# Chapter 2: War Arrives as Promised
Because of Ying's notification, Joshua soon learned of Monster's arrival.
"Strange. He has business with me? But doesn't the Northern Lands already have a teleportation network now? He could use magic to notify me from the Imperial Capital. There's no need to request an audience in person."
Muttering to himself in slight confusion, the warrior didn't dwell on such a trivial matter. He stopped his work and went down to the ground floor reception hall to meet this old acquaintance.
After some polite pleasantries, he received the good news Monster had brought from the Imperial Capital, traveling a thousand miles.
It was a commendation medal from the Imperial Royal Family.
"This is?"
Raising an eyebrow, Joshua curiously picked up this medal bearing the sun emblem, representing the Imperial Royal Family. He glanced sideways at the middle-aged inspector, who looked somewhat weathered and was drinking tea, waiting for his explanation.
"Due to involvement with certain classified matters, we couldn't make a big public display, so the Imperial Royal Family didn't send a special envoy to confer this honor upon you."
But clearly, Monster had misunderstood Joshua's meaning. He set down his teacup and began explaining other matters in detail: "The Northern Lands are too far from the Imperial Capital, and few people know you there. I'm fairly familiar with you, Lord Count, so His Majesty tasked me with inspecting the Empire's northern regions and the Northern Lands, while also having me deliver these to you."
Speaking thus, he looked at the warrior with admiration: "This is the first time I've seen those high-rank mages from the Imperial Royal Mage Association make that kind of expression. It felt like a traveler who'd been without water for a week in the desert seeing an oasis. Lord Count, what exactly did you send them?"
"I was wondering why you didn't teleport here—so you were passing through during your inspection rounds... Send them what? That's not what I'm asking. I'm asking what this medal is."
Repeating his question, and after thinking briefly, Joshua figured out the reason. He stroked his chin and said hesitantly: "Could it be that black dragon mist I sent last time? Speaking of which, I never heard any follow-up about the deep-sea derivatives. But now it seems all the rewards have been combined and sent together."
Last time, he had discovered bottled black mist in the Dragon Nest. Through the system's inspection, it was confirmed to be high-purity Mad Dragon Virus, with a clear Chaos tendency. Any creature infected by it—any creature, not just dragons—would go berserk and gradually transform into a Chaos minion.
Although the transformation success rate was very low, even less than one in a thousand, even just the berserk state was dangerous enough. Joshua knew he didn't have the ability to handle this stuff, so he simply used Brandon's connections to send it to the Imperial Royal Mage Association, letting those mages who were almost always holed up in their laboratories try to find a way to counter it.
Joshua hadn't held much hope initially, since he hadn't heard of anything like a Mad Dragon vaccine in his previous life either. But judging by the reward he'd received now, it seemed they really had succeeded in developing something.
"The original strain of Mad Dragon Plague? So that's it. That explains everything."
Beside him, Monster suddenly understood. Then he began explaining the origin of the badge in Joshua's hand.
"The Imperial Royal Family uses the sun as their emblem. The badge in your hand is called the Dawn Emblem. It's the highest standard honor certification a noble can receive. It represents that you have made an indelible contribution to the entire Empire."
Speaking thus, Monster even saluted the emblem. He said to Joshua with great emotion: "Perhaps you don't know, Lord Joshua, but the item you sent brought great inspiration to the Imperial Royal Mage Association. As far as I know, they've used it to develop a finished potion that can make the various types of ground dragons commonly used by dragon-cart merchant caravans immune to Mad Dragon Plague. For milder cases of berserk transformation, it can even directly reverse it."
So they really had developed a countermeasure. The warrior nodded slightly. This was indeed good news. With this potion that could suppress Mad Dragon Plague, at least there was no need to worry about one's pets or livestock suddenly going berserk and rioting. Especially ground dragons—at this time, airships hadn't been successfully developed yet, and dragon-cart merchant caravans were the main artery of Imperial trade. If the caravans were paralyzed, never mind anything else, where would the Northern Lands import fruits, grain, and other local specialties from?
"Now, the Empire is fully prepared to guard against the Dragon Calamity. We definitely won't end up like the Far South Kingdom, which was caught off guard and lost most of its important coastal port cities."
Monster continued, looking quite excited: "And a few days ago, the Morlai Palace received envoys from the Elves and the Far South Royal Family. They seem to urgently need our potion..."
At this point, the middle-aged inspector suddenly fell silent. He shrugged, indicating this was confidential. But even without Monster saying it, Joshua could guess that the Empire had definitely extracted a heavy price for this. Otherwise, that Imperial Emperor wouldn't have been happy enough to include Joshua in receiving a medal.
No wonder. He had only done a small bit of work—how did he end up with a Dawn Emblem, claimed to be the highest honor? The reason was all here.
After that, there wasn't much more to say. Monster indicated he still needed to inspect the other three territories of the Northern Lands' four territories, and Joshua saw him out of the Lord's Manor, watching until he disappeared around a street corner.
Before leaving, the inspector didn't forget to remind the warrior to remember to attend the celebration banquet in the Imperial Capital at the beginning of April. As a day to celebrate the complete eradication of the Orcs, it might even evolve into an annual festival. Even the two Dukes from the East and West would go to celebrate that day. In fact, basically all the Empire's high-ranking officials would go to the Imperial Capital. If he didn't want to be seen as an unsociable oddball, it would be best to attend.
Joshua naturally wouldn't forget this matter. He definitely needed to go to the Imperial Capital. Recently, the territory had been very peaceful. The Old Dwarf had temporarily returned to Black Steel Town. The improved version of the Mana Armor design had been finalized. He planned to produce about a hundred sets first for the dwarves digging tunnels to try out and see the results.
