"Everyone stand at attention — nice and still!"
"You there — what are you whispering about? Looking to lose your head?"
The prisoners who had been scattered across the Yurilland Royal City square were being reorganized by Bardess with an almost pathological ruthlessness. Fifty to a row, thirty centimeters between each person — even the angle at which their toes rested in the gaps between the flagstones had to be perfectly uniform.
The spacing wasn't just for appearances. At that distance, the slightest fidget from any of them would be visible from twenty paces away.
Bardess gripped the list of Olan sleeper agents she'd just pried out of the King's mouth, her brow knotted like a tangled rope.
Whenever her obsessive nature came face to face with a list this filthy and rotten, she felt an overwhelming, nearly physical urge to scrub it completely clean.
"Count off!"
Bardess barked the command in a low growl, her voice rolling across the silent square. As a wave of trembling voices called out their numbers, Mason soldiers moved through the crowd with the list in hand, combing through the mass of bodies like the finest-toothed comb through a nest of tangled hair.
"You. Step out."
A man with a heavily stubbled face, dressed in the armor of a low-ranking Yurilland military officer, was yanked roughly from the crowd. His eyes darted back and forth as he tried to wipe the sweat from his face with hands caked in grime.
"I'm — I'm a second-rank centurion in the City Defense Army. I'm on record!"
He shouted, trying to paper over his true identity with his fabricated one.
Bardess stepped forward. She didn't look at his face. Instead, her gaze dropped to his knees — slightly turned inward, a deliberate performance of submission.
The posture was ugly. Wrong.
A genuine Yurilland military officer, after years of riding those inferior stocky horses, would have a pelvis that tilted slightly outward. But the positioning of this man's kneecaps aligned precisely with the Olan Royal Guards' standard training stance.
This lopsided disguise was like someone pouring salt directly into her eyes!
Her Majesty's list said he was a sleeper agent planted in the logistics division. Looking at him now, he wasn't just a sleeper — he was almost certainly a purebred lapdog bred and raised by the Olan Royal House itself.
Having filth like this mixed in with the prisoners was like dropping a mouse turd into a bowl of white flour. Until she pulled him out, she wouldn't sleep tonight.
The Mason soldiers watching Bardess work her almost supernatural arrest techniques felt their admiration boil over once again.
Would you look at that! This is Mason's execution power!
Commander Bardess doesn't even need to read the list carefully. She just stands there, and the stench of rot on those Olan spies automatically clashes with Mason's cleanliness.
Hear they call what she's doing the "Human Structural Logic Comparison Method" — some kind of advanced tactical technique.
Anyone whose soul isn't loyal will have the faintest deviation in their stance.
When Her Majesty first gave Commander Bardess such authority, she must have foreseen this very moment.
The list is just a reference. It's the Commander's eyes — those eyes that cut through any disguise, the eyes of Order — that are the true bane of every Olan spy!
The search proceeded swiftly. From the moment Mason took over the city gates, not even a fly had escaped, and so the several dozen names on the list were rounded up in short order.
But when Willow arrived with a handful of clerks assigned to organize the records, the atmosphere turned heavy.
"Commander Bardess. We have a problem."
Willow handed Bardess several household registry documents that had just been salvaged from the basement of the Yurilland Ministry of Civil Affairs.
"Based on the list the King supplied, we apprehended forty-two individuals. However, among the prisoners, there are twelve people... who do not exist in any of Yurilland's official records whatsoever."
Willow's gaze carried a professional chill.
"They never received Yurilland military pay. They never paid Yurilland taxes. Even on the streets where they claimed to live, the neighbors say they simply appeared out of nowhere within the last few years."
Bardess took the documents, absently aligning their edges, and her expression went cold.
No record of existence?
That meant these people weren't Yurilland traitors that Olan had bought off. They were independent assets that Olan had inserted directly — people whose household registries weren't held by the Yurilland Royal House, but by whatever old spider sat on the throne in the Olan Imperial Capital.
Victoria had walked over during this exchange and caught the tail end of Willow's report. She tapped her ivory fan lightly against the side of her thigh.
