The first action Joel took at dawn was as practical as it was inevitable: he needed money. Even before leaving the inn, he already had a clear plan. During the night, he had calmly reviewed the jewelry he had prepared beforehand, and the day before, he had identified every pawnshop, goldsmith's workshop, and merchant willing to buy precious metals. Everything was calculated.

  To avoid arousing suspicion, he acted with restraint. He didn't sell large quantities in one place, but rather traveled the length and breadth of the city, selling small portions of his merchandise in each shop. He never earned more than ten gold coins per establishment.

  Everyone said that a single gold coin was roughly equivalent to an average person's annual salary and could be exchanged for twelve silver coins or twelve hundred copper coins. Too abrupt an influx of wealth would have been enough to attract unwanted attention, awkward questions, or worse.

  Even so, by nightfall, the result was conclusive. Joel had over a hundred gold coins in his pockets. A considerable fortune for any average citizen, obtained without visible effort and without raising any alarms. The merchants, upon learning that Evander Glezos—the name he presented to the world—was engaged in the itinerant trade of metals and valuable goods, were quick to offer him advice with self-serving familiarity. Almost all of them agreed on the same thing: if he traveled with such valuable merchandise, he should hire protection.

  Recommendations for mercenary companies poured in one after another, each presented as more reliable, stronger, or more “honorable” than the last. In the minds of these men, Joel was simply another merchant who bought cheap gold in distant lands to sell it at a high price in Dirmistan, where the demand never seemed to be satiated.

  In a way, they weren't wrong. Joel obtained the gold at a negligible cost: none at all. That silent irony stayed with him as he began to delve deeper into the world of mercenaries. He soon discovered that it wasn't something so simple, but rather a colossal industry, deeply rooted in the political and economic structure of Gaea.

  Like the adventurers' guilds in Myrrial, mercenary companies existed in almost every nation, but their true rise had come after the so-called demonic invasions, the name this world used to remember the incursion of the four empires.

  Since then, the great powers had learned a painful lesson. No nation dared to initiate open wars for supremacy anymore. Regular armies still existed, strong and well-organized, but their mobilization had become a last resort. The fear of provoking a new demon invasion by leaving cities unprotected—however improbable that might now be—served as the perfect excuse to avoid large-scale conflicts. In this vacuum, the need for intermediaries arose: an elegant and convenient way to shift violence away from official channels.

  Thus, mercenary companies became the privatization of war. Some were small, tied to a single nation or city; others, veritable international behemoths capable of tipping the course of conflicts between entire kingdoms. In modern Gaea, it was common to find mercenaries in almost any armed dispute, and there were many cases where both sides were composed exclusively of these companies.

  All this information inevitably led Joel to delve much deeper into the political situation of Dirmistan. It wasn't a difficult task. In a world where entertainment was scarce and news traveled by word of mouth, there was no shortage of people willing to talk at length about history, conflicts, and all sorts of rumors.

  He soon discovered that Dirmistan was a surprisingly young nation. It hadn't even reached its second century of existence, and its origin was directly linked to one of the worst demonic invasions the continent had ever suffered. Before its founding, these lands had been part of an ancient kingdom that was completely devastated during the chaos of the invasion, a kingdom that, in turn, belonged to the powerful Fullgorth Empire.

  For millennia, Fullgorth had been one of the greatest powers on the continent of Ytreses. However, after the defeat of the demons by the combined forces of the continent, the empire did not immediately return to stability.

  On the contrary, the war left the empire weakened, exhausted, and fragmented. The human, economic, and territorial losses were so severe that its central authority was reduced to a historical minimum.

  Added to this was another significant factor: the emperor at that time already had a deplorable reputation even before the invasions. Their constant wars of expansion, for hundreds of years, against virtually all their neighbors, had sown resentment everywhere. So when Fullgorth showed weakness, no one hesitated to seize the opportunity.

  The collapse began in the south. Two great kingdoms, Isisa and Lightlia, declared their independence almost immediately. Both watched closely the devastation wrought by the demons in the north and the pitiful state of the empire's core territories. With the covert support of foreign powers eager to see Fullgorth diminished, they waged a violent and bloody war of secession.

  It was in the midst of this chaos that the unthinkable happened: the small nations that had sprung up from the ruins of the destroyed kingdom in the north seized the opportunity and proclaimed their independence almost simultaneously. Seventeen states, modest in size and individual power, formed an impromptu coalition that called itself the Free States.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Under normal circumstances, Fullgorth would never have tolerated such a challenge. But by then, the empire was concentrating all its resources on maintaining control of the south. It simply lacked the capacity, and the will, to open a new front in the north. Moreover, those rebel nations also had foreign backing, making any direct retaliation even more dangerous.

  Intrigued, Joel tried to understand how such a small group of states had managed to intimidate an empire of such magnitude. The answer kept coming up in their conversations: the Grand Duchy of Vsererezia.

  Vsererezia was a special case in the history of the empire. One of the few northern regions that had escaped the demonic invasion almost unscathed. But its true value did not lie in its territory, but in what it harbored on its shores: the most powerful naval fleet in the north of the empire. No fewer than twenty Dreadnought-class warships, veritable floating fortresses, the pinnacle of naval power in all of Gaea.

  According to accounts, the Duke of Vsererezia executed a daring act of treachery. Taking advantage of the fleet being anchored in port, he seized control by surprise, taking the ships before the empire could react. This action left Fullgorth in immediate jeopardy.

