yournovel Chapter 157 : Chapter 157
Chapter 157 : Chapter 157
Chapter 157. Mopping Up
The same scene played out at strongholds all around Whiteport.
There was no suspense whatsoever. It was all a complete mismatch.
Those so-called fortified strongholds were as fragile as a joke in the face of magitech firepower. Magic traps, hidden arrows, mechanical ambushes—none of it meant a thing before absolute armor and overwhelming range.
One squad of new recruits even got so carried away in the fighting that they charged straight into a stronghold. Even after the rifles in their hands overheated, they simply grabbed the swords at their waists and started hacking away. It was said that despite only being Second Tier, one of them managed six sword strikes in a single second.
By sunset.
Governor’s Office, office chamber.
Akash walked in carrying a thick battle report, his face split in a grin from ear to ear.
“Your Highness, it’s done.” Akash slapped the report onto the desk. “Thirteen strongholds, all uprooted. Aside from two recruits twisting their ankles because they ran too fast, nobody else suffered even a scratch.”
Sylvia swept her eyes over the report and nodded in satisfaction.
“What about the supplies?”
“They’re all on the inventory list.” Akash rubbed his hands together. “Cash alone comes to more than five hundred thousand, and that’s not even counting the goods that haven’t been sold yet. Not only did we make back all the bonuses we paid out, we even turned a tidy profit.”
“Good.” Sylvia turned to look at Logaris, who was sitting by the window admiring the scenery. “Your new toys performed well.”
Logaris was idly turning a Communication Crystal over in his hand. It had just popped out from a spatial teleportation array.
At Sylvia’s words, he did not even turn his head, merely nudging his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
“Naturally. Technology changes lives. It can also change war.”
He lowered his gaze to the crystal in his hand. There was only a single short line written on it, sent by Reynard.
[The factory has been cleared. —R]
The corner of Logaris’s mouth lifted slightly.
Though he had not seen the scene with his own eyes, he could already imagine it. He could picture exactly what kind of devastating strike the knights of the Court of Equilibrium would unleash upon those drug-manufacturing factories in the name of justice.
“What? Good news?” Sylvia walked over and glanced at the crystal.
“You could say that.” Logaris slipped the crystal into his pocket. “The filthiest patch has been swept clean too.”
...
Morning in Whiteport. The fog had not yet fully dispersed. Inside the large conference hall of the Count’s manor—now bearing a new plaque that read “Whiteport Temporary City Hall”—
Sylvia sat behind the redwood table that had once belonged to Cassido Tarassa. Holding that obsidian-inlaid pen, she signed the flowing name at the bottom of a thick stack of documents with crisp decisiveness.
Sylvia Van Astrelia.
As the final stroke ended, she tossed the pen onto the table with a clear clink.
“Done.”
Leaning back in her chair, Sylvia’s silver-gray eyes still carried the bloodshot traces of an all-nighter, yet they shone with unmistakable excitement.
“Starting today, Whiteport is no longer any family’s private treasury.”
Standing across from the table were three young officials who had followed her all the way from Winter City.
They wore matching gray uniforms, and each of their eyes shone with an excitement bordering on fanaticism. These were all hardliners Sylvia had promoted personally. Back when they had been pushing new reforms around Winter City, they had already worked like tireless wolves.
To uproot the old noble houses that had entrenched themselves for centuries, root and branch, was for these young people—who longed for change and longed to establish a new order—nothing less than the most wonderful thing in the world.
“We’ve finally waited for this day.”
The young tax official took a deep breath, his voice hoarse with excitement.
“Your Highness, this is the deadliest blow against the old aristocratic system. Once the Whiteport model proves workable, the rest of those old diehards across the Northern Territory will have to change whether they want to or not.”
“That’s exactly why I brought you here.”
Sylvia lightly tapped her knuckles against the tabletop, a satisfied curve lifting her lips.
“The pilot reforms around Winter City were only a warm-up. This hard bone called Whiteport is the real battlefield.”
She paused, and her expression turned serious.
“Within one week, I want every rotten account in Whiteport sorted out and a completely new set of tax records established. I don’t care about the muddled books from before. What I want is this: from this moment on, the path of every single Copper Sparrow Coin must be absolutely clear.”
“One week?”
The young officials exchanged glances. Not a trace of fear showed on their faces. On the contrary, they looked like powder kegs with their fuses already lit.
“Five days!”
The lead tax official thumped his chest hard enough to shake the room.
“Your Highness, just give me five days! If I don’t patch every hole left behind by those parasites, I’ll eat this desk!”
“Good! That’s exactly the ruthlessness I like.”
With a broad stroke, Sylvia handed them the signed document.
“Go all out. If anyone dares stand in your way, that giant pit outside that still hasn’t been filled in can serve as their example.”
“Yes! For the Northern Territory!”
The three officials snapped a standard military salute, grabbed the documents, and shot out like arrows loosed from the string, looking as if they wanted nothing more than to storm into the accounting office and start tearing through ledgers immediately.
Once she had sent those three adrenaline-fueled maniacs off, Sylvia let out a long breath and turned to look at Logaris, who had been curled up on the sofa the whole time, playing with a Rubik’s Cube.
“These young people really are useful.” Sylvia rubbed her temples, her tone carrying a rare trace of relaxation. “They’re far better than those slippery old fossils in the council who only know how to wag their tongues.”
“That’s because they haven’t yet tasted the sweetness of power. Right now their heads are still full of ideals and principles.”
Logaris never even raised his head. His fingers flew, and the six-layer cube that an ordinary person could not solve in three days was restored in just a few seconds in his hands.
“But at this stage, this kind of execution is exactly what we need.”
He tossed the solved cube onto the tea table, stood up, and brushed the dust from his coat.
“Done over here?”
“More or less.” Sylvia rose and rolled her somewhat stiff neck. “What’s left is just routine follow-through. I can leave it to Akash to keep an eye on those recruits and make sure they don’t cause trouble. What about you? Got that little nun taken care of?”
“I’m just about to go.”
Logaris pushed up his glasses.
“Talent is the kind of thing that gets picked up by someone else if you arrive too late. The fools in the Holy Church threw away a pearl as if it were a worthless fish eye, but there’s no guarantee some bishop won’t suddenly wise up.”
...
Lower City, dilapidated church.
Dozens of workers who had just been rescued from the underground drug factories lay sprawled all over the straw bedding. The festering wounds on their bodies were nauseating to look at, and the air was filled with a foul smell made from a mixture of pus, blood, and herbs.
Lucia was so busy her feet barely touched the ground.
This former genius among the clergy looked more like a refugee than a refugee now. Her once-white nun’s robes had turned into dingy gray rags, her golden hair was casually tied back with a piece of straw rope, and there was even a smear of soot across her face.
“Bear with it. This might hurt a little.”
Lucia knelt beside a worker with a broken leg, both hands glowing with a gentle white light.
In this Lower City, where people could barely even afford bread, seeing a priest willing to use Holy Light to heal the poor was rarer than watching a dragon dance ballet.
“Your Reverence... thank you... thank you...” The worker trembled from the pain, tears of gratitude filling his eyes.
“Don’t thank me. Thank God.” Lucia’s voice was hoarse, clearly strained from mana exhaustion.
“God doesn’t have time for this kind of mess.”