Although the Western Federation is divided into northern and southern factions, open conflict between them rarely erupts.

  Especially since the Groias Empire and the Holy Spirit Church—the powers backing each side—have never directly cshed.

  Neither side deploys their core forces; instead, they support various proxies.

  It’s like a game of chess, with moves made both openly and in the shadows.

  Their rivalry mainly centers on control over Guardian City; other territories aren’t disputed.

  For Henwell, this is excellent news.

  So there are actually people bold enough to stand up to the Holy Spirit Church!

  The mysterious Groias Empire must be a formidable backer.

  Henwell also learns something even better: noble titles in the Western Federation are handed out rather casually.

  Basically, if you have the money and connections, you can buy a noble identity.

  But as for nd. Sorry, that’s a different story.

  The Western Federation only grants titles, not nd.

  To gain territory, you have two options: seize it yourself or carve it out in the wilderness.

  Popution in the Federation is heavily concentrated around the city-states.

  There’s a reason for this.

  The greatest advantage of the Western Federation lies in its city-states.

  Or rather, its prosperity is built on those seventeen city-states.

  Because these seventeen cities were personally established by the Groias Empire and the Holy Spirit Church.

  According to Bishop Pernas, these cities are rich in extraordinary elements.

  Training within the city walls yields twice the results with half the effort.

  Even the outskirts boast strong extraordinary attributes.

  They’re far superior to Tule City, not to mention the six kingdoms in the East.

  This draws a flood of professionals eager to train there.

  These people are willing to fight tooth and nail just for a chance to enter the city and cultivate.

  The path of gathering great power for oneself often involves little actual production.

  And since everyone is still human—not gods, they still need to eat, drink, and handle their daily needs.

  That means a rge number of ordinary people are needed to serve these professionals.

  As for the professionals, they’re hardly short on money. Or rather, they have no shortage of earning power.

  This creates a distorted economy in the Western Federation, one entirely geared toward serving professionals.

  Even basic food supplies are hard to produce locally.

  Every year, vast amounts of grain are imported through southern and northern routes from the Kingdom of Ika and the Principality of Lumir.

  The Western Federation happens to be the source of several major rivers, so transporting grain by water isn’t difficult.

  Even going upstream isn’t much of a challenge.

  The Federation operates several grain transport fleets, with ships specially modified by extraordinary means to easily sail against the current.

  Just one shipment of extraordinary goods from the Western Regions can be traded for dozens or even hundreds of ships’ worth of grain.

  Hearing all this, Henwell comes up with a rather devious idea, but keeps it to himself for now.

  Back to the Western Federation’s situation, this economic system causes rge poputions to cluster around the city-states.

  The Federation’s nd area is vast—over a million square kilometers, with plenty of unused territory.

  If you buy a noble title, you can pick some remote spot far from the city-states and quietly develop it yourself.

  So why hasn’t anyone cultivated the nd or grown grain?

  Because the means of production are controlled by the upper css.

  Poor people naturally want to farm, but without vilge protection or city-state jobs, survival itself is a struggle.

  And those with the real strength to organize nd all want to live and train in the city-state cores as professionals.

  Farming isn’t easy, especially doing it well. That takes a lot of effort.

  Rather than struggling with agriculture, it’s better to focus on cultivation, gain higher status, and find better opportunities.

  Henwell pns to spend some money to buy an official position for Hubert, making him a lord right here.

  Luckily, Henwell is skilled in developing agriculture and intends to send some agricultural schors ter.

  Before long, they’ll have a decent territory up and running.

  That said, Henwell doesn’t have any grand ambitions for this. He just wants a better way to gather intelligence.

  As for Barnett, Henwell decides to have him tour the various city-states first, then figure out how to proceed.

  Beyond these broad strokes, Henwell also learns some details about Guardian City.

  The reason the Groias Empire contests Guardian City with the Holy Spirit Church is mainly because it houses spatial teleportation arrays leading to the capitals of all the kingdoms.

  This expins how Archbishop Atwood and others managed to precisely appear in the pace square of Silver Peak City.

  The spatial coordinates there have been fixed for over a thousand years.

  When Henwell first saw this kind of teleportation, he was shocked.

  He hadn’t even boiled water (steam engine) yet, and the other side already mastered phase shifting. What kind of game is this?

  But ter, Newwood reassured him that spatial teleportation involves many complexities.

  Large-scale, precise teleportation is incredibly difficult.

  Teleporting a thousand people requires several radiant css spellcasters skilled in spatial magic, and it takes tremendous effort to pull off.

  Plus, there’s always the risk of failure.

  If the teleportation fails, hardly anyone survives, except maybe the spellcasters responsible.

  Even spellcasters on par with Glory Knights suffer significant backsh from the casting.

  More importantly, the extraordinary resources consumed by teleportation make major powers tremble.

  Teleporting a thousand people in separate trips versus all at once consumes vastly different amounts of extraordinary materials.

  As the number of people teleported rises, the required extraordinary resources increase exponentially.

  After learning all this, Henwell finally feels relieved.

  No need to worry about some group suddenly teleporting right into his bed.

  Guardian City doesn’t just host teleportation points to the capitals of various nations.

  It also has the ability to teleport across continents to the Abundant Continent, though the number of people who can be sent each year is very limited.

  Because extraordinary resources are scarce here, the spots for teleportation are fiercely contested.

  Every year, Guardian City can send just over three hundred people to the Abundant Continent.

  The Holy Spirit Church, which controls Guardian City, cims over two hundred of these slots, about two-thirds of the total quota.

  This obviously leaves the Groias Empire’s people stationed here quite disgruntled.

  Each year, intense open and covert struggles break out over these coveted spots.

  The high-ranking members of both sides stationed here don’t want to linger long in this backwater.

  On top of that, they have to send promising talents they discover back to their own factions, which means fighting even harder for more teleportation slots.

  Additionally, Guardian City reserves another fifty special teleportation slots annually.

  These are mainly for sending critical messages or important items back home.

  The Holy Spirit Church controls these as well and enforces strict scrutiny over emergency teleportations requested by the Groias Empire.

  In fact, only about a tenth of these special slots go to the Groias faction, which only adds fuel to the ongoing tensions.