211
"Talulah!!!"
FrostNova slammed the door to Talulah's office open with a bang.
"Yelena?" Talulah looked up from a massive pile of documents, her eyes exhausted, looking as if she might drop dead at any moment. "Oh, you're back."
"Tell me the truth, how many days has it been since you last slept?" FrostNova marched over to her aggressively and slammed her hands on the desk. "Are you really not afraid of dropping dead?"
"I won't die," Talulah shook her head nonchalantly. "I'm a Draco."
"So what if you're a Draco? You'll still drop dead when it's time," FrostNova frowned tightly, hearing the weakness in the other's words. "What happened back then... it wasn't your fault!"
"...I still have work to do here." Hearing this, Talulah didn't answer directly but instead lowered her head again. "Mr. Patriot misses you very much, go spend some time with him..."
"We're talking about you right now!" FrostNova said, looking utterly exasperated. "You're always like this. You've always been like this, Talulah. You always think it's your fault, that you're the one who brought disaster upon us..."
"Is it not?" Talulah raised her head at those words, a glimmer of tears flashing in her eyes. "If it weren't for me, the Black Snake wouldn't have targeted you all, and the Doctor wouldn't have had to make such a huge sacrifice..."
She had been working desperately for the past few months, completely torturing herself with the mindset of atoning for her sins.
The once faith-filled fighter now had the face of an overworked corporate slave.
"You've already said that many times. Anyway, I won't change. Are you done talking? If you're done, please leave. I need to continue working."
"Fine, fine, work, is it?" Hearing this, FrostNova laughed out of pure anger. "Alright, then let's talk about work!"
"What's wrong? Did you encounter an accident during this patrol?" Talulah asked, trying to gather her spirits.
"Oh, it's not that," FrostNova sneered. "It's just that the Doctor asked her friend to deliver supplies to us."
"Seeing how busy you are, I won't bother you. Alina and I will just go entertain the guest ourselves. You just keep doing your work!"
"What? The Doctor's friend?!" Hearing this, Talulah shot up to her feet, then her vision went dark and she almost collapsed right there. Fortunately, she managed to support herself on the desk in time.
"Where is the person? I'll go right now..."
"Go where? Looking the way you do right now?" FrostNova crossed her arms and mocked. "Don't worry, we'll take good care of our guest. As for you, heh, with how you are right now, it's best you don't go and embarrass yourself."
"Otherwise, they might think our Reunion is some sort of sweatshop organization, with our grand leader looking like she's being worked to death."
"Stop messing around, Yelena," Talulah walked over helplessly and tugged at the hem of her clothes. "News about the Doctor... you know I can't..."
"What can't you do?" FrostNova said with a straight face. "Anyway, looking at the state you're in, you probably won't live for many more years. Rather than letting the Doctor know about your condition and making her worry, it's better if you just don't show your face and find a quiet place to die by yourself."
"That way, at least the Doctor won't have to interrupt her recuperation time to come looking for you out of worry!"
"I..." Talulah knew she was only saying this because she was too angry.
But she wasn't wrong either, so Talulah was left speechless, only able to grip the hem of her clothes tightly, lowering her head without a word.
"You really are full of yourself, aren't you," FrostNova scoffed lightly, then reached out and grabbed her hand. "Let's go. Go wash your face first. At least look a bit more energetic so you don't make a fool of yourself."
Talulah obediently followed behind her.
Meanwhile, on the other side.
Xia Yu looked out the window at the Infected base.
This base was built upon a former small-scale mobile plot as its foundation, surrounded by ten battleships on its periphery. Two hundred thousand Infected were stationed within the base in an orderly manner.
"So the Doctor's condition isn't anything serious, right?" Alina looked nervously at the lady in front of her who called herself Firefly.
"Yes, she just needs time to recuperate and repair the seal," Xia Yu said seriously. "There aren't that many conflicts in the sea. As long as she avoids Aegir, she gets along very well with the Seaborn."
"The reason she was so bent on self-destruction before was mainly because she had seen too much suffering on the continent over the years and was affected by it. As long as she leaves that environment, she can slowly adjust and recover."
"That's good," Alina breathed a sigh of relief hearing this.
"By the way, you are Buldrokas'tee? The last pureblood Wendigo?" Xia Yu looked up at the Patriot.
"Yes," the Patriot nodded.
