Warlords of the witcher world

Chapter 155 Nilfgaard's "Inner Loop"

Regarding Temeria's affairs, Herme didn't want to interfere, and Herme had no interest in interfering.

It is absolutely beneficial to him that the things in Temeria happened according to the original plot, just let it happen.

At most, he was just curious, now that the Snake Demon Hunter had taken refuge in him, who would the Nilfgaardians find to be the King's Assassin.

But even without the Snake Pie, Herme doesn't seem to affect the original plot.

After all, with Nilfgaard's national strength, finding a group of super assassins couldn't be easier.

Not to mention, the cat faction, which was notorious for accepting murder commissions, was active in the Southern Empire. According to Herme, most Nilfgaardians would go to cats.

Of course, what happened in Temeria has nothing to do with Herme, but the King Assassin has a lot to do with Herme.

So Herme strengthened his guards, he didn't want to be assassinated like King Demavi.

In order to ensure safety, Herme asked a retired demon hunter to be her bodyguard. This person was the demon hunter Mor Deng of the Manticore school.

However, his current name is Xavier, a devout Lebioda preacher, and he is quite prestigious among Lebioda believers and Eternal Flame believers.

The former witcher was a full-fledged drunkard and pimp, but Morten came to Toussaint around 1203 and found spiritual enlightenment through Lebiodaism, and then completely reborn and devoted himself to missionary work.

In the past year, followers of the gods in the North have launched a "Crusade of Redemption", which is a legacy of the Second Northern War.

In addition to causing the explosion of nationalism in the North, the Second Northern War also had a significant impact on devout believers, which caused the impact of eschatology.

The prophecies of Rime Frost continued to circulate among the devout, causing a very noticeable panic effect.

Although the end of the Second Northern War severely dampened this argument, its impact is still evident.

Under such circumstances, Xavier, who has a high status among Lebioda's believers, stood up. He believed that since Hoarfrost would come sooner or later, they should start their own road of asceticism and expedition.

His ideas have been echoed by many people, asceticism and expedition, which undoubtedly hit the hearts of many believers.

Xavier's final target is Hackland. This land is still full of monsters and needs to be washed away by an expedition of fire and sword.

And the ubiquitous barbarism here also needs to be purified by civilization. They will turn forests and swamps into farmland and the cornerstone of civilization.

The most important thing is that in this process, believers can purify their souls and bodies, and welcome the arrival of the end of Hoarfrost with a better attitude.

In this way, a reclamation expeditionary force began to gather under the efforts of Xavier, and Xavier took them all over the countries, constantly attracting willing participants.

Not all the participants were devout believers, and many people were speculating in it. After all, the opportunity of a big reclamation was just around the corner. For farmers who want to get rid of their own predicament or change the future, this cannot be missed.

Reclamation is a big business. There is something to say, after three years of reclamation, it is very difficult for a single ordinary person to succeed in reclaiming. Basically, a lord or a group is required to cover it.

And such a reclamation expedition is naturally a good opportunity. Everyone has joined together for the sake of faith. In the future, there is no need to worry that the lord will use this to put shackles on his head-such things are never uncommon.

All countries don't like this expeditionary force very much.

For the rulers of this era, mobility represents instability. After all, they are not afraid of the hungry people starving to death at home, but they are afraid that the hungry people will run out to escape the famine. It is the old subjects.

But you can't shout and kill, so you can only face this group of people with the attitude of sending the plague god.

But Herme's attitude towards them is very contradictory. On the one hand, he is very envious of so many manpower, and it is also beneficial for these people to go to Hackland to open up wasteland.

But on the other hand, such a large group of people running around in their own country is too easy to create factors of instability.

After some entanglement, Herme finally sent his own guards, and Toussaint knight Chris Dreyer led a team to supervise these people.

As a Toussaint, Chris has proven his ability and character over time, that's why Herme let him go.

