Tania's Recognition
After Tania finished presiding over the advancement of the Great Fairy Minier Hemlock, Landen's repeated urging finally brought her to the Iowa border. The last time she had returned to Night-Kirin, Landen had wanted to invite her over, but unfortunately, she had been too busy then.
Before they set out, Tania did not forget to ask Landen, "How do you plan to operate this ruin in the future? You're not really going to build this place into a neutral city-state, are you?"
Landen said very seriously, "I do indeed want to make it a neutral city-state. Right now, the Human Race and the orcs are in a delicate balance, and I don't particularly want to break that balance."
After making multiple deep trips into Hindukush, Landen had already come to understand the current situation. The orcs were a tribal alliance. The eight tribes of the Royal Court on the Beastmen Plateau had certain ties to the tribes in the border regions, but those ties were not exactly close.
If the Human Race were a unified empire, perhaps it could make use of the conflicts among the orc tribes.
However, the Human Empire's situation was not much better. Within the empire, it was more like a federation; between the kingdoms and the empire, barely a confederation. Core border cities such as Night-Kirin and Dragon Tooth City also had deep central-local rifts with the Imperial Capital.
One could only say that this world's matchmaking mechanism had placed the orcs and the Human Empire in exactly the same predicament at the same time: external confrontation with each other, and internal contradictions piled mountain-high. Rather than saying their confrontation was for expanding living space, it was better to say it was for integrating internal resources and finding an outlet for their conflicts.