indeed quite busy, especially with all the reports that would be necessary at the year’s end. There would be no end to all the administrative work.

The end of the year meant calculating and reassigning money for different departments for the next year. This would be more than enough for plenty of political infighting, with meetings lasting more than ten days. It would be impossible to take a military airship and leave the Sleuweir Kingdom without an excellent excuse.

Did my return not count? It really didn’t, as I had a rather special status in the Mist Alliance. I had no official position, and technically didn’t even exist as a member of the government here. However, it was doubtful that a single person would believe anyone who said I had zero influence in the Mist Alliance and Mist Kingdom.

And so, I became “that person”, the person that everyone in the Mist Alliance knew about, but one who wasn’t supposed to exist on paper. I became an invisible person that nobody would address directly by name.

This time, the official reason that Glina came here for was to discuss a major matter regarding the Mist Alliance, something major enough to get her out of all the countless administrative year-end tasks… This was why I felt like Glina was similar to me as both of us were skilled at finding great excuses to slack off… Erm, I meant that both of us were skilled at dealing with personal matters while also taking care of official matters!

“…Is there a difference?”

“Ridiculous, of course there’s a difference. Not only does slacking off sound bad, people will want a reckoning with you afterwards. If you slack off by using some official matter as an excuse instead, you can even request governmental funds to be paid back later. It’s so awesome to use official funds to purchase old artifacts and books that you want! It’s so fun to spend others’ money as it won’t hurt at all! There won’t be any need to hesitate on buying what you want! Harloys, you’re already rich, so of course you don’t understand such joys… Eh? That didn’t sound like Harloys’ voice? K… Kelly?”

I turned around and really wanted to slap myself. Indeed, in front of me right now was the main administrator of the Mist Kingdom royalty, chief financial officer Kelly, whom I had been requesting funds from all these years!

Kelly the wood elf was wearing beautiful clothes today. She was also smiling quite sweetly, yet I only felt a chill run down my spine.

“Oh, it seems that I should reconsider His Highness Roland’s spending money for next year. I feel that giving him only 10% of last year’s money should be good enough.”

Kelly left as she talked to herself with a smile. As the #1 administrator of the Mist Kingdom, she was quite busy right now with all the year-end party preparations. This time, she made up her mind to give the prince she had spoiled too much a good lesson. No matter what excuses he came up with, she wouldn’t be giving him any spending money whatsoever.

Now my mood worsened. Since it was the end of the year, I had been hoping to obtain some extra money so that my life would be more enjoyable next year. It would seem that I needed to scam… er, obtain some more money elsewhere!

Of course I was quite poor now. Anyone who didn’t work would always become poor eventually even if they had a gold mountain. My wealth from my time as Yongye had all been given over to Annie and the others. I had barely taken any money for myself on my journey.

I never cared too much about money to begin with. I could down a glass of wine which cost several thousand gold coins in a single gulp, and I was also fine with drinking beer that only cost two copper coins. I was also the type who was unrestrained when spending money, and I was too lazy to work as an adventurer to make more gold coins. Whenever I did have money, I would typically spend it all within a month. Moreover, although I had many treasures, I wasn’t willing to part with any of them, and even if I tried to sell my treasures, it was unlikely that many people would dare to purchase them.

Actually, free adventurers who weren’t a part of any faction were all like this. If they weren’t hardworking but also were unwilling to resort to robbery, they would definitely be quite poor. I had been penniless back when I returned to the surface, which was why I had shamelessly asked Kelly for money each year…

“Father, you should just go get married to some rich woman. That way, you won’t need to worry about breakfast every day.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk, don’t be so ridiculous. Do I look like the type who needs a sugar mama?”

Although I said that, I indeed instantly thought of two women. Amelia, the Goddess of the wood spirits, and Harloys, the Elven Empress… They were the big bosses of their respective species, which meant that they were quite rich, right? If I got married to one of them, I would be able to slack off for the entire rest of my life? I swore that such a thought only entered my mind for an instant before I instantly shook it off!

“…Such a lack of motivation. I definitely won’t keep a useless handsome boy around…” the silly cat said, commenting at such a critical moment as always. My face instantly flushed red out of embarrassment, and I was angered to the point where I picked her up and instantly threw her out the window!

