Demon King of the Royal Class-Chapter 620

Despite all the time we’d spent together, Harriet’s chronic blushing, a signature trait of hers, remained uncured.

But honestly, that was part of her charm.

With her cheeks still flushed, Harriet had eagerly dragged me to her lab in Rajak.

Every time I stepped into the lab, a wave of guilt washed over me. I couldn’t help but think of the massive research facility beneath the magic department of the Temple’s university. We once had access to such grand resources that could be directed into a single project.

In contrast, Harriet’s personal lab seemed modest at first glance, lacking any impressive equipment. Yet Harriet had either crafted what she needed herself or collaborated with the Senate’s Vampire Lords to create them together.

I knew it was pointless to wonder what Harriet might have accomplished with the Temple’s extensive resources, but the thought lingered every time I saw her lab.

There was no need to go as far as the Temple’s university research lab. The magical research facilities in Rajak couldn’t hold a candle to the Magic Research Club clubhouse from our days in the Temple. That lab had been fit for a mage professor.

‘Poor Thick-Skull...’

It was like watching a wealthy man’s daughter, who had fallen for the wrong guy, trying to mend her socks despite having everything she needed.

In reality, she was a princess.

Seeing her make do with what she had made me realize now and then that Harriet was actually quite resourceful.

She had the greatest magical talent in history, but had met a man who couldn’t support her, preventing her from fully showcasing her abilities.

‘What should I do?’

I was the biggest obstacle in Thick-Skull’s life.

Others were out there building Titans and creating armies of beings called Immortals, unsettling as they might be. Yet Harriet, whose talent was nothing short of extraordinary—perhaps even greater than most—found herself trapped in this attic-like lab because she had fallen for the wrong guy.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized.

“What? Why say that all of a sudden?”

“For everything.”

“What are you talking about? You’re being so random,” Harriet said with a pout, clearly annoyed by my unexpected apology.

Watching her react like that made me feel even more apologetic, though she didn’t even know why I was saying sorry. Her lack of complaints only deepened my guilt.

“So, what’s this about?” I asked, despite the thoughts swirling about my mind. That was just the way I was—never able to express myself clearly.

“Take a look at this,” Harriet said, pointing to a flat metal plate.

Intricate patterns covered its surface, making it resemble the base of some kind of device. Some parts jutted out slightly, giving it a mechanical appearance.

And it wasn’t there by itself—there were two of them.

“Thick-Skull, I’m not a genius like you. I can’t figure out what it is just by looking at it. You need to explain,” I said.

“Are you going to call me a Thick-Skull or a genius? Make up your mind,” Harriet replied with a smirk.

‘Oh, you’re right. That did sound a bit strange.’

“Okay then, Thick-Skull—”

“Really?!”

Smack!

“Ouch! You told me to pick one!”

“Shut up!”

‘I did what you asked, so why hit me?’

If we started bickering, it would never end. But it was so much fun, I just couldn’t stop myself.

Harriet understood this too. If she ever thought I was going overboard, she’d sometimes just ignore me and say whatever was on her mind.

She moved the pair of metal plates, placing one at each end of the desk, and began to tinker with them.

“Now, like this... hmm.”

The plates were clearly some kind of magical device or mechanical contraption. As she fiddled with them, the thin plates started to shift and reshape.

Several metal pieces extended from them, forming something like a stand.

The plates resembled an upside-down table with three legs, or a pair of stands.

Harriet picked up a metal rod from one of the piles of equipment scattered about the lab.

Even during her time at the Temple, Harriet had never been one for tidiness. She always insisted she knew exactly where everything was, so there was no need to clean up, but I knew that was just an excuse.

“Watch this.”

Crackle! Crackle!

Blue sparks started flying off from the plates.

“I have no idea what that is, but it seems dangerous,” I said.

“It’s not dangerous. This is my first time actually trying it, though.”

“How can you be sure it’s not dangerous without testing it first?”

“I’m confident my theory is sound.”

I wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but it seemed a little like math. If the formula was correct, then applying it in real life should give an expected outcome.

She had already run all the simulations in her mind.

I couldn’t do that, but Harriet could.

“I supposed it has to be safe, then.”

She frowned. “I can’t tell if you trust me or not. Anyway, just watch.”

Crack! Crack! Crackle!

The sparks continued to fly out from the edges of the two plates, and they began to glow a vivid blue.

