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Gad's ferocious face was full of resentment. If the other party had not instigated him to start this food war, they would not have ended up like this.
"Do you think those wizards would have let you go if this hadn't happened?" Gustav sneered. "Look at those rioting people outside your castle. The wizards have been secretly planning to seize your territory! I'm just giving you a chance to take back your power!"
Gad stared at Gustav with a gloomy face. Although he was angry in his heart, he also knew that the commander of the God's Punishment Army in front of him was not someone he could contend with. He could only suppress his anger and inquire about the other party's purpose.
"Of course I came here to save you!" Gustav said slowly. "Your current strength may not be enough to fight against those mobs."
There was not a trace of joy on Gad's face. With the power of the commander of God's Punishment Army, it would be easy to deal with a group of mobs, but the other party chose to sneak into the fortress to meet with him. The meaning was very clear.
"Tell me your conditions!" Gad said solemnly.
"This time there are no conditions, only gifts." Gustav took out a strange-looking statue from his arms. "It will give you new power, enough for you to take back your territory."
"Statue of the evil god?!" Gad couldn't help but take a step back, a chill running down his back. Of course he recognized what this thing was.
I now understand how terrifying this thing is...
This is not a so-called gift at all, but a sacrifice!
Gad immediately took out the ancestral holy weapon, and a strong divine light immediately appeared in the fortress. However, contrary to his expectations, the holy weapon did not attack the enemy in front of it at all.
Gustav looked at Gad with a mocking expression. This holy weapon was bestowed by the church a hundred years ago, but the other party tried to use the power of this holy weapon to fight against him. It was simply unreasonable!
"Use your last bit of value!" Gustav stepped forward, and his right hand holding the statue of the evil god pierced straight through the Duke of Gard's chest.
No blood flowed out, and Gustav's hand seemed to penetrate a layer of illusory barrier and placed the statue in the other person's heart.
The next moment, a large number of voices penetrated into Gad's mind.
"Praise, Lord of Famine and Plague!" "You bring disaster to the world, punish all those who disrespect God, and drag the mortal world into hell..." "Lord, punish your enemies with plague..."
The loud, continuous prayers and the horrible and evil memories continued to attack Gad's will. His face became distorted, his body was shaking constantly, and he fell limply to the ground, suffering from severe pain both mentally and physically.
If he wasn't a bloodline knight, he would have completely collapsed in the first round of consciousness shock!
This is exactly the reason why Gustav made a special visit. The flesh of ordinary people is not capable of bearing the power of the evil god - even if it is only a statue that carries part of the evil power.
The servants in the room knelt on the ground and trembled, not even daring to look up.
Gustav listened to the other party's wailing with a grim expression, not moved at all. Since those wizards had already made a plan and instigated a rebellion of the mob, these nobles had lost the value of continuing to exist.
……
The news of the victories of the subjects who had revolted against the tyranny of the nobles in the northern border of the kingdom was soon transmitted back to the City of Fire Oil through various channels.
"Very good, very good. Now the entire kingdom is under the rule of the parliament, without any exceptions!" Harov said happily.
This was the second year since they set foot in the wizarding land, and the results they had achieved were clearly far beyond their prior expectations. Not only had they successfully established a foothold on this continent, they had also directly entered the territory of the empire!
"This is certainly an honor worth celebrating, but now is not the time to relax!" Vittorio reminded.
Although they eliminated the biggest source of instability within the kingdom in one fell swoop, the arrest and detention of so many powerful people at one time and the confiscation of their property, even with sufficient reasons, caused considerable panic.
Coupled with the lack of management personnel, the entire kingdom will inevitably face a period of management chaos.
"Master Lin En, I heard that you are considering a new method of selecting a large number of grassroots managers to manage the entire kingdom. Do you have any idea?" Aurora asked curiously.
Ever since the parliament ruled the kingdom, they have been thinking about how to rule such a vast territory.
There are currently two mainstream voices in parliament.
One is to cooperate with the nobles and implement management through feudal means as in the past, with the nobles responsible for managing secular affairs and wizards responsible for managing the mysterious and supernatural.