Letting the members of his own guard go also showed Herme's importance. After all, in most people's opinion, the guards can go directly to Datian (and it is true).

Xavier finally assembled a team of tens of thousands of people. In order to allow so many people to go to Hakland safely, the political institutions of the Kingdom of Aedirn also turned around.

Had it not been for the recent absorption of a large number of graduates from Ben Ade College, it would not have been able to deal with such a huge personnel turnover so easily.

These migrating believers and peasants are different from the army. The army has a hierarchy of jurisdiction, and the relationship between superiors and subordinates is clear.

And a lot of people in this group set foot on the road to the east on their own, which undoubtedly greatly increased the management cost.

Many people go on the road with their own partners, who cares if you are convinced or not.

On the eve when the team was about to go to Hackland, Herme saw Xavier and saw his eyes.

At this point, Herme realized his identity as a mutant, and then asked about his origin.

Xavier didn't intend to hide anything about his past, and told Herme everything.

And through his introduction, Herme immediately realized how strong the demon hunter in front of him was.

First of all, he has lived as a demon hunter for so many years, and then he has been a preacher of Lebioda for so long in the north where there is discrimination or even hostility towards demon hunters. One can imagine his strength.

So, logically, Herme invited this person to be her bodyguard.

With such a veteran witcher by her side, Herme felt relieved.

In this regard, Xavier agreed immediately, and this was mainly because of Herme's status as a divinely favored person.

Although Lebioda is also worshiped by the southerners, as the eternal fire has incorporated the prophet's thoughts into their thinking system and the location of the prophet's corpse, Lebioda is actually regarded as a member of the northern pantheon. .

After Xavier explained this, Herme once again lamented the usefulness of her status as a divinely favored person.

In this way, he had a demon hunter guard beside him, but this demon hunter had already abandoned his identity and concentrated on being a disciple of Lebioda.

But, Xavier had to settle the team he organized before he could come to Herme's side as a guard.

Herme understood this, and specially asked Chris to send a large amount of supplies so that these believers could gain a firm foothold faster.

And now, with the things over there basically coming to an end, Xavier also came to Herme's side.

The former witcher hadn't used a sword for a long time. He used a stick now, but the ability he showed had already beaten most of Herme's knights.

With the demon hunter guards in place, Herme felt more at ease about the future, and finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Of course, he will not relax either. The Guardian Guild guarantees that he will always be surrounded by a large number of guards and Weilang people, and will never close a small space, such as a boat. Magic Gold Ship.

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While the Lord Protector of Aedirn was strengthening his defenses, in the south, the Nilfgaardian Empire was brewing a new round of conspiracy against the north.

Valtier de Lidoric, Viscount Aiden, favorite of Emperor Emhyr var Enress, leader of Nilfgaard's intelligence agency.

He has made great contributions in the field of intelligence many times, and he is an indispensable figure for the success of Emhyr's strategy to the north.

It's just that this person in the Nilfgaardian Empire who would tremble three times when mentioning it, is now worrying at his desk.

Lidorick has a neat cropped hair, a set of studded leather armor that is easy to move under the black cloak, and a short sword pinned to his waist.

Looking at the document in front of him, Lidorick really wanted to push it aside, and then tell himself tomorrow, no matter what, it can only be tomorrow.

But he can't do that.

Emperor Emhyr was waiting, and His Majesty was in a bad temper.

If he was made to wait too long, he would be scolded by the emperor, and he might even be hanged.

Emhyr var Enris was never a benevolent man, especially with the state of the Empire in such dire straits.

The defeat of the Second Northern War had an extremely significant impact on the interior of the empire.

The empire's economy is very dependent on foreign wars. If the foreign war fails, then the empire's interest groups can only seek benefits internally.

Of course, defeat in foreign wars usually means the change of the throne, and the emperor was either overthrown or committed suicide.

Emhyr, on the other hand, relied on preemptive strikes to slaughter the opposition groups that wanted to strike first, which greatly deterred the unstable groups within the empire.

