"…Let us begin settling accounts with this world."
"Everyone else, go and rest first. Conserve your strength."
The candle-flames within the Governance Hall had not been extinguished all night. As the others departed, the vast, empty hall held only Sophia and Delilah, who had stayed behind to verify the precise routes of march.
The night wind outside the window carried the earthy fragrance unique to summer nights. Sophia's pale fingertip pressed lightly upon the red line that ran for hundreds of li along the border between Olan and Vala.
That pass was a place of treacherous terrain — the sole chokepoint, the throat-road, leading from the Olan Duchy into the heartland of the Northern border.
"Your Majesty, this is the grain-transport artery of the Olan Duchy."
Delilah, one hand on her longsword, bent slightly at the waist, her long red hair bound behind her head sliding down over her shoulder.
With flawless precision, she fitted several blue crystal stones — representing Mason's defensive fortifications — into the mouth of the valley's exit:
"Tina lost a great deal of her forces at the Black Stone Fortress. The fifty thousand dragoon cavalry now pulling back to defend the Royal City may look imposing, but the fine fodder those warhorses consume each day is an astronomical figure.
Once Red Maple Valley is cut off, the Olan Royal City will run out of grain within three days.
I intend to have Bardess hold here with ten thousand men, and establish three fully sealed lines of chevaux-de-frise."
Sophia gazed at those few blue crystal stones, the rustling, flickering candlelight reflected in her pale-golden irises.
"Not only Red Maple Valley."
Sophia's tone remained as cold and steady as ever, betraying not a single ripple.
She plucked several small Black Rose wooden tokens from the box beside her and tossed them casually onto the few hidden trails behind the valley:
"Tina is fiercely proud. Once she learns the main road is sealed off, she will surely send scattered merchant caravans along these mountain footpaths, trying to smuggle in grain at exorbitant prices from the tiny nations nearby.
Tell Bardess: whether it is a formal grain convoy or a peddler disguised as a refugee — so long as they do not carry a formal passage permit issued by Mason, not a single grain of wheat, not a single head of livestock, is to be let through."
Sophia raised her head, meeting Delilah's dark-red eyes brimming with battle-lust, her expression indifferent:
"What we are to do is raise an invisible iron curtain around the perimeter of Olan.
Let Tina, upon her throne, watch with her own eyes as her Empire rots away inch by inch for want of supplies."
"I, I understand Your Majesty's intent completely."
Delilah bowed slightly, a flicker of extreme, fevered worship flashing in the depths of her eyes.
To her military instinct, this manner of fighting — which spilled not a drop of one's own soldiers' blood, yet drove the knife straight into the enemy nation's belly — was far more shocking than any bloody siege assault.
The next morning, just as the sky was dimly brightening.
The drill ground of Whitestone City was still wreathed in a thin layer of morning mist, the icy dew beating upon the blades of grass, lending the scene a particular, frigid clarity.
Yet at this moment, ten thousand hand-picked Mason heavy infantry already stood in neat ranks, formed into ten square formations, each face bearing a calm and coldly severe killing intent.
"Every one o' you, buck up yer spirits!
Don't be like them starved, weak-kneed Olan shrimp!"
Bardess's enormous, somewhat androgynous voice instantly tore through the morning's tranquility.
Clad in heavy plate armor polished to a brilliant shine, she slammed that giant battle-axe — taller than a person — heavily into the ground, the shock setting the surrounding war banners trembling three times over.
This was a weapon Miss Irene had forged specially for those of great strength.
Bardess strode up onto the high platform, her face full of excitement she could not hide.
Upon learning that Her Majesty had entrusted the most crucial mission to her, this iron-blooded Commander — who ordinarily knew only how to snatch up an axe — had spent half the night polishing her weapons in elation.
She had thought that once General Delilah was revived at full health, her own usefulness would be slight.
Yet both Her Majesty and the General held her in great esteem.
"Brothers and sisters!
Her Majesty has spoken — those Olan people are not honest folk. Just days ago they even schemed to poison Her Majesty at the Black Stone Fortress!
Tell me, can we swallow this insult?!"
"We cannot!!"
Ten thousand soldiers loosed an earth-shaking roar all at once, the longspears in their hands stamping the ground in unison, ringing out with a muffled, thunderous clash of metal.
"Very good!"
Bardess laughed in satisfaction, vaulting onto a mighty armored warhorse and slashing her battle-axe fiercely forward:
"Move out! Target — Red Maple Valley!
