After being forced to step down, the once-annoying nun eloped with me.

The nun bared her teeth and claws as she approached, then pulled the dumbfounded Yang Hao aside, like a cat with its fur standing on end.

Finn simply smiled and tilted her head: "After all, while our teleportation magic is convenient, it can't teleport over large areas like humans. So, I had no choice but to grab his hand and come over like this?"

"..."

The nun was speechless for a moment, and considering that they could only have come on official business, she had no choice but to keep quiet.

But secretly, she gritted her teeth and resolved to teach Yang Hao a lesson that night.

...

After a brief flurry of activity, Yang Hao and the others approached Arthur and Naruja. Before he could even ask a question, Arthur, whose hair had thinned considerably, spoke first:

"Your Majesty, what kind of monster is this Golem?"

"Oh?"

"The Ling Clan are fucking monsters! If we had these things in our palace back then, would that bastard Garsen have dared to cause trouble?!"

Arthur reached out and slapped the golem, which had transformed from stone and earth into a metal structure, and screamed as the hot metal burned it.

Naruja, with a shy smile, walked up to Yang Hao and proudly introduced her children's latest achievements.

These metallic golems, which reflect sunlight on their surfaces, are made from the slag left after smelting ore.

The original method of disposing of slag at the Oak Mine was to bury it deep in the ground, but since the arrival of the Listeners, these hard slags have found a new purpose.

Furthermore, Arthur had a sudden inspiration to install metal plates with extremely low magical adaptability on the golems—in this way, the Light Spear of the Church of Light would be unable to pose a threat to the new golems from a distance.

Although they can still overpower experienced opponents at close range, the lower the Golems' pre-melee losses, the greater the impact they will have when they join the battlefield.

But then again...

"How did these golem limbs turn into this shape?"

If they had simply changed the material and put on armor, Yang Hao could still recognize them as Golems.

But when he saw Golem's hands transform from human-like forms into bizarre shapes—either spears, hammers, awls, or scissors—his expression turned strange.

Arthur's explanation was quite simple: ever since the Listeners and the Elven mages reached an agreement and indeed prepared a suitable, autonomous operating logic for the Golems, he felt that rather than letting the Golems retain the joints of human hands, it would be better to weaponize them at the current stage.

After transforming all his hands into weapon shapes, Golem lived up to expectations and achieved outstanding results in the previous combat tests.

In the words of the elves, if a human army did not have siege equipment or mages who specialized in piercing magic, then a single golem would be enough to wipe out an entire human hundred-man squad.

However, the price of this enhanced combat power is that Golem's overall flexibility has been severely impacted once again.

"While it might not be noticeable on the battlefield, our actual testing clearly shows that Golems can no longer perform dance-like movements..."

Naruja muttered in frustration, after all, controlling golems to dance was her specialty! Now that she couldn't use it, the simple demon woman was very disappointed.

Arthur kept rolling his eyes, while an elven woman who had appeared behind him at some point smiled and handed him a cup of tea. She looked at him affectionately and subconsciously drank it all in one gulp.

Yang Hao blinked, while Naruja whispered that it was one of Arthur's girlfriends.

Because of Arthur's heavy workload and the threats facing the Elf Kingdom, Arthur's girlfriends finally gathered together and came up with a solution.

They eventually accepted Ms. Viya's status as their "official wife" and vowed never again to secretly oppose each other and cause trouble for the men they loved. The price, however, was that they had to meticulously plan the dates each of them would spend with Arthur each month.

This was indeed a good thing for Arthur, so Yang Hao decided not to worry about whether there was anything strange added to the tea.

He only asked the question that mattered most to him:

"What about the design of the large cannons used by Golem?"

“I plan to integrate it directly into the Golem, and then have the Listeners build it according to the standardized design while installing the parts—the advantage is that launching and loading are very simple. The disadvantage is that one Golem can keep twenty Listeners out of commission for a week.”

"Naruja, are you alright?"

"Yes! No problem...if I can help..."

Yang Hao plans to divide the Golems into two main categories: inexpensive melee Golems and expensive artillery Golems.

