They had already knelt.
Even if their bodies still stood upright now, in their hearts they had already knelt.
Spineless wretches.
The clamor within the hall remained grating to the ear. The ministers savaged one another, exposed each other's faults—even certain dukes' most secret family scandals were laid utterly bare amid this hysterical mutual accusation.
Beneath the invisible net of Mason's mind-binding curse, they covered up the trembling and the craving in the deepest part of their hearts for those black-and-white slips of paper by frantically attacking their colleagues.
Upon the seat of honor, Queen Tina watched this absurd farce in silence. Within those crimson eyes, the initial fury and humiliation had, strangely, settled and sunk away, transforming into a pool of dead water too deep to fathom.
Tina watched a general below the dais flush red to the ears quarreling over a single bar of rose-scented soap, and in her heart she rendered a cold judgment.
There was no need for Sophia's black muskets to advance. The moment that wall of flame formed from fire bottles was extinguished, these so-called pillars of Olan would line up before the gates of the Yurilland Temporary Palace and, in the most standard kneeling posture, beg Mason to issue them a formal, official identity card.
But that did not mean she, Tina, would kneel as well.
As the ruler of Olan who had carved her way out of countless conspiracies and seas of blood, the word compromise had never existed in her dictionary.
Since Mason's slips of paper had already gnawed clean through the very foundations of Olan's society, and since head-on physical attack and defense could no longer stop Delilah's greatsword, then she would use the final, most reckless destruction of all to wage a gamble of unknown outcome against that silver-haired little queen!
"Enough."
Tina spat out the single cold word.
Her voice was not loud, yet it carried a supreme authority accumulated over bygone days.
The several grand dukes and marquises who had just been trading blows instantly drew back their fists like ducks with their necks wrung, retreating sheepishly and trembling to their original places.
"All of you, get out before This Queen.
Go and take inventory of your private troops. This may well be the last defensive-alignment order This Queen ever issues to you."
Queen Tina waved her intact left hand, her expression indifferent.
As though granted amnesty, the ministers scrambled and stumbled their way out of the campaign hall.
Once the heavy doors closed again, only the haggard-faced Una remained in the hall, along with a floor strewn with mottled shards of colored glass.
"Sister..."
Una crept closer, somewhat afraid, gazing at the side of Tina's face—so calm it was almost terrifying—her eyes filled with helplessness.
"You... have you thought of a way to break that person's schemes? Are we going to seek aid from the Imperial Capital?!"
Tina did not answer. She merely braced herself on the throne and slowly rose to her feet, saying in a cold, clear voice:
"Una, come with me."
Deep beneath Olan's Royal City lay a colossal underground palace built from countless black stone bricks.
This was the ultimate core handed down through several centuries of the Olan Duchy—the National Treasury.
When the heavy black-iron gate—requiring six heavy infantrymen to work the capstan in unison—slid slowly open to both sides, the dazzling radiance refracted from within made the ever-trembling Una giddy for an instant.
It was an uncountable trove of gold, silver, and treasure.
Crate upon crate of exquisite old gold coins minted at the Imperial Capital's mint piled up into mountains. Countless costly beast hides, gold coins, gemstones, and rare weapons radiated a suffocating weight of wealth beneath the glow of the everlasting lamps.
And behind this mountain of gold and silver stood row upon row of enormous granaries sealed with specially treated lime powder.
Heaped within them was the high-quality wheat and oats that the Royal House had secretly accumulated and dehydrated over the past dozen-odd years of favorable weather.
This was the true material foundation of the Olan Duchy, and also Tina's final capital, prepared to conquer the surrounding lands and even to contend for the Imperial Capital.
"Sister, this..."
Una covered her mouth, staring in shock at this vast warehouse of supplies that stretched beyond the limits of sight.
"There's clearly still this much grain and gold in the National Treasury!
Why not distribute it to the soldiers outside?!
Just hand out this wheat, and the grain shortage at Red Maple Valley could be filled at once—those people wouldn't desert anymore!"
Queen Tina walked to a crate of pure gold coins, reached out her left hand, grabbed a fistful of the glittering currency, then coldly let them slide through the gaps of her fingers, falling back into the crate with a dull, heavy clatter.
"Distribute it? Distribute it to whom?"
Oh, my foolish little sister.
Tina's tone carried a hair-raising rationality:
"Una, do you still not understand?
Those soldiers and nobles outside—their very souls have already received Mason's note ultimatum.
Right now in the Royal City, a crate of gold coins can't even buy a single bag of Mason's refined salt.
If I hand out the grain, they'll turn around and sell it on the black market to Mason smugglers from Iron Hammer Town, exchanging it for those slips of paper stamped with the Black Rose, to buy their families the good days that Mason provides."
