"Yes. Later, she truly did pledge herself to you, but her senior colleagues had other plans for you as well." Landen produced another bottle of Magic Potion. "This is the potion they gave you, right? Some of the compounds in it can dull your thoughts and deaden your senses. They tested several of them on Count Kempins."
Durosong couldn't accept these revelations all at once. He stared at Landen, and after a long silence, finally said, "No way. You must be lying to me..."
"I've become a Duke. Why would I lie to a Prince who's been stripped of every title? Do I have that much free time?"
"Then why are you telling me this?" Durosong was completely dumbfounded. In just the past few minutes, his inventions and his men had all been exposed for what they really were by the fellow countryman standing before him. "Is it just so I'll die knowing the truth?"
"Of course not!" Landen picked up the gun from the ground. "This gun is useless here, but the industrial system behind it is valuable to me. I can provide you with people and money. The two of us can write down all the physics, chemistry, and other knowledge we can still remember, and you can put it to use in industrial production."
"Didn't you say this world had invested in the magic tree and had no resources left to invest in the technology tree?" Durosong asked, bewildered.
"That's right, which is why I don't need to follow the techniques from back home step by step. I can use the magic tree we already have to build production routes for the important intermediate products."
"Have you not already become a High-Rank Mage and an Imperial Duke? What are you after?" Durosong truly didn't understand. If he