Ch.72The Ambitious King (1)

The Tanyashan Kingdom, where the Starting City is located.

It’s one of dozens of kingdoms and unions subjugated by the Empire, and its power isn’t particularly strong compared to other regions.

However, the king’s ambition was second to none.

The Tanyashan king’s ambition was to complete a map of the entire continent.

The massive map occupying one wall of the king’s office was a continental map.

It showed the western part of the continent controlled by the Empire, the northwestern region with various independent states, and a small portion of the central region with its reclusive desert nations.

The northern, southern, and eastern regions remained blank—an incomplete map.

The king wanted to discover all those blank areas.

Without curiosity about the unknown and the spirit of challenge, humans probably wouldn’t have become the dominant species across the continent.

Humans don’t live as long as elves, aren’t as skilled as dwarves, nor as strong as orcs—they’re essentially an unremarkable species.

And there was an additional reason.

The northwestern part of the continent was currently saturated.

The population kept growing while land was scarce.

They had extracted everything they could, and there was nothing new left to discover.

This is where the Tanyashan king had an insight.

Currently, the Tanyashan Kingdom was located in a remote area at the southeastern edge of the Empire.

Considering that the Empire’s center was in the northwest, the Tanyashan Kingdom was a minor nation on the periphery with minimal influence.

However, changing one’s perspective could turn everything around.

Unlike the crowded northwestern Empire, the eastern and southern parts of the continent that bordered the Tanyashan Kingdom were unexplored territories where no one knew what existed.

If they could pioneer those areas and discover something extraordinary, and if the Empire’s territory expanded further, the Tanyashan Kingdom would instantly become the center of the Empire.

That’s it.

Looking at the continental map on the wall, Beona Tanyashan, the king of Tanyashan, smiled with satisfaction.

But that smile didn’t last long.

Until now, Beona had sent several exploration teams to those uncharted territories, avoiding the Empire’s notice.

The reason for avoiding the Empire’s eyes was simple—vassal states needed the Empire’s permission to do anything outside imperial territory.

But Beona disliked the system where the kingdom did all the work while the Empire reaped the profits.

For this reason, he had secretly sent exploration teams, but the blank map still showed the results—none of the teams had ever returned.

He tried using mages, but dimensional gates required coordinates.

This meant they couldn’t open gates to unknown places.

Magic isn’t some mysterious, unfathomable power.

All magic works through complex calculations incomprehensible to ordinary people, and those calculations require minimum input values.

So mages were useless, and the ignorant priests just kept saying nonsense about unexplored territories being divine domains.

If they could at least establish a minimal supply base over there, the situation might improve somewhat.

But the Tanyashan Kingdom was a poor place on the outskirts of the Empire, lacking both power and wealth.

They couldn’t suddenly build a self-sufficient metropolis in an area full of rural villages.

Pouring money into such an endeavor would destabilize the entire kingdom.

Beona lamented the reality where he couldn’t even freely build a single city.

Then Beona received a certain application.

It was a City Promotion Application.

At first, Beona had to think for a while about what it meant, despite the title being clearly written in the common language.

A City Promotion Application would be a request to be promoted to city status.

But in our kingdom?

He knew such things existed. There had been one such case during his predecessor’s reign.

But since Beona’s coronation, there had been no city promotions—only cities going bankrupt and reducing their municipal organizations.

How could there be a place getting promoted to city status when the kingdom was in such a state?

And where was this “Starting Village”? What kind of village name was that?

Where on earth is Starting Village?

After staring at the map for a long time, Beona finally called for his chamberlain.

“Where is Starting Village? It’s not on the map.”

“Are you sure you’ve looked at the map properly, Your Majesty?”

The chamberlain clicked his tongue and brought a magnifying glass.

But even the chamberlain couldn’t find Starting Village, and they had to call in the guards stationed in the office.

Even with four people searching, they couldn’t find it, so they had to summon the ministers to finally locate Starting Village.

It turned out that Starting Village wasn’t even marked on the map to begin with.

After examining the application and marking the exact location on the map, Beona took note of the village’s position.

The Tanyashan Kingdom was at the southeastern edge of the Empire.

And Starting Village was at the southeastern edge of the Tanyashan Kingdom.

In other words, Starting Village was the only village located at the absolute southeastern extremity of the Empire.

No matter how I look at it, that’s the perfect location for an exploration base.

But how could a village in such a place become a city?

Beona flipped through the application, which was as thick as a book, and was shocked.

“Who made this? How dare they submit false documents to the king?!”

The application described how a village of poor people suddenly had increased farmland, caught more fish, and various other developments—Beona’s reaction was understandable.

Beona was about to reject the application immediately but couldn’t.

A message had arrived from the imperial capital.

It said, “Starting Village will soon apply for city promotion; please review it favorably.”

When the imperial capital tells the royal palace to “review favorably,” it essentially means “approve it without question.”

How did the imperial capital know about Starting Village, which even the king wasn’t aware of, and how did they know it would apply for city promotion?

After investigating this, Beona found himself in an even more puzzling situation.

An imperial special unit tracking the troublemaking Remugen mercenaries discovered that a base of Central slave traders had been attacked. Following the trail led them to Starting Village, where the village vigilante corps had wiped out the Central slave traders and rescued the slaves, incorporating them as village residents. Apparently, they had previously absorbed refugees from other regions as well. Now they were preparing for city promotion, and that tiny village had endless farmland, numerous fishing boats catching fish until their nets tore, several logging sites harvesting timber, a Holy Knight providing services, pigs being raised in some remarkably ingenious way that amazed the special unit commander who immediately reported it to the Emperor, who personally gave them a reward…

What kind of fantasy novel is this?

So Beona immediately dispatched an assessment team to the village, including Blanchard, the kingdom’s only mage.

This was both to follow the imperial order and to verify the details.

The reports from the returning assessment team were extraordinary.

All the unbelievable things Beona had heard were true, and at the center of it all was a highly suspicious individual—a potion shop owner.

Beona also had Blanchard investigate this potion shop owner.

His name was Jack. Born in Tanyashan City. Age 26. Family relations unknown.

A certified technician of the Potion Association, he had been running a potion shop in Starting Village for six years.

Since the beginning of this year, for whatever reason, he began distributing nearly expired Healing Potions to the poor and started working on developing the village.

He organized a vigilante corps they called “knights” among themselves and achieved self-sufficiency for the village.

But the process of achieving this self-sufficiency raised many questions.

Blanchard’s investigation suggested suspicions that potions made through methods other than certified production techniques might have been involved.

Beona had heard that potions could be made like poison.

But he had never heard of potions that could make plants grow better or help catch more fish.

Anyway, because of this, some villagers apparently regarded this Jack character as a god or an angel sent by god.

Surprisingly, even the Holy Knight serving in the village worshipped him as his Guardian Angel.

This definitely doesn’t seem like a normal situation.

How much does the Empire know?

After careful consideration, Beona decided to downplay the information about Starting City in his regular report to the Empire.

This is something the kingdom should keep to itself for now.

There’s nothing to gain by letting the Empire know the details.

Both Jack’s extraordinary abilities and the limitless potential of potions were concerning.

And the location of Starting City was too perfect.

I’ll use Starting City to fulfill my lifelong ambition of completing the continental map.

* * * * *

“Don’t be surprised, both of you.”

While I was assisting with work in the mayor’s office, Blanchard spoke in an extremely serious tone.

“What is it?”

“His Majesty the King will be visiting the city. I’m going to bring him through a dimensional gate now.”

“Gurgle.”

I looked to the side to see Bellamy foaming at the mouth and fainting.