"If they don't officially exist, then they can't be treated as prisoners of war."
Victoria looked toward the twelve spies who had been held in separate confinement — all tight-lipped, all wearing the expressions of people who had already made their peace with death — and spoke to Bardess:
"Commander Bardess, the logic of these people's existence is broken. They don't belong to this land, and so they fall outside the protection of any law. Take them back to the dungeon and let Miss Irene see if she has any new toys that might persuade them to talk. If even Irene can't pry their mouths open, then their bones are just like the Olan throne — garbage that needs to be ground to dust."
Victoria's single sentence drained the color from every one of the prisoners' faces.
Bardess nodded with deep conviction.
"Exactly right. If the records say these people don't exist, then they're not alive. Even if they happen to get... disposed of by accident, there's no need to log them on any death register."
Pinned beneath the combined gaze of Victoria and Bardess, those dozen or so people felt as though they were being stared down by a viper and a leopard simultaneously. They couldn't stop shaking.
As the night deepened, the streets of the Yurilland Royal City fell into a quiet, orderly stillness beneath the tread of patrolling soldiers.
Sophia stood at the top of a palace tower, listening to the sound of heavy hammers striking stone slabs far below.
Olan's reach — it stretched further than she had anticipated.
Sophia's pale-gold pupils glinted in the darkness.
As she descended from the tower, the night wind swept through Sophia's silver hair, carrying with it a razor-edged chill.
In the end, not one of those ghost-record spies lasted half an hour under Irene's interrogation.
These sleeper agents, trained as deathsworn, trembled as they let slip information that sent a chill down the spines of everyone present.
Less than fifty li to the west of Yurilland, there was a small principality.
The land wasn't vast, but it was rich in fine iron ore. And now, that territory had become a living hell.
A secret Olan detachment was stationed there, confining innocent civilians in specially made iron cages — using them as test subjects for a new weapon.
"They were setting fires there. Using living people as target practice, just to see if their crossbows could punch through human flesh in a single shot."
The head spy's voice was soaked in despairing tremors as he slipped into unconsciousness.
Sophia listened to it all. A deep, cold shadow passed through her pale-gold pupils.
"Since that is a land rich in quality ore, there's no reason to let those Olan people — who only know how to ruin things — run wild there any longer."
Sophia turned to look at Bardess, her tone as cool and cutting as the first snowfall of winter.
"Bardess. Muster two thousand elite soldiers and bring every black musket we have. In a quarter of an hour, the full army rides out for Saen. I want every last person playing with fire there to understand — before dawn — what true thunder actually looks like."
The night-dark wasteland was shattered by the thunder of hooves.
Since the Principality of Saen was already under Olan's rampage, Sophia saw no reason to conceal their approach.
Mason's cavalry gripped their black muskets, every pair of eyes burning with a fierce hunger for work points.
When the army crested the slope outside Saen, the scene below was harrowing even in the dark of night.
The city walls had collapsed in great sections. Dozens of iron tubes, each stamped with the Olan eagle crest, were mounted on earthen mounds. With each deafening crack, the crossbow bolts they fired punched clean through the walls of the civilian homes in the distance.
"Those arrogant old fossils — think grabbing a few crossbows gives them the right to rule the world?"
Irene sprawled across her saddle, pulling a specially crafted long-barreled telescope from the leather pouch at her hip. Those sapphire eyes of hers glittered with dangerous light.
"Your Majesty, those crossbows of theirs are far too cumbersome. Every time they fire one shot, it takes a small crowd of men half the day to reset it. To me, they're just sitting targets begging to be hit."
"Full formation."
Sophia's voice cut through precisely on the signal of Bardess's whistle.
Two thousand Mason soldiers snapped into three ranks along the ridgeline with a precision so sharp it sent an inexplicable dread through the Olan detachment on the far side.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
With the first volley of black muskets, the Olan soldiers who had been clustered around the massive crossbows below the slope went down in a swath. They hadn't even made out their enemy's faces before fire balls faster than lightning and harder than arrows punched straight through their chests.
"What is that?! Is this Divine Punishment?!"
The Olan commander frantically waved his broadsword, trying to rally what remained of his men.
