Chapter 14: Backstory: The Rise of an Empire

Seventeen years ago, at the end of the Fifth Age of Magic, Midland was only a small kingdom in the Western Continent. The people of the pen & fun & pavilion www.biquge.info hard work, and the rulers ruled the country in peace and security, and occasionally followed the trend and fought with neighbors without pain, and never completely tore their faces...... Kyle the Great was the prince of the country at the time. Lao Wang died of illness, as the heir to the throne when he encountered his brother colluding with part of the army to mutiny, the royal city was broken, and he was desperately protected by loyal guards to escape, and fled to other countries in a hurry to take refuge in Xu Tu's later plan.

Prince Kyle was falsely accused of forging a will, the refuge team did not bring out wealth, and the surrounding small countries did not have the strength and willingness to send troops to help the victims, and even provided convenience for the usurper's pursuers - anyone with a discerning eye could see that there was little hope of recovering the country.

The faithful guards accompanied the prince on his journey north, ready to wander the world away from the threat of the usurper.

However, the greatest "nobleman" of his life appeared. On the side of the road outside the village in a small country village, the prince and his party, whose carriage wheels had broken and had to stop to rest, met two living legends - Duke Foster and his wife, the Grand Sword Master of Faqin and the Grand Master of Raven, who were still just commoners and were traveling around the continent.

The true story is unknown, but the official record is that the prince made a good impression on the two powerful men with his politeness and charisma, and after hearing about his fate, the great sword master of Faqin enthusiastically expressed his willingness to help the prince regain the throne, on the condition that the prince would give them a comfortable and comfortable living environment.

Of course, the victim who had nothing agreed, and so the most miraculous empty glove white wolf in history was staged: with only a verbal promise, the prince returned to the capital of the kingdom with two super strong men who appeared out of nowhere - incredibly, even at the turn of the epoch when the magic was exhausted, the great sword master of Faqin showed the power of the gods, and he did not even let his fellow Raven help, single-handedly defeated thousands of rebels with zero casualties, and helped the prince banish his usurping half-brother to return to the throne.

The prince did not break his promise as in the clichéd fable, and the Archschem of Faqin was granted a fief, was given the title of duke, and after marrying Archmage Raven, he lived comfortably in the royal capital with the promise of the new king...... The story has no twists and turns, and it has come to a happy ending here, but the life legend of King Kyle, who is lucky and meets a noble man on the way, is far from over. After being betrayed and exiled, Prince Kyle unexpectedly showed the political wisdom and power skills of a good king...... and the astonishing ability to rule, through a series of political, economic, and military reforms, soon made the country unprecedentedly strong.

Then, naturally, he showed aggressiveness.

......

The times changed, and the Sixth Age of Magic began, and the kingdom began to expand outward. The first to suffer were the countries that did not give Prince Kyle a good reception during the months of his flight, and even ordered him to leave the country quickly, and they were destroyed one by one by the iron heel of the Red Army and merged under the rule of the Avengers. The kingdom, which had doubled its territory, was not satisfied, and various events that could justify the use of force arose one after another, and the war never ended, and the kingdom continued to expand like an inflatable soft leather ball.

And the Duke of Foster, who helped the prince ascend the throne...... As the hand-picked supreme leader of the army, he has only appeared once on the battlefield, but the legend that he is the god of war has spread among the red-clothed soldiers. The army, which was nominally commanded by him, fought like a doping addict, and its morale remained high with the winning streak.

Soon, joining the army became an honor in Midland, and witnessing a battle became a capital to brag about and prove yourself. By the end of this round of expansion wars, the kingdom's armies even wildly confronted enemy forces several times their size on three fronts in the northwest, north and south...... Relying on the plundered manpower, material resources, and financial resources to continue the war, the previous victory lays the foundation for this victory, and this victory inspires confidence in the next battle...... After more than 100 battles of all sizes, he is really as invincible as the god of war.

The rumor that the Midland army was invincible quickly spread to all corners of the continent, and the red territory continued to expand, and the blood wave was untouchable. A few years after regaining the throne, King Kyle seized the opportunity to make the lord a thing of history in the country, transforming the kingdom into a centralized empire, the king becoming the emperor, and the people privately called it the "red tide that flooded the continent".

The land occupies a small half of the entire central mountain range to the west, and nearly one-fifth of the continent, and from the map it almost seems that the surrounding forces are driven into the sea...... The rise of the new empire has finally alerted the peripheral countries and the established empires, and the Erican Empire, which has stood for hundreds of years in the vast plains east of the Central Mountains, has come to war. Emperor Eriken issued a message demanding that Emperor Kell the Great immediately stop his foreign expansion, and at the same time sent an elite army to bypass the Central Mountains and form an alliance with the northern kingdoms of the Midland Empire to fight a decisive battle with the Red Wave. Under the numerical superiority and the joint suppression of the only mage army in the whole continent, the redcoat army finally tasted defeat, and the coalition army, with the assistance of the mage army, drove straight in, and pressed the redcoat army back to the border of the original kingdom in the north.

At the moment when the new empire was about to be snuffed in, the Duke and Duchess of Foster, who had been out of the public eye for several years and lived a peaceful life, made another move and conducted a "negotiation" with the three major sword saints and several holy demon masters led by the Erican Empire in a wilderness. The course of the negotiations is unknown, but the next day a peace agreement was reached: the Erekon Empire's forces withdrew east of the Central Mountains, and the Midland Empire was not allowed to continue its invasion of the northern kingdoms allied with the former.

The agreement was swiftly enacted, and peace soon came, but one unfortunate fellow was caught between the warring parties, the neutral nation of Narig, the only human power on the border with Midland that was not drawn into the war. It was not covered by the treaty, and Emperor Kyle gave his king two choices: either submit to retain some autonomy, or be conquered and become a province of the empire. After two years of desperate struggles in a desperate situation where one side of the land by the sea and three borders became the territory of the Midland Empire overnight, King Narig finally chose to give in.

In the fifteenth year of the Sixth Age of Magic, after two years of military siege and material blockade, the unrecognized kingdom of Narig was finally forced to surrender to the Midland Empire as a vassal state, surrendering the prince as a hostage and paying a portion of the annual tax to the empire as a tribute.

The prince who was chatting with Sister Rhodes just now was the next de jure king of this unfortunate country.

***

If you count the large and small vassals, Midland's population has expanded tenfold in the eighteen years since the new king ascended the throne, and Narieg is only one of the many kingdoms it has conquered, and it is fortunate that it has not shed blood.

If the siege forced the neutral country to submit was not a war, it had been more than six years since the mainland had restored basic peace, and the Midland Empire had strictly adhered to the agreement and developed peacefully. Realizing that militarism was not the way out, Emperor Kyle learned the lesson of defeat, forcefully unified the language, weights and measures, integrated the factions and nationalities in the country, and began to plan the establishment of a mage army belonging to Midland, which may be the second formed mage army on the mainland...... After hitting a wall, a series of reforms have made the national strength stronger and stronger than before in the past few years.

What the neighbors feared the most happened, Midland, who had risen at an astonishing rate, showed no signs of shaky foundation or weakness after a rapid expansion and a loss, but quietly licked his wounds like an experienced lion, secretly preparing for the next hunt.

From tropical jungles to northland snowfields, inland deserts to seashores, even the most remote rural women of the Long-tongued village are spreading the "inside news" that peace is coming to an end, and that the Second Midland Empire's expansion war is about to begin.

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