Salvatore frowned, put the cigar he just lit in his mouth, and flipped through the paper Longjing Tea handed in seriously.
Previously, he did not have a smoking habit.
Due to the curse [Never-Sleeping Reflection], Salvatore was forced to stay up late every day and could not fall asleep until 3 am. As a result, he could only sleep for up to six hours a day, living on the verge of sudden death every moment.
Whether it was cigarettes or alcohol, he did not dare to touch them. Among the stimulants, he only dared to intake those with lower side effects and more capability to nourish and rejuvenate the body.
After all, he could not make up for the sleep he had missed.
This was Salvatore’s biggest problem.
The difference now was that he had successfully advanced into an alchemist.
His cigar was a curse vessel he made especially for himself. What was inside was not tobacco leaves but an unknown drug refined by him that could be used to repair the body.
“Alchemist” was a Silver Rank ancient profession. However, it had not yet been phased off even in modern times, and there must be reasons behind this.
The rise of Alteration Wizard was primarily because transcenders in the “Blood War” era were easily hunted if they lacked self-protection capability.
In that era, many old rulers and countries had fallen apart. The exceptions were only limited to the Austere-Winter Dukedom, which was established by the Austere-Winter Family when the Old Grandmother was still hibernating. Then, there was also the Papal Kingdom, which gathered a lot of upright deities and quickly erected a small barrier.
At that time, the Papal Kingdom had not yet established a sky city, and many churches huddled together on the ground. The crusade between the upright deities’ churches was enough to turn the Papal Kingdom into a mess.
On the flip side, no one would go to the Austere-Winter Dukedom.
Austere-Winter Dukedom was lacking in agriculture, especially during the winter year. The Austerians even had to eat plenty of raw meat from the Frost Beasts for vitamins, not to mention the snowstorm that blanketed the country.
At that time, many Austerians were forced to flee the Austere-Winter Dukedom and became mercenaries of other countries. A large part of the Austere-Winter Blood that remained in other countries today came from this historical background.
Transcenders could only head to the territories of the Silver Sire and the Elegant Elder.
At that time, the Silver Sire lived in the Noah Kingdom’s capital, and the Elegant Elder resided in the capital of what was now known as the Denizoya Kingdom. The remaining transcenders immediately began to kill each other with these two places as the center.
But at that time, the Noah Kingdom was not established yet. Denizoya was still a principality. It was not so much a crusade by various countries but a brutal “expulsion war” to compete for territories.
Coupled with the fact that there was no Underground Federation at that time, the wise people realized that after a large amount of land was lost and the Great Barrier collapsed, it would instantly lead to a shortage of resources. Moreover, the limitation of the Gray Mists and the barrier would limit the ability of the people in each barrier to communicate with each other.
The resources after that might not be enough to keep everyone alive at that time.
So they needed a war to ease the population issue and redraw the tenure of habitable land.
It was a war that did not require prisoners. It was also the first war in the world that did not focus on resource and population plunder.
Even if the warlords on all sides knew that everyone might gradually merge in the end, the fewer the people left on the enemy side, the better their life would be, and the higher their authority.
“Austere-Winter” had irreplaceable significance because only they could tame the Frost Beasts, and the Frost Beasts were the only food for the winter year.
The first generation of “Noah” had extraordinary political wisdom in the aspects of persuasion, deceit, betrayal, alliance, and so on. Finally, a ruler was established with absolute military superiority under perfect operation.
The Papal Kingdom eventually established the “House of Purity” instead of installing another king. The popes of the seven deities took turns serving as the Supreme Pontiff.
At that time, the Denizoya’s Grand Duke was the first to establish himself as the king and voluntarily gave up most of the king’s power to establish the Privy Council.
In the “Denizoya Privy Council” system, the Privy Council was divided into three levels: “Advisory Council”, “Committee,” and “Member Council”.
The Elegant Elder’s contemporary pope would appoint the “Chief Advisor”, who had the right to select several people from the committee to serve as advisors each year. As for “Committee” and “Member Council”, they had the right to propose a new bill or amendment to bills to the senators. After the proposition, it would require the Member Council’s approval before sending it to the Advisory Council. At the same time, the Member Council’s propositions could be sent to the Advisory Council directly.
The power of the advisors was greatly exalted. Core ministers, including foreign affairs, finance, national defense, culture and education, and the high court of justice were only selected among the advisors. As long as the majority of the advisors agreed, they could veto a law without the king’s intervention. The only power reserved by the king was to “remove advisors”. In other cases, the king was only on the same level as other advisors.
The first-generation advisors were directly selected from the local nobles. The right was purchased at a sky-high price.
There was no doubt that Denizoya Grand Duke directly sold his existing political power.
His purpose was that rather than trying to preserve the unsettled power he had as the new king after the war, he might as well use a portion of his power that might be taken away later as bait to end the war.
His action was like drinking poison in the hope of quenching one’s thirst. However, the Denizoya Grand Duke instantly gained the support of many great nobles in the principality who were initially opposing him or neutral. He then raised a considerable amount of funds in a short period.
Then, he used this massive sum of money or the quota privilege of the “Advisory Council” to bribe the great nobles of other countries. This allowed him to purchase secret intelligence or ask the nobles to betray his opponent at a critical moment. He also used the quota privilege of the “Committee” to recruit a large number of transcenders, outstanding technology, and military talents. At the same time, he used the “Committee” to amass veterans, workers, and businessmen.
The betrayal of many nobles and transcenders and the betrayals that might happen at any time in the future created panic in Denizoya. No enemy was in unity. Those nobles who defected to Denizoya also entered the committee.
In the end, the Denizoya Kingdom had formed.
Due to the decisiveness of the Denizoya’s Grand Duke, they were the quickest to end the Blood War and establish a stable country. Because of this, they suffered the most negligible losses in the end and even gathered more talents than the Papal Kingdom.
As for Fildes Archipelago’s surrender, that was after the Blood War was over.
The transcenders who were unwilling to join or even simply hostile to the Noah Family and the Denizoya Family had only one last place to go after the establishment of the Noah Kingdom and the Denizoya Kingdom.
That was underground.
In the underground world at that time, it was a forbidden place with no morals and laws.
The alteration school was established in the early days of the Blood War: to enable them in contributing to the war and be effective in combat when alone. In return, the “Alchemist” legacy was utterly outdated.
However, for Salvatore, it was the “Alteration Wizard” being outdated instead, straying away from its original path.
The core idea of ??Alteration School was to use what was already here to create what was not there.
Thus, it had been a long time since there were no new inventions from the Alteration Wizards.
Decades had passed, and almost all of them were improvements on old inventions.
There gone the days when many new inventions came out every year.
Although Salvatore did not know how far he could achieve, he did not want to admit defeat before trying.