What greeted him instead was Bardess's obsessively meticulous commands.
"Left flank — align! Ready — fire!"
Another volley of dense fire swept the slope.
From the commander's perspective, the Mason soldiers — whom he had dismissed as lowly militia — had transformed into the grim reapers themselves. They didn't need to charge. They didn't need to grapple. They simply stood up there on the high ground, mechanically and precisely pulling their triggers, erasing his proud experimental unit row by row.
Bardess swept her command flag back and forth, watching the Olan forces dissolve into chaos on the slope below. The revulsion she felt toward disorder detonated in her chest.
Look at these Olan idiots.
Running away all crooked and lopsided, dying in a tangled heap. An absolute desecration of this mining district!
How wise Her Majesty is — leading us on this overnight sprint specifically because she couldn't stand watching these disorderly impurities contaminate the Saen ore pits!
Just look at those crossbows, tilted every which way, not a single one aligned on an axis. Since you didn't know how to use them properly, I'll just have to scrub every last speck of filth off this place for you!
Only when the black powder smoke smothers that rotten stench of blood will the world start making sense again!
When the last Olan soldier crumpled into a pool of blood, Saen's survivors staggered out from the rubble, trembling. They had expected another massacre.
But when they raised their heads and saw — there in the silver light of a broken-glass moon — a silver-haired girl in a Black Rose cloak riding a black horse, descending slowly from the ridgeline, every last one of them held their breath.
Sophia looked at these civilians in their tattered clothes with despair written across their faces. Her tone was as steady as ever.
"Olan's illegal garrison has been eliminated. From this moment forward, both the iron ore of this land and your lives fall under the banner of Mason."
She gestured toward the black muskets still trailing wisps of smoke.
"I have no use for hollow gratitude. Before sundown tomorrow, go to Commander Bardess and register your household records. Anyone still strong enough to pick up a shovel will earn a ration of sweetened bread — enough to fill a stomach. Mason doesn't keep idlers, but Mason never lets hardworking people cry in the dark."
The survivors stood frozen. Then they erupted — a wave of weeping and screaming that shook the sky.
They had never heard logic so ruthless, yet so deeply reassuring.
Victoria stood behind Sophia, watching those civilians — who had moments ago resigned themselves to death — flare back to life. Her awe of Sophia climbed yet another step.
Incredible. My dear little sister.
In the middle of a battlefield soaked in blood and torn flesh, you can't spare a single word of comfort — yet you use this seemingly transactional logic to instantly dissolve the despair of an entire city.
While those Olan people are still daydreaming about conquering the world, you've already started building real foundations of truth on top of the rubble.
Only now do I understand — what people call royal authority doesn't live in gilded phrases. It lives in these heavy gun barrels and in bread that can be traded for a life.
Sophia turned her gaze toward the faint sliver of dawn just beginning to scratch the horizon. Those pale-gold pupils were utterly clear and awake.
I was actually pretty exhausted, but after a full day and night of this, I somehow feel sharper. Does fighting wars save on coffee?
Saen's ore, plus Yurilland's city defenses. Mason's war machine could finally fit itself with a sturdier pair of wheels.
The first thin light of dawn finally tore through the gloom hanging over the Principality of Saen for good. The gunpowder smoke on the wasteland had yet to fully clear when Bardess, accompanied by a handful of personal soldiers, charcoal pencil and rough sheepskin parchment in hand, was already moving through the wreckage and the bodies, conducting her near-obsessive accounting work.
By the time Bardess had copied the last survivor's name onto the register in careful, even strokes, her brow was knotted tighter than it had been during the charge.
"Your Majesty. The count is in."
Bardess picked her way through the rubble to the side of Sophia's black horse and held up the register — edges aligned with painstaking precision — her voice carrying a suppressed, gravelly tension.
"In total... only eight hundred and twenty-one survivors. Those Olan animals never intended to leave anyone alive. Every child too slow to run, every elder too frail to move — all of them were used to test the crossbows. Not one survived."
