Sophia slowly set the glass cup in her hand back down on the desk. The icy fruit juice carried off the last trace of heat, yet made her gaze appear all the more clear and bright.
She lifted her head, her pale-golden pupils sweeping across the assembled people before the long table, her voice as cold and crisp as ever:
"The gaze of the Imperial Capital is now a variable that can no longer be evaded."
This single sentence of Sophia's made Irene and Daphne, who had still been excited over the frontline victory report, go slightly blank.
"Until now, the reason we have proceeded cautiously at every step—even deliberately suppressing Mason's rate of expansion—was to avoid being liquidated ahead of time by that colossus, the Imperial Capital, while our assets were not yet abundant enough."
Sophia turned, her slender fingertips sliding smoothly away from the marker of the Olan Royal City, and at last came to rest in the very center of the territory of those forty-odd neutral minor states, large and small:
"But from the moment Tina at the border fortress quintupled the dosage of her poison, and we began harvesting the nearby cities, fate and Olan's greed had already forcibly shoved Mason out onto the crest of the storm.
Now Red Maple Valley has been cut off, the outer-ring cities have collapsed in a chain reaction, and the whole Northern border is singing of the Black Rose's slips of paper.
Do you really think those great personages of the Imperial Capital are blind?"
The corner of Sophia's mouth pulled into an extremely faint, yet extremely cold arc:
"Since they are destined to have already noticed this place, then before the Imperial Capital truly frees its hands and makes any substantive move, our finest solution is to seize, at the fastest possible speed, every benefit within our grasp in full.
Only when the hidden cards in our hand are heavy enough will Mason, when it comes time to face that highest core, possess the capital to flip the table over."
The study fell into a brief silence, with only the blue-grey smoke of the Black Rose mosquito coil drifting slowly apart.
Having heard out this concise yet incisive analysis of Sophia's—one that stripped away every shred of wishful thinking—the few people gathered before the long table underwent, in an extremely short span of time, a series of subtle changes in their expressions.
"Heh heh… truly worthy of being Your Majesty."
At the other end of the soft couch, Victoria was the first to fold up her ivory fan, the fervor and admiration in those lovely golden eyes all but spilling out into something tangible.
She walked gracefully forward, bent slightly at the waist, and looked elegantly upon Sophia.
What a clever move!
I had originally thought Sophia would slow her pace of devouring the Northern border out of apprehension toward the Imperial Capital.
Yet in the very instant she saw the danger, she turned that danger straight into a catalyst to accelerate her plunder!
To buy out these forty-odd countries in full before the Imperial Capital can react, using an entire swathe of the Northern border map to align against the future game of power…
My dear little sister, this audacity of yours, turning crisis into asset, is so very, very much more brilliant than those hypocritical old fogeys of the Imperial Capital who only know how to guard what they already have!
However, compared to Victoria's political admiration, the eyes with which Irene and Daphne, seated to one side, and even Willow, standing at the table's edge, now looked at Sophia carried a faint, peculiar trace of awe.
Irene stared blankly at Sophia, the little strip of jerky pinched in her fingers forgotten on its way to her mouth.
Those sapphire-like eyes had, for once, lost a few measures of their usual friskiness and mischief.
As a Transmigrator, she had been through nearly being buried at the Black Stone Fortress, through bewilderment and dread of the future.
Yet at this very moment, watching this silver-haired girl who, beneath the moonlight, remained perfectly composed as she liquidated the survival of dozens of nations as if they were hidden cards, Irene felt an indescribable shiver crawl up along her spine.
Your Majesty… seems to have become, without anyone noticing, different from before.
The Sophia of the past, though likewise cold and rational, valuing efficiency in all things, was more like a Mason lord who calculated every cent, striving to guard her own little plot of land and live a good life.
But the her of now, seated behind that broad desk, silver hair like a waterfall, her pale-golden pupils not carrying a single ripple of mortal emotion.
That terrifying, crushing pressure she radiated in her every gesture—of dominating all things, of stuffing the fate of an entire continent into a ledger…
It was unmistakably a supreme emperor in the midst of awakening, about to trample the old era utterly underfoot!
