"What?" The King of Beil, the kingdom residing at the south of Ress, was surprised by the hastily spoken report. "They what?"
It was at least 2 months or so since the isolation of the Ress and for some reason, the magical barrier that it put up had been a bane and boon to the rest of the countries surrounding it.
The boon was that for some reason, the demons were always 'hanging' out beside the magical isolation barrier, as if waiting to pounce in. This had somehow got other demons to follow as well and there were lesser attacks on the kingdom of Nalg which was to the East of Ress as well as the kingdom of Pal, the West of Ress.
It gave them more opportunities to grow and strengthened their defences while resulting in lesser clashes against the demons. However, it was no doubt at a cost. With the sudden announcement of the magical isolation barrier, most merchants had thought that the magical barrier would not last even a week. since they believed that it was eating up a particular resource: crystals.
Ress does have an abundance of it but that does not mean that they would have that many to spare. And even if they did, this would undoubtedly reduce their sizable reserves to nothing. To the merchants, it was quite a waste to waste such a resource on such a huge magical isolation barrier but if it was their king's decision, it did not matter. Find your next read on m_v l|e-novelhall.net
What mattered was that they could make a killing from all the trades that Ress was missing out. This was because they knew that Ress was not sufficient in every single aspect. A knowledgeable merchant would understand that they do not have enough and might resort to various 'bad' activities to get what they wish to achieve.
The spy network believed the same thing as well so when the magical isolation barrier lasted so long, they believed that Ress was using some alternative sources of magic to continue powering the isolation barrier. It did not take long for the royal spies to connect the dots that the new magical vehicle relic might also have something to do with alternative sources of magic.
However, what they had in mind for the alternative source of magic was undoubtedly using humans as magic fuel. It was the easiest to access and Ress was filled with mages. It could also be the reason why the king had initially called for all Ress mages to return to their kingdom.
One of their possible deductions was that the king was a tyrant but at the same time a whim that did not dare to fight against the demons as well as the rest of the other kingdoms who were vying for the crystal reserves that Ress had.
He might be strong, somewhat strong that the government and military were not able to keep him under check, or that he might have some manipulative powers as a summoned king.
With the long standing isolation barrier and the discovered magical vehicle relic, the King of Beil believed that the king was using unnatural means to survive and power himself up.
He might not have the current information right now but his spy network was robust enough to indicate that there was money flowing into Ress ministers' pockets.
So basically, the King of Mong was actually controlling Ress for a certain period of time, influencing his ideals to the Ress Cabinet and there was no doubt that they were a good set of puppets. However, the King of Beil had no idea when and why Mong hated them so much, but it was pretty apparent that the King of Mong was not exactly happy with what Jin had done.
After all, his painstaking efforts to break the Ress Cabinet were now all for naught considering how there was nothing he could do at the moment with Ress in an isolation barrier.
However, the King of Beil did not care. In the first place, the summoned king of Ress had abandoned all negotiations, broke quite a few restrictive terms and conditions and do not give a fuck about whatever was happening, and subsequently isolated the entirety of Ress.
If one were to spin the narrative, it was extremely easy to spin it in such a way that the new king of Ress was the villain, working behind a curtain of magic to possibly torture the citizens of Ress and maybe even use them as magical sources.
As long as there was no information coming from Ress's side, all the kingdom's newsmakers could spin whatever tale they liked to make sure that they could fuel the people's rage and supposed righteousness to ensure that they would get what they wanted.
It was such an easy thing to do to excite the citizens up and the fact that there were supposed refugees as well as current citizens of the various kingdoms inside of Ress because they never thought that the king of Ress could create such an isolated barrier to stop people from going in or out.
The stroking of the fire was simple and the response was undoubtedly positive to the various kings' likings for the next few weeks but in those same weeks, they had no idea that the Kingdom of Ress was working twice or maybe three times harder than any kingdom combined should.
It was all because of their new king's vision and it was not far fetched to say he was a tyrant when it came to achieving meritocracy. Even Grand Sage Mex and the former ministers could not believe that the people could put so much trust in Jin.
For he was true to his nickname and they discarded their old ways of life.
All hail the Discarded King