The blue light slowly shaped itself into a sphere.

Two blue spheres... Inside, they were pitch black.

This couldn’t be happening.

“Here.”

Harriet slid what looked like a metal rod into the left sphere.

And then...

Thunk.

The rod shot out from the right sphere, clattered onto the desk, and rolled to the floor.

I knew exactly what they were.

“Hey... This is...”

“Yeah,” Harriet said with a grin. “It’s a warp gate. A new warp gate, completely isolated from the Gate Incident.”

‘That’s my girl!’

Even in this spartan setting, she had managed to achieve something incredible once again.

“Is this... even possible?”

“I did it because it was possible, silly.”

“You... you... you...!”

I squeezed her tightly into a hug.

“Eek! That hurts!”

“You’re the most amazing thick-skull out there!”

“What does that even mean?!”

I continued to hug her tightly.

***

What exactly were logistics and distribution networks?

Honestly, I still didn’t know the specifics, but I did know they were crucial, and I understood that the Empire’s golden age did not come about from its conquest of the Demon Realm, but was a result of the warp gates.

The golden age of humanity, and the golden age of the Empire... It was not just because people could travel through the warp gates, but because of the improvements in logistics that they brought.

Advancements in transportation and logistics spurred rapid societal progress. With these developments, specialization became possible.

Before this, most cities had to be self-sufficient, without being reliant on a central hub city.

They needed to manage their own food, commerce, and manufacturing.

However, as logistics and distribution networks improved, cities specializing in commerce or manufacturing no longer needed to produce their own food. They could simply import it. Agriculture could be managed by cities or countries with environments best suited for it.

Imagine a city with a vast magic stone mine, nestled in a cold climate. If trade routes were poor, the city would have to find a way to be somewhat self-sufficient in terms of food, which would make life there quite challenging. This would naturally hinder development.

But what if there were a warp gate?

With such a gateway, the city could import food from elsewhere, transforming it into a thriving mining hub capable of extracting vast quantities of magic stones.

Specialization would drive industrial growth, and as production increased, so would consumption and the rise of secondary and tertiary industries—be it in agriculture, commerce, manufacturing, or magic.

Take the capital city of Gradium, for instance. It became the Empire’s largest city because it boasted the most warp gates. People, wealth, and goods flocked there, and Gradium naturally grew into the Empire’s largest city.

The food crisis in the capital emerged because it wasn’t an agricultural hub. Now that distribution routes were non-existent, a city that relied on imports had to suddenly become self-sufficient in terms of food production.

In response, the Empire had to repurpose the land around it into farmland to try to achieve this self-sufficiency, or source food from secured areas in other regions. However, without warp gates, which were essential to ensure easy distribution, everything now depended on Archmages and mass teleportation.

Gradium now had to rely on inefficient food production, and also tie up high-level personnel such as Archmages to bring in goods from outside the capital.

The Gate Incident had invalidated the use of warp gates, for a simple and straightforward reason. The pseudo-dimension which linked them, a sort of virtual realm, had become real, and monsters from within that realm had taken control.

It wasn’t that new warp gates couldn’t be constructed anymore—they could. But if they were, monsters would still spill out of them.

“So, you created a second pseudo-dimension?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know much about it, but no one else has tried it before, probably because they couldn’t imagine it, right?”

“Probably.”

I wanted to hug my Thick-Skull tightly and shower her with kisses for accomplishing something so incredible.

“So, you’re saying you pulled it off because you’re just that amazing?”

‘And you did it in this makeshift attic lab? You achieved what the continent’s top mages, with all their state-of-the-art facilities, couldn’t do, even after banging their heads against the wall?’

As I spoke, Harriet’s cheeks flushed a deep red, and she began to fidget with her fingers.

“I... I don’t want to put it that way...”

“Is it true or not? Just say it.”

“Yeah, that’s right...”

She understood just how incredible her achievement was. Seeing her squirm in embarrassment after accomplishing something so remarkable only made her seem even cuter and more impressive than usual.

“Let me hug you, Thick-Skull.”

“N-no, get away!”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t like it! It feels like you’re praising a dog!”

“Who mentioned anything about a dog?”

In the end, whether she did well or not, we ended up bickering as usual.

How impressive was it to create a new pseudo-dimension?

I wasn’t sure, but I knew the old warp gates had not been invented by just one mage.