Tina turned around, gazing at that grain warehouse stretching beyond the limits of sight, a crazed cold smile curling at the corner of her mouth:
"This grain is This Queen's final capital.
Since Sophia likes to suffocate her opponents with production capacity and Order, then This Queen... will use the most primitive method to inflate her fragile Black Rose credit until it bursts wide open!"
Una looked at the near-destructive madness in Tina's eyes, and her heart suddenly lurched—an extremely ominous physical premonition surged through her entire body in an instant.
"Sister, you... could you possibly be intending to..."
"Una, listen to me."
Queen Tina cut off her sister's words. She walked slowly up before Una and, with that intact left hand, pressed down fiercely upon Una's shoulder.
The force was so great that Una even felt her bones issue a faint protest.
"That shot at the Black Stone Fortress—Sophia had originally meant to take my life.
She is an absolutely rational madwoman. Anyone written into her clearance ledger has no possibility whatsoever of surviving.
The war to come, once it erupts, will be the most unrestrained collision the Northern border has seen in several centuries."
A trace of exceedingly rare tenderness flickered through Tina's eyes, vanishing in an instant:
"I have already had my personal Royal Guards prepare a carriage for you, disguised as belonging to an Imperial Capital merchant guild.
Go pack your things now. Take a third of the finest Alchemy gemstones from the National Treasury.
In a few days, when the flames of war at the border have been thoroughly smashed apart, seize the chaos and take the mountain footpath to the east—flee straight to the Imperial Capital.
Don't look back, and don't think of avenging me.
Now that the entire Northern border has been polluted by Mason's slips of paper...
Only the Imperial Capital, only that highest core, is absolutely safe."
"No! I won't go!!"
Hearing this, Una's tears instantly burst forth from her eyes.
She clung fiercely to Tina's waist, weeping hysterically:
"Sister! If we are to die, then we die together!
Olan is our home—I don't want to go to the Imperial Capital alone!
That Sophia is nothing but a sixteen-year-old girl. We still have fifty thousand cavalry—we haven't lost yet!
Sister!!"
"Slap!"
Queen Tina struck a vicious slap across Una's face, the crisp sound of the blow stirring up echoes within the underground palace.
Struck, Una's head snapped aside, her crying instantly ceasing as she stared somewhat dazedly at the sister before her.
"This Queen has no need of a useless thing who can only weep to be buried alongside her."
Tina's voice returned to its former coldness and resolve. She did not spare Una another glance—she merely turned, putting her back to her sister, and beckoned toward the shadows:
"Someone.
Take Her Highness the Princess away. Lock her in the carriage.
Before sunset today, if she has not yet passed through the gates of the Royal City, you will present your own heads to me."
"Yes! Your Majesty!!"
Four fully armed Royal House deathsworn clad in black armor flashed out of the shadows like phantoms. With movements that were exceedingly stiff yet smooth, they hoisted up the collapsed Una and, no matter how she struggled, wept, or screamed, dragged her mercilessly toward the National Treasury exit.
"Sister! Sister, let go of me!
I won't go!
Aaah!
Sister!"
Una's shrill, miserable cries gradually faded down the long underground passage. At last, accompanied by the thunderous, complete closing of the several-thousand-jin black-iron gate at the entrance to the underground palace, the whole of the Olan National Treasury sank once more into a dead, silent darkness.
The flames of the everlasting lamps burned quietly, stretching Queen Tina's solitary shadow exceedingly long.
She stood alone amid the mountains of gold coins and the granaries, slowly unwinding the blood-seeping bandage on her right arm to reveal the savage wound beneath, its flesh ground to a bloody pulp by the lead bullet.
"Sophia... the Queen of Mason..."
Queen Tina stared fixedly at that utterly sealed black-iron gate. In the vast, dead-silent underground palace, only her heavy, frenzied panting remained.
She tore off in one motion the bandage on her right arm, long soaked through with pus and blood, exposing the horrifying wound gouged out by the musket she had carried.
Though the fragments of fine-steel arm-armor and the deformed lead bullet had already been dug out, the flesh around the wound had taken on a strange, purplish-black hue.
"You think you can use a single slip of paper to write off This Queen's centuries-old foundation as one bad debt?"
A nearly morbid cold smile tugged at the corner of Tina's mouth as she gazed at the mountains of gold coins before her, and at those royal granaries so vast they drove one to despair.
"Then This Queen will use all the reserves accumulated over these dozen-odd years to inflate the credit of that paper of yours until it collapses outright!"
In this secular gamble devoid of supernatural power, when supplies grew so abundant that they exceeded the limit that single slip of paper could bear, the so-called reshaping of Order would be nothing more than a bubble that scattered at a single breath.
And at this moment, in the Temporary Palace hundreds of li away.
