Within minutes of the group's arrival in the capital, Vicente and his companions were in the royal throne hall, together with the city's leading figures who had stayed behind.",

With Vicente having exterminated the enemies around Grandis and healed the wounded men of the royal forces, they could all take a few hours to refresh themselves before worrying again about the dangers around the city.

"Congratulations on your advancement to the 5th stage, Vicente. You've achieved fantastic powers while traveling," King Seidel said as his men looked at Vicente with a gleam in their eyes.

"You've also developed a fantastic team... It's just a shame you didn't return sooner. But, fortunately, you're here now."

"I'm sorry about that. We wanted to return as soon as possible, but we got involved with the defense of the states in the central region of the continent to contain the arrival of stronger and more many monsters to the south."

"Oh? Were you successful?" The king asked.

"Yes." Vicente nodded positively, looking at the king and the remaining Sovereigns in the area. "But how is the kingdom? I've noticed that the situation in the city doesn't look good."

"Indeed, it isn't. Of the whole Diamond Province, Grandis was the only city that withstood the calamity brought by the monsters in recent weeks. We moved part of the population before the worst happened, but we lost many cities, mines, plantations and hundreds of thousands of inhabitants.

The safest places in the kingdom are currently in Snow Province and Scott Province. Because of such areas' train network, which is more developed in these areas, we have contained part of the advance of the monsters and save the kingdom's magicians. But the monster attacks against our state have been brutal.

It's as if they want to exterminate us!

Sigh! They've even destroyed the railway line connecting the capital to the rest of the train network. Unless we get to Snow Province, we won't be able to use their trains to travel, Vicente. That's why we're still in the capital, even though we're practically surrounded by monsters."

The group listened seriously to the King's words, noting how brutal the monster attacks had been in destroying Vicente's railway line, which could withstand attacks from 4th stage creatures. For something like that to have been partly destroyed, then many monsters, powerful monsters, had to have acted against that infrastructure.

"How were my rail lines and Metal City before the worst started?" Vicente asked, interested to know how well his plans had developed during his absence.

This was important for him to know, as it could help the kingdom recover, speed up contact between isolated cities, transport food and crop resources, etc.

The king understood the importance of the railway and said. "We've developed a lot, but without your help, these kilometers of railway wouldn't have the same level of protection as your network. Over 600 kilometers of track has been built in those two years, with 30 new trains and 20 new stations.

The railway was developed mainly in Snow Province. Here in Diamond Province, things weren't going badly, but I have to say that we've lost almost everything we've done.

The situation in Snow Province is better, although they too have had their losses so far.

As for the Metal City, it had reached 450,000 inhabitants before the calamity hit the kingdom for real. Today, it must be the largest and safest city in the entire Seidel Kingdom. If it weren't for our inability to travel there, your city would already be the kingdom's capital by now."

"I see..." Vicente closed his eyes, seeing that his plans had gone right and wrong at the same time.

Fortunately, the most important thing hadn't gone wrong and there was still something to repair.

He looked at the king and those Sovereigns and said. "Well, I have some important things to tell you. From now on, don't trust the Congregation of Revelations anymore. We have several suspicions regarding the guilt of this group in various events that encouraged The Purification. Not only that, we were personally attacked by a high level member of this group before we discovered some disturbing information..."

Vicente told what he knew about that group's secrets, making the entire core of the royal family worry about the actual position of the continent's former largest organization.

They thought that the Congregation of Revelations was the greatest hope for changing the continent, but if this was a corrupted force, as Vicente told them, who else could they trust in the fight against the monsters?

"Sigh! It's a shame to hear such things. But I don't think you need to worry about the Congregation of Revelations. With the fall of its leaders, this force cannot maintain its former size.

Yet, that's not so good for us. Now that many of the organization's leaders have fallen to the vampires, we have a lot of young people unable to go through the awakening."

Vicente looked at the king and assured him that this wouldn't be a problem in the future. "Don't worry, my companions and I will do the awakening of the kingdom's young people from now on. We just need a few weeks to put the kingdom in order and then we can start awakening the powers of the youngest.

But beyond that, the current state needs to leave some of its old enemies behind. Now we need Dark Path magicians more than ever. People like that shouldn't be attacked or repelled.

Apart from that, I hope I can count on your cooperation to get this state back on its feet. The ideal would be to have the capital move to my Metal City, but we have to keep Grandis standing. There are valuable resources in the province that cannot be abandoned if we want to recover the state and then counterattack the monsters."

The king's men agreed on this, not questioning Vicente's position on Dark Path magicians.

With that said, they soon dealt with a few more matters, until Vicente's group split up, with Rory, Sarah, Casey, Onyx and the woman from the 5th stage Dark Path leaving for the Metal City.

When Layla and Lina left to revisit their acquaintances in Grandis, the king's men left him, Vicente, and Lauren alone.

"Vicente, can we talk just the two of us for a minute?" The king looked at Lauren meaningfully.