Daphne, too, lowered her eyes slightly, her hands clenched tightly around her pure-white robe.
She could feel that aura of gradual metamorphosis upon Sophia—not the empty fantasy piled up from magic and Divine Arts, but a true, supreme power that toyed with the lives and deaths of tens of thousands, and with the great trends of the world, in the palm of her hand.
Willow, after a brief shock, found her gaze growing ever more fervent and meticulous.
She silently bowed her body lower still, thereby aligning her own absolute loyalty to this Queen who was striding toward legend.
"Since everyone is in agreement, then—Victoria."
Sophia gently pushed a sheet of snow-white, specially made paper bearing a faint Black Rose pattern in front of Victoria, and at the same time handed over a black quill pen symbolizing Mason's highest administrative authority:
"You shall write it on my behalf.
Issue a formal Mason state letter to those forty-odd neutral minor states out there who are still watching and trembling with fear."
Victoria reached out to take the quill, her golden eyes flickering, taking on a few touches of an eager, itching-to-try smile:
"Your Majesty, then what sort of sincerity should this humble minister align toward them in the tone of this state letter?"
"No sincerity is needed—only give them a notice."
Sophia slowly rose to her feet, her black Gothic skirts spreading open beneath the moonlight. She gazed at the farmland in the distance outside the window, being reclaimed in full swing, and her cold voice detonated flat across the deep night:
"Tell them that Olan's collapse is already a foregone fact, and that the laws of the old era can no longer sustain their survival.
From here on, let them make their own choice."
"This minister… receives the decree."
Victoria performed an elegant bow, then sat down before the table, the black quill in her hand giving off a smooth, sharp rustling against the paper.
Those wisps of words exuding the faint fragrance of Black Rose, under the Third Princess's deeply deceptive and oppressive rhetoric, turned into invisible death-hastening talismans, one after another.
On this deep midsummer night, at the fastest possible speed, they spread smoothly toward the courts of more than forty minor states across the entire Northern border.
As these light, fluttering sheets of paper exuding the faint fragrance of Black Rose were sent out through the night, the eerie calm that the whole Northern border had maintained on the eve of a midsummer rainstorm was, in a single night, utterly shattered to pieces.
On this traditional continent without supernatural, extraordinary magic, where messages relied entirely on warhorses and couriers, Mason's all-pervading black-market channels displayed an efficiency that sent shivers down the spine.
When the horizon had just begun to show the pale white of a fish's belly, within the courts of those forty-odd neutral minor states large and small on Olan's outer ring, urgent bells rang out one after another.
The eight supremely cold words upon the state letter—
"From here on, let them make their own choice."
In the eyes of the kings and lords of the different countries, were overclocked and interpreted into starkly different, terrifying meanings.
As one of the larger neutral states among the forty-odd, even priding itself on possessing the most orthodox knightly heritage, the Kingdom of Sacred Oak—its Council Hall was at this moment sunk into a somewhat neurotic clamor.
"Absurd! This is simply arrogance without a shred of logic!"
The King of Sacred Oak, Osric, past fifty years of age, slammed that corner of paper bearing the Black Rose pattern viciously onto the pure-gold long table, his bearded old face flushed crimson with fury:
"That little girl Sophia has only just turned sixteen this year, hasn't she?
Who does she think she is?
Having wiped out a few tiny tribes that don't even have regular armies, relying on a little smuggled Black Bread, she dares use this condescending tone to command This King to make a choice?!
She actually says that Olan's collapse is a foregone fact?!"
Osric shot to his feet, gripping the ornate longsword at his waist, and paced irritably about the hall:
"Tina has a full fifty thousand fully armed soldiers in her hand!
That is the most powerful strangling force the entire Northern border has seen in several hundred years!
Those ten thousand ragtag infantry of Mason's, holding their black tubes—the moment they dare approach the obsidian city wall of the royal city, they will be liquidated in full by Olan's heavy crossbows!
Pass down This King's decree: the Kingdom of Sacred Oak will make no statement of position whatsoever!
We shall continue to watch, and when Tina chops off the head of that red-haired demon, this scrap of paper of Mason's will become the greatest joke of all!"