"The eight hundred or so who made it are mostly able-bodied adult men and women. Ragged and blood-caked as they are, the fact that they endured that inhuman ordeal long enough for Mason's forces to arrive speaks to an extraordinary will to live."
At Sophia's command, several supply wagons were pulled to the center of the square.
No grand speeches. Only the silent, efficient movements of Mason's soldiers.
Loaf after loaf of Black Bread — hard, but carrying the wholesome smell of grain — was distributed into the survivors' hands, along with bottle after bottle of healing salve that smelled of bitter herbs.
A broad-shouldered man from Saen took the bread with trembling hands, not bothering to wipe the mud from his palms, and bit down hard.
The coarse grain dissolving on his tongue — that sensation made this man, who had been waiting to die in an iron cage, suddenly break down in tears.
"Eat."
Bardess rested one hand on her straight sword, sweeping her gaze across the men and women who were wolfing down their food. Her tone was stiff — yet it carried an unmistakable sense of Order.
"You need a full stomach before you have the strength to slaughter the people who treated you like livestock. In Mason, this bread isn't free — you'll be earning work points with the rest of your lives to pay for it. Understand?"
"We want to join Mason!"
Someone shouted it first. Then, in every single one of those eight hundred pairs of eyes — which had been hollow and dead just moments before — small flames of vengeance ignited, all at once.
They dropped to their knees in the mud, one after another. Not toward any god. Not toward any temple. Only toward that cold flash of silver on horseback.
"As long as we can kill Olan people... this life of mine belongs to Mason!"
Bardess looked at these survivors — eyes shot through with blood, faces twisted into something almost feral from the sheer force of their hatred — and her admiration for Sophia was practically overflowing.
This is Her Majesty's breeding logic.
I was still wondering why Her Majesty would bother dragging us on an overnight raid to some backwater principality. Now I understand completely!
These survivors aren't refugees. They're deathsworn that Her Majesty personally tempered in the furnace of Olan's hatred!
Bardess was moved to her core, and she wiped the corner of her eye where a tear had quietly appeared.
You see — the Olan people slaughtered the weak and the elderly, and in doing so they inadvertently completed the selection process for Her Majesty. Everyone left has iron bones and a killer's heart. Ready to fight from day one.
Her Majesty used nothing but a few loaves of bread and a little herbal salve to buy the loyalty of eight hundred starving wolves.
This isn't a rescue operation. This is Mason's war machine gaining its sharpest new set of fangs.
This ability to convert the enemy's brutality directly into our own fighting strength... Your Majesty, you've aligned even the creases of fate itself!
Victoria stood beside the carriage, fingertips tracing the edge of her ivory fan. Those pale-gold pupils of hers were filled with the wonder of someone who had just seen through everything.
My dear little sister, this method of yours... it really ought to put those preachy church people out of business for good.
Solid resources, in exchange for absolute loyalty. These eight hundred people will never have a homeland again. They'll have no way back. Mason's military banner will be the only faith they ever know.
In this shattered age, survival belongs only to those who can hold a gun.
The dead of Saen became an undying source of hatred burning in the hearts of these eight hundred. And you, Sophia — you are the one who controls where that hatred is aimed.
This precision recycling of resources, this efficiency so cold it borders on the divine — how could the King of Olan, who only knows how to wield brute force, ever be your match?
Sophia sat astride her horse, pale-gold pupils surveying the survivors below, all of them desperate to pledge themselves to her.
Sophia ran the calculations rapidly in her mind. These people were in good physical condition, with hatred ratings off the charts — which meant she could skip the time normally spent on ideological conditioning and psychological groundwork entirely.
Once they passed background checks, they could be put to use immediately.
If Mason were to face Olan head-on right now, troop numbers were still too thin. With these people joining, things would be considerably easier.
Since they were volunteering themselves, the logic was clean and straightforward.
The mines here needed defending, and the coming offensive needed a vanguard.
"Bardess."
Sophia's voice remained as cool as ever, unmoved by the mass declaration of loyalty.
"Once they've been vetted and cleared, fold them into the Saen Vanguard and begin basic formation drills. Tell them — before their first battle, they only hold provisional identity cards. If they want official Mason citizenship and better bread, they'll have to go take it from Olan's front lines."
