Volume 4 Chapter 12: The Penniless Foreign Minister

  Daniel trudged through the filthy snow that had not been swept in the courtyard and entered the worn entrance hall of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Since almost all the windows were closed, with wooden shutters lowered, the indoor light was very dim. He stood at the door for a while before his eyes adjusted, barely making out the surroundings.

  "Good morning, sir!"

  In the same dilapidated gatehouse, old Evan poked out his frostbitten head, wearing a tattered military uniform, and greeted him. Evan was a half-elf sailor who had been withdrawn from the battlefield a few months ago and had lost his left leg to a shell, so he was arranged to be a doorman in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Among the disabled soldiers with similar fates, Evan's resettlement after retirement was already quite good.

  "Good morning, Evan! You lazybones not only didn't open the window, but also put down the curtain? It's pitch black in this room, what if someone trips and falls?" Daniel knocked on the door frame of the hall window, saying with some displeasure.

  "Master, the firewood and coal for heating are all used up, and the windows are full of holes again. If the cold wind gets in, it's really unbearable!" Old Evan complained with a bitter face, "The fuel allocated by the higher-ups is getting less and less every day, but the weather just doesn't seem to get warmer. It's not that I'm lazy, it's just that there's no way."

  Daniel was momentarily speechless, using the faint light that filtered in through the doorway. He glanced at Old Evan's yellowed face due to malnutrition and then swept a glance over his empty pant legs, hesitating slightly before finally pulling out a piece of smoked meat he had just received and stuffing it into the other man's dry, cracked hands like tree bark. Afterwards, he ignored the gatekeeper's profuse thanks and quickly left.

  Feeling his way along the worn, old wallpaper, Daniel walked through the narrow, dark corridor and finally stepped onto the somewhat rotten wooden spiral staircase. He moved in an annoying silence. Except for the sound of his own footsteps, he couldn't hear anything else. All the offices on both sides of the corridor were empty, and even the few young nobles who had been lingering here to eat and wait for death had all been drafted into the front lines. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which originally had only a handful of employees, was now even more gloomy and terrifying, like a haunted house that had slept for hundreds of years.

  He climbed the creaking stairs to the top floor and made his way to the end of the corridor. Daniel pushed open the door to his office - it wasn't locked, there was nothing worth stealing. He pulled out the ration pack he had just collected from the space ring and tossed it onto the only desk in the room. The glass nameplate on it was engraved with ornate script that showed his current rank:

  Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Elves.

  When it comes to diplomacy, most people think of well-dressed and elegant diplomats, grand banquets, balls and diplomatic cocktail parties, witty and intense verbal sparring, as well as various private political deals and coercion, deception. In short, diplomacy is the art of telling lies, and diplomats are professional swindlers flying the national flag. Since they are swindlers, a set of decent attire is always indispensable. A general may be able to show his solidarity with his troops by eating coarse grains and wearing a soldier's uniform, but a diplomat cannot display his demeanor with shabby hospitality and tattered clothes. Therefore, it stands to reason that even if the government is in dire straits, it cannot mistreat its diplomats. Otherwise, it will become an international laughing stock.

  But unfortunately, now the diplomatic envoys of the Kingdom of Elves don't even have the qualifications to become a laughing stock.

  Since the current Elf God, Xuefola's Church incited the country to launch a large-scale attack on the human world, the number of countries with diplomatic relations with the Elf Kingdom has been rapidly decreasing. More than 100 years ago, the Elf Army's headquarters secretly replaced the embassy staff with military daredevils, who carried out suicidal sabotage operations against enemy capitals before the outbreak of war. As a result, Elven diplomats were widely regarded as extreme terrorists and dangerous human bombs by other countries, which expelled them one after another. Finally, the headquarters was blinded by Xuefola's Church propaganda of hatred and began to massacre foreign diplomatic personnel before declaring war "to demonstrate its power". Even the foreign envoys stationed in Luhua disappeared.

  Of course, the embassies of the Elf Kingdom in those vassal states are still intact. However, those so-called "ambassadors" who are above the emperor are more like colonial governors than diplomats. Since they are not real diplomats, they do not belong to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and are directly appointed and managed by the General Headquarters of the Elf Army, with no room for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to intervene at all.