The former are cannon fodder, and can be made of any material. The latter, on the other hand, require various tough minerals, otherwise they too would not be able to withstand the impact of artillery fire on their internal organs.

So after much deliberation, he decided to have everyone test all the minerals during the design phase... after all, the parish hadn't fully invaded yet, and they still had plenty of time to prepare.

After leaving the Golem testing grounds, Yang Hao was accompanied by a sullen Mother Teresa.

She stared at Fen with considerable hostility, but Fen simply responded with a calm and gentle smile.

To avoid further escalating the situation, Yang Hao coughed twice and then explained that, as arranged, he would be traveling this afternoon under the protection of the elves to the western border between the forest and the plains. There, the hopes of the Isugardians would meet with him.

“We must have an ally,” he explained his plan. “The Isgardians are a powerful ally. They have a navy, maritime trade, and can provide us with all sorts of supplies we desperately need in an emergency—more importantly, they will attack the Roman Empire sooner or later. Rather than our Elven Kingdom fighting alone, it's better to fight alongside the Isgardians…”

"Then when the war breaks out, Isugard attacks the coastal military district, and we hold the parishes back in the rear?" Sister Theresa blinked. "The elves have too few people; they simply can't support a large-scale attack like this."

Finn agreed with Theresa's statement, but she still indicated that if necessary, she could request the ancient trees to rise from the ground and become the vanguard of the attack.

"But the ancient trees' advance means the shrinking of the Elf Forest—unless necessary, I don't want you to let the ancient trees advance."

This comes at a great cost. Therefore, Finn actually prefers to defend on the spot.

But Yang Hao didn't think that way.

He only mentioned one very crucial thing.

"What about the tens of thousands of demons we've taken in? They can't live and eat in the Elf Forest forever. Even if you, Fen, take them all in—their homeland is in the Demon Forest, not the Elf Forest. Their people were captured by the parish and we don't know what they were done to. They are filled with hatred for the parish."

Even if we do nothing, they will voluntarily go to fight the parish—rather than let them make useless sacrifices, wouldn't it be better for us to lead and achieve the greatest results?

In less than ten days, the Elf Forest took in more than 6 displaced demons.

Almost half of the demons in the Demon Forest gathered in the Elf Forest seeking the protection of the elves and the ancient trees.

They had lost their homes and families because of humanity, and their eyes were filled with tears of blood as they looked at the parish. They couldn't live in the Elf Forest forever—their captured kin were waiting for their rescue, and Yang Hao needed to use them to help him achieve his goal of saving the Little Queen.

Therefore, Yang Hao believed it was necessary to take advantage of the demons' low spirits and offer them bread and candy, while also presenting them with sticks and promises—the elves promised to save their people, but in return, the elves also needed the demons to swear allegiance to them.

In this way, the sparsely populated elves gained more dependent population to support the country's development, while the demons on the front lines could provide excellent cover for the elves... Apart from the fact that they might need a long time to be educated to learn to read, the benefits of supporting the demons outweigh the drawbacks.

After all, they weren't the Roman barbarians, those almost unteachable savages. And then again, what exactly was the Roman Empire doing during this famine?

Yang Hao fell into deep thought. With the help of the nun, he boarded the eagle and, under the protection of the elves, left the place and flew towards the pre-arranged meeting place.

And that was after they left.

The nun turned around and looked at Finn expressionlessly.

"We need to talk."

"I think so too."

Finn returned a perfect smile. She would absolutely not relinquish her relationship with His Majesty the Regent.

Chapter Two: The Alliance with Isgard, Mother Teresa's Proposal

.....

the other side.

The boundary between forest and plain.

The advance team from Isgard was busily preparing the venue for the important meeting, while the fully recovered Black Dragon Nia, dressed in a black dress and high heels, paced restlessly around, because if nothing unexpected happened, today would be her second meeting with Yang Hao.

In a sense, Yang Hao can truly be considered Nia's confidant.

As the strongest black dragon, Nia did not choose to join the army and become an ace dragon in the special forces, nor did she choose to find a good place in her hometown to sleep for decades. Instead, she chose to become a researcher, a job that seemed too difficult for a large and burly dragon like the black dragon, and she has been doing so for more than ten years.

