Deep in the Kingdom of Swadia in the sprawling capital city the King awoke from his slumber, he yawned while rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and gazed at the sleeping forms of the women laying naked on his bed. A grin spread across his face as he thought about last nights happenings, then a solemn expression replaces the grin as he remembered what happened to his brother when he lived a life of indulgence.

He had promised himself that he would not make the same mistake as the previous king by only have one heir, which lead to a complete breakdown of the kingdom when no one suitable could take the throne.

The king sighed for the umpteenth time in the last week and stood up to dress himself, the head maid insisted that the maids do it for him but he thought that anyone who can't even dress themselves has no business ruling a Kingdom.

Before he could finish pulling his pants on there was a knock on the door, the ladies on the large bed stirred and the man behind the door announced "your majesty the noble house lord of --"

The man behind the door was cut off when the King coldly replied "tell them to wait" with the expectation that his trusted butler would convey his message in a more fitting way for a Ruler to speak but somehow manage to communicate his displeasure at the same time, something he found highly amusing to see in person and had inadvertently become one of the only methods he had to get back at the snobby nobles.

Nothing makes his day like watching his butler politely tell someone to fuck off in a way that sounds both elegant and greatly insulting at the same time, the King grew up as a Knights family which was fairly good considering his bastard status and something he would have to thank his father for in the afterlife, but a knights education does not include how to deal with conniving women or ambitious greedy men born into nobility.

The training did, however, help immensely with the wars he would fight on the front lines of later in life. he often wondered what it would be like if he hadn't been injured in battle on that day and instead went on to retake all the Dutchies instead like he was supposed to. During the wars, all the nobles were terribly well behaved and were all too happy to help with the lives of their subordinates, however, once the war ended and their lands stopped expanding they started to reveal themselves for what they were "greedy bastards" as the king called them.

That is not to say every noble was such a person. There were a few nobles who actually work for their people but they were badly outnumbered by those who would not.

With his mood ruined by some entitled twat thinking they could call on the King while he was sleeping, he began walking towards the kitchens. The chefs had long since gotten used to the Kings quirks and only bowed to him before getting back to work feeding the rest of the castle.

After getting something to eat and ignoring the head maids customary lecture about what the King of a country should or should not do he found his way to the throne under the gazes of all the nobles waiting to harass him about whatever small trouble they could come up with.

Everyone stood up after the king took his seat and he swore that one of these days he was going to have each and every one of them take strict etiquette training for their poor displays of loyalty, he was not so bothered by the act itself because he found all the formal bowing and kneeling to be pointless however, he knew they were trained since young to do a better job of it and he knew they were doing it simply to spite him because he was born to a commoner mother.

The king had yet to speak and already one of the greater nobles with the backing of his own rather large faction started to discuss this weeks world ending matter.

The Arcane University was going to use its magics to move the entire structure to the mountain where the new dungeon had opened up by order of the king himself even though it was secretly the university masters wish. Naturally, the nobles are not particularly enthusiastic about having their supply of magical objects and skilled mages suddenly fly away to the edge of the Kingdoms borders.

If this was up to Merlin himself he would have already had the University sitting snugly on top of the mountain above the dungeon, but the amount of mana the University core requires to fly it across the kingdom is too much for the University to supply. This would require the help of all the nobles to succeed in any decent timeframe.

But the King knew better than to think that the nobles would help out of the kindness of their hearts and the last week of mind-numbing, headache-inducing complaints showed this well. They were constantly discussing amongst themselves and proposing different deals for the University to "buy" their magic crystals they kept in their coffers gathering dust and they were lucky Merlin himself was not here because there would be more than a few fried corpses in the throne room if he were to hear some of the proposals, some included having their daughters marry Merlin himself or have their sons become his disciples or other ridiculous statements.

The king knew that Merlin would never allow the nobles to worm their way inside the university willingly so he shot all the proposals the nobles made almost immediately.

