The midsection of the Southern part of the Northern Territory, in the hilly plains far from the City of Ella.
The damp and frigid winter wind howled before the continuous fortress encampments, yet it could not invade this camp that lay sprawled upon the earth like some colossal Beast.
The joint mission of the Faen Empire and those Southern Nobles of the Northern Territory who were close to the Faen Empire stepped out from a vast Teleportation Magic Gate, standing upon a solid teleportation platform inside a massive command tent.
The entire platform was covered in intricate Magic Patterns, and towering all around it were gigantic Energy Absorption Devices, allowing this apex-class teleportation platform to maintain a constant state of ready activation at all times.
Moist snowflakes began to drift down in patches, their fall turned into billowing white mist by the vapor rising off those enormous Energy Absorption Devices.
This teleportation platform, so large that two carriages could pass through it side by side, had been built at the cost of immense resources by the Golden Empire and the Northern Kings, specifically for the transport of certain vital resources and important personages within the Northern Kings’ Alliance.
Thus the Legion Warriors guarding the vicinity of the teleportation platform within the military camp appeared exceptionally seasoned and vigilant.
As the only Magic Teleportation Spatial Marker permitted to operate in the vicinity of this pocket spatial world occupied by the joint camp of the Northern Kings, even the Legendary Mage Corps of the Faen Empire had to obtain prior consent from the Northern Kings before they could precisely construct a long-range Magic Teleportation Gate leading to this platform.
If those Legendary Mage Corps of the Faen Imperial Royal Court attempted to rely on their own power to forcibly break through the spatial marker seal over this region, or to use Magic to smuggle themselves in, they would not only be detected at once by the Imperial Mage Corps who controlled the spatial blockade.
The Imperial Mage Corps might even anchor those illicit intruders via the teleportation platform to some approximate direction—such as the depths of the Endless Abyss or the most perilous planes within the Nine Layers of Hell—and cast them into those places.
Therefore, under the leadership of the Legendary Mage Reito, the mission of the Faen Empire and that of the Nobility quickly stepped out from this seemingly tranquil teleportation platform.
Life and death were in his hands, which left the envoys of the Southern Nobles of the Northern Territory somewhat tense of expression.
Only the head of the Faen Empire’s mission sniffed the scent of Dragon Beasts in the air, let his gaze sweep across the Legion Warriors quietly watching them, and across the many Heavy Cannons arrayed within the camp, and frowned slightly.
Those Dragon Beasts, long known for their ferocity, brutality, and stupidity, ought by rights to be roaming the wilderness, howling and raging without purpose.
Yet here, a mere ordinary vine rope and bridle bound these Dragon Beasts, which were being led on patrol throughout the camp by the guarding Legion Warriors.
Knowledge of taming Dragon Beasts was not rare within the Faen Empire; for an Overlord Empire capable of opening up planes to plunder resources, such knowledge amounted to little more than basic common sense.
But the Golden Empire and the Northern Kings possessed an innate advantage when it came to taming these Beasts; these Dragon Beasts did not seem as though they had been broken, but rather that they had submitted from the depths of their own instincts.
The eyes of every Dragon Beast were filled with primordial savagery; this also meant that their combat strength far surpassed that of those Dragon Beast legions that had been drilled and broken under all manner of training regimes.
The envoy of the Faen Empire even felt that, if not for that Dragon Emperor of Gogomola, Karon Gogomola, harboring a desire to establish a civilized Empire, then solely by commanding monsters and Beasts he could already have run rampant across the entirety of the Icaria World.
After all, a Giant Dragon was by nature the King of Beasts, the inborn sovereign of the vast majority of monsters.
And while a sapient race such as humanity was the unshakable Overlord of the Icaria World, their numbers could by no means compare to those of the monsters and Beasts.
Then there were those Imperial Heavy Cannons forged by the Golden Empire, each black, gaping barrel exuding a strong reek of High-Energy Propellant.
The envoy of the Faen Empire knew these were the Golden Empire’s special export in armaments; not only did these weapons enjoy robust sales across the various nations of the Northern Continent, they had even been exported far into the Central Continent.
Among the Heavy Cannons seized along the Marino Defense Line that had been breached by the Kings, more than a hundred had been ordered from the Golden Empire.
Several nations on the Central Continent had already placed orders with the Golden Empire, and even the Faen Empire had, through certain channels, managed to purchase a few High-Energy Heavy Cannons from the Golden Empire.
In truth, the technology of such Heavy Cannons was not particularly sophisticated; the craftsmen of the Faen Empire could easily reproduce them. Yet the production capacity of the Faen Empire was far inferior to that of the Golden Empire.
The Faen Empire, whose level of Magic stood at the very pinnacle, could export advanced Magic-guided Cannons to other countries, but such Magic-guided Cannons were extremely costly to produce, and their output was mediocre at best.
Some minor states could not even equip their armies with a complete contingent of long-range Heavy Cannon units.
By contrast, though the power of the Golden Empire’s Heavy Cannons could not match that of Magic-guided Cannons, the shells propelled by High-Energy Propellant could still inflict devastation comparable to certain spells. Though it took several Heavy Cannons to rival a single Magic-guided Cannon, after the Golden Empire ushered in the industrialization of Magic, its productive capacity had become truly terrifying.
The civilizations of the Icaria World might still not fully understand Karon Gogomola; the Soul possessed by this Giant Dragon rendered the Empire he ruled very much like its Emperor itself.
Although the Golden Empire had previously kept a low profile in its development, the goal of the entire Empire’s advance was by no means merely to secure a foothold in the Northern Territory of Icaria.
The overarching aim of the Empire’s development was to move toward the point where, by the strength of a single nation, it could contend with—or even overmatch—all the civilized realms of the Icaria World.