The once noisy and clamorous council hall had long since returned to calm. Bardess had led ten thousand troops away to defend Red Maple Valley to the death.
Delilah, too, had personally led ten thousand heavy infantry on a swift strike against Bedrock Fortress. With twenty thousand of its main forces drawn away, the vast Temporary Palace took on an almost desolate emptiness.
In the study on the second floor, a Black Rose mosquito coil exhaled exceedingly fine rings of smoke from its brass censer, sealing the dry heat and mosquitoes peculiar to a summer night firmly outside the window.
Sophia sat upright behind the broad desk, the hem of the elaborate black Gothic gown upon her spreading out across the dark lambskin carpet.
She held a somewhat worn quill in her hand, her pale-golden pupils fixed upon the several asset reports concerning the resettlement of refugees on the desk. In those eyes—always cold and unrippled—a faint, almost imperceptible ripple now flickered.
Her fingertips tapped lightly upon the desk, at a frequency two or three beats faster than her usual clockwork-precise logic.
Though Delilah's injuries had already fully recovered, engaging in such high-intensity combat right after recovering was likely bad for her body.
And then there was Bardess—strong though she was, the terrain of Red Maple Valley stretched too long, and a force of ten thousand could hardly fully cover every smuggling gap in its troop density.
Even though, within the absolutely rational calculation model, the output ratio of every order was the optimal solution.
Yet this was the first time Sophia herself had undertaken something of such magnitude; to say her heart held not the slightest flutter would be impossible.
Fantasizing about being emperor and attempting to become emperor were, after all, different feelings.
"Your Majesty, this is the prunella-and-strawberry juice Daphne just prepared. It has already been chilled with well water."
Accompanied by an exceedingly regular, gentle sound of footsteps, Willow—having changed into a sharp purple administrative skirt-suit—walked in slowly.
She held a delicate tray in both hands, and upon the tray sat a glass cup filled with clear, dark-red juice.
Sophia said nothing. She merely reached out to take the cup, and without even gracefully wiping the condensation from its sides with a handkerchief as she usually did, she tilted her head back slightly and drained the entire cup of cold, sweet-and-sour juice in one go.
The slightly cool liquid slid down her throat, seeming to carry away the last trace of dry heat lingering in the hall, yet it could not soothe that very faint depth in the bottom of her eyes.
Willow stood beside the desk, her slender fingers unconsciously smoothing a fold in her skirt.
As the highest authority over Mason's internal affairs, she understood this silver-haired queen all too well.
Though Her Majesty always wore a cold, detached air as though she regarded all things as mere system data, every time she faced this sort of decisive, multi-front campaign, those fingers tapping the desk always grew half a degree heavier than usual.
"Your Majesty."
Willow bent slightly at the waist, retrieving the emptied glass cup onto the tray, the corner of her mouth curving into a gentle, polite, deeply comforting smile.
Her voice was exceedingly soft, as though it carried a magic capable of setting one's heart at ease:
"General Delilah and Commander Bardess are both keen blades that have been calibrated countless times.
With the production-capacity suppression of black muskets and fire bottles, they will surely complete their missions safely and present a most perfect borderline back upon your desk."
"That's right, Your Majesty!"
On the couch to one side of the study, Irene—who had been burying her face in a heap of blueprints—suddenly lifted her head.
Her head of pink hair looked somewhat disheveled from prolonged scratching, and there was a smudge of black charcoal-pencil on her face, but those sapphire-like eyes were brimming with confidence:
"General Delilah's greatsword is a treasure of Mason, and I recast it with the finest fine iron besides—one swing of it could align even the iron-sheet city gate of Bedrock Fortress into scrap metal on the spot!
Not to mention Red Maple Valley, which Bardess is guarding—this time I gave her the whole three hundred crates of high-concentration fire bottles from our stockpile!
The moment Olan's cavalry dares to show their heads, a few bang-bang-bangs paired with a great blaze will burn them down until not even a horseshoe is left!"
Irene swung her two legs clad in overalls, chewing on a bit of the small meat jerky Willow had roasted while consoling Sophia with an almost fanatical modern-person logic.
Though in her own heart she was nervous as could be.
And at the other end of the couch, Victoria, wrapped in a thick Black Rose cloak, elegantly spread open an ivory fan, hiding the faint smile at the corner of her mouth.
She gave the ivory fan in her hand a light wave and was just about to tease a few words in her uniquely elegant tone when a burst of hurried yet steady footsteps came from outside the door.
"Report——!
Your Majesty! An urgent battle report from the front!"
With this loud cry, the study's heavy wooden door was pushed gently open, and a Mason herald covered head to toe in dust and sweat strode quickly in.
