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

In contrast, priests are special individuals who rely on believers to cast divine spells. Like mages, they undergo tedious training, but unlike mages, priests have the ability to create conditions for abundant divine power for themselves.

The key lies with the believers themselves.

"If a mage can only cast small fireballs in an area with a magic power limit of 100, but can cast strategic magic in an area with a magic power limit of 10000, then a priest can forcibly raise the limit from 100 to 10000 by leading believers in an area with a divine power limit of 100."

Theresa explained, demonstrating with a faint glimpse of divine light.

"The number of followers makes it easier for priests and mages to compare spellcasting resources. But conversely, if a priest's followers are limited and cannot be replenished, the priest will become increasingly weak due to the continuous deaths and injuries of his followers while the mage waits for the area's magic power to recover to 10000."

From 10000 to 9000, and then from 9000 directly reduced to 2000—at a certain threshold, the lives of believers are worthless. But below a certain threshold, the life or death of each believer will affect the power of the divine spells cast by the priest…”

"So, Your Majesty Theresa, you mean... if we can find a way to reduce the number of believers to a certain threshold, then the priests of the Church of Light will at some point 'collapse'?"

"Yes. It's not just a collapse, it will also have a chain reaction - because those beneficial group barriers are also linked to the number of believers. If priests are also performing some kind of divine spell synergy, the power may even differ by more than ten times due to the death of believers."

The core issue, however, lies in how we execute our "area and point" tactics. We must simultaneously pose a significant threat to both the believers and the priests themselves. Currently, it seems that the only strategic spells capable of delivering a lethal blow to a regular army are the elven mage legions.

Because of their different mechanisms, although mages can release strategic spells with flexibility, they seem to share the total amount of mana in an entire area when casting spells, in addition to their own mana reserves. This makes it easy for someone to release a large-scale spell first, resulting in the entire area being depleted of mana.

Theresa optimistically estimated that there are now a large number of mages in Gaparia, and they should be able to unleash wide-range spells without restraint in the Elf Forest—but the problem is that the magic reserves in the Monster Forest are lower than those in the Elf Forest.

To put it simply, the magical reserves of the Fairy Forest are like a normal adult male who hasn't had sex for seven days, while the magical reserves of the Monster Forest are like a young man who's been having sex all the time without taking any supplements. When faced with the same woman, the former might be able to have sex seven times in one night, while the latter would probably be impotent before even reaching penetration...

...Although it was vulgar, the elves still accepted Mother Teresa's metaphor with its raunchy joke.

"Does this mean we'll have to fight the parish in the Elf Forest?" an old elf asked worriedly. "While we do have ways to force priests to cast divine barriers on themselves, we lack large-scale, lethal weapons that can threaten a large number of fanatics..."

"Can't a rifle work?"

"Idiot! Have you ever seen anyone kill hundreds of people at once with a longbow?"

“Those golems…”

"The quantity is still too small... and to be honest, they're too bulky..."

"Demons..."

The elves started arguing again. This time, Theresa didn't have to step in to explain herself.

She sat back down in her seat, watching the elves' commotion, and pondered whether there was a way to solve the problem.

Admittedly, the Demon's "area and point tactics" are based on the premise of simultaneously possessing large-area damage and single-point damage.

However, the elves lacked the sustained ability to inflict large-scale damage outside the Elf Forest. And this time, the parish's northern expeditionary force was clearly a formidable enemy that couldn't be defeated with just one or two strategic spells...

What should I do? What should I do?

As the nun pondered, a memory inadvertently flashed through her mind of Yang Hao murmuring to himself in her arms every night after they finished making love.

He talked to himself about many trivial things.

Divine soldiers descending from the sky, flying behemoths riding on some kind of steel flying contraption that constantly hurled explosives downwards, iron boxes capable of unleashing a hail of bullets in an instant, and... many, many more.

...The nun remembered the eagle they had ridden together.

While it may not be considered a flying monster, it can indeed fly, and apart from mages and priests, there are probably few units in the Roman Empire that can harm a hawk flying high in the sky—but a hawk can't swoop down to ambush the enemy, can it?

That...

(An explosive device thrown downwards...?)

explosive...

explosive...

...

The ammunition for the Japa 1404 rifle is made from explosive ore from the Elf Forest, isn't it?

Suddenly, the nun felt a surge of inspiration rush to her head, and her face lit up with joy, but she quickly became troubled again.

Because she only had an inspiration, but didn't know exactly how to do it.

Sure enough, I still need to discuss this carefully with Yang Hao... but when will he be able to come back from the front?

The nun looked at the noisy meeting in front of her and just sighed heavily.

At this moment, the sky above Gaparia was filled with a few stars and a bright moon. In the temporary settlement of the demons, these people who had left their homes and were under the protection of the elves were weeping sadly.

Meanwhile, at the meeting place prepared by the advance team of Issugard.

The battle between Yang Hao and Nia is over.

Because of his efforts, Isgard not only had to establish a defensive alliance and a non-aggression pact with Gaparia, but after the trade agreement was signed, all Isgard goods would be subject to a hefty tariff when entering Gaparia.

On the surface, Yang Hao appears to be doing this to make more money, but in reality, it's an effort to protect Gaparia's industries.

The reason why industrialized countries can overwhelm agricultural countries is that they can use their explosive production efficiency to crush the handicraft workshops of agricultural countries.

The time it takes you to manually produce one longsword, Ysgard can directly produce 100 for you in a standardized workshop.

With such high efficiency, even if more than 20% of the finished products are defective, Ysgard can still overwhelm the still nascent civilian industry of Gaparia with countless industrial products.

