Badge in Azure

The Empire’s group of envoys would not be leaving immediately. Saleen still needed to form his group of envoys carefully and interact more with Grand Mage Tiffany. His Majesty must definitely have more than one secret deal to discuss with Saleen. Other than allowing Saleen to send out troops, there would be other minor issues that both parties would like to discuss in private.

Saleen still needed to deploy an envoy to stay in Holy Rock City permanently. This would be a tough choice.

The pirates that had followed Saleen for the longest time were all very loyal, but not suited for such a role. On the other hand, the noble families that had pledged their allegiance to Saleen were not suitable either because the reliable ones had already been given ranks of nobility by him while the rest were not that dependable yet.

Eventually, Saleen decided to choose Baron Piac. The lands of his Deep Forest Town had already been taken over by Saleen long ago and his rank of nobility had already been implemented. Although this Baron was not the most capable, he did not know Saleen’s secrets, even if he was bribed, he would not be able to reveal much.

Saleen would arrange for a few trusted aides to accompany Baron Piac first before allowing the latter to take up this new appointment. Piac’s child was already in the midst of being groomed as a magic apprentice so naturally, this Baron would have some concerns.

After Piac had been informed, there was nothing much he could say to refuse. Saleen promoted him to a second-grade Viscount and by the time he returned from Holy Rock City at the end of his appointment, he would become a first-grade Viscount. If his son could successfully become a proper mage and could gain Saleen’s trust, Saleen would have no qualms in promoting him into a hereditary Earl.

The two grade-8 sorcerers, Tiffany and Stephanie, had secretly traded with Saleen quite a few things during this period of time. Tiffany was considered old as her actual age was already over one-hundred years even if she only looked around thirty years old. On the other hand, Stephanie was only around twenty years old in actual age. Disguising herself as a white-robed mage was just her preference and not something the Emperor had ordered her to do against Duke Bard.

Tiffany was a royal sorcerer so she kept to her boundaries, but Stephanie did not seem to share a similar concern since she was the Emperor’s private mage. Saleen managed to gain quite a lot of information on Holy Rock City through her. Stephanie did not hide her fondness for Saleen and even promised to find a way to get Saleen what he wanted after her return.

What did Saleen want? The warehouse in the palace. Saleen knew that the warehouse in Holy Rock City was not as big as the Grukos family’s, but its contents were just as rich. What Saleen wanted was copies of all the blueprints in there.

The Grukos royal family possessed many blueprints of magic equipment and most of them had been left in the corner to gather dust.

Saleen made a deal with Stephanie in private to increase the number of magic nuclei he was selling to Ojarvis to two-hundred-thousand. In exchange for the additional one-hundred-thousand grade-4 magic nuclei, Saleen would receive grain.

Saleen needed a lot of grain because Eleanor had given him an elvish recipe that could turn the grain into an elvish pill. Consuming one such pill was equivalent to three days’ worth of meals. The cost of manufacturing one such pill was also equivalent to sustaining a soldier for five days. Although a loss was incurred in this case, at least there would be much fewer logistics to be concerned about if soldiers brought along such pills.

Such pills could also be found on the Myers Mainland, but due to their high cost, armies did not usually use them widely. In Qin, the wealthy ladies would consume such pills to lose weight.

Magic nuclei would need to be used up to store grain in a magic warehouse and its nutrients would also slowly deplete. These issues would be solved by turning the grains into pills. On the elvish dimension, the elves only ate few fruit and vegetables every day and mainly depended on such pills for sustenance.

Only the low-level elves would consume three meals a day like humans.

In the past, humans were extremely powerful and would never have to consider any logistical issues when they fought in other dimensions. A powerful human could create a space and within this space, he could tear it open and retrieve the resources he needed. Such elvish pills were useless to humans back then.

By the time humans required such pills, dimensions had already lost connections with each other. Subsequently, the mages tried to recreate the pills based on their memories, but they were of poor quality. In the end, they turned out to be used as diet pills and were never utilized by the military.

The soldiers of the royal swordsmen battalion would bring a bag with them at all times since there was no harm in doing so. It would be a waste to use them as rations.

The advantages to the logistics outweighed the costs so overall it was still beneficial.

Of course, Saleen also had items that could bribe the two sorcerers. They were the materials for making magic staffs that he obtained from Joey; God’s mulberry and ghost oak trees. In order to grow these two plants to a stage where they could be made into magic staffs, more than thousands of years of effort would have to be invested.

Both of them knew that Joey possessed these materials, but they also knew that Joey would never bother with them.

If Saleen wanted all the alchemy blueprints within Holy Rock City’s royal warehouse, he knew that he would need to have something to exchange, which turned out to be five-million alchemy arrows. The core of such arrows were made up of malleable bronze and their exterior was infused with alchemy and shells of magic beasts. An arrow like this could be used repeatedly more than ten times.

