"Did he—rebel?"
Isaac looked at the intelligence in his hand and blinked in confusion. His big brother had rebelled just like that? So suddenly?
So decisive?
But after reading it carefully, Isaac understood. Solomon had been forced to rebel.
Because Solomon was a border noble, more than half of his territory had been reclaimed from the Endless Wilderness. Naturally, most of his neighbors were also frontier reclamation nobles, with only a few being old-established nobles who had inherited their lands from their ancestors.
Most of them were minor nobles such as viscounts and barons. Solomon had originally been at that level as well, but he had now risen in rank. There were three counts in this region in total. Besides him, one was also a frontier reclamation noble, while the other was an old-established noble. Like Solomon, they had both chosen independence.
Since they had declared independence, Solomon naturally had to do the same. Otherwise, he would have become an imperial enclave, forced to face the joint assault of two kingdoms and the wilderness monsters alone.
Interestingly, the reasons those two counts had chosen independence were similar to Solomon's—there was also a duchy between their territories and the empire, and it was one with extremely poor relations with the royal family, the kind almost certain to declare independence.
Thus, they too could only choose independence. At the same time, the three kingdoms had tentatively formed a simple defensive alliance.
Looking at the overall situation, after excluding the territories controlled by the two dukes, Isaac realized that the empire only had one-third of its northern lands left—
And half of that was another duchy—
The Terra Empire—
Was finished.
From now on, it would probably be renamed the Terra Kingdom.
Aside from the Terra Kingdom, the other empires had not changed