Tap. Tap. Tap.
Arthur's index finger tapped a slow, silent rhythm against the wooden sill of the narrow office window, his gaze fixed on a blurred spot beyond the cloudy, uneven glass.
Behind him, the logs in the stone fireplace crackled softly, and the dry rustle of parchment pages filled the Prince's study. Yet Arthur barely heard the noises in the room; inside his head, his thoughts were miles away, racing eastward toward the capital of Graycastle.
Is it happening right now? Arthur wondered in a silent, tense monologue. Or has the coup already ended, and the autumn wind simply hasn't carried the smell of royal blood out to the frontier yet?
In the original timeline of the story, this exact window of autumn was the season of daggers in King's City.
With almost painful clarity, Arthur could picture the fate of the eldest brother, Prince Gerald Wimbledon. Unlike the arrogant and cruel original Roland, Gerald had at least possessed the makings of a traditional ruler who tried to keep the kingdom's nobles in check — only to be ruthlessly deceived and murdered in your father's castle by his ambitious second brother, Timothy.
It is a cruel piece of poetic injustice, Arthur thought, feeling a heavy knot settle in his stomach. Gerald was far from a saint, sure, but to be slaughtered like cattle by his own blood brother just so a tyrant like Timothy can seize the crown and flood the capital with witch-hunting fanatics...
Arthur frowned slightly, trying to recall the exact dates from the webnovel chapters he had read back on Earth.
Damn it, being physically inside this world makes the exact day-to-day timeline so much harder to pin down, he cursed mentally, rubbing his thumb against the steel case of his watch. I know King Wimbledon III falls into his coma right as the cold sets in, and Timothy's madness starts immediately after. But did the spatial distortion that brought William and me here speed up the events in the capital, or delay them?
For a mind that thrived on absolute control and hard data, that blind spot felt like a slow torture. He felt like a minor god who remembered the entire history of the world, yet couldn't see what was happening on the other side of the mountain today.
Should I warn Roland about Gerald and Timothy right now?, Arthur debated for a brief second before immediately shutting the idea down. No... how would I justify knowing the exact hour of a secret assassination hundreds of kilometers away without sounding completely insane? Besides, even if Roland knew this very second, we have no army, no steamships, and no way to reach King's City in time. Warning him now would only add useless panic to his plate.
Arthur let out a quiet, inaudible sigh, feeling the strange isolation of carrying a whole world's timeline alone in his head.
While the other three men inside the study — Roland, Assistant Minister Barov, and William — were completely locked into the immediate crisis of the "here and now," Arthur was living in two eras at once, where the fictional past of a book was the deadly tomorrow of their reality.
To Roland, the heavy silence in the office was just a brief pause to calculate numbers. To Barov, it was the terrifying calm before complete financial bankruptcy. To William, leaning against the stone wall with his arms crossed, it was simply the boring paperwork before the real action started.
Focus on the board in front of you, Arthur, he scolded himself silently, turning his back on the window to anchor his mind in the cold stone study. Gerald is already a ghost of the future. Right now, Duke Ryan of Longsong Stronghold is the monster knocking at our front door.
Slam!
The heavy leather cover of a massive accounting ledger hit the surface of Roland's oak desk, breaking the silence of the room.
Standing across from the prince, Assistant Minister Barov looked as if he had aged ten years in the past forty-eight hours. Deep, dark bruises of exhaustion hung beneath his bloodshot eyes, his greying beard was unkempt, and his bony hands trembled slightly as he clutched a stack of loose parchment scrolls like a wooden shield against an incoming storm.
— "Take a seat, Barov," — Roland said, his voice carrying none of the whiny arrogance of the old prince, replaced instead by the dry, surgical urgency of a chief executive facing a deadline. — "Give me the numbers straight. Leave out the courtly excuses."
Barov didn't sit; he was far too panicked to bend his knees.
— "Your Highness! The situation delivered by the western courier this morning is worse than our darkest fears!" — Barov burst out, his voice cracking and jumping an octave higher as he spread the trade manifests across the desk.
Around the large wooden table, where a rough parchment map of Graycastle's western border lay pinned down by iron weights, Roland, Arthur, and William leaned in to look.
