After the war, Joy Boy was overjoyed. Believing he had upheld justice and purged evil, he was in excellent spirits.
He never noticed how his ranks had changed. As always, he gathered every member of the Knights and held a lavish victory feast.
Everyone exchanged toasts, ate and drank their fill, and celebrated their victory with songs and laughter. The atmosphere was electric.
Light and shadow shifted across the Sky Screen as the scenes rapidly changed.
The bloody battle against the nobles seemed to have ended, but it had actually ignited the flames of chaos throughout the Ancient World, never to be extinguished again.
The single, unbroken continent of ancient times was not made up of scattered tribes. It was unified beneath the Great Kingdom, whose vast territory encompassed the entire land.
Those hereditary nobles all belonged to the Great Kingdom's ruling hierarchy. They were the roots and branches that sustained royal authority.
News that the region's most powerful nobles had been publicly executed, their forces uprooted, and their main city stormed and devastated reached the Royal Capital like a thunderclap!
When the king of the Great Kingdom learned the full story, he flew into a rage!
In his eyes, the Holy Knights had defied royal authority, killed nobles without authorization, stormed cities, and disrupted order. They were nothing but rebels and traitors!
If he allowed them to act with impunity and challenge royal authority, the Great Kingdom's entire ruling system would eventually collapse!
The king acted decisively and issued a worldwide wanted notice!
He mobilized the nation's elite warriors and regular armies to crush the Holy Knights with everything they had!
That was not all. To destroy the Knights' reputation for justice and claim the moral high ground over their enemies, the Great Kingdom began spreading slander without restraint.