The Path to Lordship Begins in the North

In the capital of the Kingdom of Capet, Queen Lilith was pacing in the palace hall.

Despite repeated suggestions from nobles and courtiers to renovate the hall to showcase and flaunt Her Majesty's achievements, such as replacing the hall's windows with stained glass depicting the Queen's deeds.

But Lilith rejected them all. It was just that these guys wanted to use this method to get some kickbacks again. After all, under Lilith's crackdown, the gray income of some nobles was decreasing.

Building palaces is a traditional way to make money, and the king gets a newly renovated palace, the nobles get their fill of kickbacks, but it's the common people who suffer. However, with the queen's prestige so high now, the people are probably willing to spend money. What's wrong with them just riding on the queen's fame?

However, quite a few guards did feel that the hall should be renovated. Even if it didn't reflect Her Majesty's majesty, at least people shouldn't be left freezing.

As winter approached, the north winds of the permafrost finally blew into the capital. Due to financial problems, the windows of the long-neglected hall began to leak, but some guards were still wearing thin indoor clothes, which made them shiver with cold.

But Lilith, who was extremely anxious, did not notice at all that the cold north wind had blown into the hall, and even felt a bit hot.

As the war in the North continued to advance, and the Grey and White Legion reached the Golden Plains, about to annihilate Doug, Lilith was not concerned. She simply felt that the governor was finally going to unify the North.

Lilith has already made arrangements for the follow-up plans.

But man proposes, God disposes. As expected, the subsequent plans went awry. After a period of silence on the southwestern border, Anjou launched another attack, and the other side also began to use artillery to bombard the southwestern border.

At first, Lilith suspected that the artillery on her side had been leaked, but the enemy's artillery was obviously modified and its methods were different from those of the gray-collar workers.

During the subsequent investigation, Lilith learned that the other side's cannons had come from Doug in the North. However, the other side disdained to use the cannons they bought directly from Doug. Instead, they figured out the principles of the cannons and modified them themselves, making them unrecognizable compared to the originals.

The bases are similar, but the opponent's cannons are significantly larger, more powerful, and have a longer range, even more exaggerated than the city's defensive cannons.

What if you can't achieve mass production like white-collar workers on an assembly line? Alberto, the King of Anjou, learned the essence of Linde: great strength makes bricks fly.

At first, Alberto also wanted to mass-produce like the gray-collar workers, but he soon discovered that although he could gather rune artisans and alchemists from all over the country to work for him, not to mention the efficiency of mass production, standardization alone would be difficult to implement.

Although it cannot be mass-produced in a standardized manner through assembly lines and mechanical devices, along with specific mathematical arrays, like gray and white-collar workers, the greatest advantage of the Kingdom of Anjou is its ability to gather a large number of professionals.

Unable to understand how the gray-collar workers could solve the standardization problem, Alberto simply abandoned standardization and mass production, and instead had these alchemists collectively research more powerful heavy artillery.

I'm not going to mass-produce anymore, I'm going to make a big one.

If all alchemists work together to create one large one, there's no need to consider standardization or mass production.

Thus, the Anjou Cannon, whose body alone was the size of a large carriage, was born.

Alberto lacked access to train and tank technologies and didn't have any better means of transportation; otherwise, its size would likely have been comparable to that of the Gustav Cannon.

These artillery pieces were slow to transport, required the help of professionals, and were not very efficient; a single artillery piece and its shells required a dedicated unit to operate.

In a normal war, such troops would be sitting ducks and would require special escorts, consuming a great deal of resources. But Alberto didn't care, since Capet's border coalition forces had retreated back into the city after the last battle and dared not venture out to fight.

Not to mention actively harassing the artillery units.

Although Capela's side celebrated their victory with singing and dancing, a scene full of vitality and vibrant life.

But Anru's side couldn't really be said to have lost. After a few probing attacks, they resumed the battle.

Under the onslaught of Anjou cannons, Capet's southwestern coalition forces quickly fell into a disadvantageous position once again.

Not long after the war resumed, two border towns had already fallen.

This is mainly because the mobility of the Anjou cannons is really questionable, and most of the time is spent traveling.

At this critical juncture, news came from the North that the demonic monsters and the Gray-White Army were locked in a fierce battle on the Golden Harvest Plain.

Not to mention that the information transmitted in this era would be seriously distorted, just recounting the situation of the Jinshui Plain battlefield is already quite surreal.

Moreover, the Gray-White Collar Army, which was considered extremely powerful and had superior weaponry by the nobles in the capital and even by Lilith, was defeated.

This is not a rumor, but information verified through multiple channels.

Even if information in this era is easily distorted, with multiple verifications, it's simply a matter of how much the gray and white-collar workers have failed.

Although reason tells Lilith that the gray-collar workers have not suffered a crushing defeat, at most they have retreated to defend, and the situation should still be deadlocked.

After all, if the Gray-White Collar army of the Golden Harvest Plains had really suffered a crushing defeat, then those terrifying monsters would have already ravaged the Northern Territory, and there would be no news of them at all, as is the case now.

But in a roundtable discussion, those nobles from the capital won't reason with you.

Soon, all sorts of rumors spread like wildfire in the capital. Many people hoped that Lilith would make a statement as soon as possible, but Lilith blocked them all on the grounds that the war in the North was still unclear.

Almost everyone in the capital was waiting for the governor of the North to reply to Her Majesty the Queen.

Soon after, a special messenger knight braved the north wind and arrived in the hall. Lilith had now elevated all news about the North to the highest level, and Lind's reply had even reached the level of an urgent military intelligence report.

Looking at the wax seal on the envelope, Lilith breathed a sigh of relief. When she contacted the North and learned that Sean was in charge, Lilith's heart was in her throat. If something unexpected happened in the North, the situation would become even more chaotic.

Fortunately, Lind only went to the front lines, not lost contact.

However, this at least shows that the situation in the Golden Harvest Plain is not optimistic. Even Governor Linde, who usually stays in the rear, has personally gone to the front line.

Lilith sat back on her throne, carefully opened the envelope, and began to read it carefully.

After all, this letter may determine the future diplomatic policy and direction of the capital.

Although she really didn't want to deal with the demons, if the demons really had such powerful and terrifying monsters under their command, Lilith had no choice but to sit down and talk things over. However, Lilith didn't think that the demons were as easy to talk to as those people imagined.

Especially considering that those monsters sacrificed humans, no matter how you look at it, the Holy See would not tolerate the existence of these monsters, right?

Unfortunately, the Papacy is currently weak and can only help each other with Lilith. Otherwise, those nobles who dared to talk to the demons again would probably have been warned by the Papacy immediately.

After reading the letter, Lilith sighed and rubbed her forehead in exasperation. At this moment, Lilith finally noticed that the temperature in the hall was not right, so she called the guards and activated the heating magic circle under the hall.

"When Prime Minister Nora comes to pay her respects next time, remember to tell him to fix the glass in this hall. There's no need for a complete renovation."

The guards, shivering from the cold, nodded gratefully; Her Majesty had finally remembered this.

As the magic circle was activated, the temperature in the hall gradually rose, but looking back at the letters, Lilith still felt utterly cold inside.