He knelt on one knee. Though his face bore the exhaustion of a long-distance forced march, his eyes glittered with an almost feverish light.
The atmosphere in the study congealed slightly in an instant.
The fingertips tapping the desk abruptly stopped, Sophia's pale-golden pupils contracting slightly as her gaze locked with exceeding precision onto the roll of parchment in the herald's hand, sealed with Black Rose sealing-wax.
"Speak."
Sophia's voice remained cold and clear, with no superfluous words—sharp as a blade of ice freshly drawn from its sheath.
"Yes!
General Delilah personally led the Second Army Group and broke through Sachi City this day at the hour of wei!
The stubborn, unyielding Olan garrison-and-supervision force within the city has been annihilated to the last man!"
The herald's voice trembled faintly with excitement. He drew a deep breath and continued reporting loudly:
"Though the Kingdom of Sachi had previously been forcibly gathered in by Olan, its lower classes had long been seething with resentment.
General Delilah's assault was swift and fierce. Our soldiers were all well-fed and full of strength, while the Olan garrison within the city had long grown weak and frail from lack of grain.
The siege lasted but a quarter of an hour before the oppressed old Sachi remnants within the city actively cooperated and opened the city gates from the inside!
Now, Sachi City has entirely raised our Mason Black Rose banners. Order within the city is well-maintained, the common folk line the streets in welcome, the soldiers' fighting spirit runs high, and they are requesting the next clearance quota!"
This high-spirited battle report fell like a heavy hammer, fiercely shattering the very last trace of dry heat lingering in the study.
"Wow! Amazing!
Delilah really is the War God incarnate herself!"
Irene on the couch sprang straight up, the bit of meat jerky in her hand nearly dropping to the floor.
As she excitedly brandished her fist, the charcoal smudge on her face looking somewhat comical with her grin, she turned her head toward Sophia.
"See, Your Majesty! I said there'd be no problem!
Those defensive lines of the old age can't withstand even a single pellet's worth of physical collision before our dimensional suppression strike!"
Daphne, seated to one side, also let out a gentle sigh of relief, pressing her palms together, her pure-white robe rising and falling slightly with the motion, her eyes brimming with delight and praise:
"Thanks be to the Holy Light—no, thanks be to Your Majesty's divine grace, for sparing those suffering subjects of the Kingdom of Sachi from the ravages of war."
Victoria, meanwhile, elegantly hid the smile at the corner of her mouth behind her ivory fan, her golden eyes full of an as-expected composure.
She tilted her head slightly, watching the somewhat over-excited Irene and Daphne, and silently shook her head in her heart.
That overconfident Tina believed she could establish a so-called iron defensive line relying on the garrison soldiers of fifteen kingdoms, but in reality, the subjects of those kingdoms had long wished for nothing more than Olan's swift bankruptcy.
This move of Her Majesty's was not merely a clearance by military force—it conformed to the popular logic of the long-accumulated grievances among the lower classes of those small kingdoms.
General Delilah had merely gone to harvest an asset long overdue.
Her Majesty's serene attitude was the most perfect display of mastery over this devouring war.
Amid an atmosphere of joy and jubilation, Sophia alone remained seated steadily behind the desk.
She looked at the herald kneeling before her. On that exquisite, god-like face there appeared no wild ecstasy—only her originally slightly tensed shoulders relaxed a touch in this moment.
In those pale-golden pupils, the faint glow of reason flowed slowly.
In this way, the most stable of Olan's fifteen peripheral dependency points had been precisely excised. Tina's resource-circulation channels within the Royal City would shrivel at an accelerated rate of eight percent.
"Cleanly done."
Sophia nodded slightly, casually placing the freshly opened battle report back on the desk, her cold, clear tone echoing slowly through the hall, carrying an unquestionable authority and reassurance:
"Your long-distance forced march has brought your physical reserves to the critical point.
Willow, take him down to receive his reward, have him rest at the Black Rose infirmary, and ration him salted meat broth and Black Bread by the highest standard."
"Thank you, Your Majesty! May the Black Rose bloom across the Northern border!"
The herald let out a frenzied cry, and under Willow's gentle guidance withdrew—his steps weary, yet immeasurably proud.
Sophia slowly rose to her feet and walked to the enormous map of the Northern border in the study. With her right hand she picked up a blue Black Rose crystal representing Mason and, with exceeding smoothness, replaced the red crystal that had belonged to the Kingdom of Sachi.
She turned her head, looking at Irene, Daphne, and Victoria in the room, her pale-golden pupils glinting with a cold, dangerous brilliance in the moonlight:
"Scout again, report again."
Even with no expression at all, the stagnant air had grown much more relaxed.
Her Majesty was pleased.
The corner of Willow's mouth couldn't help but lift a little as well.