  The current Kingdom of Faerie Ministry of Foreign Affairs has neither any overseas embassies to manage nor any foreign ambassadors stationed in the capital to deal with. Even when there are treaties to be negotiated and signed, the arrogant and domineering Faerie military headquarters always acts on its own without consulting the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  In this way, it's just like

  Like the navies of six countries, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Elf Kingdom has completely fallen into disrepair. The poor diplomats have finally lost all their stage for displaying their talents and then disappeared from the political activities of the kingdom.

  The dilapidated building where Daniel was located was the last legacy of this poor department, and his subordinates only had an old Evan who guarded the door, with a bleak situation and no bright future.

  After pulling out a chair and sitting down, Daniel picked up the small kerosene stove on the table, wanting to boil some hot tea. However, the empty oil canister foiled his plan - the allocated kerosene had also been used up. Helpless, he muttered an incantation under his breath, conjuring up a faint flame from between his fingers, and then magically moved the cup of water onto the fire to start heating it up.

  Daniel had learned the useful technique of boiling water with magic in these hard times, and after several painful lessons of bursting cups so that he had to gnaw on ice cubes in the dead of winter, he was now able to fix flames under teacups as skillfully as he could boil water for hot tea or make cold drinks with magic.

  Although it's not honorable or economical to use magic for such trivial matters, in the Elf Kingdom where all commercial trade is prohibited, even if a wizard creates magical scrolls and weapons, they can't be exchanged for daily necessities and magical materials. Anyway, everything has to wait for allocation, and magic can't bring more material supplies, so what's the point of being stingy? In their view, the spells that can be obtained every day are cheaper than the fuel that is often out of stock when allocated monthly.

  While waiting for the water to boil, Daniel listlessly flipped through this morning's newspaper. Under the strict news censorship system, there was nothing worth reading in the paper, just reminiscing about the glorious past of the elves, avenging the brutal dark elves and humans who occupied their ancestors' homeland, advocating for the establishment of an elven-dominated world, boasting about how many enemies were eliminated somewhere, and which churches would hold what kind of celebrations. Daniel had long been tired of these empty words, but over the years, he had also learned how to find the information he needed from these empty words, even lies.

  In a long article filled with phrases like "inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy", "strategic transfer", "glorious sacrifice" and "breaking through the siege", he pieced together a fairly short piece of intelligence: our army, under the command of Tekumseh, was attacked by barbarians and suffered heavy losses, and was forced to abandon the central town of Tikal on the mainland of Mazca, retreating to the coastal area.

  "It seems that for a long time, tea and coffee are hopeless." He put down the newspaper in disappointment. Tikal City is the largest and only tea and coffee producing area within the Elf Kingdom's controlled territory. Once lost, it means that the two goods will basically disappear from daily life in this non-trading country, which really can't help but make Daniel, who loves these two drinks the most, feel disheartened.

  The water had boiled, and Daniel carefully extinguished the flame. He reached into the drawer to grab a tea infuser, but then thought of the report he had just read and let out a sigh as he put it back. Instead, he directly drank from the cup of plain hot water, feeling only bitterness in his mouth - a high-ranking diplomat like himself was actually so poor that he couldn't even afford to drink tea.

  The quartermaster's department across the street occasionally transmitted unpleasant singing voices, which made him feel annoyed. It was the quartermaster who held the power to distribute materials nationwide and indulged in wild parties day and night. Several drunken quartermasters threw wine bottles onto the street, and a strong smell of wine suddenly rose, even Daniel sitting on the third floor could smell it clearly, making his stomach churn with desire for two months without drinking, almost unable to bear picking up the bottle.

  This institution, monopolized by the followers of Xue Fulaosi, has made no contribution to the war and only knows how to frantically plunder all kinds of scarce materials: white sugar, tea leaves, coffee, and chocolate from the Mazka continent, strong liquor brewed by dwarves, high-end industrial products produced in the factories of Yongju Island, anti-seasonal fruits and vegetables cultivated by magic, grains and fabrics forcibly requisitioned from all over... They stuff everything into their own pockets under the name of military supplies, leaving only rags for the residents.

  Although the grain is mildewed and rotten in the warehouse, and the cotton clothes are damp and worm-eaten in the storehouse, it is also very difficult for the front-line soldiers to get a single good thing from these corrupt insects who embezzle in the name of Xue Fulaizhe. They still fight with the enemy in hunger and cold, snatching any food from the enemy's hands for their own belly. Even the spoils of war won at the cost of their lives are taken away by the military supply officers under the pretext of "uniform distribution", but they never see them being distributed again.