"Understood! I'll have them standing straight as rulers in no time!"
Bardess accepted the order with barely contained excitement and moved off.
In that moment, atop the ruins of the Principality of Saen, there were no more weeping survivors. There was only a torrent of revenge, brimming with hatred, being reforged under Mason's Order.
Among the ruins of Saen, the eight hundred or so newly enlisted able-bodied fighters crowded around the supply wagons, devouring their Black Bread — the bread that tasted of salvation — with the ravenous urgency of the starving.
Bardess was hollering herself hoarse, trying to arrange these scattered individuals into something resembling a coherent formation in the shortest possible time.
Just then, Delilah — who had been standing behind Sophia all this while, her complexion still carrying that sickly pallor — suddenly stepped forward. Her voice was hoarse, but it held an iron-willed resolve that brooked no argument.
"Your Majesty. Please entrust the training of this Saen Vanguard to me."
Delilah pressed a fist to her chest and bowed deeply, those bright, spirited eyes now filled with urgency and self-scrutiny.
I can't keep going on like this.
Delilah's inner voice was a storm of self-recrimination. From Cors to now, I've provided almost no real assistance to Her Majesty. My body hasn't fully healed — I genuinely can't mount a horse and lead a charge right now. But if it's only basic formation and discipline drills, I can hold up under that.
I cannot stand by and watch Her Majesty trouble herself over a task like this while I, like some pampered invalid, sit comfortably basking in Daphne's Holy Light and Her Majesty's partiality.
Sophia pulled the reins slightly and tilted her head. Those pale-gold pupils swept briefly over Delilah's faintly trembling fingers. Her tone didn't shift by a fraction — but it landed cold as a bucket of ice water poured over Delilah's head.
"That won't be necessary. Your only assignment right now is to rest."
Delilah started, and looked up with undisguised urgency.
"Your Majesty, my injuries have already —"
"That is an order."
Sophia cut her off. Her gaze held the absolute certainty of pure reason.
"In my logic, what you are right now is not a qualified drill instructor. You are a unit in need of repair. Go and do what you're supposed to do, Delilah."
Sophia gave a gentle press of her heels and rode slowly in the direction of the Royal City.
She couldn't afford to run an injured employee into the ground — especially not someone with whom she shared a deeper bond than most. Letting Delilah go back to work now — that, Sophia genuinely could not bring herself to do.
Delilah stood rooted to the spot, listening to the crisp sound of hoofbeats grow gradually distant. Something in her chest clenched hard. The bridge of her nose stung.
So... she really does think I'm useless now?
She let her arm drop, despondent, and stared at the palms of her hands — still faintly weak from the severity of her wounds.
Just as that crushing sense of failure was about to swallow her whole, Victoria's words — "living is the only legitimacy" — and the warmth of Sophia's hand gripping hers in the corner of that dungeon flashed through her mind without warning.
No.
Delilah snapped her hand into a fist.
Her Majesty doesn't think I'm useless. She is protecting me.
In Her Majesty's logic, I am her sharpest sword — a divine weapon that must be carefully maintained and saved for the decisive battle before it is ever drawn from its scabbard.
If I damage this body that is still healing out of nothing but cheap guilt, that would be the greatest betrayal of Her Majesty imaginable.
I must become stronger. Stronger than I've ever been.
Only then will I be worthy of the place Her Majesty has specifically kept open for me in this world of lies.
That evening, back at camp, the firelight swayed.
The soldiers in charge of distributing food were surprised to discover that General Delilah — who was normally extraordinarily restrained in her eating habits, and whose poor appetite from her injuries had made her eat even less lately — had today, of her own accord, asked for an extra portion of thick stewed meat and two large hunks of bread.
Delilah sat by the fire and completely ignored the curious looks being directed her way, mechanically stuffing food into her mouth without a trace of expression.
More food means more muscle. More sleep means more energy.
She chewed with robotic focus while rehearsing various techniques of applied force in her mind.
After finishing her meal, she didn't return to her tent. Instead, gritting her teeth against the maddening itch and sting of healing wounds, she moved to a secluded corner at the edge of the camp and began slow, deliberate weighted walking drills.