The instant Sophia's last syllable fell, another burst of footsteps came from outside the door—even more hurried, even heavier than before.
And this time, the footsteps outside were chaotic and dense; by the sound of it, there was more than one person.
"Bang!"
The study door was pushed open somewhat roughly.
Two scouts belonging to the Third Mobile Squad, without even time to change their clothes, their whole figures so plastered with sweat and wind-driven sand that their faces were near unrecognizable.
They all but tumbled into the hall, scrambling onto one knee, their voices hoarse yet fervent with frenzied howling:
"Report——!!
Your Majesty! A great victory!"
"After General Delilah broke through Sachi City, she made no meaningless tactical halt whatsoever!
Our army, in coordination with surrendered guides from the Kingdom of Sachi, seized the surrounding White Sand City and Black Dawn Fortress one hour ago in a single sweep!"
"The defensive lines Olan had deployed at these two cities were as fragile as bread left out for half a month.
Our heavy infantry hadn't even fully calibrated their charging crossbows before the defending soldiers, weakened by days on end of a severe shortage of survival assets, knelt and surrendered en masse before the city gates beneath the Black Rose banners!
Now all the old systems there have been swept clean, and a comprehensive alignment to Mason's labor-credit management system is underway!"
The two scouts' words had not yet finished falling beneath the study's spacious vaulted ceiling, and before Irene and Daphne could even let out a cheer, the urgent clatter of leather boots striking the ground came once more from the long corridor outside the door!
"Report——!!
Red Maple Valley, ten-thousand-fold urgent... no, a tremendous victory report from Red Maple Valley!!"
A Black Rose knight, carrying the faint sour reek of gunpowder and smoke about him, strode in with great, sweeping steps.
Owing to his excessive fervor, he couldn't even spare a thought for the bare minimum of a soldier's salute. With his right hand he held high a roll of parchment stained with the mud of the Olan border, and shouted at the top of his lungs:
"Commander Bardess reports!
Olan's Royal City dispatched its final asset-resupply line three days ago—two hundred grain-carrying carriages escorted by four thousand dragoon cavalry. At the entrance to Red Maple Valley, they were intercepted in full by our ten thousand heavy infantry!
Commander Bardess strictly aligned with Your Majesty's highest directive. Three rows of fine-steel cheval-de-frise paired with Miss Irene's high-concentration fire bottles raised an absolute physical isolation zone stretching several li across the valley mouth!
Olan's dragoon cavalry and warhorses, having gone four days without a full meal, couldn't even muster the muscle to charge. Their fighting spirit was utterly chewed to pieces under the very first round of physical coverage from our army's black muskets!
Not a single grain of the two hundred carts of high-quality wheat was lost—it has all been transported to the field-reclamation storehouses of Yurilland for asset placement!!"
"Boom——!!"
This string of victory reports, like cannon fire one after another, was like an abrupt, era-spanning tsunami, instantly and utterly submerging the entire silent study.
"Good heavens above!
All two hundred carts of grain were seized?!"
Irene leapt straight off the couch onto the floor, not even caring that the little leather shoe on her foot had stepped onto the design blueprints.
On that adorable little face smudged with charcoal, the reason that had once belonged to a modern person was washed thoroughly clean in this moment, those sapphire-like eyes wholly filled with a fervor for money and the alignment of production capacity:
"Sister Bardess is way too fierce!
Without spending a single grain of wheat, she snatched away the enemy's last shred of dignity!
Your Majesty!
With these two hundred carts of high-quality barley and the three-row tilling plows we refashioned out of scrap iron and ruined armor, Yurilland's thirty-thousand-strong army can raise its productivity by a whole four percentage points this high summer!
The old age...
The old age isn't even qualified to count as a string of redundant red figures in our ledgers anymore!!"
Daphne, too, was so moved that she clutched her pure-white robe tightly with both hands.
Out of extreme joy, a touching blush surfaced on that gentle, mild face of hers.
This Lord Saint, who had always held the lower classes in her heart, had now in this moment reached an entirely new—even somewhat sacred—dimension of worship for Sophia:
Those grain-transporting soldiers and the subjects of Sachi City...
If not for Her Majesty using weightless slips of paper to dissolve Olan's internal defenses, they would most likely all have died beneath General Delilah's greatsword in that unnecessary forced assault.
Her Majesty, in this most elegant, most ruthless, yet also most merciful way, let tens of thousands of people exchange for the right to live without shedding a single drop of blood.
Your Majesty...
You are the one and only, the truly supreme salvation in this world.
And at the other end of the couch, Third Princess Victoria had by now elegantly folded her ivory fan completely shut.
In those beautiful golden eyes of hers, the trace of languid probing they had originally held was utterly gone, replaced by an almost trembling submission and admiration.
