685 Second Trial 3 (1/2)

The ministers were stunned by Dyon's words. They had thought that all of these plans were just to make evacuating more efficient, but little did they know that that was only part of their kind's plans. The other part was to fight!

Considering the despicable nature of the martial world, Dyon had little faith in his opponents because kind hearted individuals. As such, there was a 0% probability that they wouldn't try and use their family members against them, so, Dyon removed that equation.

There was a second reason Dyon did this as well. He noticed almost immediately how realistically these people in his trial acted. The read and reacted almost the same way he did. And, from what it looked like, they were nothing like a video game with precoded phrases. That only meant one thing: grasping their sentiments was important.

Dyon had to take control of the situation exactly how you would in real life. If he neglected the people, they would react, and in times of chaos, would decide to not follow him. This also meant that while he was manipulating his enemies, he also had to manipulate his allies.

This may seem extreme, but there was one thing that kept nagging at Dyon, and he trusted his instincts. That thing was a single question: How did their enemies find out about a secret they had kept hidden for hundreds of thousands of years?

The answer was simple: There was a traitor.

**

Over the course of the next few hours, Dyon took his time in not only combing through the village with a fine tooth comb, but also mapping out the landscape surrounding their land for a few hundred miles. He memorized every street, house, and even the faces of everyone he came across. By the time he finished, the report he asked for was complete.

Censuses were important to a properly functioning society. Unfortunately, this was an ancient one, and such methods were unknown. As a result, when Dyon asked for detailed information on everyone living on their land, his ministers were scrambling until he properly organized.

Setting aside half of the military to work through these affairs, every house was visited.

Dyon was able to gather information about cultivation, numbers, occupation and possible specialties. He also divided people by age, combat ability as well as whether or not they were born in this land, or were refuged from elsewhere.

From the information, the land Dyon currently ruled housed about two hundred thousand people. This number may seem like a lot, but it was actually a drop in the bucket. An entire planet population would likely be about ten billion, so the number of warriors three God Clans and a Royal God Clan could move would be well into the millions, and that was assuming they didn't use their influence in coercing the smaller miscellaneous clans.

Mind you, that was just warriors. As for the two hundred thousand count for Dyon's lands, much of that number included the elderly and children. Even worse, when Dyon noticed his ministers didn't list a single woman as having 'combat ability', he could only curse his grand teacher. He had gone from an exceedingly simple task, to one that was seemingly impossible.

Because these ”NPCs” were so realistic, they had their own emotions and culture. Although there were no rules given to Dyon, with his keen observation skills he had already picked this up. As a result, Dyon had laid quite a few traps in his census questions in order to pick up the nuances of this culture, and it had clearly borne fruit.