The First Magic World War

Charles did not appear, but the new maritime route did, causing Juno to worry about his student—of course, he would not rashly embark on the new route, patiently waiting for several days.

On this day, just as Juno had awakened from his meditation, he sensed the presence of Isemeren. This Evil God descended from the sky, met Juno, and handed him a letter. Charles, concerned that the Evil God might miscommunicate, dared not let Him relay the message verbally, instead, he recounted his experiences in the letter.

After reading the letter, Juno was truly stunned; he laughed and handed all the ghost ships over to Isemeren. After leading the Ghost Fleet, Juno Arthur did not continue to wait for Charles's return but, with a face full of excitement, commanded the Holy Light Divine State Title and Emilia Vessel to enter the new maritime route.

Charles chose Lasaro Cardenas Port for unavoidable reasons; he had already dispatched Isemeren to summon the Ghost Fleet, but the entire region of Mosuri lacked a suitable port, and ghost ships also required a port to dock.

The Black Columbian region has two major ports, and Lasaro Cardenas Port is the closest to Mosuri.

Charles brought seven to eight hundred men, marching to the outer walls of Lasaro Cardenas Port City, where he had his Labyrinth Guardians erect a large flag. This flag was quite crude, merely a few thin tree trunks fastened together, with a piece of white cloth hanging from them, clearly secured at both top and bottom ends to ensure visibility from within the city.

The flag bore the message in both Fals and Inglima languages: "Surrender and live, resist and perish!"

In the New Continent, the currency circulated includes the Inglima Gold Pound, Shilling, and Penny, as well as the Fars Aegeus, Fore, and centime. The languages mainly spoken are the Inglima Language and the Fars Language, the former being even more widely understood than the currency, with over sixty percent of the New Continent's population being fluent in it.

These two sentences were concise and unequivocal.

This bilingual flag was understandable to ninety percent of the residents of Lasaro Cardenas Port.

Due to this flag, the city's residents fell into extreme panic, with some even refusing to follow the orders of the city's commander, General Duma, rejecting the call to defend the city walls.

The New Continent is full of immigrants, with Evil Gods being the primary enemy, not humans. The social structure is also distinctly different from that of the Old Continent.

In times of danger, cities on the New Continent were fundamentally unable to help each other. After all, facing the attacks of Evil Gods, any number of humans would merely be marching to their deaths, making it impossible for a proper country to establish itself, apart from a few overseas territories of Old Continent empires, which were either autonomous city-states or federations of city-states.

Faced with an irresistible enemy, the cities of the New Continent prefer surrender over fighting to the death, prioritizing family, loved ones, and their own lives.

Although General Duma was not exactly a seasoned military strategist and had not led troops in battle since taking command of this port city, Black Columbian region spanning two seas with thriving trade and very few wars, he also possessed some basic sense. Charles, with just seven to eight hundred poorly equipped men, could never take a fortress city like Lasaro Cardenas Port! However, his repeated rallying led to the residents being terrified by the flag's message "Surrender and live, resist and perish!", and they generally harbored aversions to war. In their minds, whether Duma ruled as the city's lord or they came under the rule of those outside the city, it hardly made any difference.

With no other choice, General Duma had to convene a temporary city council. In most cities on the New Continent, the highest authority was the city council, unlike in the Old Continent where it was typically the Royal Family.

As Charles raised the flag and had his Labyrinth Guardians shout loudly, he began to feel somewhat listless.

After all, he had never imagined that merely by raising such a flag, he could make the enemy surrender!

Such a battle, since Charles had crossed over, had never been fought before.

After all, the enemy surrendered at the sight of their opposition; they truly needed a general with an air of regal dominance.

He simply lacked it.

Charles secretly considered, "Should I feign an attack to see how the residents of Lasaro Cardenas Port would react?"

"But I only have seven or eight hundred capable fighters under my command, what if the feigned attack results in too great a loss?"

"Although transcendent forces decide the outcome, ordinary soldiers are also of great importance and should not be recklessly squandered..."

Charles remembered how the eighteen candidates for the Evil God devastated the population of Mosuri in their struggle for victory, and he felt pained; those people should not have died in vain.

Just as Charles was about to continue the pretense a little longer before withdrawing, thinking of another way to attack Lasaro Cardenas Port, he saw the city gate suddenly open, and a team walked out calmly, even carrying a white flag.

Although both sides raised a white flag, their meanings were completely different.

Charles still hesitated for a moment before commanding his army to move forward. When General Duma saw Charles, he said, "Lasaro Cardenas Port hopes for peace, we are willing to surrender, but please also promise that you will not harm any residents."

Charles readily agreed, first ordering all of Duma and the city council members who came out to surrender to be bound, and only then did he lead his troops into the port city.

He truly hadn't expected that just by approaching the city, Lasaro Cardenas Port would surrender without a fight.

Although Charles still found it somewhat unbelievable—how could it be so easy to take a city?—he did not hesitate. Upon entering the port city, he first disbanded the City Defense Force and the city council, the original administrative bodies of Lasaro Cardenas Port.

When the city residents expressed their protests, Charles immediately announced throughout the city that dissolving these bodies was to abolish taxes, suddenly reversing the public mood and gaining tremendous support.

Charles was now quite a political veteran. He seized the opportunity to cancel the old decrees, issue new ones, established the Commerce Alliance, and reformed the Westwind Knights, rallying a force of over a thousand people.

This military venture had been a sweet success for Charles, who led the newly formed Westwind Knights in a relentless series of sweeps through the nearby cities.

At this time, Ysamiel, commanding the Ghost Fleet, had already left the Agres Sea and started crossing the Golden Sea. The sea between the Agres Sea and the New Continent is known as the Golden Sea, and correspondingly, the west coast of the New Continent is called the Golden Coastline, because several adventurers, shortly after reaching the New Continent, quickly discovered gold mines in a city along the coastline, which is why the Golden Sea and the Golden Coastline got their names.

The Evil God floated daily in the sky, directing the Ghost Fleet's course while continuously muttering about addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, quadratic functions, Pythagoras cosine, subset elements...

His brain was filled with various mathematical knowledge, and if he even slightly calmed down, a worksheet would automatically generate, and he couldn't stop until he completed it; otherwise, his head would incessantly throb, giving him no moment of peace.

This was rather strange for Charles; his professional habit as a mathematics teacher led him to inadvertently infuse the Evil God with hundreds of sets of math exam papers. Normally, these papers would occupy only a tiny part of a normal person's memory, but unfortunately, Ysamel's memory loss was so severe that his main memories were entirely these exam papers...