She gazed at Sophia, seated not far off, the knuckles gripping her folding fan turning faintly pale from her extreme excitement.
A chain-reaction collapse... this was the absolute crushing dominance of Mason's credit system.
Sachi City, White Sand City, Black Dawn Fortress...
These were the iron defensive line Olan had spent decades cultivating on its periphery!
Yet why, before Delilah's ten thousand troops, were these places as brittle as a sheet of water-soaked parchment?!
Those garrison commanders and ministers, who only a few days ago were tearing at each other in the Royal City over a single bar of soap, now—the moment they laid eyes on Black Rose notes and Black Bread—lined up of their own accord to tear down the city gates themselves.
And then there were those two hundred carts of grain at Red Maple Valley...
This was plainly that old woman Tina's final life-saving trump card, yet Her Majesty didn't so much as stir—with one wire fence and Bardess's loud voice, she transferred Olan's most core material foundation in full onto Mason's balance sheet!
This girl named Sophia... she wasn't fighting a war at all.
She was using a god-like macro-scale orchestration that a backward civilization could not possibly comprehend, to precisely calculate all the reason, faith, and future of Olan—and even of the forty-odd surrounding small kingdoms—into a single account destined to be liquidated!
Tina had already retreated to a Royal City with no grain, and as for the forty-odd neutral small kingdoms outside, upon seeing this victory report of one fortress collapsing after another, what second logic for sustaining their survival could they possibly have, besides lining up to kneel before Her Majesty and beg for reward?!
Olan—truly, it was already utterly dead...
Amid a fervor and shock that nearly blew the roof off.
Sophia alone remained seated steadily behind the broad desk.
Her fair fingers lightly tidied up the stack of victory reports just handed to her, then with an exceedingly smooth motion pushed them to the corner of the desk, her expression composed.
Her pale-golden pupils, beneath the glow of the candle flame, revealed a coldness and depth of one who had seen through the inevitable outcome.
"Willow."
Amid the fervor filling the whole room, Sophia's voice was cold and clear as a north wind sweeping across an ice plain in the dead of night, soothing everyone's somewhat runaway heartbeats with exceeding precision.
"Your Majesty, your servant is here."
Willow, having changed into a sharp purple administrative skirt-suit, stepped forward. Though she strove hard to restrain herself, the smile at the corners of her eyes and the fervor flickering behind that monocle still betrayed the extreme joy within her.
"Take the details of these victory reports and, through the old-market channels of Iron Hammer Town, spread them out in full overnight.
There's no need to conceal the figure of the grain Bardess intercepted."
Sophia slowly rose to her feet, the black Gothic gown sweeping across the lambskin carpet with an exceedingly faint rustle that nonetheless carried a supreme heaviness.
She walked to the map, picked up two blue crystals with her right hand, and with exceeding smoothness and domineering force, utterly replaced the red Olan markers upon White Sand City and Black Earth Fortress.
Moonlight spilled over her long silver hair, plating her receding figure with a coldness almost like that of a god gazing down upon the mortal world from on high.
Sophia turned her head, her pale-golden pupils untainted by the slightest emotion, only the light of absolute reason aligning the several before her:
"Since Olan's material circulation has already produced bad debts, then tomorrow at dawn...
Victoria, you may go and conduct the final credit negotiations with the envoys of those forty-odd neutral small kingdoms."
Red Maple Valley.
The once steep and deep mountain valley had now been nailed to the ground by three heavy rows of cheval-de-frise smelted from scrapped steel armor.
Behind the defensive line, over a hundred pitch-black black-musket muzzles loomed half-hidden behind makeshift sandbag fortifications. In the air, besides the fresh fragrance of summer grass and trees, there hung a thick, pungent sourness of Alchemy burst-bottles and charcoal.
Having just yesterday settled in full, in a great blaze, Olan's entire two-hundred-cart wheat supply line, the Mason soldiers at this moment showed not the slightest fatigue—on the contrary, each of them puffed out their chests like hens that had just eaten their fill of wheat, their spirits aligned to the very limit.
Bardess, shouldering that enormous battle-axe Irene had recast for her from fine steel, broad as a millstone, sat in a grand, swaggering manner upon a slab of black stone.
"All of you, keep your eyes wide open for me!
Her Majesty and the General have entrusted Olan's stomach-sack to us. If you let so much as one smuggling rat slip through, tonight I'll send you off to turn over ten mu of farmland!"
Bardess's coarse, gender-neutral voice echoed above the valley, her pair of ox-bell eyes sweeping back and forth over the long line of refugee caravans ahead.
Ever since news of the great victory at Red Maple Valley had spread, and the Olan Royal City had been utterly cut off from grain, the Olan folk who wished to sneak across the defensive line, or who tried with all manner of bizarre excuses to extract grain in bulk from Mason's hands, had grown in explosive numbers along this borderline.
