I had rested up and it was early the morning. I had been giving a lot of thought to Bao Wang’s information. It was bad. Incredibly bad. At least from the viewpoint of beating the Divine Empress in states.
With nine cities, she could easily have 90 billion points worth of stats for as long as she had been ruling. That was around 190,000 stat points. The number was mind boggling. That was on top of her meta-point.
It was obvious why I didn’t stand a chance against her. It was ludicrous. It was so ludicrous that that I wanted to invent a new term just to describe the insanity that was the Divine’s Empress’s possible stat total.
I had worked the math backwards from what Clarissa had figured out. There were around 12,500 monsters of each type in a level 1 zone. That meant 50,000 level 1 monsters or 250,000 points per day not counting dungeons. For a level 2 zone there were about 8,000 of each monster type.
That meant there were 32,000 level 2 monsters per day or 1.6 million points worth of crystals. Multiply this by the 8 level 2 zones around each city, ignoring void zones and overlap, you would end up with 12.8 million points worth of possible crystals from level 2 monsters per day.
Take in loss and the very small percentage, only 10% according to Bao Wang, that the cities were allowed to keep she got a lot. It wasn’t really a percentage, but a hard number for expenses, but it came out to around 10% but could fluctuate depending on what was going on. Shrinking more often than increasing.
So let’s shall her share 10 million points per day per city. That would be 90 million points. She had ruled her Dragon Empire for around four and a half years before I showed up and one and a half years after that. That was about 6 years.
Call it 3 years, expenses, ramping up production, rebels, and other issues. I just called it 1,000 days to make the math easy. That was around 90 billion points and that was being generous. Bao Wang had given the numbers for his city, but he did not know about the others and their expected tribute.
That was a closely guarded secret by the Lords. They didn’t want to risk interception or let others know how much revenue they were generating, but it could be estimated from the zones they controlled. Pointless posturing and a sign that the Empire didn’t promote sharing any kind of information.
Even information that would have promoted internal conversation and increased the Divine Empress’s revenue stream. It was mind boggling how she ran things.
I could understand it and Bao Wang explained it, but it was insanity the more I thought about it. Complete and utter insanity. There was no real functional government. Well it functioned, but power was very centralized in a few people. There were no redundancies.
For Purgatory, the only people who couldn’t be replaced were myself and Clarissa. But in the Divine Empress’s Empire, the organization structure was frozen in place. There was little personnel management, with the Lords being the lynchpins of each city, and then the Empress’s small council being the lynchpin of the entire Empire.
The only thing holding it together were the constant influx of new people to be brutality put into the Divine Empress’s lower rungs of power to support the static ruling class.
It was madness. Or the new word for anything Divine Empress related, ludicrous. I let out a soft sigh. Hope was feeding Bao Wang and I sat back down in front of him and waited for him to finish eating before I spoke up.
“What do you want to know?” he finally asked me as the silence stretched out and was becoming uncomfortable. Hope had her breakfast quietly in the background.
“The Calamity when was it?” I asked.
“There are no records kept, but almost two years. It was a major event. A lot of people died New Beijing. I was lucky to survive. That was how I got promoted so quickly. One second everything was fine and then people’s heads just started exploding.”
“I got a really bad headache and passed out, but I managed to survive. Wuhan also lost a lot of people. Those were the only two cities affected that I know of. And I only know about Wuhan, since their tribute passed through New Beijing.” I nodded at all of this.
“What about the United City States?” I asked.
“Ah, the UCS. The Empire’s great rival and a source of light in the darkness. I arrived after the war, but the border was patrolled. It was one of the few areas outside of the cities and dungeons that soldiers would travel to.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Most of the soldiers that invaded here, came from the border. Not the elite troops the Divine Empress has in her capital.”
“What else do you know about the Calamity or the UCS?” I asked.
“Well, they were very far ahead technologically. They had many powerful weapons. I have heard horror stories of hundreds of people being killed in an instant to beam attacks that swept across the battlefield. The Divine Empress even fought herself, but it was a stalemate.”
“When the Calamity hit, I heard rumors that everyone was killed. The Divine Empress even went East herself to see what had occurred. She was not happy on her return I overheard, but I do not know more than that.”
Bao Wang had good information, but he wasn’t part of the inner circle. He was one rung below. So, he knew how things worked, but wasn’t involved in the decision-making process or had access to key sources of information.