As a researcher, Nia has been pondering how to make Ysgard better. Nia and the President are old acquaintances, and Nia knows that this vampire is willing to do anything, even vomit blood, to seek a better future for Ysgard.

As her friend, Nia naturally wouldn't admit defeat on this matter. But ultimately, [Industry] and [Politics] are two completely different yet mutually influential paths—the President has led Issugard to prosperity through politics and national policies, but what's currently hindering the nation's development is precisely Issugard's most powerful yet also lagging [Industry].

Nia is the director of the research institute in charge of industrial research. Because of this, she can clearly see that with technology temporarily reaching its limit and resources insufficient for further horizontal expansion of industry, the industry of Isgard, without external stimulus, has now largely reached its limit and can only crawl slowly like a snail.

However, this is not the main reason why Nia considers Yang Hao to be a close friend of hers.

The real reason is that they all saw the country across the sea as a threat to their homeland.

Yang Hao was deeply impressed by the ironclad ships of Isgard, and Nia was just as impressed by the prosperity of the Roman Empire back then.

Not only was an empire founded by barbarian tribes able to build a magnificent port, but it also had a regent who was a genius...

Yang Hao was worried that Isgard's industry would inflict a devastating colonial blow on the Roman Empire in the future, while Nia was even more worried that the Roman Empire, under his leadership, would become Isgard's strongest opponent.

Everyone thinks that Ysgard is incredibly powerful now, but anyone with common sense should know that a country's industrialization means a huge demand for resources.

Isgard is located on the continent of Orros, a region typically lacking in natural resources.

Although it possesses plains conducive to agricultural development and numerous natural ports, the continent of Orros has only one slightly raised mountain range.

The scarcity of mountains means a scarcity of mineral resources. A scarcity of mineral resources means that the appetite of industry cannot be satisfied.

In order to feed the insatiable appetite of industry and enable it to provide more necessities for the nation, Ysgard must establish colonies overseas that can provide it with abundant resources, and the resource-rich Roman Empire is their best choice.

Originally, Nia thought that if the Roman Empire still had a regent, Isgard would probably be in internal chaos due to being embroiled in a long war, and would eventually have to sign a humiliating defeat agreement in order to strive for peaceful development due to a lack of resources.

But now...

"The Roman Empire has personally exiled its regent... Now the Roman Empire is like a virgin veiled in a light gauze, while we, Isgard, are a vigorous and robust man... Its resources will be at our disposal, not only allowing Isgard to weather the most dangerous transitional period, but also giving us the opportunity to develop industry once again..."

Black Dragon Nia muttered to herself, her face growing more distressed as she spoke:

"But the contradiction is... the regent seceded from the Roman Empire, only to join a more powerful nation—if we don't want the regent to be detrimental to our colonies in the future, then we must at least sign a peace treaty, as she suggested..."

Elves are a powerful race, as Nia has experienced firsthand. They even have the ability to heal a black dragon that is almost immune to magic.

Moreover, not only the mage, but even the accompanying archers exuded a strong magical aura.

This means the elves come from a country even more terrifying than the Roman Empire—if their population were as large as the Roman Empire's, their war power would be comparable to that of Ysgard.

Fortunately, the country still seems quite primitive.

Nia recalled the longbows in the hands of the elves; although they looked perfect, they were... just so-so.

Compared to naval guns and rifles, the longbow, being such an outdated piece of equipment, will probably only be remembered when covert operations require a silent weapon.

Although they traded two new rifles to take back and copy, Nia remained optimistic: they probably wouldn't be able to produce usable replicas in the short term. At least not in mass production, she thought.

(After all, we can't mass-produce new rifles domestically... Besides, the caravans at Drake Port should have set off back by now, and we don't know when our spies sent into the Roman Empire's borders will be able to find out what's going on in their country and locate their secret factory...)

She sighed. Just then, a guard stepped forward and said that the scene was ready and that the headmaster should take a seat and wait for the elf guests to arrive.

"Furthermore, the President has sent you a message... Please read it immediately."

"I understand. I'm coming over now."