This time we're going to slip a noose around Olan's neck!
Her Majesty has given the order: even if it's just a rat trying to haul a single grain of rice out of Olan, we're to strip its hide right off! Move out!!"
"Boom, boom, boom."
The perfectly uniform footsteps trampled the soil of the Plains of Vala. Those columns of soldiers cloaked in Black Rose war-robes were like a colossal python cast in steel, winding silky and cruel through the breaking dawn toward the borderline of the Olan Duchy.
In stark contrast to the bustling reclamation farming and the launching of the campaign on Mason's side, the interior of the Olan Royal City at this moment had fallen into an unprecedented hysteria.
Within the Palace's Council Hall, the air was so oppressive it seemed about to drip water.
"CRACK——!!"
An exquisite glazed teacup was hurled savagely to the ground by a pale, trembling hand, shattering into a sky full of streaming light.
"Three days!
Three whole days!"
Queen Tina sat upon her throne, her face ghastly pale, her right arm still wrapped in thick white bandages oozing threads of blood.
The lead bullet fired by Sophia's own hand had not taken her life, but it had cracked the bone of her entire right arm — and now every movement brought a piercing, drilling pain.
Yet the agony of her body could not compare to the madness the war report before her stirred.
Tina's bloodshot eyes fixed dead upon the Finance Minister kneeling below, and she snarled through gritted teeth:
"What were the garrison troops of Red Maple Valley doing?!
Ten thousand of Mason's ragtag rabble, with a heap of hoes and barbed wire fashioned out of iron armor, sealed the whole valley mouth for three solid days!
And where is the grain convoy I sent out?
That was a full three thousand-strong escort force!
Why could they not bring in even a single sack of wheat?!"
The Finance Minister, trembling all over in terror, pressed his forehead hard against the cold marble floor, his voice choked with weeping:
"Your Majesty... it was not that the escort did not try their utmost!
That Mason Commander called Bardess simply would not meet us head-on!
They built three lines of man-high steel chevaux-de-frise at the valley mouth, and behind them all were those fire-spewing black tubes!
The moment our cavalry made ready to charge, a sky-blotting hail of lead bullets came crashing down, and men and horses alike were blasted into mangled meat!
And what's more...
And what's more, they set fire to the surrounding mountain forests — Red Maple Valley has now become a road of death!"
"Then take the secret trails! Go through those small principalities nearby!"
Queen Tina slammed a palm down on the table, screaming hysterically.
"The Northern border is not the only road there is!
Have the caravans bring more gold coins to buy grain from the mountain principalities round about!
Even at ten times the gold, you will assemble next month's military pay for me!"
At the words 'gold coins,' the Finance Minister's face instantly grew more ghastly than a corpse's.
He raised his head in something like despair, and with trembling hands fumbled from his robe a sheaf of black-and-white paper slips that gave off a faint rose fragrance:
"Your Majesty… it's useless.
Those mountain principalities, and the Iron Hammer Town on the fringe…
they will no longer accept our Olan gold coins at all.
The day before yesterday I sent a caravan with three chests of pure-gold old Imperial coins to buy grain — and those damned dirt-legged peasants would not so much as glance at it, and drove our caravan right out!
They said… they said now the Northern border recognizes only the Queen of Mason's Black Rose notes.
Only by holding such slips of paper can one trade in Mason's black market for clean refined salt, for sickness-curing Holy Potion, and for that honey-sweetened Black Bread.
Those gold coins of ours, passed down for centuries — in their eyes, they are now nothing but scrap iron, devoid of any value in circulation!!"
"Absurd!
This is simply absurd!!"
Princess Una, seated to one side and equally haggard of face, cried out in disbelief, her golden eyes filled with extreme terror born of the unknown.
"How could a slip of paper possibly be more useful than gold?!
Have those lowly merchants had their brains devoured by the devils of hell?!
Sister, this must be the Witchcraft of that wretch Sophia!
She must have laid some evil Alchemy upon those slips of paper, able to manipulate men's hearts!
Otherwise, how could even our Olan's mid-ranking knights now secretly steal the horseshoes off their warhorses to sell them to Mason in exchange for those slips of paper?!"
Throughout the hall, those Olan ministers who had once held high power and lofty position were now each as ashen-faced as dirt, their very breathing grown somewhat suffocated.