However, the Marquis Blade seated at the lower end of the hall was staring fixedly at that sheet of paper, the cold sweat on his forehead sliding smoothly down through the seams of his windproof armor.
He's gone mad… His Majesty the King has truly let the glory of the old era addle his brain.
Do you really think this letter is that silver-haired Queen consulting with us?!
Look at the precise calculating logic behind this line of words—
If she truly had no certainty of victory, how could she possibly send a document that amounts almost to an ultimatum to forty-odd countries at the very moment their Mason general has just laid siege to the city?!
She even brazenly wrote outright in the letter that she had already sent it to multiple countries!
This is plainly Your Majesty Sophia using this high-dimensional posture to make the final compositional sorting of the entire Northern border's flow of supplies!
Whoever chooses to watch and wait now will, in Her Majesty's ledger, be directly aligned as old-era dregs that need to be formatted away!
If we follow the King and wait alongside him, then when the day of the autumn harvest comes, what we will greet is absolutely not Olan's winning game, but the merciless freezing and cancellation of our entire royal house's assets by Mason's black muskets!!
In stark contrast to the Kingdom of Sacred Oak's rigidity, the coastal Duchy of Rila was at this moment displaying an extremely efficient kind of busyness.
The supreme ruler of the Duchy of Rila was a young female leader renowned for her shrewdness and ruthlessness——Duchess Catherine.
At this moment she had changed into an exceedingly crisp set of silk casual wear, those long, narrow, lovely fox-like eyes glinting with a sharp light, as though tallying assets on an abacus.
"Your Grace the Queen, are we… are we really going to deliver a letter of dimensional-reduction submission to the Yurilland Temporary Palace this very morning?"
The internal affairs officer, off to one side, trembled as he checked over the gift list being prepared.
"After all, Olan still has its royal grand vault overclocking the supply of materials—victory and defeat are not yet certain…"
"Victory and defeat?"
Queen Catherine let out an extremely contemptuous sneer, lightly stroking with her fair fingertip that blooming Black Rose hidden pattern on the letter-paper:
"Fool.
That old woman Tina throwing open the royal grand vault shows that she has already lost all sensitivity for carrying out normal resource flow at the border.
Right now the entire Northern border's black market is madly devaluing Olan's gold coin, and in the shipping ports of our Duchy of Rila, the merchants have emptied out their whole family fortunes just to snatch a single Mason universal note.
If not for the cold-fever-curing potions shipped over from Mason, next month the lowest-tier subjects of my Duchy of Rila would erupt into civil unrest from a lack of survival assets.
This letter of Sophia's is granting us clever ones a priority slot to enjoy the good days ahead of time."
Catherine slowly rose to her feet, walked to the long table, and with an extremely rational and domineering air placed into a specially made brocade box the state seal representing the Duchy of Rila's highest tariff authority.
"Pass down the order!
Not only must we state our position, we must align in full with Mason's credit system!
Take the thirty thousand catties of premium sea salt in our stores, and the controlling rights to ten merchant ships, and offer them all as the Duchy of Rila's meeting gift for merging into Mason's new order!
Tell Mason's Queen that I, Catherine, will tomorrow stand in line before the Temporary Palace gate, by the rules that most conform to Mason's standards, and await Her Majesty's audience!"
Meanwhile, in the Kingdom of Goran, geographically extremely close to Red Maple Valley, the court was at this moment already in utter chaos.
"What do we do? My lords, you tot up this account for This King, then!!"
The King of Goran, Berick, slumped his whole body limply against the back of his chair, his complexion ghastly pale, that head of somewhat curly brown hair clawed into utter disorder out of anxiety.
Looking at those ministers on both sides of the long table, whose faces were likewise the color of dirt, his voice carried an uncontrollable, powerless tremor:
"This letter that Mason sent over—there isn't a single superfluous riddler's word inside it.
'Make your own choice'…
Does this mean This King is to throw open the city gates to welcome that Bardess's great axe, or does it mean This King is to dispatch his army to go help Tina guard her city gates?!
