The Righteous Player(s) Chapter 202: The Principality of Winter faces external and internal troubles

——Great level spell.

There are only six treasures left in this world. They are great things that are far more powerful than the curses of gods, just like the name itself.

Just knowing its name is equivalent to being part of the ritual.

The current distribution of great-level spells is one each for Noah, Winter, and Denisoya, and the Theocracy has two. There is another thing sunk at the bottom of the maelstrom... It is said that the wise men in the underground world are also trying to salvage it.

It can even be said that the current countries have all relied on great spells to rebuild after disasters. If they had not mastered the great-level spell, no **** would choose to rebuild the barrier around them.

——It is precisely because great-level spells cannot be lost. The divine power and the new royal power reached a certain degree of compromise.

And this great magic item held by Winter...

Is this the three-color scepter that Ivan has always used as a crutch?

At first, he thought that this was proof of the power of the Principality of Winter... Unexpectedly, it was indeed the case, but it was somewhat different from what he thought.

Annan couldn't help but take a closer look at the scepter.

It is composed of silver, black, and dark blue colors, intertwined with each other like hard vines. At the bottom, the three colors are untied from each other and protruding in three directions, as if forming a non-slip bracket.

A structure similar to an armrest is formed at the top - composed of intertwined silver rings, black crosses, and a huge eight-sided dark blue diamond in the middle of the entire pattern.

Usually when Ivan wants to stand up, he will put his hand into the middle of the ring and hold the upper part of the cross. When he is standing, he will put his hands on the ring as if he is holding a steering wheel.

This allows Ivan to stand very steadily.

Rather, it was because its function as a "crutch" was so perfect that Annan did not doubt whether it had other uses...

"...but is it too dangerous?"

Annan still couldn't help but said: "I remember that other hands of winter have touched it. What if the news leaks and the three-color scepter is stolen?"

"It is precisely because no one can be trusted that it should be held in the hand; precisely because it is not safe to hide it anywhere, it should be put in the sun."

Ivan said slowly and took a deep look at Annan: "It is precisely because neither the Grand Duke nor the scepter can be lost that it is used as a symbol of the Grand Duke's power - so there is no need to consider the accidental loss of one of them. Consequences."

It is obviously different from other countries.

On the winter side, there is a "few people" that stands out.

Noah’s dinner at the palace alone had more than 200 attendees; Denisoah and the United Kingdom of Field Islands had even more people—only counting the royal family members who lived in the palace, including the harem, There were more than three hundred servants and eunuchs.

Looking back at the Principality of Winter.

As of now, there are only a few people in the Grand Duke's Mansion in Winter. Ivan no longer has a wife, and he has no elders - the only child at home is Annan.

In addition to the two of them, there are four other people in total. All are leaders of the Hand of Winter... Originally there were only six leaders, and two of them were not at home.

Yes.

In the Principality of Winter, there are no servants to serve the Grand Duke. That's why a separate department was drawn from the Hand of Winter to handle the Grand Duke's internal affairs.

This is partly because the Principality of Winter lacks everything - you know, one of the responsibilities of the Hand of Winter is to monitor the local nobles and prevent them from being too wasteful; and in order to achieve this goal naturally, the Grand Duke also Must lead by example.

On the other hand, it is also to be responsible for their life safety. The Hands of Winter might be able to protect the Grand Duke if they were attacked, but asking them to protect their servants...that was impossible.

Although there is surveillance by the Hand of Winter, and the survival of the Blood of Winter is very important for suppressing the frost beasts, theoretically the Principality of Winter should be the principality with the strongest rule. But in fact, the Duke of Winter and his direct heirs have been attacked the most among the leaders of various countries... bar none.

This wonderful phenomenon has also attracted the attention of scholars from other countries.

According to the research results of a sociologist, this should be related to the mechanism of "winter year".

Because in winter, the people of Winter must rely on the protection of small barriers to avoid being frozen to death by the cold wind... This has led to the people of Winter mainly relying on city-states for their lives. As the connections between cities become looser, the respect ordinary people have for the Blood of Winter and the laws of the principality will drop significantly.

What replaced it was the direct control of local nobles and a variety of local laws. The Grand Duke's own ability to supervise and control local nobles will actually be weakened.

But ordinary people don't care about this - their dissatisfaction with the extravagant and wanton local nobles will eventually radiate directly to the Grand Duke. This is related to the fact that the local nobles consciously attract people's attention and hatred to the "Hand of Winter" who is actually responsible for supervising them.