— "The updated winter trade agreement sent by the Merchant Council of Longsong Stronghold is nothing short of highway robbery!" — Barov cried, wiping cold sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. — "Duke Ryan has officially raised the tariff on wheat and salted meat by another twenty percent while slashing the purchase price of our raw iron ore! He has put a rope around our necks and kicked the stool away!"
Roland's expression darkened, his fingers drumming once against the wood, though he kept his composure remarkably steady. Instead of answering Barov immediately, the prince raised his gray eyes toward Arthur and William standing near the side of the desk.
— "Before I sign any evacuation decree or reply to this extortion," — Roland said calmly, testing his new advisors, — "I want to hear what my two scholars from the Kingdom Dawn see when they look at this map. Arthur, you have spent the last three days buried in my treasury archives. What is your diagnosis of our little financial black hole?"
Arthur stepped forward smoothly, forcing the last thoughts of the capital out of his head and switching entirely into corporate crisis-management mode.
He leaned over the table, his eyes tracing the crudely drawn lines of the North Slope Mine, the jagged ridge of the Impassable Mountain Range, and the winding blue ribbon of the Redwater River.
Backed by his study of finance and administration and his complete knowledge of the story's background, Arthur didn't just see ink on sheepskin; he saw supply chains, caloric deficits, and a cold-blooded political strangulation.
— "Ordering a winter evacuation to Longsong Stronghold is not a safety measure, Minister Barov; it is a political trap," — Arthur began, his calm, razor-sharp voice cutting straight through the old bureaucrat's panic. — "Duke Ryan does not care in the slightest about the lives of Your Highness's servants or the survival of the two thousand miners outside these walls. What he wants is an empty town."
Barov blinked, taking half a step back at the intensity in the young scholar's eyes.
— "An... an empty town?" — Barov repeated.
— "Think about the seasonal cycle here," — Arthur continued, pointing a finger directly at the fortress icon of Longsong Stronghold to the west. — "Every single winter, when the Months of Demons begin, Border Town panics. The administration packs up, abandons the walls, and drags the population to beg for shelter behind Duke Ryan's stone ramparts. Not only does the Duke charge the royal treasury an astronomical fee for 'housing and feeding' our refugees for four months, but while Border Town stands empty, his private prospectors and smugglers move into our hills as soon as the snow starts to melt, claiming the best surface veins as 'abandoned territory.' He is using Border Town as a disposable buffer shield against the demonic beasts while draining every silver royal you own."
Arthur paused for a beat, letting the cold truth sink in before going for the jugular:
— "The core problem of Border Town has never been a lack of natural resources, Your Highness," — Arthur stated firmly. — "Border Town is being systematically strangled by a rigged colonial economy. Right now, our only exports are raw, unrefined iron ore and rough copper. In exchange, we import nearly one hundred percent of our basic survival needs from Longsong — wheat, barley, salted meat, dried vegetables, and even iron tools. Every single calorie that enters a peasant's stomach in this town passes through Duke Ryan's tollgates or comes down the river from Willow Town. We are not a self-governing fiefdom; we are a labor camp where the miners are paid just enough stale bread not to die before their next shift."
Standing by the fireplace, William looked over at Arthur, a spark of genuine respect mixing with sheer amusement in his eyes.
Damn, bro... you actually memorized every single detail of the medieval trade routes and grain tariffs from the novel too?, William thought, hiding a smirk behind his hand. You really are the turbo-nerd! LMFAO! Thxx God you're on my team, because if you asked me right now, I wouldn't even know the price of a sack of rye!
Ignoring William's amused stare, Arthur traced a line with his fingernail along the uneven boundary of the North Slope Mine on the map.
— "Look at the geological survey of the North Slope," — Arthur said, looking directly at Roland. — "From what Anna observed during our initial ore tests, and from the deeper shaft records in the archives, this mountain is an absolute geological jackpot. The tunnels have no mapped bottom, and the variety of minerals sitting right next to each other defies normal nature, high-grade iron, copper, sulfur, limestone, coal seams, and even rough gemstone crystals are packed into the same mountain ridge. It's as if the earth itself gifted all the raw materials to our backyard."
