Pirate Kingship-Chapter 870 - 516: The East Wind Blows, War Drums Thunder, Two Requests for Reinforcements

Chapter 870: Chapter 516: The East Wind Blows, War Drums Thunder, Two Requests for Reinforcements

The war for the throne of Hightins was accelerated to the extreme by Byron.

The scout units of both sides watched as the tortured corpse of Old Woodville disappeared into the black tide caused by "Death Stranding".

After the coup in the Ganquan Palace, no one doubted that the Kingmaker Warwick wielded terrifying Black Sorcery.

At least now, with the Church still standing, forbidden knowledge remains a rare commodity in the Old Continent, and those who master it to a high level are exceedingly rare.

Mud in your pants, even if it’s not shit, it’s still shit.

The Kingmaker Warwick must wear this dunce cap squarely on his head.

Of course, from Warwick’s own perspective, he saw nothing wrong; his initial plan was to have the Hell Painter ambush and take out Old Woodville.

It was just that Leonardo executed it "so beautifully" that he hadn’t intended to wipe out the entire family nor meant to infinitely escalate the situation.

After this incident, it was certain that Warwick would develop a rift with the Hell Painter, who repeatedly expanded the scope of the attack on his own initiative.

However, many Transcendents in the Hall Sequence tread the line between genius and madness, and even if he wanted to punish the other side’s blunders, he had to wait until after winning the war for the throne, for now not cutting off his own arm.

With the entire Woodville family slain, the only one left, who could still sway Edward IV and high-ranking members of the Royalist Party, was Elizabeth Woodville.

"Blood vengeance" naturally became the politically correct stance within the Royalist Party in an instant.

A tacit understanding during the war between both parties was completely broken - not to kill nobility.

Because among a nation’s nobility, many are interrelated, often within eight degrees of kinship.

In the wars of this era, even if nobility were defeated, they usually wouldn’t be killed but traded to the other side for ransom; only the humble lower-class soldiers died.

Nobles, after fighting wars for their respective lords, would go on to eat, drink and be merry, or intermarry, without delaying anything.

Now things were different.

Just like after the Red and White Rose War when captured Lancasters were slaughtered by the York Family, the tacit understanding of ransom was gone, and officers would unhesitatingly kill the defeated noble enemies on the spot.

The battlefield became exceptionally bloody.

When the blood of the "noble" flowed freely, it signaled they were no longer noble.

Hatred between the sides escalated swiftly, gradually reaching the dead enemy state once seen between the Red and White Roses.

Rumble...

"Kill, no matter the status, leave none alive!"

"Break Edge Fortress, no need to restrain swords, you can keep half of the spoils."

Just as February’s springtime arrived and the ground began to thaw, a series of battles thundered relentlessly as heaven and earth.

The number of nobility in Hightins decreased at an unprecedented rate; the families’ funerals hardly stopped.

By then, even if Byron Lancaster, whom the Royalist Party and the Earl’s Party had once driven out together, returned, they had lost the mutual trust foundation needed to unite against enemies once more.

Even many in the Earl’s Party without an irreconcilable blood feud with the Lancaster Family advocated joining forces with Wild Hunt Byron Lancaster to share the Kingdom of Hightins, gaining increasing support from mid and low-ranking officers.

After all, they hadn’t participated in the scheme to use the Touch of the Kraken to massacre the entire Lancaster clan.

Many middle and lower levels, who used to serve the Lancasters, felt a stronger allegiance to their old master than to the York Party, which ruled for less than two years.

All of this was precisely what Byron, the mastermind behind, hoped to see.

He looked at the war reports sent back by Leonardo the Hell Painter, Succubus Therese, and the neutral faction Marquis Thales Neville, feeling satisfied with the progress of his first step plan:

"I need obedient officials, loyal officers, fearless soldiers, but definitely not the great nobles who hold powerful forces independent of me.

This group holds vast lands, populations, and possesses independent economics and military systems, each like a country within a country.

I must take advantage of the chaotic struggle between the two parties and the chance of the war for the Stolen Country to clean them out completely, to reclaim the Royal Iron that rightfully belongs to the monarch.

This is why I say if we don’t fight a hard battle, but instead gain Royal Iron through internal connections, subversion, and appeasement, there will only be endless small skirmishes in the future.

Solving one Edward IV and one Kingmaker Warwick is not the ultimate goal.

Only by resolving these great nobles, the sources of chaos, and consolidating the Royal Iron completely into my hands, completing the great achievements ancestors couldn’t, will I become the true King Over All Lands and not merely the strongest Feudal Lord Leader within the country.

Perhaps only then might I be eligible to attempt to pull out the Zero-Level Sacred Relic Sword in the Stone again, becoming the rightful king of the Hightins Islands."

From a practical standpoint, the entire nation’s output has an upper limit.

Too many idle, rent-seeking classes will parasitize this gigantic organism like leeches, continuously sucking its blood, stuffing income rightfully belonging to the collective into their own pockets.

The more they take, the less the monarch gets, and so the national treasury inevitably declines day by day.