The Tales of Draconic Warlock

What is there to see?

This is just a ship.

Why is she being cryptic about this?

Is there something that will blow my mind as we go on this journey?

Let's wait and see.

---

An hour after we boarded the ship, it started to sail. We were not its only passengers. There seemed to be at least a thousand people on board, and the goods that were loaded onto the ship were too many for me to even think about counting.

The ship left the port. Nothing new.

It started to sail in the open seas. Nothing new.

It has been an hour. I waited on the deck to see what the mystery was about. Nothing...

Wait, why is the ship shaking?

This is not the usual ship shaking but as if...

"Wait, what's happening?" I shouted in alarm.

"Quiet down. There is no need for alarm. As I said, wait and watch", Rose smirked.

As I watched from the deck, the ship left the water beneath and started floating towards the skies. This is not a ship but an airship.

I was really surprised by that.

I only heard about airships but had never seen one before.

Airships are costly. The consumption of resources is a lot even building one. Maintaining an airship is also not cheap. It burns a lot of resources every day. So normally, kingdoms don't possess one, only empires do. The only exception was if your kingdom was rich but that would never be the case.

There is never a reason for the empires to let a rich kingdom be independent.

Empires always want to expand, but maintaining an empire is expensive. So they wouldn't want to expand their area of rule that easily.

This was because if there were too many poor regions in an empire, it would cause a lot of trouble for the ruler and the officials.

The people from poor regions would want to develop their areas and the rich regions would hate when all their taxes are diverted to other regions. Since they are the ones that generate the maximum income for the empire, they would argue that their regions have to be developed far beyond any other region.

There was nothing wrong in either case.

The poor want to develop and get out of poverty. They would want better healthcare, education and employment. There is nothing wrong with that, but to do so would cost a lot of money, which they couldn't generate. It has to be borrowed from somewhere else.

The rich want to develop too. though they look developed when compared to the poor regions, there is no such thing as the end of development. There would always be new things invented and discovered.

No rich person would say no to new luxuries. In fact, no one would say no to luxuries but the poor can't afford them and would be against them. This was because anything new wouldn't come out of thin air. There would be research, sometimes for years and research means a lot of cost of resources and gold.

This would mean there would less resources for the poor to develop. It means that they would remain in poverty and that means chances of bandits appearing and rebellions in the empire.

It would cost both resources and men. The losses would be not small and it would be always substantial, something that the empire couldn't bear.

So unless the territory has a strategic or resource value, they won't care about those territories.

Having too much territory is a hassle and does not always show the strength of the empire nor would it help increase the strength of the empire.

So usually empires would let many kingdoms be unless required.

The presence of other kingdoms and races was also the reason why there was never a single human empire that united all of humanity.

Humans were scattered across the world. There was no continuation of human settlements. There are other races' kingdoms that exist in between human nations.

Attacking them would incur the wrath of that race's kingdoms and empires that stretched throughout the world. So uniting all humans into a single empire was never possible.

This was especially improbable due to the Human-Demon wars that have been ongoing for centuries. It was already troublesome that humans had demons as their enemies. Adding more races would spell their doom, even if those races hate each other.

This was why even though some humans hated other races, they kept their distance. It doesn't mean that they didn't make any moves.

I reckon, whatever bad things that they did, were always in the dark and made sure that there would be no evidence left behind.

---

There are only a few reasons why a kingdom with a lot of rich resources would still be independent.

One, there are too many high-level powerhouses in the kingdom.

Two, the kingdom is too remote and the travel is highly dangerous.

Third, if the kingdom borders another empire that is also trying to capture the kingdom.

When we consider the first reason, having too many high-level awakeners as opponents, the losses wouldn't be small, which would defeat the purpose of even occupying this new territory. It would also give a chance for some others to cause chaos in the empire, such as invasions or rebellions.

Coming to the second reason, the travel of goods and soldiers is very important when invading any territory. If the line is broken or dangerous, the losses would be higher when compared to the gains that could be realized from occupying the territory.

The third reason, another empire near the territory would mean prolonged conflict, which is not good for either of the empires. Instead of that, buying the goods from the territory would be cheap and involve less work.

Of course, these reasons may not keep the independence of a kingdom alive as that depends mostly on the ruler of the empire, but these are the main reasons why an independent kingdom could keep its independence after some rich resource point was found in their territory.

The resource point could be a Magic Metal mine that has a lot of ore that can be mined or a high-level dungeon or a secret realm.

Whatever the reason might be, as long as there is a rich resource centre in the kingdom, the king has to bend his knee to an emperor in order to keep his title and probably his life. Of course, tax has to be paid, and that would be a different issue.

---

"Surprised are we?" Rose asked me, seeing that I was gaping at what was happening.

I nodded, "Yes, I have never seen an airship. It was said that it costs a lot and usually kingdoms won't keep them even if they are second-handed".

"You are right. Officially that was the line but there are many things that may appear different than what they appear on the surface. Not everyone would be able to know these things. Only someone high in the kingdom is cleared to know such knowledge".

"Of course, if you were to serve the kingdom, there would be many things like that you would come across. There is of course the rule that you can't tell others about those things", Rose explained to me.

Though it may appear as a simple explanation, she was also wooing me to join the military.

Why? I don't know the reason and maybe can't know the reason unless I ask her.

When I asked my mother why was Rose nice to me, she had no answer. In my mother's words, Rose acted strictly even when she was dealing with my mother and father.

For them, she showed some respect, which lacked when she communicated with the other family members.

When she came to bring my other to the Valtis City, she met a few of the elders and she as a military colonel, showed no respect to them. The ones that she respected were the ones that previously served in the military or were still part of it as reserves.

For some reason, she was nice to me. Though she was beautiful and her beauty is a very distracting thing to my thinking, I wouldn't easily fall for her tricks.

There was no reason for someone to be nice to others, I wouldn't believe it. There's always a reason.

It would have been one thing if she was nice to everyone but she wasn't. Even to my parents, she was sincere and respectful but she acted all nice and cozy with me. There should be a huge reason why she was nice to me. I will find it and based on that, how I will be with her in the future will be decided.

---

Three-hour journey later...

"We are here", Rose announced suddenly.

We are where?

I can't see anything but a lot of mountains.

Wait, is the entire area clocked?

Possibly.

It is a hidden city after all. If one can see it through their eyes, there is no meaning in saying that the city is a hidden city.

I didn't need to wait for long before the airship passed through a mountain and there was our destination, Valtis City.

Wow, this is better than I imagined.