It was always going to be a difficult task to take back the kingdom with only two people, fortunately, the princess had not been resting on her laurels while I was chilling on a boat. She had used her connections in the free trade republic to gather any loyal ministers to a dukedom bordering the inner ocean on the west side of her country. With her vast sums of loot, she had been running supply ships containing food and weapons to a hidden port they had secretly constructed in an ocean cave off the coast. The merchants would be raided by 'pirates' while actually delivering the goods with those in the know had their lips sealed with censorship curse magic. This allowed her to build up a small but well-equipped army, complete with a range of doping potions and lethal poisons. The best part was this also allowed the army to gain real combat experience acting as actual pirates, looting ships containing supplies meant for the traitors.

Not everything was going as well though. During the dracon takeover, the dissolved the central government. This was all to create a situation where no single elf lord could gather enough authority to claim the throne and subvert their rule. With this new decentralised puppet government, it was impossible to do a smash and grab as the prince had done in the past. Even if we conquered the capital city, the dukedoms would ignore us while claiming authority over their own lands and fight back until reinforcements from the two dracon kingdoms arrived.

The princesses plan was multifaceted and I would essentially be used as a strategic weapon. My first act being the destruction of the teleportation network. While taking the capitol would only force us into deploying soldiers to hold it in the event of a siege, destroying the teleportation network would cripple their ability to rapidly move soldiers between the dukedoms. Eliminating this ability to rapidly gain reinforcements would actually turn this segmented mess to our advantage, preventing our small army from being overwhelmed.

After asking about the expected opposition, I found out that the holy dragon empire had a level 95 pope and two level 80 archbishops. Along with their king being level 75 and his top three generals being around 70, it became apparent why this kingdom was considered a powerhouse. As for the Narith dynasty, their king was level 90 and his war generals were level 80 and 75 respectively. These reports were a combination of public knowledge and espionage, so it was safe to assume that their levels and abilities could vary wildly from these listed. Seeing as neither the pope or the kings were likely to appear on the battlefield it gave us about three level 80's and four level 75's to deal with. On the elven side, we had a lot better information, placing the highest level traitor at 65 with the other dukes being around level 50.

The plan for me was simple, go to the capital and steal the coordinates linked to the dracon empires in a similar manner to what I accomplished on the isle of mages. Once I have the data, report back to the princess who will be arranging her army. When she is ready to attack the first traitor dukedom, she will send me a signal. I will teleport into the castle and destroy the physical gates, before teleporting over to the narith dynasties main barracks and launching a pre-emptive strike. From there it is up in the air as it depends on who surrenders to the returning princess and who decides to fight against us. Now the question is. Why do plans always fail when they meet reality?

Teleporting to my cave in the original forest, I successfully managed to fly for the first time as I approached the capital from the air. Not hopping, not gliding but actual flight. The secret was in not using my wings like wings, they were magic and I had to use their ability instead of their physical form. Landing a distance away, I activated my disguise and wandered down the main road. Entering the city with the appearance of an elf was easy, just a matter of paying a few coins and offering a few compliments to the dracon guards. I slowly wandered the streets both looking for a place to stay and gathering intelligence. The population after a period of destabilisation had reverted back to normalcy. With the government spreading rumours of the princesses death, the people accepted that the old lineage was over and they needed to adapt to survive. As with most kingdoms, a change in ruler will not be noticed by the working class unless the new rulers change the policies.

The only people truly disadvantaged by the new government were the farmers who lost their land and the trading companies forced to supply materials to the dracon for minimal profit, sometimes even at a loss. The first group of people were already scattered throughout the land. Even before the coup they were lacking a centralised authority and had diminished power in the political world. As for the traders, most of the rich ones moved to the free trade republic while the poor ones were displaced or purchased by dracon companies. Neither really had enough authority or power to reverse the decisions and the general population did not seem to care as long as their needs were supplied.

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This was not to say there were no dissidents, only that over the last year they had been either targeted and terminated by the new government forces or were rallied by the loyalist dukedom on the western coast. Furthermore, the manipulation of information acted as a floodgate preventing rebellion through propaganda and deception.