"That's good. I have a letter for you here," Xia Yu pulled a letter out from the void and handed it to him.
The Patriot tensed up instantly the moment he saw the wax seal on the envelope.
"Theresa asked me to deliver it to you," Xia Yu explained. "I came from Kazdel, so it was on my way."
"Theresa?" Hearing this name and seeing the Patriot's reaction, Alina was somewhat curious. "This Miss Theresa..."
"She's the current Sarkaz Lord of Fiends," the Patriot's voice was deep. "She's our hero. Two hundred years ago, I also fought under her command for Kazdel."
"Lord... Lord of Fiends?" Alina tensed up at the words. The grand reputation of the Lord of Fiends was still very effective in the outside world.
Even though she had been with the Patriot for a long time and harbored no prejudice against the Sarkaz race, hearing the title of the Lord of Fiends still made her somewhat nervous.
"Don't worry, she's a Lord of Fiends of utmost benevolence and kindness," Xia Yu comforted upon seeing this. "She's a good person, even though she just declared to all the Sarkaz that she's going to be a tyrant."
"Utmost benevolence and kindness? Lord of Fiends? Tyrant?" Alina was completely confused hearing this. Can these words even be put together?
"Utmost benevolence and kindness... what a good description," the Patriot rubbed the envelope with his fingers upon hearing this. "Her Highness is indeed that kind of person. It's just... a tyrant?"
He looked up at Xia Yu. "This doesn't sound like Her Highness's character."
"There's nothing she can do about it," Xia Yu shrugged. "Kazdel has tens of millions of Sarkaz. With a large population and little land, that barren territory is no longer enough to support so many people."
"So the Military Commission, led by Theresis and the several great Royal Courts, started plotting foreign wars. It just so happened that a Grand Duke of Victoria extended an olive branch to them, inviting them as mercenaries to fight for that supreme crown."
"But Theresa didn't want Sarkaz blood to flow for others, so she had been opposing it all along."
"So Theresis's Military Commission and Theresa's Babel parted ways. With the atmosphere before, a civil war was about to break out at any moment."
"So, this letter..." The Patriot looked at the envelope in his hands with a heavy expression.
Could this be a letter from Her Highness Theresa trying to persuade him to return and join the war?
This didn't seem like Her Highness's style.
"Oh, don't worry," Xia Yu knew his concern and kindly reassured him. "They've already finished fighting. The letter isn't calling you home. She just heard about what you've been doing over here, so she wrote a letter to catch up with you."
What? You ask me why I know?
Of course, it was because he was right next to Theresa when she wrote this letter. Before the ink was even dry, it was stuffed directly into the envelope, stamped with a wax seal, and handed over to him. How could he not know?
"What do you mean, finished fighting?" The Patriot was a little dumbfounded.
The current situation of the Sarkaz... he had asked Lord Kal'tsit about it when she came over previously. Basically, more than half of the Sarkaz army was in the hands of the Military Commission, and three Royal Courts strongly supported Theresis.
On Her Highness's side, there were none. The Banshees could only guarantee their own non-participation. Although there was a huge disparity in strength, it wasn't completely without hope. At the very least, Her Highness's rallying power was still there.
If this devolved into a civil war, no matter how one looked at it, it wouldn't be something that could end in a short time. If they didn't fight until rivers of blood flowed, would they still be Sarkaz?
"Didn't I tell you? I came from Kazdel," Xia Yu said calmly. "Before I came, I was employed by Theresa as her top enforcer."
"And so?" The Patriot still didn't quite understand.
"So seven days ago, I beat up everyone who refused to submit to Theresa," Xia Yu answered. "Everyone who dared to resist took at least one punch. After suppressing the entirety of Kazdel, basically no one dared to oppose Theresa anymore."
"What, you don't believe me?"
"This... apologies, but to me it indeed sounds somewhat... like a fantasy," the Patriot said hesitantly.
Logically speaking, he shouldn't believe such a thing at all. Having spent his childhood and youth in Kazdel, the Patriot knew exactly what kind of existences those Royal Courts were. For a single person to solo the entirety of Kazdel... was simply too whimsical.
But thinking about how the other party was the Doctor's friend... then again, that changed things.
Considering that the Doctor could destroy a fleet composed of ten Ursus battleships even when in poor condition, this Miss Firefly's methods probably weren't too shabby either.
