Ⅰ
Arthur would never complain about becoming too powerful or his influence growing too vast.
If he could, Arthur would have liked to keep expanding without limit.
Unfortunately, that was impossible.
Because-
Resources were limited!
Take the newly upgraded [Devoted Blood], for instance. Having reached the level of "Above Epic," it ranked among the best items Arthur possessed.
Even so, the Blood Slaves, Blood Fighters, Blood Warriors, and Blood Brides it could create numbered only 143 in total.
Had this been the Silver Age, an era that prized cavalry charges, Arthur could already have shouted that he finally had "the strength to protect himself."
After all, even the wealthiest region, the Inner Bay, had been unable to field ten thousand heavy cavalry in the Silver Age.
In fact, at the height of the Inner Bay's prosperity during the Silver Age, three thousand heavy cavalry had been its limit.
Arthur suspected even that figure had been inflated.
But even if it had been accurate, so what?
If 143 practitioners of the Mystical Side shamelessly resorted to ambushes and assassinations, they could leave three thousand heavy cavalry helpless. Even if the enemy had high-ranking practitioners, his side had them too.
Thus, anyone faced with the troublesome Blood Clan would have had a terrible headache. That had been the pride of the family to which the Blood Marquis once belonged.
Unfortunately, as the times advanced, methods of production evolved, and the rise of gunpowder shattered a certain balance.
A single musket was enough to make an ordinary practitioner of the Mystical Side break into a cold sweat.
Armies, meanwhile, had long abandoned the strategy of charging with heavy cavalry.
Ranks of muskets were now the norm.
And those ranks of muskets left most practitioners of the Mystical Side helpless.
Unless high-ranking practitioners intervened-but