However, although Emhyr can kill, he must also give compensation to appease the frightened imperial dignitaries, lest they be scared to jump over the wall.

After all, the carrot and the stick go together.

Next, the Ancient Family and Merchant Association started their actions.

The key to all problems lies in slaves, and the essence of wars launched by the empire is for slaves and markets.

Slaves are used to expand production, and the market is used to buy commodities produced by slave factories.

Since labor and markets cannot be found outside, it is necessary to look for them internally.

First of all, the provincial residents were forced into slavery.

Nilfgaard has a large number of policies that can guarantee that a person will be forced to sell himself into slavery. From raising taxes, low-cost usury, high-priced goods, etc. to smuggling people, there are all kinds of tricks. The empire always has an official or non-official Official methods turn people into slaves.

Of course, this kind of policy also exists in the core area of ​​Nilfgaard. Interest groups don't care who becomes a slave, even if the slave is the cornerstone of the empire.

So what about a Nilfgaardian slave, that's fine, at least he can speak Nilfgaardian, and it's nice to have a slave who can understand himself.

Some provinces have focused on implementing these policies. If this continues, the people in the provinces will inevitably be unable to bear it, and rebellion will arise if they cannot bear it.

In order to ensure the outbreak of the rebellion, the ancient families and merchant associations will continue to provide resources to the rebels before they reach that step, so that these dissatisfied forces will have the idea that someone at the top of the empire is on our side.

Then, with the outbreak of the rebellion, the imperial army could march in and happily hunt slaves.

At the same time, when suppressing the rebellion, the imperial army will also carry out a sweep of the local political structure, destroying the local grassroots organizations, and allowing imperial goods to enter the previously closed areas.

You see, the market is here.

As for how many provincial people will die because of this, no one cares.

The Old Families and the Merchant Guild were good at this, as they had done when the First Northern War was lost.

At that time, they provoked a rebellion in the province of Aibin, and then let the imperial army and their slave catchers enter to suppress it. Now it is just a repetition of the previous actions.

This time, the ancient family and the Merchant Association played a big game, and rebellions broke out in the two provinces of Metina and Nasser.

These two provinces were conquered later, so there is still more oil and water, so they chose here.

But, when the farmers and citizens of these two provinces took up their weapons, they suddenly discovered that the imperial army had already entered, and the high-level empire that had given them all disappeared now.

But even if it is the imperial army, it will take some time to suppress such a rebellion that has swept across two provinces.

So until now, five months have passed since the beginning of the rebellion, and the suppression is still going on.

Most of the rebels have been wiped out, and their team leaders are basically nobles and wealthy businessmen, and only they can gather so many rebels.

So to a certain extent, the rebellion can be regarded as suppression. Now it is all garbage time to hunt down the remnants and small groups of rebels. The empire can already declare that the rebellion has been put down.

But the empire did not do this. If the rebellion is over, how can the ancient families and merchant associations continue to capture slaves and collect scraps in the province?

Li Daorike was very disgusted with what happened in the province, and he knew very well that it was just drinking poison to quench thirst.

After all, slaves cannot buy goods. The interest groups of the empire turn ordinary provinces and even the residents of the empire into slaves, which is ultimately reducing the total market volume.

The internal exploration of new markets will come to an end sooner or later. When the scraping fails, everything will fall into a vicious circle, and in the end, the empire will explode.

However, Li Daorick knows this, so what can he do?

This is also the reason why His Majesty Emhyr is still obsessed with the north.

Interest groups are forcing him to expand, and the empire also needs to expand, or it will die.

Therefore, Li Daorick was scolded by the emperor every day, asking him to come up with a charter.

Li Daorick really wants to scold your mother, take it, take it, you are a big-headed ghost, you only know how to scold me every day, you only know how to increase the size of me, and let me work overtime without limit.

The intelligence chief really wanted to scold Emhyr, but he didn't have the guts to bet on Emhyr's tolerance.