With no Paladin to spar with and no Old Dwarf to research mana technology with him, Joshua could only idle about, spending his days very leisurely. As for the Dragon Calamity, for it to spread from other places to the Northern Lands, where the Dragon Nest had already been eradicated, would take at least half a year or more. There was no need to consider it at all. Now, besides attending the celebration banquet, he also planned to experience the Imperial Capital's famous Magical Beast auction, buy a few Gold-rank monsters, and incidentally complete the Ultimate Essence trial mission.
As for the Dawn Emblem... Joshua's heart wasn't that of a true noble. He didn't care much about these so-called honors. And even from the system's perspective, this badge only provided bonuses to aspects like prestige and charm, which were irrelevant. For the warrior, since no matter what he did, he couldn't turn his negative twenty charm back into positive numbers, it was quite useless. After thinking it over, he put it in his collection room, letting it accompany the Twin Serpent Ring of Flame and that strange [Shard of Burning Steel].
Returning to the study, Joshua continued handling official business. He had been reading intelligence about the Far South Kingdom's handling of the Dragon Calamity, and naturally continued now.
Because of his previous life's comrade Claire, Joshua paid close attention to intelligence from the Far South. Although in his previous life, the Elves had relied on their Forest Fortress defenses and hadn't suffered too much loss from the Dragon Calamity, that didn't mean they were truly safe. In fact, the warrior knew that quite a few small and medium-sized Elf villages and towns had been breached by mad dragons and slaughtered. Before mad dragon species, humans and Elves were no different.
After confirming that the Wind Song Clan, where the Elf Druids were located, was a large Elf settlement, the warrior felt somewhat reassured. He turned his attention to information about the Far South Kingdom. In his previous life, he had personally participated in it, but now he was observing from a bystander's perspective.
—Era of Falling Stars 833, March 12th. The last coastal city of the Far South Kingdom, Ruhl City, was reduced to ashes by raging flames. Wherever the dragon swarms passed, nothing remained. Countless wild beasts were driven by dragon might, even forming a small wave of beast tide surging northward.
Fortunately, most of the people in the fallen areas had been urgently evacuated and saved their lives. But millions of people were displaced from their homes. The amount of food, shelter, and various supplies they needed was enormous. Even the traditionally wealthy Far South Kingdom found it hard to bear. In several refugee-concentrated cities around the Southern Ridge, due to food shortages, local riots had already broken out. Under the deliberate incitement of certain rioters, this unrest was gradually spreading.
For a nation, compared to the terrifying Dragon Calamity, the turmoil in people's hearts was even more frightening.
And Joshua knew this was only the beginning.
In his previous life, the Dragon Calamity had brought not just war. It had also completely shattered the trust of some lower-class people in the Far South Kingdom's high-ranking officials. With countless people displaced and leaving their homes, the vast majority of those lacking food and clothing wouldn't seriously think about the disaster's cause or understand the Kingdom's difficulties. They would only blindly blame the high-ranking officials for inaction. This also laid the groundwork for later division.
The news of Ruhl City's fall reached the Far South Royal Capital the same day. Fortunately, the Far South Kingdom's army had also finished reorganization. The coalition forces formed by local nobles and the central government had already set out from Bodington Fortress, actively eliminating several flying dragon clusters heading toward the Southern Ridge refugee gathering points. But this couldn't reverse the terrible situation, only barely maintain the defensive line.
On the 13th, traces of several Iron Scale Dragon clusters were discovered in the Silent Forest. These were originally a very docile, omnivorous species of Primordial Realm Dragon, known for their hard scales. But after becoming ferocious, they completely transformed into killing machines, leaving no living thing in their path, even devouring trees. Although they were eliminated by the Elves the next day, they had already caused enormous losses.
On the 15th, the Commercial Alliance, also located in the south, was attacked by dragon swarms. Not expecting the Dragon Calamity to be so large-scale, they suffered considerable losses in the initial stage. Several coastal trading cities were attacked by Sea Sword Dragon clusters, and hundreds of merchant ships sank on routes they had traveled for thousands of years. The Far South Royal Family's envoys also returned from the north.
On the 19th, the first large-scale battle between the Kingdom's coalition forces and the dragon swarms unfolded on the Gramma Plains. Because of the Black Tide, humans had rich experience dealing with this type of large beast. Using fortresses built on the spot and ground dragons that had taken the Mad Dragon Resistance potion as a diversion, the coalition forces eliminated tens of thousands of flying dragons at minimal cost.
On the 22nd, using several large cities in the central region as bases, the Far South Kingdom established an ironclad defensive line, completely separating the fallen areas from the safe zones. The war situation temporarily entered a stable phase. The Kingdom's high-ranking officials began fully eliminating the riot instigators hidden among the refugees.
But those rioters, clearly Chaos believers, had hidden themselves well. This elimination effort returned without results. Seeing this made Joshua frown.
The entire Dragon Calamity could be said to be the conspiracy of Chaos believers. Their purpose was to satisfy the conditions for summoning an Evil God. That's why they had gone to such great lengths, preparing for hundreds of years, even planning to incite refugees to destabilize the rear. In the warrior's view, the Far South Kingdom's cleanup efforts were simply insufficient. They paid too much attention to the giant dragons and not enough to the refugees.
Now it was 833, March 27th. A new round of battle reports hadn't arrived yet, but history was still advancing. Now, not just the Far South, dragon disasters of varying intensity had erupted across the continent. Even the Northern Empire on the other side of the world was like this. Only the Northern Lands, where the Dragon Nest had been eliminated, was still relatively peaceful. Although occasionally crazed beasts and dragon species appeared, there were no large-scale clusters.
But now, it was only the calm before the storm.
Joshua turned around, looking at the huge world map behind him. He focused his gaze on the south.
War had arrived as promised. (To be continued.)