Every step landed with complete steadiness. Every breath aligned precisely with the rhythm of the Holy Light.
Not far away, in the shadows, Saint Daphne had just finished distributing healing salves to the soldiers. Her jade-green eyes watched quietly, resting on that solitary figure laboring in silence beneath the night sky.
Seeing that Delilah had stopped drowning in guilt-ridden gloom and was instead using a nearly ruthless kind of rationality to care for her own body, Daphne's perpetually tight lips finally softened into a gentle curve.
General Delilah has finally stepped over that pathetic threshold.
She finally understands Her Majesty's true intent.
Her Majesty refused to let her lead the troops because she needs her to complete the transformation — from an ordinary mortal general to a Guardian of Order.
Just look at how she's eating. That isn't about satisfying hunger. She's frantically absorbing energy so as not to waste a single unit of the resources Her Majesty has invested in her.
Now that she's had this realization, her rate of recovery should improve by at least thirty percent.
With this, the one missing piece in Her Majesty's otherwise immaculate strategic map — the hardest piece — has finally been put in place.
To see the people around her all voluntarily aligning their own logic toward Her Majesty's goals... Her Majesty's mood tonight — it might, just perhaps, be a little lighter than usual.
Meanwhile, inside the command tent.
Sophia was hunched over the Olan defensive maps that the Yurilland King had surrendered. Her slender fingertip traced lightly across several of the mineral deposit markers.
Not a huge haul of mines, but large ones — and well-situated.
This means Mason will have another mineral source beyond Qubi.
And Delilah's condition is improving.
Sophia watched her eat a proper meal for once, and felt a quiet relief settle somewhere in her chest.
The dawn over Yurilland's Royal City arrived wrapped in a martial, eerily silent stillness.
Sophia stood on the broad terrace of the palace. Morning wind stirred the Black Rose emblem on her cloak.
Behind her, several elite soldiers — lithe of build, moving as though they were part of the shadows themselves — were kneeling on one knee.
These were the shadow assassins that Delilah had personally selected and broken through grueling training during Mason's most precarious days. Their alertness and capacity for concealment were a match for even Olan's finest scouts.
"Go."
Sophia did not turn around. Her voice was clean and cold as ice.
"Keep watch on Olan's main army movements. I don't need you to risk your lives. I need only the most precise coordinates and march progress. The moment you sight the enemy, signal at once."
"By your command, Your Majesty!"
Several silhouettes vanished instantly into the shadows along the palace walls.
Sophia drew her gaze back in, and those pale-gold pupils settled on the dense grid of prisoner formations in the square below.
Under Bardess's near-pathological precision, Yurilland's remaining four thousand soldiers had been sorted into exactly eighty formations.
On the other side of the square, more than eight thousand subjects huddled together, eyes filled with the raw terror of people who had barely survived.
Once the internal informants, the hardened holdouts, and those eliminated during the fighting had been removed, what remained was the full extent of Yurilland's available human capital.
Daphne was making her way through the prisoner formations. With a touch of her slender fingers, Holy Light traced across the foreheads of each prisoner in turn, leaving behind a Black Rose brand that pulsed with a faint ripple of magic.
"Listen up, you country bumpkins."
Bardess rode her horse along the line, one hand resting on the hilt of her sword as she conducted her inspection. Her voice was coarse and loud.
"This brand isn't here to torment you. It is Her Majesty's mercy."
As long as you accumulate enough work points through labor service or combat in the days ahead, Lord Saint will personally erase that mark. And at that point, you'll receive official Mason identity cards.
"In Mason, only the hardworking earn the right to live — and they'll live a hundred times better than you did under that fat old King of yours!"
The "fat old King" Bardess was referring to was at this very moment standing in the crowd alongside his wife and children. He didn't argue. He was simply grateful to have survived. He hadn't actually expected that young Mason Queen to truly spare his family.
He was just an ordinary person now — but somehow, looking at the Mason soldiers around him, he found himself feeling something unexpected: a flicker of anticipation for what lay ahead.