Ledoric looked at the documents in front of him and sighed again.

In fact, the plan has already been worked out, the plan is perfect, and there are assisters.

The sorceress hall.

Of course, they are not voluntary.

After the defeat in the Second Northern War, Li Daorick keenly realized that there was probably something wrong with him, which led to the leak of intelligence.

At this time, his mistress "just happened" to disappear.

As an intelligence officer second only to Dijkstra in the entire continent, Li Daorike realized that this was a thread, and most of the problems were in this place, so he immediately followed the clues to investigate.

Next, he found a Nilfgaardian sorceress, and through monitoring the sorceress, he discovered the existence of the sorceress assembly hall.

Li Daorick was very angry. He had been assigned spies by his side without knowing it, and leaked a lot of confidential information. It is estimated that those sorceresses are often laughing at him.

But he finally held back his anger and began to plan his counterattack.

First of all, he gave Dijkstra the secret that the empire did not assassinate King Wizmir, so that Dijkstra would definitely suspect the leader of the sorceress assembly, Philippa Erhart, and the two sides would inevitably Conflict broke out.

But what he never expected was that Dijkstra was eliminated in the first round.

After yelling at his old opponent as a waste, Lidorick could only look for new opportunities, and the opportunities came a long time ago.

The Redanian intelligence department has many lines that only Dijkstra can contact, and Dijkstra has been paying these lines to ensure that they provide intelligence and information.

Now, with the departure of the spies, all the important spies on the line have lost their benefits, and they can't prove themselves. Some people went to Redania after all the hard work, wanting to get paid, and then they were taken as liars chased away.

As a result, many people went directly to Nilfgaard, and Lidorric gained many of the northern secrets.

Relying on these lines, Li Daorike has instead laid a close spy network in the north, involving all parts of the north.

It's a pity that he can't infiltrate Novigrad, the free city, but that doesn't hurt too much.

Relying on his newly deployed intelligence network, the information from the north was opened in front of him like this, and Lidorick took advantage of this to start monitoring the sorceress assembly hall instead.

And after several years of monitoring, he has basically figured out who these female sorceresses are, which makes him very confident to use these people to complete his plan.

Then, the moment he finished using them, he would throw out the sorceress covenant like garbage, and by the way, charge them with all the crimes-and they did participate in those crimes.

His plan was perfect, but there was one problem, and it kept him here.

Where can I find such a powerful assassin.

Originally, his target was the Demon Hunters of the Snake School. Ever since the usurper captured their castle, this School of Demon Hunters has been running for the Revival School. I believe that if an opportunity is thrown, they will definitely agree.

Anyway, in order to survive, these Snake factions have already engaged in assassination. For them, assassinating the king is not an unacceptable thing.

In the end, he found nothing, not to mention snakes, and not even a gecko.

Then his target was Mao Pie. Anyway, these people were doing assassination work. As a result, Mao Pie seemed to disappear, and nothing was found.

The demon hunter couldn't do it, so he could only look for other options. During this period, he found Bonnet, the most famous bounty hunter in the south, but unfortunately, the mutant killer ran away when he heard that he was going to assassinate the king.

Now Lidorick can't be found alone, so he is very troubled.

Let people from the empire come?Forget it, Li Daorick didn't think his subordinates had this ability, and those members of the Fighting Faction didn't make any fuss after suffering heavy losses in the Second Northern War.

"Sorrow, sorrow, bitterness, when did this end? I can't become a super assassin."

After skimming through the contents of the proposal again, Li Daorike said rather angrily.

However, no matter how angry he was, the problem was still there, waiting for him to solve it.

While Lidorick was in distress, suddenly, his door was opened, and a man in black military uniform walked in.

"Lord Lidorick, three demon hunters have come outside. They have cat badges on their necks. They are demon hunters of the cat school that you ordered to look for. They said they saw the notice to recruit demon hunters urgently." .”