"And what's this about Her Highness saying she wants to be a tyrant?" the Patriot asked curiously.
"It means she's establishing a dictatorship," Xia Yu smiled. "She'll no longer listen to anyone's opinions, focusing entirely on developing Kazdel's industry and agriculture, boosting the economy, expanding foreign trade, and building an internal education system..."
"These past few days, they've been holding meetings every single day, researching how to fleece talent from abroad to develop Kazdel."
"The kind of tyrant where if anyone dares to sing a different tune, they'll be dragged out and executed directly."
"She sounds like an absolute wise ruler," Alina whispered upon hearing this. "Aren't these all good things?"
"You don't understand the Sarkaz," the Patriot shook his head. "Not allowing any foreign wars... Her Highness is truly dead set on being a tyrant."
"It's mainly because we've given them so much," Xia Yu spoke up. "Right now, all of Kazdel is drafting strong laborers to build warehouses. The food we provided as aid is enough to feed ten million Sarkaz for an entire year."
"If all this food was just dumped on the ground, it would be a total waste. Even the mercenaries from the Scar Market were conscripted to do hard labor."
"So much food..." The Patriot was openly envious upon hearing this.
"You all get some too," Xia Yu smiled. "Ah Tui specifically instructed me to bring a batch for you as well, but you have too few people to consume that much. I can give you at most a tenth of what they got."
"A tenth of the food needed to feed ten million people for a year," Alina's pupils shook at this, and she muttered to herself, "That's enough to feed a million people for a year. Our base only has two hundred thousand people in total. That's enough for us to eat for five years?!"
"That's only if you just sit around eating your reserves," Xia Yu said. "You can still farm and have your own production. In Lungmen, Bailu has opened a few companies to conduct trade with Kazdel."
"You can naturally set up a trade route as well. They primarily deal in food and mobile plots. Of course, there are also all sorts of essential supplies available for purchase. However, those won't be free aid, you'll need to pay for them."
"After all, her company in Lungmen also has to support over a hundred thousand Infected. They rely on this to put food on the table."
"No problem! There's no problem at all!" At this point, an excited voice rang out from outside the door, and Talulah pushed her way in directly. "Isn't it just paying money? The Tundra has plenty of Originium Ore. We can rely on our own manual labor to exchange for the hope of survival."
"What Reunion lacks isn't wealth, but stable trade channels!"
"You don't need to worry about the Lungmen route," Xia Yu said upon hearing this. "As long as Ursus is of sound mind, they won't go out of their way to sever this line."
Of course, he was mainly talking about the Black Snake.
If his mind was functioning normally, he would just turn a blind eye. After all, if he really forced these two hundred thousand Infected into a corner where they couldn't survive, their only option would be to head south and plunder the wealthy households.
At that point, when the plundered nobles started rebelling, he wouldn't be able to control it. Once the flames of war ignited, the Infected certainly wouldn't be able to hold out against the Ursus fleet, and it was hard to say what would happen next.
What if that Doctor went crazy? The entirety of Ursus would have to be buried alongside them.
Therefore, not only could he not sever the trade route, he even had to spend his own money and effort to maintain it.
With a full two hundred thousand people in the Tundra right now, the supplies they had accumulated previously simply weren't enough. They could only engage in fragmented, private trade, and the only reason these trades still existed was entirely due to Koschei's efforts.
"Phew, excuse my lack of manners. Hello, Miss. I'm the leader of Reunion, you can call me Talulah," Talulah looked at Xia Yu and introduced herself.
"Just call me Firefly," Xia Yu smiled faintly. "Right now, I'm just a Messenger. Oh right, there's a letter for you here. It's from Lungmen, written by your sister."
"Huijie..." Hearing this, Talulah accepted the envelope with a complex expression.
"Miss Firefly, may I ask about the Doctor's current situation..." She put away the letter and began to ask about the matter she was most concerned with.
"She's doing very well right now," Xia Yu smiled and said. "Blue seas and blue skies, nothing to worry about, and a group of Seaborn accompanying her. She's living very comfortably."
"Before I came, she instructed me, saying that Miss Talulah would definitely overthink things and believe that everything was your fault."
"She asked me to tell you not to dwell on these pointless thoughts. The problem doesn't lie with you."
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T/N: If you spot mistranslation, do tell me.
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