Those who could sit in high positions — however foolish they might be — had, at last, before this sheaf of weightless Black Rose paper, felt an irresistible weight of despair belonging to a new age.
Terrifying…
This was the true killing-stroke of that silver-haired Little Queen.
We thought it was arrogance for her to bring only four people to the Black Stone Fortress — but in truth, she used that very posture to draw all of our attention, so that her paper slips could, like a plague, utterly hollow out the foundations of Olan!
Look at the Royal City now…
The soldiers, holding heavy gold coins, cannot buy even a single mouldy loaf of Black Bread in the marketplace.
Because all the merchants have hidden away the grain, secretly hauling it to the border to exchange for Mason's notes.
Fifty thousand heavy cavalry are imposing indeed — but with no fodder, with no bread to fill their bellies, those proud knights, within a few days, will turn into a mob of the most primitive savages for the sake of survival!
Her Majesty Sophia need not even let those black tubes fire. She need only sit in her Temporary Palace in Yurilland, sign her name on paper with a quill — and this old Empire of ours, centuries old, will strangle itself to death in famine and civil strife!
This is no war at all…
This is the god's — utter erasure and final settlement of the old age!
"Your Majesty... there is one more matter."
The Finance Minister swallowed a mouthful of saliva, his voice trembling almost beyond hearing.
"This morning, the two centurions guarding the Royal City's west gate… along with the two hundred cavalry under their command, left behind their warhorses and fine-steel shields in the dead of night.
The men… the men have already slipped across the border, to defect to Mason's reclamation farming districts.
It's said it's because their families received formal identity cards issued by Mason in Iron Hammer Town, and were allotted three mu of black earth fit for growing fine wheat…"
"Get out!
All of you, get out before This Queen!!"
Queen Tina could no longer restrain the terror and fury within her, snatching up the documents on the table and hurling them madly down at the ministers below.
The entire hall instantly fell into a dead, silent chaos.
Those Olan nobles, ordinarily so lofty and aloof, now like prisoners sentenced to death, withdrew in trembling fear.
Tina, meanwhile, slumped feebly upon her throne, staring at that bandage-wrapped right arm of hers, listening to the faint clamor drifting in from within the Royal City — the commoners, growing restless and uneasy for want of grain.
The sunlight beyond the window was dazzling, yet in the eyes of this Olan Queen, the entire future of the old Empire had, beneath the covering of sheet upon sheet of Black-Rose-printed paper, plunged utterly into a cold, lightless abyss.
The border of the Olan Duchy.
As one of the several great gateways guarding the Olan heartland, this small city was ordinarily garrisoned by the most elite frontier defense troops.
Yet at this moment, those Olan soldiers atop the walls, clad in iron-bound light armor, were each gaunt-cheeked, their once well-fitted leather armor hanging loose and slack upon their shrunken frames.
Their warhorses, for want of fine fodder, could no longer manage even the most basic whinny, all listless and feeble.
"Tramp… tramp… tramp…"
From the distant horizon came, abruptly, a heavy, intensely rhythmic trampling sound.
That sound was not the chaotic surge of galloping warhorses, but more like some colossal machine assembled from countless steel components, bearing down upon the fortress at a constant acceleration.
The garrison Captain swallowed his saliva with some difficulty, bracing himself against the cold city-bricks and straining his eyes into the distance.
When the surging dust and smoke dispersed in the morning light, revealing that black square formation made up of a full ten thousand men, the clear, crisp clatter of dropped blades instantly rang out all along the fortress wall.
What manner of soldiers were these.
Every one of them was ruddy of face, their thick fine-steel breastplates reflecting a dazzling, frigid glare beneath the sun.
Sustained by sugar-sweetened Black Bread and steaming, salted meat broth at every meal, these ten thousand Mason heavy infantry brimmed with an almost explosive physical power.
And riding at the very front of this steel torrent, far outstripping the rest, was Delilah.
She rode a wholly jet-black armored warhorse, her long red hair bound behind her head streaming wild as raging fire in the gale, her dark-red eyes glittering with the cruelty and savagery of a black panther fixing upon its prey.
"Mason forces — calibrate siege positions."
Delilah slowly drew the heavy greatsword at her waist, broad as a door-plank, its edge tracing a cold arc through the air to point slantwise at that tottering little Olan city:
"Olan's soldiers are already famished and gut-empty. It's time for you to start earning your labor credits!
