The Emperor is Kaede's father. You are talking about a king of Hilderan, heroines father, who wants to recreate Hilderan Empire.

I didn't like this arc in the novel, so they should do it better here. Changes to characters are somewhat important, so maybe border conflict arc will be skipped as well. That being said. I'm curios about the details of the webtoon's version of water mage and 3rd prince.

What a weird design choice. Am I the only one who saw this and thought "Condom-man"?
https://i.postimg.cc/rF8ZrpwF/i.webp
Also, Rozel was supposed to be cold towards him for loosing an eye, since he was indirectly responsible for it.
https://i.postimg.cc/RCjsgTdW/i.webp
Anyway, It's unfortunate that they mostly skipped Ahkan arc (Maybe some of the scenes will happen later?) but it seems that Necromancer arc is next. That being said MC was supposed to make a deal with Kaede before getting involved with the Empire. She wanted him to help her older brother from the same mother, the Third Imperial Prince.

https://i.postimg.cc/zD4GjKn9/i.webp
Saihate no Paladin

MC and Jason (liar) are trying to dig into each others secrets. They don't make heroes public but human public opinion is another tool/battlefield. For example: MC funded his shell company with Jason's money so Liar knows about it and deduces the truth about Hillan. Later he attempts to take over that company.
"...one of the reasons..." - that is true. The strongest hero (The Guild Master), who killed MC, works for Jason, but it's something like a blackmail, not an absolute obedience. Jason generally has strong ties with The Jaspine Empire.

Some exciting things begin to happen in the middle of the story and I don't want to spoil them without being asked directly. So for now I will just say that 4 Heavenly Kings are: Ernan Hilderan, Kaede Jaspine, Lavinia Ahkan and Luise Werft. Obviously, none of them were planed for.

Yes.It's finished and with some side stories.

They already got the highest rank for their first clear. In this chapter they were redoing the previously cleared floor.

This arc happened later in the novel. Also Jason didn't act so directly and openly since he prefers to keep his involvement hidden. So the appearances of Jason and Draxen in this chapter are all webtoon original plot points.

The context is also different. Since MC's tower wasn't discovered yet, 5th prince came to the mountains fully prepared to look for the tower while escorting Lavinia.

It is hard to judge this early but I like that MC is under pressure at this point in the story in the webtoon and the romantic sub-plot also progresses faster.

https://i.postimg.cc/g0Ht2Mch/i.webp

I was about to make a similar comment with my own screenshot. 😂

I don't think so. The future events will unfold in different circumstances and maybe in a different order but it's too soon to talk about the ending. In the novel the location of MC's tower is publicly revealed in the middle of the story and MC is able to deal with the following big attack so it's not the final confrontation.

The order of events in the webtoon is somewhat different then in the novel. The biggest change at this point in the story is that in the novel MC's tower haven't been discovered and that hunter hero returned alive after failing the mission, so MC wasn't under time pressure yet.

I will add this to my collection.
https://i.postimg.cc/rF9LMjX0/i.webp

Surviving the Game as a Barbarian

Indeed. Since he is acting alone, there is no pressure of taking care of his subordinates.

https://i.postimg.cc/yY5WS8Xn/i.png

Abandoned: The Hero Who's So Strong He Breaks Every Weapon and the Elf Weaponsmith
https://mangakatana.com/manga/abandoned-the-hero-whos-so-strong-he-breaks-every-weapon-and-the-elf-weaponsmith.27680

Me neither. So I will just say that I really like this webtoon. Reading this fake multi-pov is really funny.

I support that idea.