Yurilland's soldiers kept their heads down. No one dared make a sound.
For them, compliance was the only remaining logic of survival.
Even a curse branded into their flesh was better than becoming dry bones bleaching on the wasteland.
And yet, when midday rations arrived, something began to shift in that forced compliance — a subtle chemical reaction.
Because they were prisoners of war, the Yurilland soldiers received only the Black Bread that Irene had improved — filling enough, but coarse in texture.
They crouched on the ground, washing it down with cold water, mechanically swallowing.
But not fifty paces from their formations, the Mason soldiers assigned to guard them had gathered around a campfire.
When the lid was lifted from the large pot, a rich, dense fragrance — heavy with meat and the spicy bite of special seasonings — billowed across the entire square in an instant.
This was the Mason army's standard midday meal.
Large chunks of salt-pork stewed with beans, served alongside white flour long loaves. And in every man's hand — a small cup of clear, refreshing fruit wine.
Gulp.
A wave of synchronized swallowing rippled through the prisoner formations.
An old Yurilland veteran stared blankly at the chunk of Black Bread that had fallen into the mud. Then he looked back at the Mason soldiers — their ruddy complexions, their easy confidence as they tore into their meat. The envy in his eyes was almost brimming over.
Those are Mason soldiers?
They eat better than we did in the Royal Guards!
The color of that stew — even at the lord's own table, you'd be lucky to see broth that rich.
Olan people always said Mason was a wasteland so poor the people ate dirt. Yet here we are — we so-called elite soldiers of a great nation going hungry, while their ordinary foot soldiers drink wine and eat meat.
Is this what that young Queen meant when she said hard work could buy you a life like that?
If earning merit gets you a bowl of that stew... maybe this brand isn't quite so unacceptable after all.
Bardess cradled her bowl of meat stew and deliberately walked over to stand in front of several Yurilland officers whose eyes were most restless, and with trademark obsessiveness, arranged a few stray beans in her bowl into a tidy row.
Her Majesty's stomach offensive — it's an art form, pure and simple!
Having us deliberately eat meat in front of the prisoners — it's all just to show them the gap between the false legitimacy of the old era and the real bread of the new one, isn't it?
Just look at those country bumpkins' eyes. A minute ago they were dead and hollow. Now every single one of them has gone bright-green like a pack of starving wolves.
This hunger for a better life — that is the most unshakeable kind of loyalty there is.
Her Majesty doesn't even need to raise a whip. She just lets the smell of the stew drift over, and those four thousand prisoners will soon be the most eager candidates for Mason's reserve force you've ever seen.
Following Her Majesty, even a meal call becomes a dimensional suppression strike of psychological warfare. I am, in every possible sense, at her feet for life!
Beside the carriage, Sophia accepted a cup of red tea from Willow and cast a brief, cool glance across the square.
Physiological stimulation. More efficient than any political speech ever written.
Since Olan's main army was still en route, she had a few days. Enough time to brand Mason's mark on the stomachs of these units-awaiting-reform before anything else.
The Council Hall of the Yurilland Royal City.
This room had once been where that round-bellied, corpulent King convened his ministers to debate new ways of squeezing taxes from his people — all in opulent luxury. Now, Sophia sat at the council table carved from a single block of white marble.
The air still carried the faint aftertaste of expensive incense, but Sophia's ice-cold presence had already scoured every trace of incompetence and decadence from the room.
"Your Majesty, the first wave of accounting results has arrived."
At the click of crisp boot heels, Willow led dozens of elite soldiers filing into the hall in an orderly stream.
The soldiers carried one heavy rosewood chest after another. Some were edged in gold leaf, others inlaid with pearls — and even in the dim hall, they radiated a dazzling, almost dizzying splendor.
Click. Willow personally unlatched the first chest.
In an instant, massive gold bricks blazed in the torchlight, staining even the ceiling a rich, extravagant gold.
Treasures: several hundred chests of exceptional jewels and ornaments, including uncut sapphires from Saen and red agate from the empire's southern territories.
Consumables: rare aged vintage wines, precious medicinal herbs sufficient to supply the entire Mason medical corps for three years, and bolts of silk enough to carpet the whole of Whitestone City's square.
