Chapter 217: The Lord of the City’s Troubles |
Blake Snow Bear was deeply troubled right now. He could not understand what exactly had happened in his territory.
He was the lord of Snow Bear Territory. Thirty years ago, he had inherited the position from his father and become the lord here.
To be honest, life had not gone smoothly for him over these past thirty years. The Northern Frontier was bitterly cold, and food production, water, and even heat all demanded enormous resources.
Just maintaining those basic necessities consumed a great deal of his energy every single day.
Not to mention the many other vexing matters.
His father had been a conservative lord. During his father’s tenure, when he heard that the Alliance had absorbed another neighboring territory, his father had reacted like a startled bird.
His father had immediately ordered craftsmen to rush the production of large quantities of weapons and equipment and prepare defensive measures. He had intended to fight the Alliance’s mages to the death.
Fortunately, his father had done exactly that. Otherwise, the position of lord would never have fallen to him.
After his father made that decision, all of his brothers and sisters were terrified by the sheer madness of the idea.
The city walls and the castle inside had all collapsed into rubble, and the houses inside the city—already emptied after all the villagers had been driven away—had also fallen in that instant.
What shocked his brothers and sisters even more was that, compared to destruction, those mages were especially good at construction.
In the span of three days, they had watched a pillar taller than a mountain rise from the flat earth, its summit emitting a terrifying heat.
Those events shattered all of his brothers’ and sisters’ confidence. They believed resisting the Alliance was a dead end, so they fled Snow Bear Territory overnight and escaped to who knew where.
But what happened afterward was almost laughable. The Alliance merely absorbed that patch of land. It did not touch a single one of the surrounding territories.
And so his father had no choice but to lock away all those weapons and pieces of equipment, then sell off some of the excess to recover part of the cost.
But because of that large-scale purchase of weapons and equipment, the already poor state of the territory had only worsened.
Blake should not have been the one to inherit the lordship. But when all his brothers and sisters ran away, only he, a seven-year-old child, stayed behind.
That led his father to directly designate him as the next lord.
So in his early teens, he took over the position passed down from his father and obtained the power of a lord.
But the consequences of his father’s mass purchase of weapons and equipment had not faded. Every day, he had to worry over the lack of money in his territory.
In a place like the Northern Frontier, there really were not many ways to make money.
His father had only been able to buy so many weapons and pieces of equipment because of the savings accumulated over several generations.
By the time it came to him, there was nothing left. He was so poor that all he had left were weapons and equipment.
What made matters even worse for his territory was that the name of the Northern Society had spread across half of the Northern Frontier.
At that time, he had only just taken office and did not yet know how to handle tax collection, which led his subordinates to collect taxes far too harshly.
The common people had nearly been driven beyond the point of survival.
It was right then that news spread of a great furnace at the Northern Society, a place of incomparable warmth where it was like spring all year round.
As a result, the people who could no longer survive made the desperate decision to set out for the Northern Society.
It had to be understood that, if those people had not already been unable to live where they were, they never would have taken that road.
Those people were not professionals, after all. Only a tiny handful among them could even be called apprentices.
They had no way to withstand the magical beasts on the road or the freezing cold of the Northern Frontier.
If they had stayed where they were, then the magical beasts would not have been able to break through the sturdy city walls, and the warm furnaces in their homes could have driven away the cold.
But what had happened had already happened. Even he could not possibly return those things to those peasants.
In that incident, roughly one-tenth of the territory’s population had set out for the Northern Society.
And by his estimate, half of them had failed to reach the Northern Society for one reason or another.
If some of the people who set out earlier had not fed the magical beasts along that road, then perhaps even fewer of the later travelers would have managed to reach the Northern Society.
Seated in a chair decorated with furs, Blake stared blankly at the roaring furnace flames, lost in thought.
Those had been the troubles of the past. His current troubles, however, were even harder for him to deal with.
Over the past few days, a large number of unfamiliar people had suddenly passed through his towns. None of them were merchants.
When he first heard the news, he had been delighted, because those people could also be charged a bit of “toll.”
So, driven by greed and eager to fill the territory’s financial deficit, he had sharply raised the fee for entering the city.
But the money proved very difficult to collect.
Those apprentice-level professionals were manageable enough. If two or three guards worked together, it was not impossible for them to subdue one.
But who knew why, among the people passing through here, there were even First-Tier Professionals—and quite a few of them.
Now, as he looked over the casualty report compiled by his subordinate knights, his head throbbed with pain.
“Ten guards injured, three guards dead. Half of the injured guards are unable to move...”
“Of the four knights under my command, two are already bedridden.”
These reports had tormented him for who knew how long. At this point, he estimated that the number of First-Tier Professionals already inside the city had probably reached double digits, not even counting himself and the knights under his command.
As the lord, he was not the least bit afraid of facing three or four First-Tier Professionals. The bonuses granted by his territory, along with the ability to wield the territory’s power while within it, gave him complete confidence.
He could absolutely fight three or four First-Tier Professionals and defeat them.
But who was going to tell him what in the world was going on with more than ten First-Tier Professionals?
No matter how strong he was as a lord, he could not deal with that many First-Tier Professionals!
And to make the situation in his territory even worse, a strangely dressed person had run all the way to Snow Bear City and handed him a letter.
That person wore a suit of blue-gray armor and had an unfamiliar insignia pinned to his shoulder.
The moment he opened that letter, he felt as though the sky were collapsing over his head.
【The Goddess of the Currents sends you her greetings, Lord of Snow Bear Territory:
One of the Goddess’s Bishops will soon arrive in Snow Bear Territory with a force of roughly one hundred people. We hope that the lord will provide us with supplies. Naturally, we will also offer appropriate compensation.】
“A hundred people?!” Are they here to attack Snow Bear Territory?
And just the symbol of the Church of the Goddess of the Currents alone was enough to give him a headache.
He had heard long ago just how fanatical those who worshiped gods could be. If anything went wrong, conflict with them was all but inevitable.
Now that all these problems had piled up together, he had no idea how to deal with any of them.
Just then, one of his knight squires knocked on the door and bowed his head as he reported a piece of news.
“My lord, the Battle Mage from the Northern Society has arrived. She intends to clear out the Undead Creatures in that mine.”
The knight squire received no reply. He raised his head and saw the lord’s face shifting through a storm of emotions.