Yes, they're connected, but it makes the story's atmosphere all over the place and weird, where you got the laid back and carefree guy on one part, while there's the super serious kingdom politics shenanigans on the other.
O . o;
But it was deeper then that. MC running around everywhere saving the different sacred beasts, and each time he pushed back against the curse there would be corresponding ripples and fractures in the empire.
And it was weird, because the kingdom were barely told in the story, outside the evil king, plus a bunch of random sorcerers, knights, and slaves. Like, there's no background story or whatsoever being told, despite they're supposedly a very prominent kingdom that being able to utilize curses and other dark magic.
It didn't need to be deep, they were the big bads that caused strife and corruption in the forest. It was then further explained that the Empire wasn't even the real cause, just the mechanism by which three system administrators were abusing their position. I mean sure it was a rather weird direction for the author to take, but even that particular poorly thought out plotline has yet to finish.
Bruh, the manga has been ongoing for 6 years, and the story barely moves, where it still tells about the same conflict between the kingdom and the guy.
You might find this hard to believe, but most stories and novels before the internet took years to be written, edited, printed, and then distributed to their target audience. So I'm kinda OK with things taking time.
If this is One Piece, then we spend 6 years, and Luffy is still on East Blue. See how insane that is?
Nope, don't find that insane at all. As above, I follow many series and stories that only update few times a year. And worse, book series that have gap years. That just gives me more time to reread the series when a new update is released.
If the whole story can be made into a meme, then it'll be like this:
Apt meme, but not sure how that's exactly a bad. Though I do have to push back a little. God did inform the MC about the empire, and how they were the cats paw the apprentice system admin used to corrupt the system and try to aquire power from it's collapsed.