The disguise tricks of the old age were played out in endless variations before this iron defensive line.
"Soldier-sir—oh no, my lord officer of Mason—this old crone has finally laid eyes on a living immortal."
An old woman dressed in tatters—even her headscarf patched in three places—wore an almost fawning, kindly smile all over her face.
With an empty, ragged bamboo-strip backpack-basket slung over her arm, she cheerfully sidled up to the cheval-de-frise.
Trembling, she fished out from her bosom two crumpled Black Rose Universal Notes giving off a rose fragrance, and waved them at the Mason centurion guarding the line:
"My home is right there in the Iron Hammer Town area on Olan's border.
You see, Her Majesty issued these rose notes, and this old crone's household has many mouths—several people all waiting to eat.
I'd like to use these two notes to exchange with you soldier-sir for two hundred jin of white flour, and another fifty jin of salt. I swear that what I take back is all for my own family's children to eat—I absolutely won't send a single grain of rice to that wretched Olan Royal City!"
The old woman smiled until her eyes narrowed into two slits, looking as innocent as innocent could be.
Before the centurion could even open his mouth, Bardess, seated on the black stone, strode over with great sweeping steps.
The shadow of her tall, burly frame instantly engulfed the old woman whole. That enormous battle-axe came down on the ground with a "thud," the impact making the small bits of gravel on the ground jump three times.
Bardess rolled her eyes down at her from on high, her coarse, heavy hand seizing that empty basket directly and hoisting it up:
"You old woman, do you take me for a fool?!
Two hundred jin of flour? Fifty jin of salt?"
Bardess's dark-red cheeks twitched, and she hollered crossly:
"Your household has several mouths?
Are the old and young in your house pigs born with nine stomachs?!
This raggedy basket of yours would snap your old back loading thirty jin of wheat—what are you going to haul two hundred jin of flour with?
Besides, our notes are aligned to standard labor credits!
These two one-cent-denomination Black Rose Universal Notes of yours, at the very most, can exchange for four sweetened pieces of Black Bread—and you still want to swindle two hundred jin of white flour?!
Get lost, get lost, get lost!
Quit settling those muddled accounts with me here. If you don't leave, I'll have someone dig out that smuggling secret letter hidden in the sole of your shoe!"
Hearing this, the kindly smile on the old woman's face instantly froze. She glanced in terror at her own thick right shoe-sole, and without even bothering about the basket, slapped her backside and turned to run faster than a rabbit.
Bardess gave a cold snort. She'd already stopped countless of that sort of believer—not a single bit of use to any of them.
Incredible! Commander Bardess is practically channeling Her Majesty's divine grace from afar!
An old woman who looked about to starve to death—the Commander didn't even spare her a glance, and yet from the mere figure of two hundred jin she deduced that the basket's structure couldn't bear the load, and even pinpointed with precision the Olan Royal City secret letter hidden in the sole of her shoe!
It seemed that when Her Majesty bestowed this fine-steel great axe upon the Commander, she'd poured Mason's latest thinking into the Commander's brain in full along with it!
That bunch of old codgers in Olan actually thought they could challenge Her Majesty's precise-calculation model with this kind of low-grade human-nature disguise—it was the greatest joke under heaven!
The old woman had just been driven off when an old man in a washed-out old tailcoat, leaning on a half-broken walking cane, came over amid a fit of coughing.
He looked somewhat proud and unbending. Even in the face of the pitch-black black musket muzzles, he still elegantly removed the battered top hat from his head and performed a standard old-Olan social courtesy toward Bardess:
"Esteemed General of Mason, I am a scholar who fled out of Sachi City.
I know full well that Olan's Queen Tina is selfish and greedy, obstructing the development of Northern border civilization.
I deeply admire Her Majesty Sophia's finance and her reshaping of Order.
I have no intention of defecting back to Olan; it is only that I have a group of students, some sixty in number, who are at present trapped in the woods on the far side of the valley, cold and starving.
Here I have a few high-grade Alchemy raw ore-stones brought back from the Imperial Capital. I hope to exchange them with the General for five hundred jin of Black Bread and twenty packs of mosquito-repelling incense, to save my students' lives."
As the old man spoke, he fished out from his bosom two rubies giving off a faint glow, his gaze clear and resolute, brimming with a lofty sense of laying down his life for righteousness.
Bardess curled her lip, scratching the wooden handle of her great axe with her short, stubby fingers.
"A scholar out of Sachi City?
Sixty students?"
Bardess looked at those two rubies with some disdain, her loud voice bursting out unceremoniously across the valley:
"Old man, the efficiency of your story-making is way too low.
