"Bang! The Madrid Empire has committed countless evils; this is a truly satisfying end! Hahaha..."
"Stop laughing. Do you think you'll have a good ending? With the start of the war, money will be burning through truckloads every day. It won't be long before taxes increase, and we might even be forcibly conscripted to the battlefield!"
"You spineless piece of trash, you're too cowardly to go to the battlefield but you're spouting these depressing words, you deserve to die!"
"..."
The noise downstairs in the pub made the wealthy people drinking coffee upstairs frown.
However, no one dared to speak, simply because sitting in this coffee shop was a pale body that resembled a god.
No one else can be agitated until it is agitated.
Norton sat behind a table covered with a brand-new white cloth, sipping his coffee, which had been laced with blood, like a leisurely rich man.
Although he is no longer affected by Kuba and no longer needs blood to survive, as is characteristic of Vampire, the richness of their blood is still unmatched by other foods.
This is a seasoning that you'll never get tired of.
Norton sipped his coffee, gazing at the chaotic streets below, exuding an air of detached detachment from worldly affairs.
In fact, he can now truly be called a living god. After a thousand years of change, it is normal for him to have this sense of detachment from the mundane world.
But today, Norton's sense of detachment has dissipated.
" Miles XIII conquered most of the Madrid Empire, yet to this day he still hasn't implemented the policy of 'Pale God,' even choosing to turn a blind eye to the Holy Lord Church within the Madrid Empire, seemingly wanting to let it develop unchecked... Sure enough, here we go again? The familiar taste!"
Norton downed his coffee in one gulp, yet the Pressure in his mind gave him a clear understanding of the current state of the Madrid Empire.
Having enjoyed such good fortune for so long, Norton almost began to believe he had truly become the God of the Southern Continent.
Now Miles XIII's reaction is more interesting than we thought!
Backstabbing!
Norton suppressed his own desires and did not try to discern Miles XIII's current thoughts.
Things are different now. Norton is like God now, enjoying being betrayed.
In order for their backstabbing to be truly effective, he had to force himself not to know about the backstabbings he should have known, so as not to see everything and know all their arrangements before they even betrayed him.
"In the past, God was stabbed in the back by Kuba and hung in the sky, probably thinking the same way I do now... What cannot kill us is of no use to us; only what can kill us has a chance of advancement!"
This Existence Level is a real freak!
Norton was deeply moved, and he increasingly understood why God had been betrayed in the first place.
Now, apart from God's intervention, his consciousness in this realm is almost immortal. Except for the fact that his Existence Level has not yet reached the level of God, everything else about him is almost exactly the same as God's; he can survive even if his physical body is destroyed.
Therefore, their advanced explorations can only be exactly the same.
Perhaps God knew that He Existence Level, which is why He created Kuba, who was of the same Existence Level, to see if Bowser could bring Him any surprises.
Unexpectedly, the backstabbing did occur, but the surprise was nowhere to be found.
Now, Norton might just be the surprise God has been observing.
But who will Norton visit?
He couldn't create someone of equal Existence Level to him, and given the nature of Kuba, he didn't see the point in creating someone of equal Existence Level to him. The only hope he could have was for the ultimate tradition of the Southern Continent: backstabbing.
Therefore, Norton craved being betrayed, anticipated being betrayed, and even blinded himself to the possibility of being betrayed!
But that alone is not enough.
"If the world doesn't see the ugliness of me, Norton, who will focus on backstabbing me?" A somewhat eerie smile appeared on Norton's refined face.
War has indeed broken out.
The inventions and creations gathered by the Pale God Norton in the past were not given much attention, but during the war, they were all put to use.
The Norton sewing machine, the Norton new steam engine, and various other machines bearing the Norton name were highly valued by the Aodelan Empire.
Miles XIII even allocated special funds from the national budget to massively improve manufacturing and increase logistical capacity.
With the outbreak of war, all production began to surge to unprecedented levels. In the past, the poor people of the Southern Continent who could only beg for food were now mostly able to obtain a job that was once considered a dead-end job, in order to increase the logistical production of the Aodelan Empire.
The application of new machines, the increase in the number of workers, and the demand for all inventions and creations during wartime all propelled the real process of industrialization.
Just as Europe's industrialization process unfolded amidst revolutions and wars, the wars in the Southern Continent are now effectively promoting technological progress and development.
As a newly established empire, the Aodelan Empire still possessed a relatively solid foundation.
The war has just begun, and people's lives haven't changed much. The only problem is the economic sanctions between countries, which have caused some goods to increase or decrease in price.
But this is just the beginning.
The situation in the various countries remained calm for less than six months after the partition of the Madrid Empire.
The Aodelan Empire then sent ships out to sea again under the pretext of transporting holy water, thus creating conflict with the Holy Boya Empire.
As expected, this action resulted in the ship being attacked again and the holy water being dumped once more.
Just when everyone thought the outcome would be the same as before, with the Aodelan Empire taking the opportunity to intercept and kill the merchant caravan of the Holy Boya Empire.
As a result, during the war against the Madrid Empire, the Aodelan Empire, having witnessed the power of blitzkrieg, did not play by the rules as usual.
In the spring of Holy 1574, the Aodelan Empire, which had long been plotting invasion, launched a surprise attack, mobilizing a massive army of three million men, divided into three directions, and once again launching a blitzkrieg-style attack under the cover of night.
By the time the Holy Boya Empire's royal family received the message, the Aodelan Empire had already advanced sixty kilometers, fully invading the Holy Boya Empire's territory.
This action completely ignited the entire Southern Continent.
In the summer of 1574, the Holy Noah Empire formally declared war on the Aodelan Empire under the pretext of the " Wartime Mutual Assistance Treaty "!
Just one month later, the Aidebao Empire and the Kaimen Empire also joined the war, citing an alliance treaty.
The two major military blocs each deployed a million troops and threw them into the battlefield.
The so-called Pale God or holy water have all been cast aside by various countries.
Years of accumulated hatred, mixed with a frenzy for profit, caused this war to escalate into a full-scale, all-out conflict from the very beginning, with mutual attacks creating an atmosphere of extreme terror.
A single battle involves a dozen divisions and hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and a single battle can deplete the resources of an entire small country in the Southern Continent.
A war of this magnitude and scale is comparable to the wars instigated by Norton in the mythical era a thousand years ago.