According to Grand Duke Saint-Ouen, the emperor back then had thrown his full weight behind that project, nearly staking the Empire’s fate on it. The finest mages of the era had to have been involved, and it was the culmination of years of research and experimentation.

It was almost like a professor in a liberal arts college telling one of their scholars, “Hey, isn’t this a good idea? Why don’t you give it a shot?” and then overriding all objections and forcing them to get it done. I couldn’t even begin to fathom how many engineer-mages had been sacrificed in the process.

The old warp gate system was the culmination of years of research and experimentation, not the triumph of a single individual—yet Harriet had somehow managed to do it all on her own. And she had achieved it in this place, without the benefit of proper facilities or equipment.

Of course, she hadn’t started entirely from scratch. She had already delved into warp gate research long before I even understood the cause of the Gate Incident, driven by her desire to explore dimensional magic. All that accumulated knowledge was already in her mind, so it wasn’t as if she was starting from zero, like the first inventors of the warp gates.

Still, the fact remained that Harriet accomplished what no one else could.

After the Gate Incident, warp gates had become an unusable form of technology.

In the original story, Harriet used her skills to become a formidable battlemage, participating directly in combat. In that story, she clung to her bratty persona until the very end. Over time, she began to form a sort of camaraderie with her classmates, but it wasn’t as if she ever became friendly.

“Get lost, you idiots, you’re in the way!” she’d shout, yet she’d still show up when her friends were in danger, taking down monsters all on her own. In a strange way, that was part of her charm.

Now, unlike in the original story, Harriet’s main role wasn’t combat. Even though she did fight, she wasn’t always on the battlefield. This gave her the space to think, and she eventually discovered her own way to revive the warp gate technology.

Of course, a big part of her interest in warp gates was because of me. She wouldn’t have known about them otherwise.

In the end, the truth was right in front of me. Harriet had successfully developed a new warp gate system.

“How far can it reach?” I asked.

“This was just a test, to see if it worked,” she replied. “If we scale it up, the range will naturally increase. As it stands, it’s not practical for any specific use.”

“And if you have the resources to scale it up?”

“It won’t be that different from the existing warp gates. You know that warp gates are connected to all others within their range, right?”

“Yes, I know.”

“And you remember how I configured the gate pathways to connect seamlessly, without needing to enter and exit at each stop?”

“Vaguely.”

The Empire’s warp gate system was like a subway network, built over time and with too many transfer stations, which made it inefficient. It was like a tangled mess of spaghetti.

Imagine the first subway station ever built—charming but hopelessly outdated, although its outdatedness wasn’t always obvious.

This new system was something Harriet had crafted from the ground up.

Unlike the old system, one would no longer have to hop on and off at every intermediate gate during long-distance travel.

“If you want to travel a long distance, you’ll still need an intermediate stop. A link between one gate and another... in other words, you’d have to build a nexus.”

“A nexus...?”

“It’s a relay point to amplify the warp gate signal. It only serves as a waypoint, though—people don’t actually go in and out of it.”

“And you developed that as well?”

She looked at me, puzzled. “Of course not. If you only build half of a warp gate, it basically becomes a nexus.”

I couldn’t understand anything. “What?”

“You don’t get it, do you?”

“Not at all.”

‘Teacher, I really don’t understand what you’re saying.’

“Okay. Explain, please.”

Harriet looked at me, puzzled, and began to think deeply.

She drew a diagram with points labeled 1, 2, and 3.

“Imagine a straight path. In the past, you needed warp gates at points 1, 2, and 3 to connect them, right?”

“Right.”

“But now that most cities have been destroyed, there’s no need to build warp gates at every point, is there? Let’s say there’s no city at point 2, but we still want to connect points 1 and 3. However, let’s assume that point 1 and point 3 are too far apart.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t need to build a complete warp gate at point 2. You can just make it a transit point. Do you understand what I’m saying?” 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

“It’s like a stepping stone, right?”

“Exactly.”

I began to understand what she meant.

“With the old warp gate technology, you had to construct a full warp gate at point 2. But that meant pouring resources into a gate that would only serve as a stopover. Now, the process is streamlined. Since there’s no need for people to constantly pass through point 2, you only need a structure that performs some of the warp gate’s functions.

“Let’s call it a ‘nexus’ for convenience. By building just part of a warp gate, it acts as a nexus. If you ever need a complete warp gate at point 2, then you can turn the nexus into a complete gate. They’re essentially the same structure.”