Its effect on magic was average, but was much more effective on warriors’ armors.

Saleen had wanted to equip his own armies with such weapons and had already created around four-million of them. If he rushed a little, he would be able to complete all the arrows for Tiffany before she left.

What Saleen possessed in abundance was the hard and solid shells of magic beasts. All the red krill that he hunted, aside from their spikes, the rest of their bodies were as hard as metal. While the red krill’s spikes were hard to refine, their external shells could be melted easily before putting them onto metal.

If a mage could infuse magic into these arrows, they would be able to pierce through spells, but could no longer be used repeatedly. Without magic, these arrows were still sharper than iron arrows and would be able to pierce through heavy armor.

After experimenting on it, Stephanie was very pleased with such an equipment. Holy Rock City could definitely manufacture such arrows or they could also be bought from Alchemy City, but the cost would be high and they would never be sold in the millions. Saleen was willing to fork out five-million of them. This would be significant in the battle at Luolan and even Prince Safilos would not be able to refuse them.

Saleen was also satisfied. Red krill were incredibly useful creatures. They had magic nuclei, spikes, and shells that could be manufactured into equipment and its flesh could be used to feed his lightning dragons.

No wonder Alchemy City had been so dominant that even Holy Rock City could not afford to offend them. The amount of resources that the ocean offered was simply too rich. Whoever controlled the ocean controlled the Mainland.

Holy Rock City was well aware of the fact that Metatrin City had been hunting in the oceans. Holy Rock City was not about to interfere or they would be left with no choice but to purchase items from Alchemy City at high prices. The business agreement between Metatrin City and the Emperor had helped the latter to save more than half of his funds.

In the middle of July, the group of envoys were about to depart and Saleen arranged a farewell ceremony in a grand fashion. This time around, he deployed a battalion of soldiers to escort the envoys back. This battalion would be able to pass through Phoenix and the mages in the battalion had been tasked to use magic projection to record the terrain and create a map subsequently.

Saleen only dared to do so because there was a deal in place between him and Prince Safilos. Prince Safilos had acknowledged his presence and wanted Saleen to completely seal off Alchemy City’s naval route towards the north. In the future, the resources in the north would be taken over by Holy Rock City. One could never force deals with Alchemy City. In the name of the Empire, Prince Safilos would now invest large amount of funds. Although magic nuclei were out of the question, he would still be able to purchase equipment materials, minerals, wood, and magic potions from Metatrin City at a low price.

Prince Safilos even planned to set up a naval force in Lianyun City to secretly control Alchemy City in case they interfered with his business dealings. All the business dealings that Prince Safilos conducted were to develop his own forces, but done in the name of the Empire. The noble families in the north were more loyal to the Emperor and the Prince had no wish to change that, but the noble families in the south did not quite obey the Emperor’s commands. Prince Safilos decided that he should buy over one group and strike the other.

Saleen was glad to reach peace with the Prince for the time-being. If they continued to be at odds with each other, he had no wish to encounter a gold grand swordmaster anytime soon. Unless he would never ever leave Metatrin City, otherwise making such an enemy was worse than being at odds with a grade-9 sorcerer.

The noble families of Metatrin City might have incurred some losses,, but Saleen also helped them to improve their cash liquidity so that they now had more money to conduct other businesses.

As for Saleen himself, he was busy building up a mercenary group.

In Eleanor’s plan, Saleen needed to build a mercenary group to avoid some potential issues. These issues included entering Phoenix and Luolan. If it was Saleen’s official armies, questions would be raised. A mercenary group was different. They could travel anywhere as long as they had been hired.

The mercenary group would simply be called the ‘Metatrin Mercenary Group’ and would be registered with Saleen. The group would be made up of auxiliary soldiers on top of twenty-thousand soldiers. With a total of fifty-thousand vacancies in total, Saleen needed to continue recruiting many soldiers.

Saleen was extremely strict with the recruitment of soldiers into his official armies, but was much more relaxed for the mercenary group. A battalion of elite soldiers were chosen from amongst his official armies, but their privileges remained the same despite a more impressive title. Only the remaining auxiliary soldiers were newly recruited.

Even so, the equipment possessed by Saleen’s auxiliary soldiers would not lose out to any private soldiers of noble families.

Saleen managed to recruit thirty-thousand men very quickly and would be able to fill up the remaining twenty-thousand vacancies within the next few months. The situation at Luolan was chaotic and their original population of tens of millions of people had been reduced to a few million as many had fled to Qin and Phoenix. All the strong and fit ones could be recruited into the armies.

Saleen planned to rotate his soldiers from the ten battalions into the mercenary group occasionally. Only then could these soldiers experience real battles and become stronger as a result. Soldiers that never experienced battles would never form a powerful army.