Chapter 231: No, You Have to Go Back. (2)
Gillian, who was waiting outside the castle, bowed to Ghislaine.
“Preparation for deployment is complete.”
“Good, take Davin to Baron Valua as quickly as possible and deliver the food before Amelia moves.”
“Understood.”
Before Davin could collect his thoughts, Gillian dragged him and joined the procession.
Penris’s army hastened forward toward Baron Valua’s territory without resting.
At that moment, Amelia heard the report that Ghislaine was bringing Davin and bit her lip.
‘How on earth? How did he manage to take Davin away right before my eyes?’
She was well aware that Ghislaine understood quite a bit about her. When he had previously extorted 20,000 gold from her, he hadn’t seemed to be merely guessing.
However, she never imagined he would predict the timing of her movements and sneak Davin away. Had he even thrown a feast beforehand as a smokescreen?
‘That bastard Ghislaine…’
Amelia’s insides boiled with anger.
She thought he was an unusual character, yet always considered him someone she could dispose of anytime.
But after what happened this time, she realized that notion was completely wrong.
Despite having monitored Ghislaine’s movements after he took Count Cabaldy’s territory, he had brazenly outsmarted her.
‘The difference in information was too vast. No, it wasn’t just a matter of information.’
At this level, he must have directly observed and predicted her and Harold’s moves.
Amelia reflected on Ghislaine’s accomplishments up until now.
The development of the Forest of Monsters, victory in the Perdium skirmish, cosmetics development, drought predictions, soaring rumors of flying machines, and a multitude of knights.
‘Is it… really possible for one person to achieve all this in such a short time?’
Amelia felt a chill run down her spine.
It was logically impossible. Given Ghislaine’s achievements, he could easily be compared to heroes from founding myths.
She even wondered if he had indeed predicted the drought, rather than merely preparing for it by chance.
Could she act like Ghislaine?
It was impossible.
With just ordinary knowledge and experience, it couldn’t be done. It required insight that saw through everything, combined with sheer luck.
Crunch.
Her teeth ground together involuntarily.
She felt a strange sense of defeat. The thought that Ghislaine had predicted and prepared for her moves was infuriating.
But now was not the time for such emotions.
‘What’s done is done. There’s no need to regret the past. Just repay him in kind.’
‘Think, think. What is he planning?’
‘He is not an ordinary person. I must predict his actions.’
‘If I were Ghislaine, how would I utilize the current situation?’
Once she completely took control of Raybold, she would need to attack Ghislaine together with Harold. After all, for Harold, Ghislaine was the biggest obstacle to conquering the North.
Ghislaine would probably predict that much, and he would try to prevent her from allying with Harold.
“You’ll try to prevent him from teaming up with Harold.”
“If I bring Davin into the picture, it gives me a justification to attack this place.”
Amelia shook her head while pondering the first possibility that came to mind.
He’s such a petty guy that he’d extort 20,000 gold from his fiancée. But would he really suffer the loss of his own troops?
There’s no way he’d do that.
“Then…”
There’s only one answer. Assigning Davin to someone who could rebel against him.
“Map! Bring me the map!”
Swish!
Amelia quickly scanned the area around Raybold.
Out of the seven vassal baronies, she had secured loyalty through persuasion and threats from four territories.
Now, there are three left. Amelia’s mind started racing.
“Where is it? Where?”
Getting rid of the heir ultimately means trying to provoke a civil war with Raybold. It means tying her hands and weakening her forces.
She had to stop that at all costs.
“This isn’t the place.”
One of the three baronies wasn’t far from Raybold’s castle and had a weak force. It would be too risky to send Davin safely.
That leaves two options.
Both were quite a distance from Raybold. By distance alone, they were actually a bit closer to Count Cabaldy’s Territory, which Ghislaine occupied.
As Amelia nervously chewed on her lip, her gaze fixed on one side of the map.
The southernmost part of Raybold, the area known as Raybold’s Shield.
A territory where Raybold’s steadfast and loyal vassal was holding out.
“Baron Valua!”
If she were Ghislaine, she would definitely send Davin there.
With plenty of food to last through a prolonged battle.
Amelia urgently gestured to Bernap.
“Immediately assemble a pursuit team…”
She bit her lip, stopping mid-sentence. By now, her fist was trembling with rage.
“It’s already too late.”