After finding a simple motel close to the palace, I began my ritual. Unlike the isle of mages, the gates here were constantly active eliminating the need to use transceivers to track the signal. In some ways, magic and technology can be seen as two similar systems aiming towards the same objective. Spacial gates like computers rely on sending data between two points. The difference is the data sent by a gate is a person converted into essence while the signal is in the form of mana waves. In order to create a second entrance into a special tunnel, you must first know the exact coordinates of the end of the tunnel and then calculate a wave pattern created from your gate that will perfectly overlap the wave pattern from the original gate thus remaining hidden. On higher layers, they also incorporate a scrambler so you must tune it to multiple waves with the same changing pattern. An incorrect wave pattern won't prevent the teleportation but it will make the additional gate detectable and give them the option to shut it down, dispersing the person's essence in the process.

Leaving the ritual to gather the data and complete the calculations, I exited the city to create a backup plan. In a small forest to the north, I created a large scale space folding formation over the next two days. This single-use ritual had the ability to translocate the same amount of space from two different locations and was set up to move the battleground outside of the city in the event I had to fight. To disguise the formation, I incorporated the living trees and natural mana flow thought this did make it take longer to complete.

Finishing my woodland venture, I returned to the capital where the city was abuzz about a planned meeting of the new government. It appeared the dukes would be in one place while deciding new taxes and tariffs. Sending the information to the princess, we decided to move during the meeting with the majority of original plan intact. I would still destroy the gates the only difference would be instead of attacking the dracon, I would immediately strike the traitor dukes as they assembled. meanwhile, with the leadership gone, the princess could blitzkrieg their territories.

The meeting was scheduled for the following week, giving me four days to gather information and prepare. Travelling into the sewers, I set about constructing a large scale shadow, space and force barrier below the castle. I concluded that trapping the government members would make it easier to eliminate them. While the barrier I was crafting could not be too strong due to limited time and materials, it should be sufficient to hold back a few level 70's for around an hour. The palace apparently already had its own personal permanent barrier but even if I could commandeer that, it only worked to prevent things from entering not leaving.

With the best preparations I could create on short notice, I waited as the delegation entered the city. I could not act too soon lest they escape the trap, yet assaulting too late would allow them to receive word of the princesses attack. Sitting at the top floor of a pub overseeing the central square in front of the palace I witnessed a sight as rare as a unicorn, a fat elf!

The reason this anomaly was so uncommon was that unlike humans who store excess energy as fat, elves convert excess energy into mana, an elf can literally eat their way to over-mana. The only way for an elf to get fat is to ingest such a large amount of food that they fill an over-mana bar equal to their regular mana and then keep eating. Considering over-mana depletes at a rate of ten points per day and food converts to mana at a rate of 15000 kilojoules per point. An elf must be consuming more than 157500 kilojoules per day to put on weight. The equivalent of eating more than 88 hamburgers every single day!

While I was somewhat distracted by the sight, the delegation entered into the castle and their guards took up position around the entrance. This was more of a display of power and formality than a threat given that most of these fools wearing shiny armour were around level ten. Giving it about an hour for them to get settled, I teleported into the gate room. Appearing on a crossbeam in the ceiling, it was evident these guards never expected an attack because they were playing cards. However, even if they were doing their jobs correctly, I would have still likely gone unnoticed as it is normal humanoid behaviour to never look up.

Spreading a gas created by the princess, I watched as these guards lapsed into slumber, before lowering myself to the floor. Despite it being my job to break the gates this did not require any major physical damage. After looking them over I decided to simply remove the power conduit crystal, replace some of the glyphs and change the default destination to a random location in the planets mantle. By doing so even if they had backup conduits, unless they also had someone truly knowledgeable in the creation of these devices, it would take them weeks to find the slight modifications made to only three of the several hundred runes. Even if they successfully fixed those, the fist unlucky person through the gate would end up incinerated as would anyone following if they didn't notice and change the location.

Deciding to move onto my second objective, I teleporting directly into the meeting room. Surrounded by the twelve dukes and four others I recognised, I realised this was all about to go to shit.