Our Mason's General Delilah already bought up Sachi City in full starting from the hour of wei yesterday. Right now the old Sachi remnants in the city are lined up at the Black Rose infirmary getting hot meat broth to drink.
You've got sixty students, and instead of taking them into the city to register with General Delilah for flour and soup, you leave them in the woods to eat the northwest wind?!
And another thing—these two raggedy stones of yours don't even have an Imperial Capital workshop's anti-counterfeiting hidden pattern on them. They're plainly failed smelting scrap from Olan's military-supply storehouse!
You want to swap this junk for our refined mosquito-repelling incense and bread?
Go on, get out!
Quit putting on your literary airs with this old lady. That whiff of Olan cavalry company-captain's boot-leather on you turned my nose crooked from three li away!
Seize him—send him off to the mining district for field reclamation and turning soil!"
"Clatter!"
Two black-musket infantrymen instantly rushed forward, the cold muzzles pressing directly against the old man's forehead.
That old scholar, who moments ago had been so righteous and high-minded, went deathly pale in an instant. The walking cane in his hand dropped to the ground with a clack, and he could no longer squeeze out a single one of those elegant old-age turns of phrase.
Before long, another burst of shrill weeping and wailing came from before the defensive line.
A dark-skinned man in coarse cloth garments pushed a battered wooden plank-cart, atop which lay a corpse covered with white cloth, already utterly devoid of life.
The man kowtowed against the ground the whole way as he walked, weeping until tears and snot covered his face, and knelt straight down before the cheval-de-frise stake:
"Soldier-sir!
I'm a law-abiding common man of Iron Hammer Town!
My pa was over on the Olan side yesterday gathering herbs, and got beaten to death with a musket-butt by those damned Olan brutes!
I don't ask for anything else—I just want to haul my pa back to be buried in Mason's ancestral grave.
But those corrupt officials of Olan would squeeze the oil even out of a dead man. I left all the old gold coins in my house with the city-gate officer, and now all I've got left in my pocket is this bit of leather for coffin boards.
I'd like to swap this leather for thirty jin of beans and a jar of refined salt, to make offerings to my pa along the road. Once I get back to Mason, my whole family will be beasts of burden serving Her Majesty Sophia! Boo-hoo-hoo!"
The man wept his heart out, and several of the refugee soldiers newly joined to Mason watching nearby even felt their hearts faintly stirred with compassion.
Bardess strode forward and gave a sniff.
She lowered her head to look at that battered wooden plank-cart, then looked at the corpse covered in white cloth, and afterward a coarse, cold smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.
"Haul your pa back to the ancestral grave?"
Bardess held her battle-axe upside down and gave the wheel of the plank-cart a forceful kick with her great leather boot, drawing a dull "clang":
"You great filial son, you're putting on quite a convincing show.
But your pa sure died awfully heavy—these cart wheels have been pressed down a full two cun into the ground.
I, old Bardess, walk the dry hay-mud ground of Iron Hammer Town every day. What kind of weight can press these hardwood axles down till they creak—I know that clearer in my heart than any ledger!
Thirty jin of beans?
I'm afraid you mean to use the excuse of thirty jin of beans to brush over the fine-steel heavy arrows and horseshoes hidden under this whole cart, ready to be shipped back to the Olan Royal City, don't you?!
And one more thing—that old pa lying on the cart: if you keep playing dead, this old lady will bring my axe down right now and help align your death-notice into reality's law for good and all!!"
The moment Bardess's words fell, that corpse covered in white cloth gave a violent shudder, flung off the white cloth, and scrambled and tumbled straight down off the cart.
That was no old man at all—plainly it was a hale and hearty Olan Royal House secret agent!
"Seize him!
Capture man and cart both—haul all the steel scrap off to Miss Irene's workshop, melt it down and forge it into big plowshares!!"
Bardess waved her great hand in excitement, and ten thousand Mason soldiers instantly burst into a roar of laughter.
Before this Red Maple Valley, sealed off utterly by absolute reason and an era-spanning defensive line, all of Olan's old-age schemes and disguises became, in the face of Bardess's coarse precise-calculation consecrated by Her Majesty, one farcical, ludicrous slapstick act after another with nowhere left to hide.
Olan's neck had truly already been strangled clean through by Mason's iron curtain.
____
________________________________________
🌸 Help Love Bloom!
Our girls need a little push... and you can help!
💖 Gift for Everyone: Once we hit 150 Powerstones, I'll release +1 bonus chapter to warm your hearts.
🚀 Community Reward: If we reach 20 supporting members, we'll have a +5 chapter marathon across all stories! The romance won't stop.
👻 Come to our secret corner: Search for GirlsLove on (P). You know that's where the magic happens... 😉