The Golem Mage

The moment the great lord departed, Alec wasted no time heading to the twins’ palace to swiftly claim their lord token.

Meanwhile, the citizens of the cities ruled by the twins had already realized that their lord had either been defeated in battle or they had deserted them.

As this realization took hold, anxiety and fear spread among the populace, although the twins were far from being ideal rulers and were largely disliked by their people, but the citizens had learned how to manage under their reign.

Survival for most meant keeping a low profile to avoid attracting the lords’ attention or suffering their worst impulses.

Yet, when they compared the familiar cruelty of the twins to the terrifying rumors of what they heard about how other lords who conquered another domain treated the captive populations, they couldn’t help but tremble at what their future might hold for them.

Amidst the panic, the remnants of the twins’ army gathered to form a defensive line around their loved ones, clearly ready to protect their families to the very death.

Observing their anxious behavior, Alec decided to address the crowd. Coating his voice with mana to ensure it reaches everywhere and everyone could hear him, he assured them that he had no intention of causing them harm.

He further explained that he did not plan to conquer the twins’ city.

Knowing how difficult survival would be for the citizens without any lords to govern and protect them, he offered to welcome them into his own domain instead.

Initially, many remained deeply skeptical, as they struggled to comprehend why a lord like Alec would go through such extensive trouble to care for people who weren’t even his own subjects. Given the harsh reality of widespread food shortages across the Wilderness region, it was just hard to trust that another lord wanted to take them in instead and increase the burden of food he had to provide, such lords were definitely hard to come by, especially among Wilderness region lords.

Imagining worst-case scenarios of what might await them in his kingdom like being turned into slaves to work for a very long time in oppression, the crowd grew hesitant.

At first, Alec was puzzled by their intense resistance to his offer of protection.

However, as he hovered in mid-air waiting for anyone to accept his proposal, he caught the whispers of a few brave individuals. Listening closely, he finally understood the underlying reason for their profound fear.

He then began another round of explanations that he was a new lord of the wilderness region and had received the blessings of the realm as a ranked lord and that his territory was far from barren.

It didn’t take long for the remaining soldiers, those who hadn’t joined the assault on his region, to piece everything together.

They quickly realized he was the exact rising new lord of the wilderness region who had everyone talking, renowned for his fertile lands and rapidly expanding domain.

Once they uncovered his true identity, persuading them to relocate to his territory became significantly easier.

After all, a domain where citizens were left to manage their own farming and where taxes hadn’t even been established yet sounded like an absolute dream, for those that are already witnessing this rapid development(his current citizens), living under Alec’s rule was an opportunity they desperately wanted to protect, and they would do whatever it took to avoid violating any laws that might result in the banishment of themselves or their families from the cities under his control.

Within about an hour, approximately eighty percent of the residents had decided to follow him. They gathered at the entrance of one of the twin lords’ castles, where Alec was already utilizing the claimed lord token to operate the teleportation nexus.

Alec managed to substitute an origin essence crystal with his own system points, while he was uncertain of the exact mechanism by which his system bypassed firewalls to manipulate another city lord’s Teleportation nexus just like it was able to do his, he suspected it was linked to his possession of the lord token, the ultimate symbol of control for each city.

Operating at a rate of one hundred system points per person, each activation cost him 10,000 system points.

This was due to the twins’ Teleportation nexus being limited to a capacity of only one hundred people per session, unlike his own nexus which could accommodate a thousand.

Nevertheless, he patiently took his time, and once everyone who consented to relocate had been safely transported, he wiped the saved coordinates of his own region from the teleportation Nexus to ensure it could never be exploited as a backdoor to attack his domain.

Although he found himself unable to pinpoint David’s current whereabouts, he briefly toyed with the idea of leaving the coordinates intact as bait to lure him out.

Ultimately, however, he cast the notion aside.

Because to Alec, David was entirely different from his hot-headed brother, Dave who died. David would easily see through such bait, choosing to act on the coordinates only if he was absolutely certain of a victory.

This was a gamble Alec preferred to avoid, regardless of his low opinion of David, he strictly adhered to his personal principles: never underestimate an opponent, always feign weakness, and strike with absolute decisiveness.

These were the operational codes of his clan, the Gordons Clan, invaluable advice passed down by his grandfather that had successfully kept him alive to this day.

He then took flight toward the territories of the other two level-1 city lord domains who had backed the twins in their assault against his domain.

Upon his arrival, however, he realized that someone had already beaten him to it and plundered their lord tokens; it took little effort for Alec to deduce who had disrupted his plans.

Even while fleeing from him, Alec still believes that David was the one who had prioritized stealing the tokens to take them along, if Alec had to venture a guess, David likely stole them to help build up his and Liam’s strength.

With most of the Tudor lords already dead, his only choice now was to build up the strength of the remaining survivors so they wouldn’t lose their foothold in the origin realm.

Since he could no longer return to his territory in the wilderness realm because of the Fear of Alec or simply kill lords from other realms to steal their tokens, his best path was to help Liam grow.

If Liam could one day defeat a lord in his own region, he could allow him to absorb the token and become an independent lord once more. This was exactly why he had taken those level 1 lord tokens as future upgrades.

Although Alec was annoyed that he had been beaten to the punch, he still fully intended to track him down, but currently he believes that would have to wait, however.

He first needed to understand what a Great Lord truly was, and the easiest place to get that answer right now was from his city heart’s AI.