Badge in Azure

“What is your name?” Daniel sat opposite the prisoner on the other side. He had a chair too, however, it was made from ice and it was not comfortable sitting on it.

The group leader endured the pain on his back side as he said to Daniel with tears pooling in his eyes, “Respected mage, you have asked this question many times. I am Ri En, Ri En! I beg you, ask me something useful, I will tell you anything.”

Daniel was expressionless as he continued, “Alright, then tell me, what is your name?”

Daniel had learnt this from Saleen. He had already been interrogating the prisoner for over an hour, asking the same question over and over again. If the prisoner did not answer, he would use magic to induce pain in the prisoner’s soul. The pain would get progressively more painful and it was impossible for the prisoner to get used to it.

This prisoner rubbed his fingers, not daring to stand up. He could only look at Daniel with pleading eyes. Daniel felt he was almost there, Saleen’s plan had worked and he did not want to use such boring methods of interrogation too. Besides his, torture methods were technically difficult.

Some soldiers retrieved the prepared paper and pen and threw it on the table. Daniel said to the prisoner, “I am going to take a rest, if you have thought of anything useful, write it out. When I am back, if I am not satisfied with what I see, we will continue.”

With that, Daniel left the room. The prisoner had lost all will of resisting, he immediately grabbed the pen and paper and started writing. He wrote in the common language and even though the grammar was incredibly different than the language used on the Myers Mainland, it was still understandable on paper. Luckily he was an officer who was literate. If it was any other soldier, they might not even be able to recognize the words.

Daniel did not rest, he went to organize whatever he had gotten from the other prisoners. He started comparing them and analyzing which was true and which was false. These interrogation records were similar, the prisoners were from the island country in the eastern sea tens of thousands of miles way. They were heading to Lianyun City. This expedition had over three-hundred combat vessels that were split into dozens of teams, moving towards the west.

Along the way, they met with a storm and several ships were lost. They found themselves near Saleen’s city and saw the two combat vessels moored at the small island, leading to what happened.

Over three-hundred combat vessels? If there were one-thousand soldiers aboard each vessel on average, this was an army with three-hundred-thousand people. This was only the main army and did not include the sailors and back ups. Those equipped merchant ships could not fight well, but the number of people it could carry was more than a powerful combat vessel.

To overthrow the Myers Mainland with only three-hundred-thousand people, was the king of the country crazy?

The group leader Ri En wrote down whatever he knew on the paper, naturally someone asked him to explain what he wrote and translated it into the Qin Language. Just the account from any normal soldier, Daniel already understood what was happening.

Perhaps an army of three-hundred-thousand soldiers might not be able to conquer the mainland, but it would not be a problem taking down Lianyun City. Lianyun City was a middle-scale city with over two-hundred-thousand people. It had around twenty-thousand people in the army and a combat fleet made up of twelve boats. Besides the twenty-thousand soldiers in the city, there were some scattered mercenaries and private soldiers from the wealthy. They made up less than three-thousand people. To defend against an attack from three-hundred combat vessels was impossible. Besides the equipped merchant ships, all the combat vessels had magic trebuchets. Even the walls of Lianyun City would not be able to fend that off.

Upon seeing the statements, Saleen immediately analyzed a result. He started getting frustrated again. One of the combat vessel that Lex had taken with her was in Lianyun City. Lex obviously wanted to bring a group of people from Lianyun City to there using the sea route. Some of them must be mages and if her people were still in Lianyun City, they would have no choice but to help the wealthy there to defend against the invasion.

The other party had quite a few mages too and if it was a true invasion, there would be a grand mage for every one-thousand soldiers. Three-hundred-thousand people meant there were at least three-hundred grand mages. Lex did not have many grand mages with her and most of them were low-grade mages. If they really met with the other party, Saleen knew most of them would not be able to survive.

What left him most frustrated was that there was not a teleportation array between there and Bitter Water Prefecture. He could not quickly send out any information. If he had a teleportation portal, no matter how much gold coins he would need to spend, he would warn Lex to change her route. A combat vessel did not mean much but the low grade mages with Lex were the most important. The money used to nurture them was enough to create hundreds of combat vessels.

Now, Saleen finally understood why the wealthy that owned cities could only save tens of thousands of gold coins every year. Even though the city brought with it large revenue, to protect it, the investment was huge too. He was considered wealthy now and the precious ingredients he had with him were more than what some could gather in their lifetime. The intense hunt at the Oceanic Ice Block left him with a shocking number of magic nuclei too.

Whichever grade one was at, he would have a relative amount of spending. Saleen wanted to keep twenty-four lightning dragons and to nurture them at a speed one-hundred times that they would naturally. He wanted them to grow up within a year and the number of magic nuclei and food he would need to spend was an astronomical figure.