At the most generous reckoning, the Kingdom of Goran is only the size of three towns. In the head-on clash between two generals, one stray alchemy projectile flung over and This King's Palace would be written off in full!!"
"Your Majesty!
In this humble minister's view, this is precisely a psychological binding-curse from the Queen of Mason upon us!"
The Minister of Military Affairs slapped his thigh, his eyes full of extreme terror born of the unknown:
"The day before yesterday, in Iron Hammer Town, this humble minister saw with his own eyes those Olan deserters who had joined Mason's vanguard army—each and every one of them eating Black Bread laced with honey-sugar, laughing like madmen before a portrait of Your Majesty Sophia!
This proves that anyone who touches a Mason note has their very sanity tampered with!
If we choose now to throw in our lot with Mason, we might still keep these seats of ours.
But if we choose to watch and wait, then those two ravening wolves Delilah and Bardess will, in the fastest possible time, smash the bones of us neutral states to bits and use them as fertilizer for the autumn harvest!!"
"Yes, yes, yes! The minister is right!"
King Berick was so frightened he slid straight off his chair, not even caring that his shoe had trodden upon a glass ornament on the carpet, and shrieked over and over:
"Quick!
Have the court painter work through the night to rush out a colossal sacred portrait of Your Majesty Sophia!
Hang it at the very highest point of our city gate!
And dispatch an envoy bearing the entirety of our mineral account-books to carry out a final asset reconciliation with Her Highness Victoria!
Our Kingdom of Goran… we will not be watching, waiting impurities; we will go right now and become Mason's most loyal holders of formal identity cards!!"
Throughout the whole midsummer night of the Northern border, scenes like these were rehearsed in alternation across different courts and castles, at a frequency that was utterly absurd yet supremely logical.
Those kings and lords who normally held themselves high above all—before this light, fluttering notice that carried not even a shred of armed intimidation—some sank into the self-aggrandizing destructive fantasies of the old era.
Some, under the alignment of interests, made the most shrewd severance; and more of them still were utterly tormented to mental ruin by that imperial divine-status Sophia exuded without form, and, trembling, prepared their ledgers of submission through the deep night.
And Sophia, far away in the Yurilland Temporary Palace, still maintained that cold, composed, exquisite countenance, quietly greeting the dawn light that was about to align the whole world.
As the morning breeze blew away the last lingering trace of ink-fragrance within the study, the delivery work of the Black Rose universal note state letters had been fully settled and arranged through Willow's black-market channels.
The oil lamp in the study swayed somewhat feebly. Irene rubbed her slightly aching eyes, that head of pink hair looking a bit frizzy in the lamplight.
She lifted her chin from the edge of the long table, her sapphire-like eyes fixed on the grey crystals on the sandtable representing the forty-odd neutral minor states, and suddenly, as though she had thought of something, asked rather curiously:
"But, Your Majesty, if that pack of kings and lords great and small, after receiving the letter Princess Victoria wrote on your behalf, neither reply to state their position nor defect to Olan, but simply huddle in their castles playing dead, doing nothing at all—then what do we do?"
Sophia's fingertips were just then stroking that somewhat icy deep-blue chess piece. Hearing Irene's question, she did not so much as lift an eyelid.
The moonlight pierced through the floor-to-ceiling window, setting off her exquisite, godlike countenance as all the more cold and unrippled.
She slowly snapped the chess piece down onto the long table, giving off a crisp physical clack of impact, her tone so flat it did not carry the faintest contamination of emotion:
"If they do nothing, then we do them in."
These dozen-odd simple words, under that absolutely rational intonation, carried a kind of unquestionable, life-and-death-mastering, terrifying crushing pressure.
"Wah——!
Your Majesty is so domineering! Truly worthy of being my wise sovereign, Your Majesty!!"
Irene sprang straight up from her chair, those sapphire-like eyes full of fanatical adoration.
As a Transmigrator, what she most loved to see was precisely this kind of crisp logic that wasted not a single superfluous word on the old era.
Victoria, seated to one side, gracefully spread open her ivory fan, her golden eyes glinting with a trace of "just as I expected" admiration.
