"...What a delightful celebration. It almost makes you forget there's a war on at the front."
"I feel like you're being sarcastic, and I don't need proof."
Looking at the girl's inscrutable expression, Lu PingAn, her master, remained quite calm.
He was actually a little surprised—surprised by the city's prosperity. It had every kind of facility found in the Eastern Kingdom, and even goods from the Eight-Clawed and special materials from the Lava Clan. Lu Mouren had even seen cultural products and flesh-based goods from the "insectoids."
The Mingxi Islands had already been confirmed as the capital of the New Kingdom, but their prosperity still exceeded Lu PingAn's expectations. Back when he had been at the shipyards on the outer-ring islands, he had even seen Lava Clan warships and the large insectoids' biological vehicles.
Apparently, fighting while negotiating—and even secretly trading with certain entities on the other side—was standard practice in wars between nations.
Of course, the nominal controllers were not enemy races. Some appeared to be Mixed-bloods, while others were defectors from other races. Perhaps these defectors survived by becoming bridges for trade and communication between both sides.
Intelligence, resources, specialties, and even certain people's lives could become bargaining chips. Both sides suspected them, yet both sides entrusted them with important tasks.
"Isn't the Abyssal Swarm a hive mind? They have defectors too?"
Lu PingAn truly did not know much about that. He had no interest in bugs. More precisely, he had no interest in hive minds, which violated his rules of "trade" from the very beginning.
At his current level, it was also difficult for him to separate such creatures from the hive mind's consciousness. Simply put, he could not make effective use of such materials. Many Beast Tamers who tried to raise insect swarms ended up becoming