Barov let out a heavy, defeated sigh, his shoulders slumping like a man trying to row a leaky boat against a tsunami.
— "And what good is a mountain full of stones and gems when winter is weeks away, Master Arthur?!" — Barov argued, his voice hoarse. — "We cannot eat sulfur or iron ore! And Duke Ryan's Six Great Families control the western river docks! They are the ones who set the price for every pound of ore we dig up!"
— "And you just hit the nail right on the head, Minister," — Arthur replied, locking eyes with Barov until the older man looked away uncomfortably. — "What you currently have with Longsong Stronghold is not a trade agreement; it is a leash. Duke Ryan refuses to pay for our ore and raw gems with real gold royals or silver coins; instead, he pays us directly in overpriced 'food rations.' He calculates the exchange rate down to the last copper penny so that the entire annual output of the mine buys just enough grain to keep two thousand people breathing — not one sack more, and not one sack less."
Arthur stood up straight, folding his hands behind his back with the effortless authority of a seasoned chancellor:
— "Because no actual currency stays in Border Town, there is zero capital accumulation," — Arthur concluded. — "We cannot hire skilled craftsmen, we cannot buy proper weapons, and we cannot expand farmland. To Duke Ryan, Border Town must remain a starving outpost forever trapped in debt slavery."
Behind the desk, Roland leaned forward, resting his chin on his laced fingers. Arthur noticed Immediately that the prince's gray pupils were slightly dilated — the unmistakable look of Cheng Yan's mind seeing the entire economic matrix laid bare.
— "And what about the local hunting and fur trade in the southern forest?" — Roland asked, testing the next piece of the puzzle.
— "Another massive leak in your treasury, Your Highness," — Arthur answered without missing a beat, not even needing to glance at the ledger. — "The local hunters and trappers take high-quality winter pelts out of the forest every week, but instead of selling them here, they smuggle them directly down the river to private buyers in Longsong and Willow Town. Because the previous administration never set up a proper customs post or offered competitive silver rates, zero taxes are collected on furs. Border Town sits on a goldmine of timber, pelts, and minerals, yet it is managed like a chaotic refugee camp where money leaks through the floorboards like water through a sieve."
— "Then the diagnosis is clear," — Arthur said, tapping the map firmly. — "We cut the umbilical cord to Longsong Stronghold today. We stop trading raw ore for Duke Ryan's moldy bread. Instead, we bypass his monopoly entirely, send our barges straight down the Redwater River to the free merchants of Willow Town, demand payment in hard gold and silver for our refined products and gems, and buy our winter wheat on the open market. And as for the Months of Demons... we don't evacuate a single soul. We build a permanent defense line between the mountain and the river, and we hold this town ourselves."
The moment the words "we don't evacuate" left Arthur's mouth, all the remaining blood drained from Assistant Minister Barov's face.
The old man turned as white as a sheet of parchment, his knees wobbling so badly he had to grab the edge of the oak desk to keep from collapsing onto the carpet.
— "A... a defense line?! Stay here during the Months of Demons?!" — Barov gasped, looking at Arthur as if the scholar had just suggested they jump into a volcano. — "Your Highness, please, do not listen to this madness! Those monsters are not common wolves! They shatter wooden palisades like dry twigs! They rip through mud walls with a single charge! And winter is less than three months away! Even if we emptied the entire treasury today, we do not have the master masons, the time, or the cut granite blocks to build a stone fortress wall before the first snow falls!"
— "A wooden palisade? Or cut granite?"
From the side of the fireplace, William let out a sharp, booming laugh, pushing himself off the stone wall and striding over to the table with the heavy, confident swagger of a heavyweight fighter entering the ring.
Planting both of his large hands on the edge of the oak desk, William leaned in across from the trembling minister, his eyes gleaming with a fierce mixture of amusement and pure battle adrenaline.
— "Take a deep breath before you have a heart attack, old codger, because nobody here is talking about stacking logs or chiseling rocks with a tiny hammer," — William said, grinning from ear to ear. — "This right here is where that 'cement' we mentioned at the castle gates enters the game! Forget everything you know about masonry. With the Prince's designs and Anna's fire, we don't stack stones — we pour liquid rock straight into wooden molds!"