Even if she gathered her forces and set off now, it would be too late.
If she had sent Davin alone, he would have already reached Baron Valua’s territory, making any effort useless.
If food was sent along, it probably hadn’t arrived yet, but a considerable number of troops would have followed, so a hastily thrown-together small force wouldn’t guarantee victory.
The enemy had been preparing and moving properly for a long time. If she moved in a rush, she wouldn’t be able to win.
The Ghislaine she had seen was no longer an easy opponent.
Taking a moment to close her eyes and steady her heart, she soon regained her composure.
“Bernap.”
“Yes.”
“Notify the remaining lords of the two baronies, excluding Baron Valua, that I will give them a month to declare their loyalty. If they don’t swear their allegiance to me in a month, I will send my army.”
“Are you not going to contact Baron Valua?”
“It’s pointless. Prepare for immediate deployment. He’ll be holed up in his castle, so make sure our siege equipment is ready. I’ll go personally and wipe him out.”
At that moment, Conrad, the leader of the Aktium Merchant Group, cautiously voiced his opinion.
“Baron Valua is a renowned commander. It might be better to try persuading him…”
“He’ll fight to the bitter end. That’s just who he is. And…”
With a chilling gaze, Amelia continued.
“Davin will also head there. I need to personally go take his head.”
*
“Alright, it’s going well.”
When Gillian returned safely after dropping off Davin, Ghislaine wore a satisfied smile.
Amelia would ultimately have no choice but to go to war with Baron Valua.
Once that happens, she wouldn’t be able to pay proper attention here until the war ends, making it hard to pull off any tricks.
Baron Valua wasn’t an easy opponent to handle while distracted.
Harold couldn’t start a war right away, either, as he was under threat from the Crown Prince Faction.
“After that assassination failure, he’s probably grinding his teeth looking for another way.”
Both sides were in a situation where they couldn’t move recklessly. Ghislaine intended to seize this opportunity to focus on developing her territory.
It was chaos. Ghislaine thought it was the perfect time to focus on developing the territory.
Currently, there were a lot of large incubators in the territory, resulting in an absurd amount of chickens being produced.
The abundance of meat made the territory residents scream with joy.
“Our lord is the best!”
“How did you even think of creating something like this?”
“Meat everywhere! I never thought I’d see the day!”
For the territory residents, meat was so scarce that they barely even glimpsed it, let alone eat it. With bread in short supply, meat was a distant dream.
Originally, the production capacity was low and mainly used for nobles and knights. Even they struggled to eat meat after the drought hit, causing significant damage to livestock.
But suddenly, meat started to overflow from every direction. Although it was just chicken, the territory residents felt blissfully happy.
Especially the elves, who were undergoing stamina training, had tears brimming in their eyes from the long-awaited meat.
“Damn… Why is this making me so happy? It’s not like I received a luxury item.”
“We used to only eat high-class food…”
“Seriously, this beggar-like territory is so annoying…”
The meat tasted good, but it made them cry. Especially seeing Gordon downing a hundred chickens by himself was enough to bring tears to their eyes.
“Alright! Once you’ve all eaten, let’s start exercising right away! We need to absorb this quickly to turn it into muscle! Let’s go all out today! We can’t afford any muscle loss!”
The absurd statement made the elves shut their eyes.
“I’m going to throw up. You idiot…”
“Can we please work out logically…”
“Oh, here we go again today.”
As the elves expected, Ascon, the ‘Master’ of anger management, suddenly jumped up and started cursing.
“Hey, you little shit! Don’t you realize that as you age, your digestion gets worse? Do you think we’re all as dumb as you when it comes to our stomachs?”
As a master, he was incredibly good at distinguishing who to curse and who not to.
“Crazy lord, pretty priest, nagging butler, maid mage, the supreme elder, and the cranky elder. Just avoid those.”
Everyone else received a hearty dose of Ascon’s insults. Particularly Kaor reacted hilariously to every curse directed his way.
Unable to kill him, he just caused a ruckus on his own, which was quite enjoyable to watch.
In fact, others had also tried to provoke him but ended up being summoned by the lord to experience hell. The last time he was called, his great-great-grandfather and the World Tree came out to greet him.
“Especially that pretty priest named Piote? Or was it a guy? Anyway, that guy is definitely off-limits. Seems like a special management case. The thrill of cursing was just too good.”