Within a quarter-hour, follow This General and tear apart their defensive logic — break the city!"
"ROAR——!!"
Ten thousand well-fed, overflowing-with-energy Mason soldiers loosed an earth-shaking howl all at once.
That fevered battle-lust, born of abundant stamina and absolute credit, transformed into an invisible, terrifying weight of spirit, crashing down sky-wide upon the Boulder Fortress.
The Olan garrison atop the walls collapsed utterly.
They had already starved for four whole days, the longspears in their hands as heavy as solid iron bars.
Looking down at those Mason monsters below — whose very necks had thickened a ring, who reeked of meat broth — these Olan soldiers had not even the strength to draw a bowstring.
"The witch… Mason's witch army has attacked!"
"Run for it! This can't be fought at all — we can't even lift our shields!!"
"Devils — the silver-haired devil's soldiers have come to reap our lives!"
Before any true clash had even occurred, the Boulder Fortress's defensive system, amid a chorus of utterly panicked wailing, fell into a state of complete disintegration and paralysis.
At this moment, within the field-command hall hastily opened up inside the City Lord's Mansion, the atmosphere had long since sunk to the very nadir.
Queen Tina's face was a somewhat sickly pale, the bandages on her right arm faintly seeping a glaring trace of blood.
Olan's medicine was decent enough, but the people here had never encountered a gunshot wound; to have treated it to this point was already quite good.
That single shot at the Black Stone Fortress had not only shattered her arrogance — it had left, upon her proud soul, a shadow of Sophia.
Tina, who was just then conferring with several ministers who had stayed behind on how to secretly smuggle grain from the black market, suddenly heard the faint, thunder-like Mason roar drifting in from beyond the city.
"BANG——!!"
The doors of the field command were flung open, and an Olan messenger — armor askew all over his body, his face nothing but cold sweat — came tumbling and crawling in:
"Your Majesty! Disaster!
Mason's Black Rose army…
that red-haired Delilah, with a full ten thousand men, has already smashed clean through the east gate of the Boulder Fortress!!"
"What?!"
Queen Tina was so shocked she rose straight up from her high-backed chair; the motion was too violent, pulling at the cracked-bone wound in her right arm, and she drew a sharp, hissing breath of cold air, a fine layer of sweat-beads instantly seeping out across her forehead.
"Delilah?
How dare she launch a direct assault at a time like this?!
Where are the three thousand supervisory troops I left on the outer defense line?
Why could they not even send up a warning signal flare?!"
The messenger knelt on the floor, trembling all over like a sieve being shaken, his voice carrying utter despair:
"Replying to Your Majesty...
The supervisory troops — most of them had already starved and fled last night.
The moment those who remained saw Delilah charging, they threw down their weapons on the spot, knelt by the roadside, and begged the Mason men for Black Bread.
That woman called Delilah is too fast!
Her heavy sword took but a single strike to smash the iron-bound city gate, bolt and all, into splinters of wood!
The soldiers guarding the city had no time even to react before they were trampled into meat-paste by Mason's steel torrent!!"
Throughout the hall, the Olan ministers — already on edge for want of grain — were now so frightened their faces went deathly white; several aged nobles went weak in the legs and slumped straight down into their chairs.
Amid the terrifying dead silence, a thought near-absurd yet utterly consistent with logic began to spread wildly through the depths of every mind.
Premeditated… this was absolutely a script that silver-haired Queen had written two months ago!
No wonder, back at the Black Stone Fortress, facing Her Majesty's fifty thousand troops, she had replied only with a single, icy 'no comment.'
Because from the very start, she had never intended to negotiate with us at the dinner table!
First she had Bardess use those damnable barbed-wire fences to choke Red Maple Valley dead, severing the flow of our supplies.
Then she used those slips of paper — exchangeable for meat broth — to hollow out our border's old markets, draining away all our strength in famine.
And only when we had grown so weak we reached the critical point of being unable even to draw a bowstring, did she coldly unleash Delilah, that black panther, to carry out the final harvest of assets!
We thought we were playing a game of chess against Mason — but in truth, in Her Majesty Sophia's eyes, we did not even qualify to be an opponent on her ledger.
We were merely a heap of discarded parts, following our preset course, marching toward destruction!
Run!
We must run!
If we don't run now, we'll all be left here for that red-haired woman to forcibly settle accounts with!!