Truly worthy of being my dear little sister.
In Her Majesty's ledger of the new order, a neutral who does not actively defect to carry out credit alignment is, in essence, a dead asset refusing to provide liquidity to the Mason system.
For this sort of old-era dregs with no value-added worth whatsoever, that would only obstruct the formatting of productivity, the most perfect solution is of course direct physical erasure.
This single line of Her Majesty's, do them in, is not pure cruelty, but the most thorough, most efficient cleansing of the entire Northern border map!
Those fools still watching and waiting have no idea at all what manner of emperor, possessed of iron-blooded means, they are facing.
The next day at dawn, the sky had only just turned faintly bright.
Upon the giant Drill Ground on the western side of the Yurilland Temporary Palace, there still drifted a thin layer of summer morning mist mingled with the fresh fragrance of earth.
On the parade ground at this moment, the ten thousand Mason regular soldiers left to garrison the Temporary Palace had already formed up neatly into several grand square formations.
Since both General Delilah and Commander Bardess had each set off for the other two battle lines to carry out their plans, the morning-inspection special drill of the garrison army these past few days had lost a few measures of its usual iron-blooded roaring.
Yet today, when the first physical golden ray of the rising sun pierced through the thin mist and lit up the commanding general's high platform, the atmosphere within the Drill Ground sank in an instant into a nearly suffocating fervor.
Upon the high platform, Sophia stood quietly in the center.
For ease of movement, today she had, for once, not worn that elaborate, heavy black Gothic skirt, but had changed into a set of black fine-steel light leather armor, personally designed by Irene, cut exceedingly crisply and form-fitting.
That head of waterfall-like silver long hair was neatly bound behind her head, swaying gently with the morning breeze, her pale-golden pupils refracting in the sunlight a coldness and nobility untouched by worldly emotion.
In her absolutely rational thinking model, Sophia reckoned that since her two great generals were absent, and she herself happened this morning to have a little interest in conditioning her body—
then personally leading these soldiers through a round of basic muscular exercise was the thing that most conformed to a commander's logic of maximizing productivity.
"All units under command, calibrate the rhythm of your pace."
Though Sophia's cold, crisp voice was not loud, wrapped in combat aura it detonated flat with extreme precision right beside the ear of every single soldier:
"An army that cannot even align its basic movements is, upon my chessboard, equivalent to invalid, discarded assets.
Within a quarter-hour, follow my rhythm and begin the morning-inspection special drill."
As her words fell, Sophia slowly drew the Black Rose rapier at her waist, the one symbolizing Mason's royal authority.
She used none of the gorgeous old-era combat-aura techniques—only the most basic military formation swordsmanship, personally calibrated by Delilah.
She thrust out a single stroke, her form as smooth as a wisp of silver flowing light, her footwork so precise, her frequency so constant, perfect as a fine machine meshed together from the most rigorous of rules.
"Roar——!!"
Below the high platform, in the very second the ten thousand soldiers saw the silver-haired Queen personally draw her sword, the battle-soul within their bodies was overclocked and ignited in an instant!
Their uniform longspears, in perfect unison, stamped down hard against the ground, bursting out a deafening metallic roar!
Within this army formation at this moment, apart from the purest Mason veterans, more than half were also surrendered soldiers gathered in full over these past few months from conquered countries such as Yurilland and Vala, along with refugees from the surrounding regions who, unable to survive, had crossed the border to seek shelter.
In the old imperial era of the day before, these lowly mud-legged commoners, in the eyes of those lofty kings and grand dukes, were nothing more than a heap of expendables and cannon fodder that didn't even count as numbers.
In their old memories, even to see a lord they had to humbly press their heads down into the dust of the mud.
As for the lofty King, Your Majesty?
That was a god they would have their heads chopped off for the lèse-majesté of so much as glancing at, not once in their whole lives.
But now…
This silver-haired Queen, sung of throughout the Northern border's black market as the Rose True God, who held refined salt and Black Bread in her grasp, was actually standing upon that high platform, facing the blazing morning sun, personally leading them—these former slaves and prisoners of war—drilling in the sand, sweat pouring like rain!
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