"Give him face," Raymond said to himself, "let him show off for a few more days, let him indulge in this illusory glory.
Once he’s finished off his dissidents and exhausted the army... I will gradually replace his guards, cut off his financial resources, and mix the potion into his food.
The bloodline of Auguste is already rotten. The future Empire doesn’t need a crippled madman on the Dragon Throne. It needs a true dragon with dragon’s blood."
Despite the thousands of calculations swirling in his mind, what showed on Raymond’s face was the helplessness and gentle tolerance of a loyal minister.
He walked to the door and casually patted the shoulder of the Personal Guard captain: "Lead the way. As a minister, I must not keep His Highness waiting too long."
......
The Second Prince’s command room was brightly lit, the candle flas dancing wildly in the breeze, illuminating the huge Empire sandbox like a beast being torn apart.
Kaelin stood with his back to everyone, his shoulders rising and falling with his breath, like a volcano about to erupt.
The air was heavy with anxiety, all the Knights and Scouts stood tense against the walls, yet no one dared to speak.
Until Kaelin slowly raised his hand, his voice hoarse and low: "Say it again."
The Scout’s voice trembled, almost unrecognizably: "Reporting to the Executive Officer... Fifth Prince Lampard has fled to the Southeast Province! Yesterday, with the support of the heretic Church Court, he announced the establishnt of a new regi: the Holy Eastern Empire!"
The entire room fell abruptly silent.
The Golden Feather Flower Church Court, an eternal enemy regarded by the Ironblood Empire as heretical.
Kaelin suddenly turned around, his voice booming like thunder: "He dared to turn to heretics?! He dared to let heretics plant their flag on Imperial land?!"
The Scout shivered all over and continued: "The Fifth Prince issued a ’Call to Obliterate the Rebels’, accusing the Second and Fourth Princes of regicide against the Regent King... The Southeast Province has already opened all passes to the Church Court army."
The sandbox trembled, dust rising.
Kaelin smashed his fist down, gritting his teeth, his chest heaving violently: "That spineless coward! To save his life, he even dares to sell his ancestors’ ashes to heretics!"
Raymond slowly rolled up the Scroll, casually raising his eyes.
He glanced at the furious Kaelin, and then at the Scout kneeling on the ground, the corners of his mouth slowly curving into a faint smile.
"His Highness called late at night, and it turns out it’s over such a trivial matter." He walked over to the sandbox, picking up a glass of red wine from the side.
"Lampard thinks that a few bottles of holy water, a few heretic bishops, plus the Calvin Clan’s ambiguous attitude, can prop up a state? He’s just concentrating the Empire’s traitors in one direction, making it easier for us to burn them down."
Raymond gently shook his glass, not even glancing at the new Golden Feather Flower flag planted in the Southeast: "Ignore it, once I integrate the Central Army and digest the remaining forces of Rhine, co next spring, I will personally lead the Knights to flatten that group of heretics’ temples."
Kaelin’s anger churned in his chest, but Raymond’s calm deanor slightly steadied him.
Yet the next mont, a sudden commotion erupted outside the door.
"Ergency military situation! Urgent report from the Northern Territory!"
The Personal Guard entered, kneeling on one knee with standard military salute, holding a frost-covered Gale Bird dispatch tube over his head.
The purple-copper shell showed fine frost cracks from long-distance flight, and touching it felt like the cold wind blowing from miles away.
This was a top-level ergency military dispatch.
Kaelin raised his hand, signaling for it to be read out loud.
The guard pulled out a thin ssage slip, the runic ink glinting in the candle fla.
He took a deep breath and, following protocol, read out the military intelligence sentence by sentence:
"Ergency report! Louis Calvin, Count of the Northern Territory, has led an army southward, and contacted with the Empire’s Seventh Legion, Fourteenth Legion, Seventeenth Legion in the Gray Stone Fortress defensive zone."
Raymond’s nerves, tense from the Southeast rebellion, relaxed instead upon hearing this.
He sneered faintly: "Is Louis mad? Nearly ten thousand regular troops defend the fortress; does he dare to crash into it with his family’s ager forces? An egg hitting a rock?"
Soone in the advisory seat couldn’t help but lower their head and laugh, clearly thinking this was just an overreaching probing skirmish.
However, the next sentence sliced through everyone’s smiles like a blade.
Yet, the guard’s voice noticeably trembled, but still he stubbornly adhered to protocol, reading on: "The contact battle lasted only one day; all three legions... were utterly defeated. Gray Stone Fortress, on the third day, declared fallen... it is now lost."
"Clang."
The glass fell at the mont, Raymond’s face seed split in half by a sharp blade, one half maintaining the aristocratic coldness, while the other twisted with anger and shock.
This ti he had no elegant disguise, shouting angrily: "Absurd! You couldn’t slaughter ten thousand pigs in one day!"
The guard struggled to maintain his composure, continuing to read out the final piece of intelligence: "End of the ergency report: the entire Northern Army has now regrouped, advancing south and officially entered the Greyrock Province... Intelligence ends here."
The flickering shadows from the candles shivered on the walls of the Imperial Hall, while the hall itself was so silent it seed to lack air.
Straightaway, Raymond’s expression completely changed, for he finally understood Louis’s true aim.
Not aiding the King, nor vying for supremacy, nor annexing the Northern Territory, but Greyrock Province.
It held three hundred years of his family’s accumulations, a treasury capable of equipping ten legions, innurable still-public contracts of wealth, and the dragon blood experint that could reshape the Empire’s military map.
If those things fell into Louis’s hands...
Raymond’s chest heaved violently, yet he no longer seed hysterical as before.
He slowly raised his hand, pulling away the thin piece of ssage slip, forcing himself to suppress his shout and draw his focus back to rationality.
He stared at the date on the bottom of the slip: seventeen days.
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