“It’s wintertime! As a cat, you should go capture some mice for me to store as winter rations… Right, Glina, since you’re here, you must have new information about the application to join the Mist Alliance?”

What, you’re saying that I was quite forcefully changing the topic? Cough, cough, I felt that it was time to get on track and discuss serious international business, that was all!

The purported reason for Glina’s arrival was a discussion of international affairs. Something serious enough to require the two biggest leaders of the Mist Alliance to meet would naturally be the previous application to join the Mist Alliance.

The Mist Alliance’s spies and diplomats had been insanely busy over the past few days. Still, their hard work bore fruit, and we did obtain truly useful information.

The Soen Dukedom and Feldis Kingdom were sincere in wanting to join the Mist Alliance. Their leaders, Archduke Klein and King Vincent, had prepared themselves to give up part of their royal authority. Since they had come to such a decision, there was no reason for them to hide why they wanted to join the Mist Alliance.

“The Stanley Theocracy? The Holy Church yet again, sheesh…”

The Soen Dukedom and Feldis Kingdom had voluntarily given us the most convincing information they had on why they wanted to join us. The reason why they were willing to give up part of their royal authority in order to join us was because there was something worse waiting for them if they didn’t.

“The Northern Divine Battlefront Alliance? Damn it, will the Holy Church ever stop causing trouble?”

“…You should first remember just how many incarnations of the God of Holy Light that you’ve killed already. He’s probably never suffered so many losses in recent years.”

The silly cat suddenly jumped out of some corner again with a serious expression, and she discussed international affairs with me just as if the earlier awkwardness hadn’t happened at all.

With this information, the Holy Church’s clumsy scheme was laid before us.

A small country in the north, the Stanley Theocracy, had come up with the idea to establish a “Northern Divine Battlefront Alliance”. The main idea was to establish a northern alliance of countries, similar to the Mist Alliance, who all worshipped the teachings of the God of Holy Light. The goal of this scheme was to seal in the entire Mist Allliance.

The members of this new alliance would be the countries all around the south of the Mist Alliance. As long as this new alliance was truly established, it was indeed true that the Mist Alliance would become blockaded in the corner of the north.

Although the Stanley Theocracy had less than 20% the national power of the Feldis Kingdom, it was obvious that the Stanley Theocracy would be the core leader of this new alliance. It was equally obvious that the Holy Church would be pulling the strings behind the Stanley Theocracy. In fact, two high-level Holy Knight groups and a cardinal had also been sent to the Stanley Theocracy.

However, it was quite evident to the other countries that it was a huge pitfall. Joining the Northern Divine Battlefront Alliance would mean completely antagonizing the Mist Alliance, along with becoming cannon fodder for the Holy Church. Plus, recent developments had already proved that the cardinals, who were experts at political infighting, were absolute idiots regarding warfare. They only focused on obtaining more personal benefits for themselves. Future prospects for any country which joined such an alliance under the military command of the cardinals were unimaginably dire.

The Holy Church had already issued formal letters to each northern human country’s royalty, requesting them to join the Northern Divine Battlefront Alliance. These small northern human countries had never received so much attention from the God of Holy Light before. Basically, this meant that they could no longer remain neutral. They would have to make a choice between the Mist Alliance and the Holy Church.

And so, the Soen Dukedom and Feldis Kingdom chose to join us instead of the Holy Church…

“What are those idiots of the Holy Church thinking? They want to be on guard against the Mist Alliance? But we’re supposed to be allies right now?”

I was rather astonished and angry, but I felt even more pitiful helplessness. I felt like I had already been expecting something like this from the bottom of my heart.

“Cough, you just attacked your ally the God of Holy Light with an Ice Aeon forbidden spell recently… Don’t be so surprised, don’t you realize at all? For certain powerful existences of the Order Faction, they don’t view the Hell Faction as any different from the Chaos Faction. Rather than an enemy that they’ve fought so long and know so much about, wouldn’t they think that it’s more important to be on guard against ‘their own juniors’ that are about to surpass them?”