The city needed to expand to the west, at least for more than thousands of miles before there was any meaning in developing. Only then could it attract more people to come forward and do business. Saleen considered building an army that needed at least six camps. This was equivalent to sixty-thousand people. Together with the back up army, Saleen could not afford to feed them.

A set of soldier armor costs more than ten gold coins at the very least. According to Saleen’s standard, it might even go up to one-hundred gold coins. These armors would get damaged during training and needed weekly maintenance and repair, all that cost money too. In comparison, feeding these soldiers was akin to throwing money away every day. For them to have the will to fight, they had to have decent food with meat for every meal.

To eat meat? He had to buy in bulk, if he were to build his own farm and raise the livestock, how much land would he need?

These soldiers had families too and to let them fight peacefully, their family needed to be taken care of. A private soldier and a common recruited soldier were different concepts. The families of these soldiers were his men too. No matter who the enemy was, even if the pope was standing in front of them, these soldiers would charge without hesitation.

Why were private soldiers so loyal? It was because the entire family counted on the leader. So long as the wealthy did not die, he would be responsible for the lives of the family members. The empire limited the number of private soldiers and at the end of the day, it was because they were afraid of a rebellion by the wealthy.

Saleen had to use his money wisely now. As long as Lex was not back, the amount of money he could put in was limited. He had more than two-thousand Cascausus warriors with him now and that was already a formidable force. It was still insufficient to hold onto such a big city. His city lacked a true teleportation portal and the one on the Pan’s Turtle alchemical boat could only teleport a few meters away. A true teleportation portal could transport distances over few thousand miles.

Like the dimension portal, it could only be completed with Lex’s Gods Ring. It was not something that could be solved with money.

Luckily he had found an island which was worth a handsome amount. It was rich in minerals. If he had not found it the money needed for Saleen to buy resources would have been a pain in the ass. Even though his expenses to the Oceanic Ice Block were a lot, if he bought equipment from the four families directly, he might as well die.

No matter how good his relationship was with Aini, he would not dare sell the equipment at a lower price. It was prohibited by the empire. A large part of the Clyde family’s revenue had to go to paying taxes, if not how would the emperor trust the four families. No other families entered this business because the emperor did not want to hand over such things to a higher-grade wealthy. Once any duke could run a mine, it would become a disaster for the empire.

Saleen realized the minerals did not have to have their profits slashed at Holy Rock City. Any place that was not the empire’s territory he could take as his magic territory, just like Alchemy City. In the islands outside of Alchemy City, there were bound to be precious mines too.

Saleen did not care that much about these mines at first. After hearing Aini explaining the related problems, he suddenly understood. In comparison to the mines, the revenue from the magic nuclei did not matter. Even though they were more valuable than metals, it was not controlled by anyone and it could not be controlled.

If Saleen did not have a huge mineral reserve to buy weapons, he would need to bear a heavy price. No matter how much money he had, he would not be able to hold back against other’s raising their prices.

His heart started beating fervently. Within his room, over eighty skeletons stood motionlessly. He had to quickly create smaller boats to let these skeletons go out to sea to explore the mineral vein. He did not need to many. If he found another three to five more similar islands, Saleen could ensure that his weapon production would not be limited by others in the future.

He did not feel safe entrusting this to anyone, luckily the winged skeleton could discipline these evolved skeletons. He needed to let these skeletons quickly finish their transformation in the spirit pool, if not they would die soon.

“If this carries on, I would become a death mage,” he thought and sighed inwardly.

A death mage was lucky to have so many trustworthy spirits to count on. Their contract was mutually beneficial, but what about elemental mages? Besides magic chords, there was nothing they could count on.

He was still too young and had oversimplified the building of the city. Saleen thought that with his teacher’s support and Lex’s assistance, this would not be a big problem. Now, his city wall had not even finished being built and only the city center was completed. The port had taken up much time too and if the entire city building was overseen by him, he would not have any more energy to train his magic.

No wonder no mage was willing to work for the wealthy. For them, this time wasted was indeed a stupid thing.

Who else around him could do it? Jola and the magic beast swordsmen had decent combat abilities but they did not have this skill. Sika? She had to manage the Cascausus people, they would only get more upset without Sika. It would be unlikely that Saleen could command them directly. He could forget about the barbarians, they could only hunt and fight. Nailisi? When she was upset, she could not care about any future problems and would even kill those around her. The demon had to be controlled by his side.

He could not count on the mages from Sregl Island either. They were trustworthy, but they could not be used to manage talents. The swordsmen from Sregl Island were loyal but beside fighting, they did not care about anything else.

The only one he could count on by his side now was Aini. Without his reminder, he might not have taken much notice of that island. Someone from a business family was the most suitable for managing. Aini was a mage and he would not focus too much on things like that however.

Irene? Forget it, he had already given up on her.