  The threat was clear. If the naval forces of Isisa and Lightlia, to the south, were to coordinate with the captured fleet in the north, the empire would completely lose its dominance of the sea. A scenario that Fullgorth was simply not prepared to face.

  Faced with this reality, the emperor had no choice but to yield, and reluctantly, he recognized the independence of the Free States.

  Thus was born one of the strangest and most fragile alliances in the history of Gaea. Seventeen nations united more by convenience than by affinity, profoundly different in culture, laws, and forms of government, coexisting under a single pact. An unstable equilibrium… but enough to keep them out of the reach of a wounded empire.

  Within the seventeen Free States coexisted a surprising variety of systems of government, so disparate that it was almost a miracle the alliance still stood. Five of those nations were still ruled by absolutist duchies, where power rested unequivocally in a single ruling house. Seven more were administered by councils, structures where the balance of influence was fragile and constantly contested. Two had devolved into oligarchies controlled by powerful merchant families, for whom gold outweighed any written law.

  There were also singular cases: one nation ruled alternately by two powerful families, who took turns in power according to a strict pact. Another, deeply influenced by demihuman culture, had adopted a brutally simple system: only the strongest could rule, and leadership was decided through open challenges. Finally, there was one state that, according to accounts, had embraced a primitive form of democracy, where citizens elected their rulers and members of the representative council. A political experiment that many observed with curiosity… and others with open contempt.

  Dirmistan belonged to the group of nations governed by a council. In their case, this council was composed of the governors of each province, positions that, in practice, were usually monopolized by a handful of influential families. Every two years, the council members elected a national leader, a figure with broad political and military powers, even capable of vetoing the council's own resolutions. In Joel's eyes, this system resembled a kind of democracy: the structure was there, but real power remained concentrated in lineages that were rarely held accountable.

  The story of the Free States deeply fascinated Joel, though it also stirred in him an immediate sense of unease. Such a heterogeneous alliance, forged more out of necessity than affinity, could hardly remain stable in the long run. And indeed, internal tensions were evident, especially for Dirmistan, which had been facing the constant hostility of one of its neighbors—the Duchy of Migozyria—for over a decade.

  For many, it was no longer a secret that Migozyria was being influenced—if not directly manipulated—by the Fullgorth Empire. At least a significant portion of the duchy, particularly its southern and eastern provinces, seemed to be acting in foreign interests. This influence had led to numerous border skirmishes, small conflicts that never escalated into open warfare, but which slowly drained the resources and stability of both nations.

  The Free States had strict rules regarding conflicts between its members. An open confrontation between states could trigger the direct intervention of the alliance's central authorities, a considerable military force collectively funded by the seventeen nations. However, this protection had a dangerous loophole: the rules did not apply to interprovincial conflicts.

  Some nobles—who were seriously suspected of collaborating with Fullgorth—had learned to exploit this weakness. Under the guise of internal disputes, local revolts, or administrative conflicts, they had launched veritable campaigns to destabilize and seize control of neighboring provinces, always under the pretext of maintaining order or restoring stability.

  On the surface, the borders remained intact, and the maps didn't change. But in practice, something far more insidious was happening. Loyalties were eroding from within, and many feared that these maneuvers were merely the seeds of an eventual return to imperial rule.

  Rumors circulated that Migozyria had already lost almost a third of its trusted governors, replaced by figures of dubious loyalty. Dirmistan, for its part, had reportedly lost effective control of at least four southern provinces. It could already be considered a given, but no one wanted to admit it, especially the Duke of Migozyria, a man who didn't want to show weakness to the rest of the world and refused to ask for help, even though he was practically facing a civil war in his domains.

  Under these circumstances, one would think that the central authorities would have already intervened decisively. However, the reality was much more complex. Considerably more serious problems were developing in the south, where for years there had been constant military maneuvers, massive troop concentrations, and strategic movements that almost completely absorbed the political and military attention of the Free States.

  It was an open secret that the Fullgorth Empire had recovered a significant portion of its lost power. Its reconstruction had been slow but steady, and now its armies marched with discipline once more, boasting a considerable number of high-level warriors, and its influence was beginning to be felt again on the borders. For many, there was no longer any doubt: the empire was preparing the ground to reclaim the territories it had lost after the daemonic invasions.

  In this context, the internal tensions between northern provinces seemed, at least from a distance, like minor conflicts. More than one analyst, and quite a few governors, maintained that the unrest in Dirmistan and Migozyria was nothing more than a carefully orchestrated diversionary tactic, designed to weaken the Free States from within, while Fullgorth concentrated its forces in the south. An open war between member nations would have been unacceptable, but the ambiguous and difficult-to-classify provincial clashes provided the perfect breeding ground for eroding loyalties without provoking a direct response.

  Caught between this external pressure and the internal fragility of its political system, Dirmistan had been forced to rely with increasing frequency on mercenary companies. These companies contained skirmishes in the border provinces, quelled localized uprisings, and served as a deterrent force where the regular army simply could not intervene.

  News of new clashes had become routine. Each week brought rumors of minor skirmishes, evacuated villages, attacked caravans, or governors accusing each other of treason. Nothing large enough to spark open warfare, but constant enough to make it clear that the region was treading on dangerously unstable ground.

  For Joel, it was obvious that this wasn't a passing crisis, but the prelude to something bigger. A conflict that hadn't yet erupted, but whose shadow already loomed over all of Dirmistan… and, by extension, over his own future in that world.