It was all rumors and guesswork from what I could tell, and he was being up front about that. “The Lords are appointed by the Lord General?” I asked to confirm.
“Yes, and they go before the Divine Empress to swear fealty and…I…motivation,” he said the last word quietly.
“Motivation?” I asked. Bao Wang gave me a haunted look.
“We are forced to skin ourselves and cut off body parts to present to her. Many fail or are not strong enough to step up. The pain is immense. It…it is a reminder and a promise of the light touch and kindness of the Divine Empress to allow a person to manage a city for her.”
“If I went back or survived after what you had done, I would rather kill myself than become one of the people grafted into her throne. The Forbidden City is a nightmare…a living nightmare.”
“So, what will happen now?” I asked. “What was the invasion plan?”
“To sweep East and take control of the cities one by one that had been cleared out for the most part, ahead of time. New Lords would be installed and the tribute system set up. A limited investment would be made into roads to connect back to the West.”
“New Beijing would became the central nexus for all traffic from the North and the East back to the Forbidden City and would act as the forward staging area to the East.”
“The City Maps, do all cities have them?” I asked.
“Yes. But there are often issues with trying to track people. Disturbances. There are devices made by the UCS that disrupt them from showing information and low level sensing. It is a constant issue when trying to track people and hunt down rebels. I guess I should be grateful for that now.”
“You really don’t want to go back, betray me?”
“I would rather die. One quick sword through the head. There are quiet rumors about other Lords who had defected to the UCS in the past. Now they are no more and there is nowhere else to go.”
He was pulling a Naran. Stop pulling a Naran and making me feel bad for you. You are a cog in the evil empire that is built on slavery and crimes against decency, humanity, common sense, and basic governance.
The sad part was I could see the situation Bao Wang was in. There was nowhere else to go or become a rebel. Rebels died and stood no chance. So, he moved up the hierarchy since there was no other option.
It was like being stuck in Nazi Germany, but there was no country to flee to. He got into lockstep and started shouting Divine Empress. Even if people banded together to try and overthrow the government after being tortured and pushed to the brink, the Divine Empress would just stroll on threw and crush any resistance or her Envoy if she couldn’t be bothered.
The people who survived were mentally scared. The only option to not dying horribly was to bend the knee and serve. Over time these positions filled up and there were always people beneath them who wanted to take their place.
The soldiers would just look at the slaves and realize they had things better than them, so they kept their heads down and lived. The slaves, well they were free outside the cities, but had nowhere to go. Without stats it would be near impossible to cross a level 3 zone by themselves.
That was the situation that had developed up to this point. If the Divine Empress was killed, then the entire Empire would fall apart. Her subordinates could be killed. Or they were hiding her death to get more power until they could replace her.
Getting 90 million points a day was about forty-five times faster than my grinding speed. That was the true power of an Empire to support a single person and push them above all others.
There was a lot to think about. Bao Wang had run out of high-level useful information. I considered him carefully. Dammit, I was a bleeding heart and felt bad for him. But he was also an upper-level member of an evil empire.
While he hadn’t said anything I knew he took part in all those horrid activities he had described. While he was careful to paint the picture about others, it was clear he had firsthand experience. Even if the Divine Empress was killed, I would need someone who spoke the language to take control of the cities.
A former Lord would be more easily accepted than myself. Unless I managed to take the Divine Empress’s position. Too bad she didn’t wear a mask or hide her features, otherwise I might have tried dressing up as her and causing chaos.
I got up and went a small distance from the campsite. It was just frustrating not having a way to target the Divine Empress.
Any plan I came up with was useless in the face of her absolute might. I might have considered otherwise, if I had not seen her firsthand easily curb stomp all of Purgatory and myself at the same time with little to no effort.
I could only pray to the Almighty System that the Astrologer had managed to kill her after I was sent flying away. That was the other annoying thing. Her Empire would continue to function even without her present. Only her inner council would know her current state.
The biggest weak link was the Lord General. Killing him would disrupt the deployments of various troops and possibly lead to a power struggle. The inner circle were the few people with high level stats and skills.
With the way the Divine Empress ran things, I would be the only one capable of killing them. I let out a sigh and looked up at the sky. Well it was time to finish sorting out this mess and come up with an actual plan.