This path was obviously not feasible because they were taking the pauper route, thereby undermining the church's faith, which was in serious conflict with the interests of the nobles.
The second is complete governance by wizards, such as what they do in the wizard land.
But in Lin En's opinion, this is an alternative system of wizard enfeoffment...
Its main purpose is that a city is directly managed by a school led by a great wizard!
This is slightly better than the hereditary inheritance of the empire's nobility. After all, being able to be promoted to this level itself means being good enough. However, there are also many disadvantages. After all, being strong and having a good brain does not necessarily mean that one is good at management.
In fact, many great wizards don't put much thought into managing their territories, and leave it to the wizards of the schools below to manage, and the level of management can only be described as uneven.
Not to mention that there are so many cities within the kingdom, and even more if the empire is included, it is impossible for wizards alone to manage them all.
Lin En had no intention of hiding anything and quickly told everyone about the examination and selection system he was planning to implement.
The Speakers were naturally familiar with examination selection. For example, in the Land of Wizards, the promotion of formal wizards was evaluated through tests. Lin En optimized this system again when he was in Yieta Harbor, so they had some understanding of it.
"Are we going to rely on academic performance to select the best candidates? Then what specific subjects should be tested?" Vittorio asked thoughtfully.
"The first is literature. If a manager doesn't even have basic literacy, how can he understand the orders we issue?" Lin En explained one by one.
"Then there's Mathematical Olympiad. Calculation skills have a wide range of applications and are also necessary!" "Finally, there are some exams related to professions. For example, agricultural managers must understand climate, farming, and how to operate various alchemical instruments."
In this way, managers who pass the exam only need to adapt to the work a little before they can get started.
However, senior managers should mainly be wizards. After all, a civilian simply cannot manage wizards with powerful powers. Lin En is very clear about this, so he can only select wizards who are good at management to take the position.
As for those wizards who are extremely powerful but not good at management, they will be brought into the parliament and given identities and status that match their abilities, so that they will not cause dissatisfaction.
In addition, all managers only have administrative power. For example, the local city lord is not qualified to form and command the army, and replacements are appointed by the parliament, completely abolishing the hereditary system.
Lin En described his ideas as concisely as possible and also included the corresponding prosecution and reporting systems. He was just short of taking out a code of law.
Chapter 462: The solution to nuclear radiation is to drop another hydrogen bomb with a larger equivalent!
Lynn talked freely about his ideas.
He did not blindly promote any theories and strategies of equality for all in this alien world. After all, every world is different, and many situations do not correspond at all. Rashly applying a certain system may not necessarily achieve the desired effect.
Moreover, this world is home to powerful individuals called wizards, the best of whom can fight against an entire army alone, which in itself represents some kind of advanced productivity. In such a situation, the concept of equality is obviously not applicable.
So the solution Lin En chose was to optimize the existing wizard council system and give the poor at the bottom a relatively fair channel for upward mobility.
This new examination and promotion system aroused great interest among the speakers present.
They could all see that this was a plan that was completely different from the previous feudal and election system. It sounded very feasible and could completely get rid of their reliance on previous aristocratic management, prevent local areas from becoming too powerful, and bring most of the power into the hands of parliament.
It can be said that there are only advantages and no disadvantages...
While Harov and others were thinking about the pros and cons, Lin En asked about the construction of a nuclear fusion reactor.
This is the most important thing in the near future.
"According to the current progress, it will be completed in ten days at most!" Vittorio said excitedly. If anyone was the one who was most looking forward to the completion of this thing, he would undoubtedly be the one!
Although the parliament had previously mobilized some thunder wizards to make artificial starch to solve the food crisis created by the nobles, the overall progress was not greatly affected by the hard work of many alchemists day and night, and there were even signs of completion ahead of schedule.
"We must strengthen protection during this period and must not allow any accidents to occur!" Harov said solemnly. Once this fusion reactor is damaged during activation, the consequences will be disastrous!
Lin En also nodded. He had thought about building this thing somewhere outside the city before, so that if any emergency occurred, the destructiveness could be minimized.
But in order to carry out this epoch-making nuclear fusion project, they have mobilized all the power of the parliament. The daily mobilization of personnel and resources is too frequent, especially the operation and consumption of massive water resources. No matter where they are placed, it is unlikely to be hidden from the spies of the church.