‘Hmm.’

I still couldn’t wrap my head completely around it, but I got the gist of it.

It was like setting up a temporary station, connecting two points for the moment, which could still be turned into a full station if necessary later on.

It also meant the cost of connecting the entire continent with warp gates could be drastically reduced. All the inefficient technologies from the development phase would be eliminated, allowing for fully efficient operation.

Harriet smiled at me, noticing my partial understanding of her explanation.

“Do you know why I shared this whole story with you?”

“Did you want me to compliment you?”

Harriet shot me a glare, making it clear she wasn’t seeking praise. “What do you take me for?”

Her voice softened. “It won’t be impossible to link Edina to the continent. We could even link the Empire to Edina with warp gates, and we can achieve this at a much lower cost than before.”

Her words left me wide-eyed in astonishment.

Linking the Empire and Edina with warp gates was a perilous idea. The Empire had no knowledge of our location, which was precisely why we remained safe. Harriet, however, wasn’t suggesting this to put Edina in jeopardy.

“We could transport the anti-imperial forces from the capital straight to Edina,” she proposed. “That way, no one would have to spill blood.”

“...”

“You were considering evacuating everyone from the capital if things went south, weren’t you? You know that’s not feasible, and it wouldn’t be easy.”

The seeds of division had already been sown. They were sprouting, and the sprouts were growing stronger by the day. When the rift became undeniable, countless lives would be lost.

One choice was to dismantle the Empire, but there was another path: to take those loyal to me away from the capital and make the journey south to Edina.

War, or a great exodus...

Both paths promised immense loss.

I would be leading millions, perhaps tens of millions, away from the capital on a journey spanning thousands of kilometers. The monsters posed a threat, but even without them, a majority would not survive the trek.

It felt like trying to carry out the Exodus without being Moses.

Leading an unknown number of people while trying to avoid war seemed foolish. But was it any wiser to allow a civil war to break out within Gradium the moment this division became too apparent?

I hadn’t made up my mind yet, but I knew I might have to later on.

Connecting the Empire to Edina with warp gates was undeniably risky, but if it allowed millions to leave without conflict, it would certainly be better than embarking on a long and perilous journey.

“I’m not saying we have to do it that way, but you should know we have a new possibility now, and one that would be essential for rebuilding the world, even if we don’t settle on it right now."

These new warp gates could be a tool for war or a path to prosperity and reconstruction, depending on how they were used.

“For now, I’m concentrating on linking the islands. By reducing the need for travel between them, we can strengthen the bonds between the islands and enhance the control that the central administration can exert. You remember how the Empire’s power became absolute after warp gates were developed, right?”

That was a good point. When travel time is reduced, the central government’s grip on the provinces would tighten, and the power wielded by the central administration would grow far more formidable than before.

The provinces would enjoy greater stability, and we would be able to respond to emergencies instantly. Therefore, our first step was to reconnect the Edina Islands using warp gates. Whatever came after that would follow naturally.

It was amazing to think that such a world-changing technology had come from such a small, clever mind.

“Very well, I’ll grant you one wish. What is it?”

‘I feel unstoppable right now! Even if you asked me to bite my tongue and die, I’d do it! Just tell me what you want—I’ll do anything for you!’

“Ugh... It’s a bit overwhelming when you’re so intense,” Harriet said, blushing at my earnestness.

“No, it’s not just one wish. I’ll do anything for you from now on. Just say the word! Anything! Whatever you need! I’ll do it all!”

“Stop! It’s actually overwhelming!”

Harriet, taken aback by my fervor, paused for a moment before letting out a sigh.

“Forget everything else. Just turn into a cat for me,” she said.

‘Huh...? You want me to become a cat suddenly?’

“Why that again?! I did that last time...!”

‘She’s as much of a cat psycho as Ellen, isn’t she? She asks for it whenever she gets the chance! Besides, is that really all you want? I was really serious about granting you any wish!’

“Oh, are you saying no then?”

She looked at me, her eyes questioning if I couldn’t even manage that after claiming I’d do anything.

‘Well... If that’s the cost of building a new warp gate... It does seem a little low, doesn’t it?’

“You’ll go through with it, right?”

“Of course...”

So, that night, I ended up falling asleep in my cat form, snugly wrapped in Harriet’s arms.

‘Honestly, isn’t this more of a win than a loss for me...?’ I wondered.