"Your Majesty, we can hesitate no longer!"
Princess Una, by now also frightened pale, gripped Tina's one good left arm with all her might and shrieked:
"That wretch Sophia…
that woman's sensitivity must be maxed out!
If Delilah could so precisely find the gaps in our fortress's defenses, it means this little city has long been crawling with Mason's spies!
They've come this time straight for your head, Sister!
If we stay here, we simply don't have enough troops to clash head-on with those ten thousand well-fed madmen!!"
Queen Tina clenched her teeth so hard that blood seeped from her lips.
She gazed toward the city wall beyond the window, where black smoke had already begun faintly to rise, listening to the ever-nearer, deafening tread of Mason's military boots upon the ground — and the streak of unwilling hatred deep in her eyes was, in the end, utterly shattered by a bone-deep, icy reason.
Una was right: in this little city brimming with famine and betrayal, her safety-output ratio had already fallen below zero.
"Pass down the order..."
Queen Tina closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and when she opened them again, there remained only endless humiliation and panic:
"Abandon all heavy assets of the Boulder Fortress.
Have the Royal Guards escort This Queen at any cost — withdraw under cover of night, change route, and fall back to defend the Olan Royal City!"
"Yes! As you command!!"
The ministers, as though granted a reprieve, could no longer spare even the most basic noble bearing, and dashed tumbling and scrambling toward the rear courtyard.
When night fell completely upon the wilderness of the Northern border, the back gate of the Boulder Fortress quietly opened.
Several hundred top-tier Olan royal guards, riding the few remaining warhorses, escorted at the fastest possible speed Tina and Una — seated within a plain, unadorned carriage — plunging headlong into the pitch-black night that led toward the Olan Royal City.
All along the way the hooves clattered in panic; documents and costly ornaments scattered across the ground, yet not a single person dared stop to pick them up.
And behind them, atop the black-stone walls of the Boulder Fortress, an enormous Mason war banner — painted with a gorgeously, seductively blooming Black Rose — had already, amid the great fire and the streaming wind, been planted with utterly silky and domineering force upon the soil of the Olan Duchy.
The border iron curtain of the old Empire was, on this night, formally torn open with its first wound that would never heal.
"Crack! Crack!"
A mud-soaked leather whip cracked out ear-piercing reports in the night sky.
Four royal carriage-horses, ordinarily pampered and well-kept, were now being lashed madly by the driver, hauling that utterly undecorated plain carriage at full speed down the pitch-black trade-road across the wilderness.
Within the carriage, the axles let out a teeth-grating creak and groan under the overloaded strain.
Queen Tina leaned hard against the velvet cushion, her face a sheet of ghastly white beneath the swaying oil-lamp.
With her left hand she pressed tightly over her endlessly bleeding right arm, the piercing pain surging in waves along the cracked-bone wound, leaving her forehead covered in a fine layer of cold sweat.
"Sister… we're almost there. Just ahead is the Royal City's inner moat."
Princess Una huddled in the corner, the lavish hunting attire she ordinarily wore long since fouled by sweat and dust.
In her eyes there was no longer any of her former arrogance — only the terror and trembling of one whose nerve had been utterly broken by Mason's black muskets.
Tina said nothing.
She only bit down hard on her bloodless lips, letting hatred and fear interweave and gnaw at her heart.
No matter how she thought it over, she could not understand how the fortress she had so painstakingly arranged could be smashed through so easily — within a mere hour — by that silver-haired Little Queen, as effortlessly as crushing a biscuit.
And that Delilah, who had once sworn loyalty to her, could actually lead ten thousand well-fed, overflowing-with-energy madmen and, like a red-hot branding iron cutting into butter, chew her border-guarding Boulder Fortress utterly to pieces within a single day.
"Sophia..."
Tina squeezed out that name through the gaps of her teeth, and each time she spoke it, she felt as though those pale-golden irises were piercing across the void, gazing down with cold condescension upon her impotent, raging fury.
She had thought that once she returned to the Olan Royal City — back to the very core of her own dominion — she could rely on the tens of thousands of troops left in garrison and the sturdy city walls to regroup and rally.
But as the carriage slowly decelerated and passed through the Royal City's towering west gate, the clamor and oppression outside the carriage shattered, in an instant, the last shred of fortune in this proud Queen's heart.
There was no anticipated welcoming procession lining the road, nor any solemn array of heavily garrisoned troops.