The other party may not know what they are doing, but they will definitely try their best to stop it, and it may even become the fuse of a new round of war.
Even in the City of Oil, the parliament had to keep releasing false information to explain, such as the large amount of raw materials transported was for the expansion of the city, and the large amount of water transported was due to radiation pollution, etc...
The construction going on all over the city was also to some extent a cover-up for the construction of the reactor.
At least until someone is promoted to a true legendary wizard, they try their best to avoid conflicts with the church, so secrecy is naturally the top priority.
"You don't have to worry too much. The nuclear fusion reactor I designed is relatively stable. Coupled with the emergency plans prepared in advance, even if it suffers the most serious damage, the damage will be limited to a controllable range." Lin En said comfortingly.
One of the advantages of magical civilization over technological civilization is that it can relatively easily control this terrifying energy through gravity and magnetic fields.
Moreover, the fusion reactor is built underground in a large aristocratic manor, covering a large area and located in the corner of the city. The underground facilities are built completely according to the strength of a nuclear bunker, which can also minimize the damage caused by accidents.
In fact, the most important reason why nuclear accidents are so frightening is the nuclear radiation problem caused by the older nuclear fission reactors.
Not to mention an explosion, even if the radiation were simply leaked it would spread to land within a radius of dozens of kilometers, causing extremely adverse effects.
However, fusion reactors use clean hydrogen fuel, so there is no such concern.
"Even so, we still need to be more careful. We have spent so much manpower and resources, and we must not make any mistakes." After Lin En's explanation, Harov did not relax at all and took out a secret piece of information.
According to reports from their spies planted inside the empire, the church seems to be carrying out a new round of troop mobilization in recent times, and the possibility of launching a tentative attack cannot be ruled out!
"Perhaps they want to take advantage of our internal strife to cause trouble," Aurora guessed.
The church was behind the food war instigated by the nobles, so it was not impossible for the other side to take advantage of the opportunity to launch a large-scale attack.
Although this dispute has been perfectly resolved by the parliament, cleaning up these parasites inevitably involved a lot of the parliament's troops. Now there are less than 20,000 people stationed in the entire Kerosene City.
This is all thanks to the great uprising of the poor that Linn asked Redel to organize. Otherwise, in order to recover all the territories in the West and North in a short period of time, most of the main forces of the parliament would have to be pulled over!
In addition, the maintenance of the railway also requires manpower to prevent the road sections from being damaged by people with ulterior motives, causing tragedies such as car crashes and deaths...
Unknowingly, the power they could mobilize had become less and less!
"The church is testing us so frequently that I'm afraid it has become suspicious," Vittorio said with a frown.
More than two months had passed since they defeated the Imperial expeditionary force, and the lack of an offensive would indeed arouse suspicion from the other side.
"Why not teach them a lesson?" Lin En suggested.
Harov and the others were all shocked. They all understood that this "learn a lesson" naturally meant using the nuclear explosion again!
"Are you planning to attack the Holy City directly?" Aurora asked with great interest.
That will definitely leave a 'deep impression' on those bishops!
Lin En rolled his eyes. If they blew up the place of faith, the church would have to fight them to the death!
[Ella] Any incarnation that comes down can hang them up and beat them up, so it's better to take it easy.
"Then where do you want to use it?" Aurora asked in surprise. Throwing it on other cities in the empire would not have any good effect and would also affect a large number of poor people.
It's not a good idea to just find an empty place and blow it up, right?
Lin En shook his head and said with a smile, "Haven't those elemental wizards always been worried about how to eliminate the radiation problem? This time we can solve it all at once!"
How to solve the problem of nuclear radiation proliferation most efficiently?
Of course, the solution is to drop a hydrogen bomb with a larger equivalent on the spot and purify it thoroughly!
……
After a ten-day cleansing operation, food prices, which had been soaring like a roller coaster, gradually stabilized.
The parliament finally began to buy back the excess wheat on the market at a price of one copper per kilogram, which was only half of the price before the food war, but at least it left some grain merchants a way out and prevented them from losing everything.