The World Dragon's Heir-Chapter 177: Cold Shoulder

In the Ducal Palace in Albroles, Prince Kaizon had not received the warm reception that he had been hoping for.

"Your Highness. I believe that you may have overstepped your authority. The rightful leader of the nation is not you, but the eldest legitimate son of the former King.

At the moment, the eldest legitimate son who is not in enemy custody is the Viscount Boscom." The new Duke Albroles, brother of the deceased Duke, announced in a cold tone.

"I am still your regent, and you will behave as such." Prince Kaizon demanded.

"Respectfully, Highness, you are not. And insisting that you are amounts to treason against the rightful King." Duke Albroles insisted.

Prince Kaizon slammed his fist on the desk.

"Does Boscom have the political influence to take the throne? The armies to hold it? No. Think carefully about who you are siding with because you can’t take it back once I leave this room." Prince Kaizon insisted.

Duke Albroles remained silent as the Prince stormed out of the office and returned to his suite within the Palace.

From the back of the room, a muscular man with long black hair stepped out of the shadows.

"Kaizon is rapidly losing his mind. But the army is still loyal to him. Or the commanders are, anyhow. At this point, who knows who the enlisted men owe allegiance to.

But what I do know is that the King of Skiple refused to send aid until the new King is declared. West Keria is threatening to join the war on the Cygnia side if Kaizon takes the throne before the war is over, and Axbridge sent our envoy back in seventeen pieces." He announced, speaking softly, but with authority.

"Then what is our next move, Lord Boscom?" Duke Albroles asked.

"Let him lead his armies on a wild chase through the countryside for his intended bride. By the time that he realizes his mistake, I will be on the throne, and his head will be on a pike."

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Dominic was resting in bed with Princess Alexis, who was reading a fantasy novel, when the runners came in the next morning to give their reports.

"We have news from the embedded scouts. The training camp is gone. The Cygnia army obliterated it last night with a combined air and ground strike.

They are headed north up the river toward Staptondon, but the scouts report that there should be an entire train full of recruits that is almost to the camp.

What are your orders?" He asked.

Dominic and Alexis smiled at each other.

"No change of plans. We will disable the train and deal with the soldiers on board, then free any forcibly recruited peasants who do not wish to fight. A few more bodies for the upcoming peasant revolts.

There is no camp for them to be trained at, so they would otherwise be redeployed.

Once that is finished, I believe we are done here, and we can head toward another target." Alexis ordered.

"Understood, Highness. Are we sending the whole Regiment, or just a scout team to stop the train?"

Alexis paused, then smiled.

"Send a small scout team. Blow the tracks, disable the locomotive, mortar the officers’ cars, then let the recruits follow their conscience. I suspect that Dagos is about to implode under the weight of decades of neglect."

The team was sent out immediately so that they would have time to intercept the train from a suitable ambush point and escape largely undetected.

So far, the Dagos Army hadn’t fully realized the extent of the activities in the area, but soon they would start to notice that everything was being destroyed, and it couldn’t all be attributed to the Cygnia Military force that had passed through.

Soon, they would be attacking another target, and it would be clear that the actions of the Natural Sons were not the same unit.

While they waited for the report, Dominic focused on repairing spare rifles with the new parts he was carrying, using the worn out rifles from the siege as the base. This duty was closer to what they had expected the rifles to face, a few dozen shots once every few days.

But, Dominic wasn’t going to risk them getting into another long battle without suitably reliable weapons.

He was just finishing for the night when he noticed a change to his Trade Skill Core. There was a single streak of blue, thin as a hair, along the front of the orb.

The first signs of a Journeyman level of skill.

Soon, the trade skill knowledge locked inside and reserved for Journeyman by Pops when he created it would unlock, and Dominic would learn a few new tricks of the forge.

That may be a huge gain for him, but Dominic didn’t know for certain what Pops had hidden for knowledge within the Trade Skill Core. Each of them was individually made, and intended to impart all the knowledge that a Journeyman should need. But when that knowledge released and what was deemed essential were both left up to the Master who created the Core.

"Sir, we have the reports. Today’s haul was better than expected." The messenger from the Regiment reported just before dark.

"I thought that they were going to hit the train and then retreat?" Dominic asked.

"That was the plan. But when they hit the supply cart with a mortar, entire bags of mana cores spilled out. They sent in a strike team to recover them, and found twenty bags of Cygnia Army marked Mana cores, and two chests of essential skill gems in the supply cart of the derailed train.

None of the gems are anything that we would need, but they brought them back to deny them to the enemy anyhow.

No casualties or injuries on the strike team, but the casualties among the Dagos recruits were higher than expected. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

The plan to destroy the tracks met with a minor miscalculation, and the train continued another five hundred metres along the rail bed before flipping and rolling down an embankment into the river." The messenger explained.

Dominic sighed. He knew exactly what likely happened. They had targeted the track with explosives, and the train derailed, but momentum carried it in a straight line until something, likely an attack on the other train cars, upset the balance.