Before Charlotte lay a map.
He was holding a military council, attended by the core members of the West Wind Knight Regiment.
Although the map showed the entire Old Continent, every other region was blank. Only the Black Phoenix Dynasty's territory had been densely marked.
Charlotte was feeling somewhat troubled. How should he fight the next stage of the war?
He had invaded the Black Phoenix Dynasty before and had investigated the distribution of its noble territories, autonomous territories, and directly administered regions in advance. Once the war began, he specifically targeted the weak spots, capturing twenty-eight cities and occupying more than twice the land of Mecklen County.
But from this point on, attacking anywhere would draw reinforcements from noble territories elsewhere. Every battle would likely be a hard fight. That was not Charlotte's usual style. He was hesitating between patiently waiting for the armies of the Four Nations Alliance to launch their attack and taking a few more bites first, weighing the pros and cons without reaching a decision.
The Black Phoenix Dynasty covered more than four times the area of Fars, but most of its territory was worthless desert. Its core lands consisted of only twelve directly administered counties near the sea. Those twelve counties accounted for just one-twentieth of the dynasty's land, yet held more than seventy percent of its population and had the most developed economy.
Besides the directly administered counties, the Black Phoenix Dynasty had 1,106 noble territories and fifty-eight autonomous territories, with no overseas territories or overseas dependencies. The Black Phoenix Dynasty had been founded more recently than Fars and Inglima. When other nations were frantically seizing overseas territories and dependencies, it had not yet risen to power. By the time Black Phoenix unified into a great empire, the Age of Exploration had already