Currency: a staggering sum of gold, silver, and copper coins piled together in a small mountain.
Armaments: not as advanced as Mason's, but precision-forged steel weapons and heavy armor of exceptional quality.
"Your Majesty."
Willow pushed her glasses up, and though her voice remained steady, even she couldn't fully hide the shock in her eyes.
"The wealth recovered from Whitestone City and this palace combined already exceeds the total assets across all the cities Mason currently controls. Yurilland... was a piece of meat dripping with fat."
Sophia reached out and picked up a goblet of pure gold, letting her fingertips trace its intricate engravings. Those pale-gold pupils held only cold, rational appraisal.
This density of wealth, in a country where the common people could barely eat.
Sophia's mind raced through the calculations.
By Yurilland's annual revenues, this gold was enough to fortify Whitestone City's walls ten times over — or put a large pot of meat on the table every day for those eight thousand subjects.
But that King had turned all of it into dead weight rotting in a cellar.
This extreme selfishness of logic had left Yurilland's internal structure as fragile as a single sheet of paper.
The fire I brought them only ignited dead grass that was already long overdue for burning.
"This is, without question, a catastrophically failed model of governance."
Sophia set the golden goblet down, producing a small, certain, crisp sound.
"He believed that by gripping the gold he was gripping legitimacy. He never understood that without wealth in circulation, a false regime like his only rots faster."
Willow stared at Sophia — utterly unmoved before a mountain of treasure — and felt an admiration that words could no longer describe.
This is what it truly means to see from the perspective of a god!
Any ordinary lord laying eyes on this gold would have been swallowed whole by the euphoria of sudden riches. But in Her Majesty's eyes, all these glittering things were apparently nothing more than misallocated energy packages in need of recalibration.
Her Majesty deliberately forbade looting during the city's fall — specifically so she could do exactly this: confiscate all the accumulated rot in a single sweep, then inject it precisely into Mason's work point system.
Just look at how Her Majesty is eyeing these jewels — she's calculating how to convert them into machinery for the Saen mines, into new-model muskets for Mason's soldiers.
To take a century of a nation's exploitation and, in a single day, strip it clean and channel it back into the engine of civilization... Your Majesty, you are quite literally performing a blood transfusion for Mason using the marrow of an entire continent.
Sophia looked at Willow, her tone coolly precise.
"Willow — register all of these gold coins into the treasury. Set aside a portion of the jewelry and gems and let Irene review them for potential use. As for the silks and the wine — price everything openly and use them as premium work point exchange rewards for distribution within Mason."
"I want every Mason soldier to understand — follow me, and they won't just eat meat. They'll be able to exchange for the kind of luxury goods that only the old nobility ever got to enjoy."
Sophia rose from her seat and walked to the council hall's tall window, looking down at the streets outside, now being absorbed into Mason's Order.
"Every last coin of metal that King squeezed from his people — from today forward, all of it becomes ammunition fired straight into Olan's chest."
Victoria chose this precise moment to walk into the hall. She had come to report on the resettlement of the Royal City's civilian population, but the sight of several hundred chests of dazzling treasure stopped her dead in her tracks.
Insane... truly insane.
No wonder he carried himself with such extravagance in front of Olan's envoys before.
This was never governance. This was fattening Yurilland into a piggy bank, waiting for a stronger predator to come and smash it open.
Sophia, standing there right now, you look like a composed auditor clearing the books of a world gone completely off the rails.
Looking at all these jewels, I finally understand why you never needed to put on a performance of mercy for those prisoners.
Because when you command this kind of efficiency — the efficiency to reshape wealth itself — you are, by your very existence, the legitimacy of this new age.
This approach — not merely seizing territory, but stripping the conquered of the very logical foundation of their right to rule — that is conquest at its absolute highest level.
Sophia did not turn around. Her voice carried through the gold-and-splendor-soaked council hall.
"Victoria. It seems we need to accelerate the build-up. All this unexpected windfall — if it can't be converted into fighting strength before Olan arrives, it would be the greatest insult imaginable to this land."
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