What pervaded the air was not the luxury and tranquility of an old Empire's Royal City, but a pungent, sour stench mingled of extreme famine, panic, and the burning of inferior firewood.
Queen Tina knit her brows tight, enduring the sharp pain to lift a sliver of the carriage curtain with her left hand.
By the faint firelight on either side of the street, she beheld a scene that suffocated her utterly.
The Royal City's streets were densely packed with withered-faced commoners and low-ranking soldiers; and those low-ranking dragoon cavalry — who should have been guarding the walls, Olan's sharpest hounds and falcons — had now actually unstrapped the fine-steel swords and heart-guarding armor from their bodies, and were crowded before several shifty-looking black-market peddlers.
"Friend, this longspear is top-grade goods out of the Imperial Capital's arsenal — forged of fine iron, a full thirty jin in weight!"
An Olan cavalry Captain, eyes red, slammed the fine-steel longspear he ordinarily prized like his life down hard upon a long bench.
His voice carried a hoarseness and an unconcealable shame:
"I don't want your gold coins!
I only want that half-sack of honey-sweetened Mason Black Bread in your hand, and three Black Rose universal notes!
Get a dose of painkiller for my daughter — she won't make it through this summer!"
That black-market peddler, dressed in coarse cloth, eyed the exquisite longspear askance, took a disdainful drag of the finger-thick Black Rose mosquito-repellent incense in his hand, and exhaled a ring of smoke:
"Tsk, a fine-steel longspear?
In this Royal City where you can't even buy horse-fodder, this thing can only be melted down as scrap iron now.
Seeing as you're doing it for your kid — ten standard labor-credit notes, plus two loaves of Black Bread. Take it or leave it.
Right now in the whole Northern border, only by holding these Black Rose notes can you trade at the border's Mason apothecary for Divine Miracle Potion. You'd best think it through."
That cavalry Captain clenched his fists hard, but at the four words 'Divine Miracle Potion,' that proud spine of his, in the end, still bent and caved.
He snatched up the few black-and-white paper slips and the rock-hard Black Bread the peddler handed over, guarding them as though some peerless treasure, and turned and vanished into the shadows.
"Absurd… absurd!!"
Within the carriage, Princess Una, having witnessed the whole thing, clapped her hands disbelievingly over her mouth, her whole body trembling, terrified by this utterly incomprehensible spectacle:
"That is the military arms of the Olan Empire!
How dare he… how dare he trade the martial might granted by the royal house for those few slips of paper too stiff even to wipe one's backside!
Sister, these soldiers have all gone mad!
They must have been utterly brainwashed by that wretch Sophia's spiritual hex-curse!!"
Queen Tina stared death-still at the black-and-white notes the peddler was counting in his hand — faintly scented with rose — and in those bloodshot eyes, that streak of despairing iciness at last spread out utterly in this moment.
No… that is not Witchcraft. That is a devouring law a thousand times more terrifying than Witchcraft.
That silver-haired Little Queen need not send a single soldier to attack my Royal City at all.
She merely used that life-saving Black Bread and Potion to bestow godhood upon these slips of paper.
Look at my Empire...
The soldiers, holding heavy pure-gold coins, yet cannot buy a single clean grain of wheat in the marketplace.
Because every merchant knows that gold coins cannot buy Mason's refined salt — only those slips of paper can be exchanged for life-saving assets!
When my army cannot even eat its fill, cannot even keep its families safe — then what difference is there, in their eyes, between me, this Queen, and a clay idol sitting upon a throne?!
Those arrogant words Sophia spoke at the dinner table — so it was never her sulking with me in spite at all.
She was telling me that from the moment she issued her first slip of paper, my fifty thousand Olan heavy cavalry were already, in her credit model, destined to exit the stage...
Within the field-command hall of the City Lord's Mansion, the Olan high nobles and ministers, summoned overnight, stood in two rows.
The candle-flames swayed in the faint breeze, stretching every man's shadow into something extremely twisted.
Queen Tina sat in the chief seat, her face an iron-gray; her bandage-wrapped right arm gave off a pungent reek of medicinal herbs, yet it could not mask that dead-as-the-grave, oppressive, and uncanny atmosphere within the hall.
Those grand dukes and core generals, ordinarily so lofty and aloof, though they still bowed their heads now, kept sweeping their gazes — ceaselessly, covertly — over the sleeves and pockets of the colleagues beside them.