The achievements of Grand Duke Ivan are undeniable. But the nobles still have other tricks up their sleeves.

One theory is that the Hand of Winter has restricted the Grand Duke's channels for obtaining information, just like the Kingdom of Denisoya where the eunuchs are in charge - but this statement can only be understood by people with some culture.

Another, more common theory is to blame Grand Duke Ivan's poor health.

Why there are so many taxes, because a lot of resources have to be used to support the Archduke's life; why the Hand of Winter or the nobles act so recklessly, because the Archduke is in poor health, so he cannot leave Frostwhisper.

This resulted in the Duke of Winter often being attacked by various types.

Of course, there are actually very few "Avengers" who are completely brainless.

Most of the attackers knew that Ivan must be protected by the Hand of Winter.

They all hope to achieve their goals by kidnapping the grand duke's heirs, wives or other relatives.

Either they are asking for the release of an important political prisoner (usually a spy from another country, or connected with the Icebreaker Army); there are also some whimsical people who are asking the Grand Duke to pass one or more laws; and Some hope that the Grand Duke can punish certain local nobles. Of course, their kidnapping was highly unlikely to succeed.

But there are some smarter ones who will pretend to be the names of certain local nobles and directly assassinate the Grand Duke. I hope the Grand Duke can find out and take revenge on a certain noble.

This is also the reason why Annan still has to investigate carefully even though the Northland Alliance assassinated Annan.

Neither Annan nor Ivan wanted to be used as a weapon - they had to find out before taking action. Because in the history of Winter, there have indeed been such incidents of blaming political opponents.

In addition, you must also prevent the possibility of your food being poisoned by spies from other countries, or your servants being bribed, eavesdropping on intelligence and stealing important documents. For the Principality of Winter, which can be said to be a "remote country", it is not easy for a person with the status of "servant" to be bribed.

Even if they are both countries protected by the Righteous God, this does not mean that the relationship between countries will be very good.

Leave aside the issue of border friction, the completely different cultural atmosphere alone will lead to a lack of communication between them.

In addition, King Noah of the previous generation - the one who claimed to unify the five countries and rebuild the Great Barrier.

Although Annan knew that, in fact, this was because he was the "child in the cup" whose life span was locked, so he deliberately planned to use this method to make enemies of Noah and take revenge on the Kingdom of Noah for giving birth to him... But the people and high-level officials in other countries don’t know that.

As a result, the revenge of the boy in the cup not only hurt Noah, but also directly disturbed the muddy waters - his declaration of war on Winter made Denisoya and the Theocracy wary. An arms race had to be launched.

After the Theocracy and the United Kingdom of Denisoya increased in strength, Winter had to remain vigilant against them.

The result is that the peace that was initially able to be maintained after the **** battle is now increasingly shaky.

In addition, the incident of the Winter Defying Man also reminded the Winter family that even the Hand of Winter, which holds a spell like a caged bird and is completely unable to disobey Grand Duke Winter, cannot be absolutely trusted.

The result is. ~IndoMTL.com~ Grand Duke Ivan not only had to find a way to lead all the people through the difficult winter.

He also had to do his best to maintain diplomatic deterrence externally, suppress the alliance of northern nobles who had long been rebellious internally, and make good friends with several extraordinary nobles in the south.

In addition, there is also the mess left by the Icebreaker Army and the Winter Defenders - there are always restless people in the Frost Beast Army, and a very important Frost Beast was lost some time ago. I suspect there are still people doing experiments on frost beasts.

Looking back, Annan was assassinated again... According to Annan's feedback, it seems that it was not just the forces that wanted to evade Dmitry. If the bloodline of "Gryaznuha Winter" is found, then the situation will be more complicated.

They still don’t know what method the Winter Defenders used to break the curse of the “Hand of Winter” and lead other Hands of Winter out of the Archduke’s control.

In this case, the local nobles withholding taxes and relying on "local laws" to act recklessly can be regarded as the simplest situation.

——They are all unruly people.

With so many troubles coming together, Ivan's body couldn't hold on any longer.

"...The situation faced by Winter is very complicated. Fortunately, you are back."

Ivan said slowly: "I must first hand over the title of Grand Duke and the curse to you. Then I can conduct some investigations... and actions as I thought.

"Follow me, Annan. I'll teach you how to use the power of the scepter."