692 Metatrin Mercenary Group Part 1 (1/2)

The Empire's group of envoys would not be leaving immediately. Saleen still needed to form his group of envoys carefully and interact more with Grand Mage Tiffany. His Majesty must definitely have more than one secret deal to discuss with Saleen. Other than allowing Saleen to send out troops, there would be other minor issues that both parties would like to discuss in private.

Saleen still needed to deploy an envoy to stay in Holy Rock City permanently. This would be a tough choice.

The pirates that had followed Saleen for the longest time were all very loyal, but not suited for such a role. On the other hand, the noble families that had pledged their allegiance to Saleen were not suitable either because the reliable ones had already been given ranks of nobility by him while the rest were not that dependable yet.

Eventually, Saleen decided to choose Baron Piac. The lands of his Deep Forest Town had already been taken over by Saleen long ago and his rank of nobility had already been implemented. Although this Baron was not the most capable, he did not know Saleen's secrets, even if he was bribed, he would not be able to reveal much.

Saleen would arrange for a few trusted aides to accompany Baron Piac first before allowing the latter to take up this new appointment. Piac's child was already in the midst of being groomed as a magic apprentice so naturally, this Baron would have some concerns.

After Piac had been informed, there was nothing much he could say to refuse. Saleen promoted him to a second-grade Viscount and by the time he returned from Holy Rock City at the end of his appointment, he would become a first-grade Viscount. If his son could successfully become a proper mage and could gain Saleen's trust, Saleen would have no qualms in promoting him into a hereditary Earl.

The two grade-8 sorcerers, Tiffany and Stephanie, had secretly traded with Saleen quite a few things during this period of time. Tiffany was considered old as her actual age was already over one-hundred years even if she only looked around thirty years old. On the other hand, Stephanie was only around twenty years old in actual age. Disguising herself as a white-robed mage was just her preference and not something the Emperor had ordered her to do against Duke Bard.

Tiffany was a royal sorcerer so she kept to her boundaries, but Stephanie did not seem to share a similar concern since she was the Emperor's private mage. Saleen managed to gain quite a lot of information on Holy Rock City through her. Stephanie did not hide her fondness for Saleen and even promised to find a way to get Saleen what he wanted after her return.

What did Saleen want? The warehouse in the palace. Saleen knew that the warehouse in Holy Rock City was not as big as the Grukos family's, but its contents were just as rich. What Saleen wanted was copies of all the blueprints in there.

The Grukos royal family possessed many blueprints of magic equipment and most of them had been left in the corner to gather dust.

Saleen made a deal with Stephanie in private to increase the number of magic nuclei he was selling to Ojarvis to two-hundred-thousand. In exchange for the additional one-hundred-thousand grade-4 magic nuclei, Saleen would receive grain.

Saleen needed a lot of grain because Eleanor had given him an elvish recipe that could turn the grain into an elvish pill. Consuming one such pill was equivalent to three days' worth of meals. The cost of manufacturing one such pill was also equivalent to sustaining a soldier for five days. Although a loss was incurred in this case, at least there would be much fewer logistics to be concerned about if soldiers brought along such pills.

Such pills could also be found on the Myers Mainland, but due to their high cost, armies did not usually use them widely. In Qin, the wealthy ladies would consume such pills to lose weight.

Magic nuclei would need to be used up to store grain in a magic warehouse and its nutrients would also slowly deplete. These issues would be solved by turning the grains into pills. On the elvish dimension, the elves only ate few fruit and vegetables every day and mainly depended on such pills for sustenance.

Only the low-level elves would consume three meals a day like humans.

In the past, humans were extremely powerful and would never have to consider any logistical issues when they fought in other dimensions. A powerful human could create a space and within this space, he could tear it open and retrieve the resources he needed. Such elvish pills were useless to humans back then.

By the time humans required such pills, dimensions had already lost connections with each other. Subsequently, the mages tried to recreate the pills based on their memories, but they were of poor quality. In the end, they turned out to be used as diet pills and were never utilized by the military.

The soldiers of the royal swordsmen battalion would bring a bag with them at all times since there was no harm in doing so. It would be a waste to use them as rations.

The advantages to the logistics outweighed the costs so overall it was still beneficial.

Of course, Saleen also had items that could bribe the two sorcerers. They were the materials for making magic staffs that he obtained from Joey; God's mulberry and ghost oak trees. In order to grow these two plants to a stage where they could be made into magic staffs, more than thousands of years of effort would have to be invested.

Both of them knew that Joey possessed these materials, but they also knew that Joey would never bother with them.