"Peter, you haven't heard of Storm City either?"
"Young Master, I truly haven't. However, our Sacred Alliance has dozens of principalities, large and small. Some smaller principalities are even vassals of other principalities, at most comparable to a count within our Empire. It's genuinely difficult to remember a city within one of them, especially since such small principalities are generally located on the Alliance's remote fringes, where the roads may be extremely inaccessible."
"Mm, that is indeed possible. No wonder I felt Nalant didn't know much about certain matters concerning the Alliance this afternoon. He really might come from some remote little principality!" Roel nodded, finding his knight captain's reasoning very sound.
After traveling for an entire afternoon, Roel had also learned a little about Nalant, such as the fact that he was unfamiliar with many things on the continent.
Of course, Roel did not find this especially strange. Sacred Continent was vast, and many small principalities were scattered throughout it. Though they were also principalities of the Alliance, they were in fact merely the surviving nobles of certain small principalities who had fled to hidden or remote places while escaping the Dark Creatures.
Later, after the Dark Creature invasion had been repelled and the situation on the continent stabilized, they gradually began making contact with the outside world and joined the Alliance.
Moreover, because the Dark Creature invasion had drastically reduced the human population, the six great empires of the Sacred Alliance forcefully suppressed all internal wars, especially large-scale ones.
Thus, although these later-discovered small principalities might be forced into becoming vassals of certain other small principalities, they would not be wiped out.
In this way, they became kingdoms unto themselves in those remote corners, and could still be said to have "a place" in the Sacred Alliance.
Of