Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons novel Chapter 368

The room's temperature seemed to drop several degrees with Kharzan's cold fury. "His idiot son went and got himself killed at the worst possible moment... Is the Strahlfang group already insubordinate?"

"Yes, sir. They demand immediate retribution for the son of Patriarch Strahlfang and his men," the assistant confirmed.

Kharzan rose from his seat, moving slowly toward the window that offered a panoramic view of his territory.

'The idiots of the tiger clan,' he thought bitterly.

For generations they had been rivals of the lion clan, then after an internal war they had fallen under Goldcrest rule, and now that they had recovered numbers and power, they were relatively subordinate but increasingly independent allies.

"If they weren't such a numerous clan with so much prestige in our zone," he murmured, more to himself than to his assistant, "I would never have entrusted this mission to young Strahlfang's firstborn."

The patriarch had insisted. His son needed to start accumulating achievements to consolidate his position before the future succession. And Kharzan, thinking of future alliances and the power they would bring, had yielded.

"What do we know with certainty?" he asked, turning toward the assistant. His eyes gleamed with purple predatory focus, the pupils contracting to slits in the room's dim lighting.

"Commander Strahlfang is undoubtedly dead, sir. Two of his closest men are missing." The assistant nervously consulted his notes, the parchment trembling slightly in his hands. "They found his body near a burned house in district fifteen. The violence marks in his body suggest a prolonged attack before execution, possibly from someone of Silver 2 or 3 rank with focus on strength increases."

"It must have been that cursed woman who trains the kid on behalf of the Ashenways... And now the information about the child with the 'concerning light' might escape," Kharzan concluded, his frustration visible in his gesture.

The assistant nodded. "We've maximized surveillance at the border, sir. And we have observers on the plains. But if the perpetrators have already managed to contact the central government..." He left the sentence hanging, unwilling to voice the full implications of such a failure.

Kharzan struck the table forcefully, startling the assistant who took an involuntary step backward. "That damned Strahlfang! Not only was he incompetent in life, but his death is causing even more problems."

And it wasn't an exaggeration. The murder of a 'commander', and an important son, on the Goldcrest side had sent Patriarch Strahlfang into a state of fury, dispatching all his assets to the border, which threatened the stability of both the frontier and Kharzan's alliances if he didn't do something about it.

Simultaneously, Julius and Selphira's faction had responded to his increase of troops at the border by doing the same on the other side.

Tension grew by the hour, and all because of a child and his supposed purification ability. A capability that, if real, threatened everything Kharzan had worked toward.

The stalemate persisted because the people who had joined the Goldcrest side weren't increasing; on the contrary... In recent months, support had reached a historic low. The golden tide he had counted on was ebbing, leaving his plans stranded.

"All thanks to that trick of giving cultivation methods to poor people," Kharzan muttered with disdain. "With barely 25% assured support on our side, we can't start the war with certainty of winning or pressure Yino to attack first."

The 45% objective had been close at a maximum of 35%, but each week since they released the methods seemed to take them further and further away. The central government's strategy had been too effective, winning them numerous victories in the battle for public opinion.

The new methods were indeed too effective and much cheaper than any of the conventional ones. Selphira and Julius had played an incredible card that was difficult to counter.

Even stranger was that if one could believe the mostly ineffective child of the Goldcrests abandoned on the other side, the same child with the weird light was the creator of such methods…

"We're in crisis... However," he continued, his voice turning more severe, "allowing the escape of the child my son Kassian told me about, who by the smallest possibility might be the reason for our political defeat, would be a grave error. His ability could be effective against more than just Bronze ranks..." _{freёwebnovel.com}