Chapter 143.1 : Infiltrating Proxia Empire
This incident happened on the same day Flora was teleported to the Paladia kingdom.
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After staying in Almond for one night, Rio then went towards Proxia the next morning. Naturally his goal was to pursue Lucius’s trail. Though it was still unclear whether Lucius belonged to the Proxia empire or not, even more so as it was that self-proclaimed ambassador of Proxia empire, Reis who said it, he couldn’t ignore that piece of information. The infiltration could be considered a success as long as he could get some information about Lucius from the top brass of the empire.
Rio flew to the empire’s capital Nidgard, located at the centre of the empire, with his wind spirit arts.
Though he stopped at several cities along the way to gather the information about Lucius from famous mercenaries, he couldn’t get any useful information. On the third day after leaving Almond, Rio arrived in Nidgard.
（The castle is far………….. From the size, this can be considered as a big city. Even if it’s only a self-proclaimed empire.）
walking on a nearby road towards the city, Rio entered the imperial capital from outside the rampart and looked up at the imperial castle far ahead of him. The imperial castle that was reflected into his eyes was in fact a magnificent and impressive display of power.
But the development of the city outside the rampart where Rio was standing in was disordered and a gloomy atmosphere enveloped the entire city.
（Let’s take a look at the inside of the rampart for now.）
Rio decided to head for the center of the imperial capital first.
One hour later, after confirming the state of the empire from the street stalls which he stopped by, he arrived in front of one of the gates of the rampart. After paying the tariff, he went into the area inside the rampart.
After entering he could clearly see that the inside and outside of the rampart were like two completely different worlds. Though he was able to see even from outside of the rampart that the living standards rose higher and higher as he got closer to the rampart, the wealthy lifestyle became even more prominent when he stepped inside.
The clothing of the people aside, from the aura of the people inside the rampart and the street stalls that could be seen everywhere, the inside of the rampart was an extremely lively place. Moreover, even while it was filled with neat and tidy buildings, all of it was properly maintained with soldiers patrolling everywhere to protect the citizen’s safety.
Even though there were many cities which had vast gaps between the living environment of outside and inside of their ramparts, a city that showed priority of developing the inside area was rare. As if reflecting the raison d’etre of the former mercenary turned emperor, Nidol Proxia, he built a segregated place emphasising on survival of the fittest.
「…………. Uhn? 」
Rio felt slightly uncomfortable in seeing the appearance of the grandiose castle in front of him. When he strained his eyes to see the reason for that uncomfortable feeling, he noticed that a cylindrical shaped magic barrier enveloped the entire castle.
（What kind of a barrier is it?）
Rio’s eyes opened wide and a thoughtful expression floated on his face.
In the first place, barrier magic had a complicated structure and it was yet to reach a practical level with the level of magic engineering in the Strahl region. Though some countries managed to reach a semi-practical level by analyzing a part of ancient magic tools, it still had a fault, namely the power source to maintain the barrier. So the current civilization of the Strahl region had no choice but to abandon this research theme when it came to large scale magic barriers. At the very least it was used for the protection of an important person.
But now, the magic barrier that enclosed the entire imperial castle was obviously a large scale one. Though the level was still a far cry from the one used by the Seirei no tami, this level of magic engineering was obviously at the top in the Strahl region.
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