To prevent the country of Gaparia from being flooded with civilian products from Isgard, to the point where even toilet paper has to be a gift from Isgard, Yang Hao has no choice but to use his authority as regent to make an effort.

However, overdoing it may not necessarily be a good thing.

The meeting, which was exhausting even for Heilong, left Yang Hao utterly weary. He was so tired that he just wanted to go back and get a good night's sleep—but for now, he still had work to do here.

The young empress is still in the Roman Empire. And once the Roman Empire tends towards stability, given Garsen's thinking, he is very likely to marry his brother's daughter off to someone.

She was not even ten years old when she had to suffer the pain of having her tongue pulled out because of her uncle's ambition—this made Yang Hao feel extremely guilty and also made him realize something.

As long as the Roman Empire remains in chaos, Garsen will not make a move against the little empress anytime soon.

What would make the Roman Empire even more chaotic?

That meant accelerating Isgard's invasion—after all, the two sides had already signed a contract, and even if Isgard invaded Romance, it would probably take more than ten years to digest it... So, both logically and emotionally, Yang Hao felt it was necessary to tell Isgard some good news...

“Ms. Nia, before you travel to Gaparia to become the [Ambassador] of Isugard, I will give Isugard an extra message.”

He raised his head, his bloodshot eyes meeting Nia's dark red ones. After the black dragon nodded slightly in acknowledgment, he said:

"You have obtained the core blueprints for the steam plant from me—have you ever considered why the Roman Empire is now blockading their ports and preventing you from entering or leaving?"

This question startled Nia for a moment. Then, after a thoughtful pause, she gave a reply:

"Is it to prevent us from acquiring the technology?"

Black Dragon was clever, but clearly, her intellectual capacity prevented her from guessing the Romans' true intentions. It was as normal as a normal person being unable to imagine that there were people in the world willing to eat excrement.

So Yang Hao just smiled and decided to stab Roman a few more times:

"That's because they want to prevent merchants at sea from discovering the weaknesses within the Roman Empire!"

"Empty...empty?"

“Yes, it’s emptiness.” Yang Hao handed the signed contract to the elf beside him. “Did you really think they would have preserved everything I built after they exiled me?”

These words elicited an extremely strange and astonished expression from Black Dragon: What do you mean?

Regent, are you trying to tell me that after they banished you, they even tore down everything you had done?

Even without speaking, the black dragon's eyes revealed an indescribable and direct confusion.

Yang Hao wanted to tell her that everything was right.

"The steam plants within the Roman Empire have already been dismantled. Anything that could be turned back into iron ingots has been melted down, and anything that couldn't be smelted was either thrown away or sold."

He stated it word by word, then stood up and turned to face the tent exit.

"Even the steam rifle team that I had painstakingly built up was disbanded, probably because they were uncontrollable—of course, those weapons were probably sold or thrown away."

Not only that, but there is also a famine in the Roman Empire. And it's not just any famine. The central region hasn't received a drop of water in a while, and the farmers have probably eaten all the moss off the ground, let alone cultivated the land.

The prosperity of Drake Harbor is nothing but an illusion for you! I could guess with my own ass why they're doing this...

He paused for a moment, seemingly feeling that the current situation was not tragic enough, so he decided to add another bombshell, possibly fabricated.

Anyway, in Khagad, the Khagadians have already eaten jerky made by the Daedric.

So, if we go a little further and say that the Romans have started cannibalism, wouldn't that be reasonable?

"If nothing unexpected happens, in the worst-case scenario, they've probably already started cannibalism."

Yang Hao's words stunned Nia.

What? What happened?

What exactly are the Romans doing?

After expelling a capable person, can't you vent your jealousy and anger? Why do you have to demolish and sell everything the other person has built?

Nia really couldn't understand it.

Even in the early days of Isgard's founding, there were those traitors who wanted to usurp the presidency and restore the monarchy.

They were just thinking of ousting the president, changing the title of the current Issugard, abolishing the parliament, and then becoming emperor themselves.

They never intended to demolish the existing industrial areas of Isgard, or to disband and replace all of Isgard's existing forces and navy with new ones. All for the sake of a reason that they "must be loyal to themselves"?

What kind of junk is this?! Is this some kind of primitive tribe?!

For a moment, Nia even wondered if Isugard was overestimating these primitive people by fighting against them.

Not only that, her admiration for Yang Hao has also grown even stronger.

Not only did he manage to transform such primitive people into an empire, but he also actually built a steam factory on that foundation—although the factory was demolished and he stepped down, this alone is enough to demonstrate Yang Hao's great achievements.

As for the question of why he didn't educate the people and enlighten them, Nia didn't intend to ask. After all, to be honest, Roman had only been a nation for a few years, less than five. Even if he were to launch an education program, he would probably only achieve minimal results... How could he expect to enlighten a bunch of primitive people under such circumstances?

Why not expect Yang Hao to return to China with her immediately? That might actually be a possibility...

Nia swallowed hard a few times. After expressing her respect to Yang Hao with her eyes, she understood the importance of this intelligence and chose to express her gratitude.

"...This is a one-time offer. The Black Dragon will fight for you for free. Consider it payment for the intelligence." She said, her excitement almost impossible to conceal. "We Isgard people don't like free gifts given for no reason—Your Majesty Yang Hao, free things are the most valuable."

"It seems I need to be more wary of you. If you were Roman barbarians, they would have been overjoyed to accept this free feast."

"After all, we are civilized people."

Nia smiled and walked up to Yang Hao, extending her hand to him under the wary gaze of the elves.

Yang Hao nodded, shook her hand, and then left immediately.

The meeting has ended.

Nia excitedly reported this important information to her friend afterward.