William tapped his knuckles hard against the solid oak table to drive the point home:
— "It's a bond of elements that hardens faster and tougher than the heart of a dragon." — William declared with a predatory grin. — "Once that gray wall cures between the cliff and the river, those mindless demonic beasts can bash their skulls against it until spring comes, and all they're going to get for their trouble is a one-way ticket to hell! If you catch my drift!"
Barov stared at the tall, muscular young man in complete bewilderment. He didn't understand half the modern slang coming out of William's mouth, such as "heart dragon," yet the sheer, unshakable violence and certainty in William's voice terrified the old bureaucrat even more than the numbers.
Desperate for a voice of sanity, Barov whipped his head around toward the throne chair behind the desk — only to freeze when he saw the exact same fierce, ambitious fire burning in Prince Roland's gray eyes.
— "Well, Barov? You heard my advisors," — Roland said, leaning back and pointing a finger toward Arthur as if the scholar were a compass pointing true north. — "Start drafting the official administrative decrees right now. Cancel the annual evacuation preparations. Send a polite refusal to Duke Ryan's trade envoy, dispatch purchasing agents to Willow Town with our reserve silver, and mobilize every able-bodied laborer in the slums. This winter, Border Town does not run. We build the wall, and we rewrite the rules of the western border."
Looking at Roland now, every trace of the confused, exhausted transmigrator from the first two days had completely vanished.
In his place sat a cold, calculating industrial ruler. Arthur's ruthless breakdown of the town's finances had confirmed the most fundamental law of both physics and corporate engineering in Cheng Yan's mind: if a machine does not generate its own power independent of its rivals, it will eventually be dismantled and eaten alive.
Barov opened his mouth, then closed it again, looking like a fish gasping for air on dry land as thirty years of traditional court bureaucracy crumbled into dust in front of him. Before he could muster a single protest about the suicidal impossibility of fighting demonic beasts head-on, Roland raised his right hand in a sharp, final gesture of dismissal.
— "That will be all for this morning, Barov. Get the decrees ready for my seal before nightfall."
Bowing stiffly with his stack of ledgers clutched to his chest, Barov backed out of the study on shaky legs and pulled the oak door shut behind him.
When the latch clicked, a deep, heavy silence settled over the Prince's office — the quiet, electric stillness that hangs in the air right after a cannon fuse has been lit.
Roland let out a long breath and looked across the table at his two strange, priceless allies: Arthur, the cold-blooded strategist who viewed a kingdom through the lens of capital flows and supply chains; and William, the relentless powerhouse who looked at an incoming wave of monsters as nothing more than a warm-up fight.
Even with the three of them working together, the weight of reality pressing down on their shoulders was immense.
In roughly ninety days, the first snow of the Months of Demons would fall, sending hundreds of mutated beasts pouring down from the Impassable Mountain Range like a black tide. And to the west, in Longsong Stronghold, Duke Ryan and the Six Great Families were already circling like hungry sharks, waiting for the naive Fourth Prince to starve or get eaten so they could pick his bones clean.
The odds were stacked terribly against them.
Yet, as Roland stood up and walked over to the window, looking out as the late afternoon sun dipped toward the jagged western horizon, he felt a surge of genuine warmth in his chest that had nothing to do with the fireplace.
Down in the muddy yard and along the road leading toward the North Slope, dozens of cooking fires and torches were already being lit around the new brick kilns. For the very first time in the miserable, forgotten history of Border Town, the orange glow rising against the dusk didn't come from tavern candles or witch burnings — it came from the glowing coals of an industrial revolution that was about to set the old world on fire.
Standing beside the map table, watching the silhouette of the young prince against the crimson sunset, Arthur felt a quiet wave of relief wash over his mind.
Far away in the capital, Prince Gerald Wimbledon might very well be taking his last poisoned breath tonight, and Timothy's reign of terror was about to begin. It was a tragedy for the crown, yes.
Let the old royal court rot and tear itself apart in the dark, Arthur thought calmly, his eyes reflecting the firelight. Because right here in the mud, we are forging a machine that won't need crowns or bloodlines to rule the continent..
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