Chapter 679: Not An Option

After his ambassador finished reading aloud the formal invitation to the upcoming international conference, King Darian’s face twitched ever-so-slightly as he sat on his throne.

Whether he wanted to laugh or wanted to curse, no one was really certain.

On the other hand, it was fairly easy to tell how the rest of the members gathered in the Royal Council Chambers today were feeling, especially the members of the Noble Faction.

For the past several years, they had been increasingly pushing for war with their old enemy to the west, but every time they seemed to be making a bit of progress, something got in their way and set their progress back again.

Most of those setbacks were a result of opposition from the Royalist Faction led by the Crown Princess.

It seemed like Talia was interested in trying a different approach to this longstanding problem, a strategy of national development and economic pressure to weaken the Rockwell Kingdom gradually rather than resorting directly to war.

Recently, the Crown Princess had even begun heavily investing in a number of different infrastructure projects, things the Royal Family would have previously only had a cursory interest in but now was actively supporting.

Talia was so adamant about this particular set of projects that she hadn’t even waited for approval from the Royal Court and had instead used her personal funds to speed them along.

The Noble Faction didn’t know why the Crown Princess had suddenly become obsessed with building new roads and dykes, but since all of these projects were happing in territories loyal to the Throne and no money from the kingdom’s coffers was being used for them, there was nothing they could do to stop her.

On the other hand, the Noble Faction did block all of Talia’s recently proposed changes to the kingdom’s taxation laws, ensuring that such laws died in the Royal Council Chambers before ever seeing the light of day.

Duchess Camille Dyer, the head of the Noble Faction, had been so incensed by the idea of lowering merchant taxes and abolishing city entry fees that for once, she had shown up in person at the Royal Council to argue against the measures.

As far as she could tell, Talia was trying to cut off a vital source of revenue for her and her fellow nobles, all in an attempt to weaken them, and that was something the Duchess would never accept.

After quashing those ludicrous reforms, Camille and her faction had thought that things were finally getting back on track.

Although the Rockwell Kingdom hadn’t weakened as much as they had hoped, they had still suffered some amount of loss thanks to the chaos in their South-West Province.

On top of that, the attacks which had plagued their two kingdoms up and down the Lorren had mostly shifted away from the Darr Kingdom and now seemed to be concentrated on Rockwell territory.

Why that was, Camille didn’t know, but she also didn’t really care. A powerful and mysterious organization operating with impunity in their kingdom was certainly a threat, but compared to the Rockwell Kingdom itself, it was more of a minor inconvenience.

Plus, anything that weakened their western neighbours was beneficial to her faction, so while she wasn’t exactly thrilled about the situation, she was also planning on taking advantage of it.

With the weather having been particularly cooperative over the last year, allowing their grain and sugar farms growing more heartily than normal, the Duchess and the rest of the Noble Faction expected it to be a bumper harvest in the coming months, which would fill all of their coffers with Gold and Silver.

They couldn’t openly convert all of that money into arms and armaments as that would be far too blatant, but increasing the pace of their war preparations wouldn’t be a problem.

By now, all the upper-level nobles of the Rockwell and Darr Kingdom knew that war was coming, so while both sides were still feigning ignorance and putting up a ’peaceful’ front, they also no longer needed to be as secretive about their own military buildups.

That said, all signs pointed to the Darr Kingdom still having a significant advantage in this race as they had a big head-start over their opponent.

Now, however, this ’international conference’ threatened to blow all of that up.

In fact, many from the Darr Kingdom’s Noble Faction believed that the whole point of this farce of a conference was to mess with their plans.

The timing and stated objectives were just too favourable to the Rockwell Kingdom and too detrimental to their goals to be seen as anything else.

The worst part, though?

Refusing to participate wasn’t an option for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that the bait the Rockwell Kingdom was dangling in front of their faces was too tempting to resist.

Since its founding, the Darr Kingdom had always suffered from food insecurity issues, a fact that every leader in the South-Central Region was well aware of.

In order to alleviate this problem and to keep its citizens fed, the Darr Kingdom only had 3 choices, buy food from the Kore Sovereignty, from the Tarnath Dynasty, or the Rockwell Kingdom.

The Kore Sovereignty would indeed sell them grain whenever they asked, but it was almost always of poorer quality and at a higher than market price.

The Rockwell Kingdom severely limited the amount of food which it sold to them as this was a massive point of leverage they had over them.

So that left the Tarnath Dynasty, which did sell the Darr Kingdom a significant amount of grain, fruit, vegetables, and meat each year, but knowing that they had no other option, the Tarnaths also didn’t hesitate to charge them a premium for these essential goods.

This had actually gotten a bit better about 1o years ago when the Queen Verena lowered the markup her country was charging them, apparently wanting to boost the dynasty’s exports. Still, that was only a measly 2% discount compared to previous years.

Of course, there were always ’illegal’ methods of obtaining food, such as smuggling and black markets, but unlike with luxury items like the Darr Kingdom’s flagship product, sugar, it was very hard to make a profit trafficking large quantities of cheap grain so very few people did it during normal times.

Reducing the amount of farmland dedicated to growing sugar and switching it to growing staple crops would solve this self-sufficiency problem, but doing so would require the wealthy plantation owners, most of whom were high-ranking nobles, to willingly make less profit in order to feed the common masses.

The chances of that happening were about as good as Spirit Crystals raining down from the sky.

It was the Darr Kingdom’s biggest and most challenging problem, one that everyone from the loyalist Royalists to the most rebellious Noble Faction members agreed was holding their nation back.

So, when Nathanial Rockwell sent a formal letter to the Darr Kingdom stating that if they send a delegation empowered to make real and consequential decisions on behalf of their nation to the conference, the Rockwell Kingdom would lift all export controls on grain to their country and offer to sell it to them at 40% below current market rates...