Garling Breaking Out in a Cold Sweat

After the Reverie ended, Mary Geoise did not return to its usual peace.

Between the palaces, the smell of blood had been deliberately masked beneath incense, yet traces still lingered.

The attendants kept their heads lowered as they used cloth soaked in special solution to wipe the corridors the nobles had passed through again and again. Every few steps, CP agents in white uniforms and masks stood like statues, their gazes sweeping every corner through the eyeholes, as if the attackers might regenerate from the cracks in the stone.

This time, as many as thirteen Celestial Dragons had died. Four were killed by the initial high-pressure torrent, while the rest had been taken by poison gas.

It was no longer possible to suppress the news. Fifty kings and their attendants had witnessed the World Nobles' deaths with their own eyes.

The Five Elders could not kill every witness, just as they could not chop off their own limbs to treat a festering sore on their hand.

Power was like a spiderweb; sustaining it required countless supporting points. Killing one or two kings could be explained away as a shipwreck, illness, or pirate attack.

But killing fifty? That would mean the collapse of the entire web. Could a World Government with only a ruling body and no member nations still be called a government?

The World Government's only directly administered territory was the Red Line, but crops could not be grown there. Only the modified region of Mary Geoise could support plant life, yet how could the pampered Celestial Dragons possibly be willing to sacrifice living space just to grow vegetables?

It was the same with resources besides food.

The World Government depended heavily on its member nations for resources and would never dare to completely fall out with them. Otherwise,