Civil Servant, but an Elf

[Note: Thanks for the reminder. I reviewed the Peerless Tang Sect manga, and Cai Toutou's gear definitely doesn't count as the mecha seen in Legend of the Dragon King; it's more accurately classified as power armor.]

By the time Rus Wang and Ximing successfully flew to the Dragon Valley Continent, a full month had passed since the meeting between the Giant Mountain Golden Ape and the Turquoise Dragon.

"This journey was truly arduous. It was only a few thousand kilometers, but it felt like wandering through a labyrinth, as if I were just spinning in circles. Yanjin had to carry me while also bearing the brunt of all those obstacles; it's a miracle he didn't just eat me."

Ximing looked back at the path they had traveled with lingering fear.

Among dragonkind, at least those under the hundred-thousand-year threshold, cannibalism was a reality. Given that Ximing and Yanjin were different species of dragons, one could see just how formidable Yanjin's willpower had been at the time.

"Alright, Ximing, with me here, you don't need to worry about such things. Just rest easy."

Rus Wang took out his self-made soul-guided drone and tablet, comforting Ximing as he rested. Today, Rus Wang chose to let Ximing recuperate for the day while he took charge of the night watch.

Once tomorrow dawned and Ximing had finished resting, he would use the Seer Elf stamina recovery mechanism to take a short nap and restore his own state.

"Then I'll leave it to you, Rus."

"Mm."

Ximing lay down beside Rus Wang, his heavy eyelids no longer resisting the pull of exhaustion. They slammed shut, and within minutes, Ximing began to snore.

Under the night sky, two dragons rested side by side.

"Achoo!"

Thalassa couldn't help but sneeze, the force of it nearly scattering all the annual summary documents the elven civil servants had placed on the table.

"My apologies, I lost my composure, Elena."

Looking at the annual summary reports scattered across the throne room, Thalassa felt embarrassed and joined Elena in using soul power to gather all the documents back up.

As an Elf Kingdom with a monarch-offline system, the Prime Minister here was not produced through party elections, but voted in from high-level civil servants screened by examinations. They were essentially high-profile career bureaucrats, which made them extremely professional.

Furthermore, after Osuen suggested changing the Prime Minister's term from six years to eight, it allowed for more stable policy continuity. Previously, a Prime Minister would spend one year designing new policies, one year testing them in pilot regions, one year summarizing and correcting flaws, two years for full implementation, and the final year entirely devoted to campaigning for re-election.

However, while selecting a Prime Minister from civil servants ensured high professionalism, it also brought about some of the unique "slacking" habits typical of bureaucrats. For instance, the Permanent Secretariat, composed of the Prime Minister, several executives, and the Chief Justice, was specifically designed to interface with the frequently offline Rus Wang and the Queen, Thalassa, who only helped Rus review annual summary reports once every dozen years or so.

Simply put, the members of this Permanent Secretariat would categorize the annual reports submitted from below and provide Rus Wang and Queen Thalassa with professional options to help them approve, read, and understand the overall development of the kingdom.

"Oh, this is a disaster. The annual reports that the secretaries had already systematically planned out are all in a mess. Elena, have them re-categorize these."

Thalassa looked at the jumbled pile of reports from the Ministry of Railways, Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Education, and Ministry of Defense. She felt a headache coming on, so she simply asked Elena to send them back to the Prime Minister's office to be sorted out again.

"Understood, Aunt Thalassa."

Soon, the Permanent Secretariat reorganized the mixed-up annual summary reports and brought them back to Thalassa. Thalassa finished reading the materials, which would have normally taken hours, very quickly. This was because the secretaries had thoughtfully attached a brief summary to each re-categorized report, extracting the core points and offering professional solutions.

Thalassa basically only needed to read the first page to understand the entire content of the annual summary report in her hands. She didn't operate like Rus Wang, who would hold onto reports for days while simultaneously having the elves of the Grey Feather Division cross-reference the real-world status of various projects against the civil servants' reports to see how much was actually true.

Thalassa, on the other hand, didn't overthink it; she simply stamped "Approved" on the reports sorted by the secretarial staff and called it a day.

"Work finished. Come on, Liana, let's go play mahjong."

In just one day, Thalassa completed the annual summary reports that would have taken Rus Wang a week or two to review. Fortunately, the Grand Mentor of the Grey Feather Division, the strongest member of the organization, was also a member of the Permanent Secretariat. Even with Thalassa acting this way, the Prime Minister and the Chief Justice didn't dare to falsify the reports too much in front of that individual.

But since the King and Queen of the Elf Kingdom were both dragons, didn't the elven soul masters and officials below have any complaints?

Actually, they really didn't. After the older generation of elves passed away with the flow of time, logically, the ruling power brought by Rus Wang's initial protection of the elves should have declined significantly. However, ever since the elves experienced a soul master riot of their own making, they had gained a sufficient understanding of having dragons as their King and Queen.

That is, Rus Wang was indeed an alien and spiritual leader with real power who could manage the country, not just a mascot. But this King didn't really manage the affairs of the elven race, leaving everything to the elven officials to handle themselves; he was a King who only listened to the annual reports they wrote.

After all, that nationwide riot had lasted for nearly a year. If the soul masters of the Grey Feather Division hadn't run into the Nanshan Rainforest to tell Rus Wang just how incompetent the Prime Minister of that term was, he really would have waited until the annual summary to hear the report at the Temple Mountain in Ravenna. The inclusion of the Grand Mentor of the Grey Feather Division into the Permanent Secretariat was a regulation born from that painful lesson.

The idea that anything not working for the elves was the fault of the bureaucrats, and not the King's, had become common knowledge even among elven children.

Additionally, with hundred-thousand-year soul beasts transforming into human form and coming to live in elven cities, and the popularization of spiritual contracts between soul beasts and elves, the elves had gained a comprehensive understanding of soul beasts.

Low-level soul beasts were not much different from wild animals like the Allosaurus (a top predator of the Jurassic period and a species of the Folded Ear Continent that the elves frequently fought during their tribal era, and still do today). They had certain emotions and thoughts but required spiritual contracts to barely communicate. High-level soul beasts, however, were completely distinct from wild animals; their brains truly grew over time, and communication in the spiritual world became more like a dialogue between elves as their cultivation level increased.

But there is no harm without comparison.

The elves expressed that, compared to ordinary soul beasts, they preferred to form spiritual contracts with the King's own bloodline descendants.

When Rus Wang's children were only at the ten-year cultivation level, they could already speak fluent Elvish (Chinese) and their intelligence would slowly grow like that of an ordinary elven child. After thirty-some years, they were no different from a physically mature elf, save for their physiology. In contrast, ordinary ten-year or hundred-year soul beasts, and even some thousand-year soul beasts, were no different from household pets in their thinking and behavior.