The World Dragon's Heir - Chapter 671: Royal Departure

Chapter 671: Royal Departure

As Alexis opened the gifts, the King whispered to the maids to bring them all tea instead of wine, as they were planning to leave within the hour.

He hadn’t been joking about things at home becoming chaotic when he was away too long. When bureaucrats had decades to consolidate power, they tended to forget that they were employees of the crown and not ranking Nobles ruling over their departments.

Leaving them unattended, with only messages back and forth, was giving them ideas about how much they could get away with, and it was time for him to go back and deal with some of the reports he had received about certain members of his staff overstepping their bounds.

“I must say, it’s been a pleasure to see how well the region has been developed under your guidance, Duke Wavemates. I look forward to seeing what you can do for Stansia Province in the near future,” the King began, signalling that it was time to leave.

“It has been my honour.

Given another year and minimal natural disasters, I believe that we should be able to pull most of the region up to the standards of the rest of Cygnia.

From there, it’s all upwards and onwards for us all.” Dominic agreed.

The King chuckled. If he could get to the standard of the rest of the nation in a year, what about in three or five years? Wouldn’t he be implying that they were going to leave everyone else in the dust, or that the rest of the Nobility was incompetent?

It was starting to feel that way.

Though, the more time that they spent in Wistover, the more that the King began to realize that the hidden biases against nonhumans within the nation affected their potential.

It always seemed like such a small issue here in Wistover.

But when he looked at it from an outside perspective, wasn’t that almost entirely because none of the Nobles dared to air anti-Sorcerer sentiment against a man who was known to wipe out entire cities and lineages? One who had his own Royal favour confirmed with a marriage to a Princess of Cygnia?

Once he got back to the Capital, he was going to start making some changes.

It would be a slow process, he knew.

Half the shops wouldn’t even sell to someone like Dominic unless he was an employee of the Palace. And the sentiment among the Nobility was generally worse than average.

Dominic had just managed to sneak past their usual unspoken rejections to gain a place within the Royal hierarchy.

The King sighed as the rest of his family said their goodbyes, then made plans to change the Emissaries here every five years. With everything that was changing in Wistover, they would lose touch with the nation if he left them any longer than that.

But cycling through advisors and Emissaries more frequently, instead of appointing them to what amounted to a lifelong position, would help keep them honest and spread the network, instead of giving certain people a strong ally in certain departments.

The entirely new Nobility here around Wistover was thoroughly refreshing.

Even if his Military Advisors back in the Capital feared rebellion and war crimes.

“I will be in touch regularly, Your Majesty.” Alistair declared, then opened a portal directly to the Palace gates, the closest you could easily open a portal to the Royal residence.

“Thank you, Alistair. Enjoy your time in Wistover. You did always say that you wished you could find just one Noble who might teach you something new about magic. Perhaps that might happen here.”

The old mage laughed. Did it really count if you just elevated someone who had an entirely different understanding of magic to the Nobility? Wistover was a good deployment, though. Dominic actually listened to his advisors, he was willing to spend on infrastructure, he paid contractors on time and in full without haggling after the contract was signed.

It was generally low stress being his advisor.

Prince Russel sighed as everyone else departed, leaving him with Dominic, Alexis and the other Advisors.

“Well, it looks like we’ve got high expectations to live up to.

So, what is our next world-shaking project going to be? Portal arrays to fly airships through? Some revolutionary farming system that’s going to completely break trade with the Alliance members?”

His joke made old Jack Merlot laugh.

“I think that we should start small. Send a team of machines and mages to build a road to Lympsbury.

The King himself told us to do great things for Stansia Province, and what would be better for everyone than a major road to the closest major city? We’ve got a huge open area between the two cities that is mostly ungoverned now, and an abundance of Noble Sons with not nearly enough ambition sitting around Cygnia.

I reckon that if we put in a road and let common folk start settling with minimal oversight, some of them brats will start getting ideas about developing ’the frontier land’ as they’ve been calling Wavemates,” he insisted.

Alexis frowned. “Who is even in charge of that region? The new Earl of Lympsbury was given fifty kilometres to the south of the city, and officially, Wistover Duchy only runs for about two hundred kilometres in that direction.

That leaves over a hundred kilometres of open and unclaimed land.

Dominic, what did it look like before? You studied the map, right?”

Dominic shrugged. “There was nobody there to start with. This whole end of Stansia Province was mostly wilderness. If anyone did live there, they likely did it without oversight.

However, we should likely arrange something so that it doesn’t turn into a haven for bandits.

With so many refugees after the flooding of Kinewen, banditry will be endemic within the next few months.”

No matter what else happened, there was going to be a lot of banditry in the region in the next few years. That was simply unavoidable, and they would have to raise a massive army to snuff it out.

So, they would have to find an alternate way to reduce it before it got out of hand.