After being caught a few times extracting tears from Piote with curses, he nearly faced eternal burial in the ground.
However, he was sure it was okay to mess with Gordon in front of him. If he could freely curse at Kaor, then Gordon was just an easy meal.
Sure enough, Gordon bit his lip and trembled his hands even after being cursed at.
He couldn’t kill him, and he couldn’t really injure him too much either. It meant he could only land a few hits at most.
But that Ascon guy surprisingly had a strong constitution. No matter how many times he was hit, he would bounce back up and start cursing again, which made Ghislaine want to go insane with anger.
“Stop cursing at me!”
Finally, Gordon swung his fist again.
“Ugh!”
Ascon fell over but didn’t stop cursing.
“Your mother makes the worst soup! I ate it and threw up! Dammit!”
“Don’t talk about my mom! You crazy elf!”
Gordon’s fist flew once more, but Ascon’s insults showed no signs of stopping.
The elves watching shook their heads. Wasting time meant they wouldn’t be able to sleep and still had to train afterward.
They were indeed feeling stronger from eating so much meat lately, but it also meant Ascon’s rampages lasted longer, making everything just as difficult.
It was just as hard since it was over.
The people living near the Lord’s Castle, including the Elves, had become healthier thanks to the abundance of meat.
However, not every territory had a Large Incubator. The production costs were staggering, making supply difficult.
It required a lot of materials, and since Mages had to participate in the production process, it also took a considerable amount of time.
But they needed to build one for Perdium as well.
In the end, supplying each village with a Large Incubator was pushed back, and they had no choice but to distribute from the main cities to each village for now.
The first necessary infrastructure for that was roads.
Under Ghislaine’s orders, a multitude of Laborers got to work on road construction, progressing rapidly.
Since Perdium actively provided Soldiers and Laborers, the roads connecting the main villages and each castle were somewhat organized.
But the problem was that they still couldn’t make proper use of those roads.
Ghislaine gathered his Retainers and said.
“Now that we have roads, we’ll start a transportation revolution. Faster transport means quicker development of the territory.”
Hearing that, Claude asked.
“Are we going to procure a large number of horses as you mentioned before?”
“That’s right. Most of the horses in the territory are only used for military purposes. With a shortage of horses, transportation will inevitably be delayed.”
Food, meat, and large construction materials can’t be moved by hand.
However, there were far too few horses compared to the size of the territory, so timely support was impossible.
In fact, the most time-consuming aspect of construction sites in the Penris Territory was waiting for the materials.
As a result, Ghislaine thought it was about time to procure some horses. It wasn’t just because they were necessary for transportation.
“We need a lot more horses to train a large number of Cavalry.”
To increase military strength, they also had to increase the Cavalry. Most of the troops in the territory were infantry.
Claude, feeling bold, brought up a question he had previously asked but never got an answer to.
“How do you plan to get them? You said you would tell me later.”
“You said you wouldn’t oppose it, right?”
“Oh, of course! Everything the Lord has done so far has been successful; why would I oppose it?”
Claude had gained some confidence. Having dealt with so many absurd situations, he now thought whatever will be, will be.
The other Retainers felt the same. They nodded in agreement with soulless expressions.
“We really need the horses.”
“Our Lord must have a solution for everything.”
“Just let our Lord do whatever he wants.”
Ghislaine smiled with satisfaction. True intentions eventually connect. Now they could reduce the bothersome and noisy process a bit.
So, feeling bold, he casually brought up something.
“My father has been struggling over there at the northern fortress for quite some time, hasn’t he?”
“Yes, that’s right. The Barbarians come to raid often, so he must have struggled a lot watching over the place without enough money or troops.”
“Right, our family’s ancestors really had a tough time. Always poor because of them. They were originally poor, but they became even poorer because of those guys.”
Claude just rolled his eyes and didn’t respond.
It felt uneasy. Why was the Lord rambling on about this while suggesting they go fetch horses?
The Lord often said nonsensical things, but in hindsight, they all turned out to be essential.
But bringing that up was? It meant he was thinking of some risky endeavor.
As Claude nervously observed, Ghislaine casually said, “Prepare for departure.”
“Why? What sudden departure? Why go out to get horses?”
Ghislaine continued with an expression that suggested he had something in mind.
“I think I’ll go take care of the Barbarians.”
‘Why do you have to do that!’
Claude’s head was spinning.
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