"what?"

Lidorick immediately stood up,
"Okay, okay, take me to see them right away."

There is an urgency in his words that is not usually there. After all, the problem that has troubled him for so long is finally about to be solved.

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On the edge of a village in the Nasser province of the empire, an imperial army was leaving the village, and they were escorting a large number of men, women and children. The villagers were tied with ropes and strung into two rows.

Imperial soldiers in armor kept walking past them, and these people also let out low sobs from time to time, which annoyed the nearby soldiers, and the whips waved directly.

For a while there were screams everywhere, and the whole team was crying, but immediately more imperial soldiers joined the beating ranks, and they kept beating the captives with spear shafts and sword hilts to silence them.

During this period, the soldiers watching nearby laughed all the time, as if they were enjoying a comedy, rather than watching their own kind suffer.

"Calculating the time, they are almost talking to that Vatier."

Next to a Nilfgaardian general wearing a black mask, a man with a cat's head badge on his neck said.

"Gizlas, is this really good? Will it not affect your authority?"

"Mao faction has never been short of lunatics who like to risk their lives. Since those few are willing to go, it means that they are sincere. In fact, to be honest, if it weren't for my current status, I would have to participate in this mission. Damn , Walking on the tip of the knife in the North-South struggle is really exciting, and I'm about to pull myself up."

Gizlas's face contorted in a morbid excitement.

Regarding Gizlas's madness, the masked general didn't express anything, and he was used to it.

And his mind was thinking about other things.

It has to be said that the intelligence network of those vampires is really too powerful.

They can figure out the top secret of the empire.

He wondered whether many political conspiracies within the empire had also been fueled by these guys.

However, the three vampires assured that they had no interest in power, and this network was just arranged casually. It was essentially a collection of their connections and relationships.

Arranged casually, but a secret network that can be called an underground king has been arranged. It is estimated that Li Daorick will be too ashamed to speak when he hears the vampire say this.

"Speaking of which, did that guy Kasimir reply? You just came back from there, so it's impossible not to send me a letter."

The general asked about other things,

"Do you still need me to report this matter? The one who expressed his willingness to obey your will, when necessary, his army will join you."

From Gizlas's point of view, isn't it something that has been done for a long time, so there is no need to ask.

The general frowned. This cat is useful... But sometimes he is too self-righteous, and he doesn't tell him such important news immediately.

He prefers well-disciplined soldiers to uncontrollable swordsmen.

But now he has nothing to choose, and it doesn't matter anymore. In order to regain his throne, he must use all the power around him now. As long as their small problems don't affect his great cause, he can only endure it.

Yes, that general was none other than Torres the Usurper.

After Torres left Stiga Castle, he quickly arranged his plan to regain the throne.

He decided to join the imperial army first, to make a name for himself in the army, and how to make himself unrecognizable by others, he relied on the mask, saying that he was disfigured and shameless, and insisted that someone want to see him, and then there was the face with illusion.

Relying on the many connections of the vampires in the empire, Torres quickly became the commander of a division. As one of the ancient families of the empire, the Moraham family did not participate in political struggles, but with their connections, it would be impossible to arrange a division commander. No problem.

As for why he was in such a hurry to sit in such a high position, it was mainly to make contributions in the subsequent provincial suppression - he knew very well what the empire would do after its failure in foreign wars.

In the process of repression, he will build his career and establish his position in the imperial army.

The other side is to communicate with the former subordinates. Even after Emhyr’s attack, there are people from the Mist faction everywhere. After it is still bad, it is possible to reveal the identity to win over.

But for them to vote, it needs strength, and the empire's cutting-edge war heroes, this is very good.

Everything went so smoothly, and then, he found out about Lidorick through the vampires.

Torres immediately promoted this matter, only to make the third northern war come sooner.

After all, an actor can only leave the scene if he has finished his role, and Emhyr will never be able to leave the scene until he completes his role.

(End of this chapter)