The suspicion and unease in the air had already grown thick to the extreme.
"Speak."
Queen Tina slapped the table fiercely with her left hand, the impact setting the surviving glazed cups rattling in disarray.
Eyes red, she fixed her stare dead upon the Internal Affairs Minister kneeling at the very front.
"Red Maple Valley choked dead by Bardess, the Boulder Fortress taken by Delilah in a single day.
And now even the west-gate garrison of the Royal City has begun deserting in whole units to Mason's reclamation districts!
I ordered you to investigate where those damnable slips of paper flowed into the Royal City from — what have you uncovered?!"
The Internal Affairs Minister shuddered all over, his forehead pressed hard against the floorboards, his voice trembling like a leaf in the wind:
"Your Majesty… we, we cannot trace it!
Those Black Rose notes were not brought in through any one particular caravan at all.
Now every commoner in the city, every knight, even…
even the attendants of certain grand dukes — all secretly keep a few tucked in their pockets!
As long as someone makes a single trip to the border's Iron Hammer Town — even just to sell a bundle of hay — they come back with their hands full of nothing but these slips of paper.
It's like the mosquitoes of summer — it gets in through every crack and crevice!"
"Your Majesty, this humble minister believes this is no ordinary paper currency at all!"
A senior hereditary Marquis suddenly stepped forth, his face ghastly pale, his eyes glittering with a near-morbid certainty and fervor:
"These past days I have carefully studied the trajectories of those deserters.
That Mason Queen called Sophia has, without doubt, secretly inherited in the Imperial Capital some lost and ancient spiritual hex-curse, capable of manipulating the minds of ten thousand people!
Think about it — Princess Una's poisoning maneuver was so concealed; why did that silver-haired girl know there was poison in the cup without so much as a glance?
Because her spiritual tendrils had long since taken root inside our Black Stone Fortress!
And it is the same with these notes now.
Everyone who has touched that Black Rose paper has, invisibly, had their reason and their logic of allegiance rewritten by Sophia!
They will spontaneously feel that Black Bread is more noble than the Empire's gold coins; they will spontaneously feel that Mason's Order is the true orthodoxy!
Even…
even among those of us present, I fear there have long been some who, after touching those smuggled notes, have had their thoughts settled remotely by Queen Sophia, and become Mason's hidden moles and traitors within!!"
The moment the Marquis spoke these words, a string of sharp, cold gasps instantly rang out throughout the hall!
"Clatter——"
Several hot-tempered generals retreated a great step backward almost by sheer instinct, the hands resting on their sword-hilts trembling violently as they stared in terror at the colleagues beside them:
"I knew it — why else would the finance officer sneak off to the rear courtyard the day before yesterday!
So you've already been controlled by Sophia's hex-curse!"
"Bullshit! I went to take inventory of the storehouse!
What about you, then — didn't you go to the black market last week to buy Mason's soap for your concubine?!"
"Soap? Didn't you also buy Mason's shampoo for your son? The rose-scented kind, no less."
"How do you know what my son's hair smells like?"
The hall instantly descended into a hysterical morass of mutual accusation and suspicion.
Gazing at this pack of ministers before her — already tormented by terror and runaway imaginings into something like a mob of madmen — Queen Tina slumped utterly limp upon her throne, her left hand drooping down somewhat powerlessly.
She looked at the Royal City beyond the window — dead-silent beneath the night, yet secretly seething toward riot.
She knew: Olan was finished.
Both in spirit and in reality.
This pack of ministers had already begun to mythologize Sophia.
They defined their own subconscious leaning toward Mason as the Queen of Mason wielding Witchcraft.
But what they did not know was that this was, plainly, the wavering of their own faith.
The ministers who had only moments ago been trembling in fear were now, upon learning that everyone else was likewise using Mason notes, beginning to tear into one another.
The savaging was thoroughly, gratifyingly visceral — even, faintly, beginning to turn into excitement.
Because it meant that they were not the only ones who had used Mason notes, who had betrayed their nation doubly, in spirit and in reality.
It was everyone.
Everyone.
Tina watched the ministers below still savaging one another, her gaze like stagnant, dead water.
Was she really to compromise, just like this?
No — that was not her style.
She had not yet conquered the Imperial Capital, had not yet conquered the world — how could she let herself be wiped out by some tiny little nation like Mason?
Soon, Tina's gaze grew resolute.
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