The noise inside the room grew increasingly loud until the King finally had enough and infused mana into his voice then shouted "SILENCE!", The room immediately became silent and the king gave an imperceptible nod to himself, satisfied that his injuries did not prevent him from a show of force occasionally.

He continued "do you think that the Dutchys will sit idle with a new dungeon opening so close to the border, the borders are already tattered enough as it is after all the raiding from so-called "bandits". The only reason the Dutchies have been so passive all these years is that they have been too busy fighting amongst themselves and they don't have the resources to mount a proper attack.

And the only reason the Dutchies are still poor is that they only have a few weak dungeons in their territory that have not expanded in decades nor do they give any decent resources, so what will happen when they take a dungeon that expands every few months" The king let that information sink into their brains for a while before adding, "did you know why there are no great dungeons in the Dutchies, this is because all the dragon veins converge in the south and run straight between the middle of the Dutchies before going back deep into the earth, this means that the great dungeons only appear in the middle of the south where the mana is richest"

He paused again for added effect and one of the younger nobles gasped "that's where the elven forest is, they can't access them even if they wanted to"

The king gave a faint smile as they started to realize the problem with just sitting idly while the dutchies expanded their territory and he could see the worry rising up in the eyes of the nobles whos land was close to the dungeon. These lands would be the new frontier that "bandits" would constantly raid and the king was almost tempted to allow it just so they could have their power worn away like his followers who he was forced to put on the frontlines to protect the borders.

Some of the king's most trusted allies now had their lands completely decimated by the raids and were now worthless, however, the nobles on his side refused to leave and continued protecting the barren land from invasion, they had once been powerful nobles from the Kings faction and now they were merely acting as generals protecting the border because they had no people on their land to govern anymore.

The King stood up and left the throne-room because the nobles here would not agree to anything at the moment so he let them stew in their own turmoil, he could already hear some of the smaller nobles that governed land near the border trying to convince others to lend military aid to protect their lands.

Such pleas resounded on deaf ears and the king couldn't help a smile from forming as he imagined all the desperate nobles quickly changing sides to the king's faction, they may only be minor nobles because they are located so far from the capital but every person swings the political power in his favor a little more.

The King made the mistake of ignoring the nobles that were not causing trouble after the wars which allowed the large noble factions to grow from behind by recruiting all the minor nobles. During the war, he had set up the lands and powers so that his people would end up with the majority of the power, but he did not expect that all the minor nobles could make so much of a difference, so he focused on getting the Kingdom back onto its feet after the war, however, once they had majority vote the King's faction has been put on the back foot and has not been able to recover since.

After a short walk, he reached the garden and found his butler with a pot of hot tea already waiting for him next to his favorite chair. Once he sat down he started to tell his butler about what happened. When the king reached the part about the dragon veins the butler looked at him with a strange look before asking "I assume you received that information from Merlin after all the nobles harrassed you about this all week" because he knew the king was not so magically inclined to know such things.

The King laughed then replied "no I did not call him for such matters, truth be told I have no idea if that stuff about the dragon veins is true or not" then laughed again when he saw the other mans expression, "well I did hear him talk about such things when I was a child"

The butler smiled in response then said "They would never guess that you and Merlin are friends, even I did not figure it out when we were on the battlefield. I only found out when I became your spymaster"

The King smiled as he reminisced about the past and lightly said "of course they don't know, nobles only keep track of other nobles, they would never imagine that a lowly knights son was being trained by the strongest mage in the country as a swordsman no less"

The Butler replied "so that's how you knew him, I had no idea he was proficient in swordsmanship, although he is an old monster so it's not too surprising"

"ha, he can't even swing a sword properly let alone teach someone the ways of swordsmanship. No, he taught me to use my physique more efficiently and he also taught me some magic that would help during battle" answered the King.

The butler nodded then his voice lowered as he asked "is the dungeon really worth it"

After thinking for a moment the King answered "I don't know if the dungeon is worth it, but I do know the friend is"