LCD The Strongest Dull Prince's Secret Battle For The Throne

Do we learn anything more about the adventurer's guild?
Does the ideology of adventurer's become more than the singular phrase "for the people"?

I put up with a lot of things with this novel, but I swear whenever the author uses "for the people" it always feels lazy, reductionist and as if he's taking the audience's intelligence for granted.

 

Well:

Spoiler

Well, there was 1 small arc related to guild. It happened right after current arc. During this birthday arc, one of enemy countries brought their HOLY dragons, basically guardian beast of the country, and MC nuked them. Guild felt political pressure due to this and used it as a pretext to control their strongest members. MC pretty much did what everyone thought to be impossible and gathered all highest rank ones and completely destroyed that plan. This is more or less everything.

 

Yeah, we've just got the chapter where Silver destroys them.

I don't like that the author is making Gordon and the United Kingdom hold the idiot ball to make William and Silver look competent. Gordon/Zandra/Eric are supposed to be so good that any of them would win the competition in any other given generation.

Do people change their opinion or expectations of Al?

 

Yeah, a bit. Specifically those groups I have mentioned in the previous spoilers due to the reasons mentioned in those spoilers..

 

Ok here's my read on the situation and it's not to make Silver/William look more competent.

• There's someone unknown that hasn't been discovered yet in the series. Their actual goals are unknown. We can make reasonable guesses by inferring, but that's not the point of this post so I'll leave that alone.
• Said unknown is pulling a lot of strings behind the scenes. They are responsible for the assassination of the Crown Prince as well as the current situation in the empire.
• Said unknown has done something to Gordon/Zandra/Eric. The way Gordon and Zandra are acting, there's no way they could have such loyal followings if they were always like this. My guess is that there was a limited window for the person to act and they managed to get to Gordon/Zandra/Eric around the same time. Which is why Leo isn't affected yet.
• Someone sent a message to William's country saying they had the capital and to send the dragons. Up to this point you could sort of kind of follow the old addage "Do not attribute malice what can be attributed by incompetence", however this right here is actual sabotage. Originally I thought it was Silver's machinations until I realized there was no way he could have known specifically that was in the plans. Sending the holy dragons even if they held the capital is a risky move.

Add this all up and that basically says we have not truly been introduced to the antagonist of the novel yet.

Now I have a number of problems with this novel, but this particular sequence isn't one of them. Unless there isn't a hidden antagonist in which case the author is just bad.

 

Based on the spoilers I could understand the first point about someone influencing the top 3, but the second one regarding the kingdom doesn't hold.

It's common sense to verify one source with two or three or 10 considering you are deploying not just your trump card, but a symbol of your nation, your religion, your first and only line of national security and defense. But they did not verify that account with even a single other source. Even if they knew Elna was out of action, they still know the Brave is around somewhere and I refuse to believe the hyped up Brave, with decades of experience, can't kill one dragon.

 

I've pointedly refused to look at the spoilers, but as for the kingdom verification. that is a hard thing in this kind of society. Military strategy requires timing and they do not have instant communications. Silver's one of the few mages (if not the only one) in the world who can use portals. Which means you use some kind of passcode or token to confirm that the information is valid. Typically you may send multiple runners in case someone is intercepted/killed. As for Elna being able to kill the dragons, yes. That's why they considered sending them in the first place. You need a concentration of forces. Combine the holy dragons with a fleet of dragon knights a legion of troops and maybe you can hold Elna back. Without said dragons, Elna could just roflstomp the combined Gordon/Kingdom forces. The other two countries were brought in specifically to keep Lizelotte contained. Silver neutralized one with the dwarf SS adventurer and Lize's boy toy was taking over handling the second country. The plan on paper was workable. The whole strategy levered on Gordon officially requesting for the dragon's help so that the adventurer's guild had 0 reason to interfere, thus neutralizing Silver.

Yes this strategy is risky, but you'll find any military strategy against a competent opponent is risky. Take a look at Earth's past for the number of military offensives that have failed even though the aggressors had superior numbers and a good strategy.

 

This current arc feels like a retread.

 

Can someone tell me which girls are in the MC's harem so far?

 

The only certain one is Finne. Arguably Elna since I don't see her ever having an interest in anyone else. The rest are still only potentials as of the current translated chapter.

 

How far has the romance progressed?

 

If we take 0 as the starting line and say 100 as officially a couple... we're maybe somewhere in 30-40 range.

 

Well that sucks I was hoping for a harem ending but I guess that’s not going to happen.

 

Well it's tagged as harem, so you may get it. It's also tagged slow romance... so we got awhile.

 

What? damn I thought its not harem... That's too bad bc I rlly hate harem novels and I usually checked it before I began reading it, but for this one... It's too much of a waste if I drop it now that I have already read 400+ chapters... Yeah fine, I guess I'm just gonna ignore the shitty romance
┐(´ー｀)┌

 

The romance is done better than the damn strategy/tactics! Having the high ground is meaningless if you lack air superiority. Leo should have been easily overrun before Al ever left the Capital.

 

I thought you didn't believe criticism was constructive?

You can read it.

It's not really harem so much as there are 2-3 female characters that are rotated based on the arc, and they usually aren't integral to whichever arc is going on. Also there has never been any lovey dovey stuff. Only a couple things have been implied, but for the most part it's platonic.

Although I wouldn't recommend reading it because of it's quality. It's gotten to the point I won't read another JP novel outside of the ones I've already started.

 

air superiority doesn't mean much when it's just guys with spears on dragons that we haven't witnessed use breath weapons. they're just more mobile cavalry with stronger mounts. the moment something like battlements are taken into account they are pretty much useless and considering how wary the other dragon knights are of concentrated fire from the ground, it's just overly expensive cavalry now that they are in a siege fight. maybe they have an advantage on campaign, being able to scout and attack in places conventional cavalry can't but here, or even in a pitched battle where the enemy's archer's aren't constrained, they would be useless in any role other than scouting for enemy reinforcements, interdicting messengers, or countering enemy air. tbh, the fact that william's been tasked with this siege instead of some of the other fields of conflict is more proof that gordon knows jack all about war and just wants to play dress up.

as for the romance, I wouldn't even begin to call it even 30%. hell, leo's closer to sealing the deal with his girl than arnold is.

 

not gonna lie, the way this author is starting to extend the story by granting the MC's side only partial victories over and over again is ruining it for me. survived that long and ridiculous arc in the capital and finally kill off for good one of the problem applicants for the throne? well, it's all good, we just created a new one with the second brother of prince whoever, and we let william escape carrying gordon so gordon can miraculously start a rebellion in the north that isn't put down right away because the entire imperial army are traitors. get the reinforcements to leo in time? no bother, we let william take one of the magical wands so they can reverse engineer it and regain their tactical superiority in the air. at this point I wouldn't doubt if the author is planning on having the black dragon knights all equipped with the damned things and competently using them by the next time they show up because you know, plot. who needs to figure out how they actually work amirite?

 

ngl, the longer this story goes, the more inept the father seems. he literally has left this whole problem for his sons to settle. the war in the north and battle in the capital? the emperor's fault for not stripping gordon of his power the first time he disobeyed orders as a general. the situation with the northern nobles? the emperor's fault for not handling the situation after his son died. hell, a significant amount of what's wrong with the story right now is the emperor's fault for forcing a marriage with the duke's daughter who he didn't care about.

how much of this story is going to be arnold wiping his father's butt?