Chapter 14 : Chapter 14
Chapter 14. The Celebration Assembly
Morning in the valley of Obsidian Territory was awakened by wave after wave of hammering, sawing, and shouted calls.
Eli had just finished his daily round of Intelligence Acquisition when a noble violet light flashed across the system interface:
【Buck, the trusted personal guard of Marquess Leon Black, will soon arrive at Obsidian Territory with an additional 500 gold coins.】
......
Time turned back to three days after Eli’s departure.
In Orlandia, within the office of the Royal City Guard,
Marquess Leon was still baffled after inexplicably receiving praise from the Prime Minister at the court meeting that had just ended.
“I clearly didn’t do anything. Why would the Prime Minister...?”
Raised according to the expectations placed upon a second son, Marquess Leon had never possessed particularly sharp political instincts.
The captain of his guard, who stood at one side, looked conflicted for a moment before finally speaking.
“My lord, word has spread all across the royal capital that your third son, Eli, voluntarily applied to become a Frontier Knight and has already departed. So that is why...”
“Eli? A Frontier Knight?”
The first person Leon thought of was Livia.
“I am sorry, my lord. My aunt... has never been particularly broad-minded...”
Leon fell silent.
He thought of Eli’s late mother, and of how she had died because of his weakness.
“No... it was my indulgence.”
He lifted his head, and his gaze turned firm.
“Allen, make a trip to House Black’s fief. Tell your aunt that it ends here.”
Allen Montauban answered in a low voice, feeling a flicker of shame himself.
After saying that, Leon directly drew Frost Crow, the ancestral side sword of House Black.
“Buck!”
The personal guard outside the door immediately pushed it open and entered, only to frantically catch the sword that came flying straight at his face.
“Take some men and go to Eli’s territory. Deliver this to him personally.”
“Yes... my lord...” Buck wiped the cold sweat from his brow.
But at that moment, Leon could not help thinking of Eli’s brilliant deeds, as well as the solemn gravity with which his own father had once entrusted Frost Crow to him.
He calmed down and called Buck back.
“Ahem... wait... perhaps... he would prefer gold.”
......
“An additional five hundred gold coins? There is such a good thing as that?”
The corners of Eli’s mouth could not help lifting. Though the system’s evaluation of him as a wastrel left him a little displeased, gold was a very real and timely blessing.
“Ella, come outside with me and have a look.”
In an excellent mood, he stepped out of his lord’s tent.
“Yes, Lord Eli.”
The changes in the camp were already visible to the naked eye.
Centered around the high ground by the river, a residential district of modest scale was rapidly taking shape.
Large quantities of felled and trimmed logs had been stacked up.
Under the craftsmen’s direction, the slaves and soldiers worked with blazing energy.
Some were nailing thick plank walls onto wooden frames. Others were laying roofs of packed thatch and mud.
Still others were digging foundations in preparation for larger structures.
On the open ground at the center of the camp, Eli was speaking with Brandon and a slave called Old John.
Old John’s hair was already white, and his back slightly hunched, but his eyes were shrewd. The joints of his fingers were thick and covered in calluses.
He had originally been a guild craftsman in a small city-state.
When war broke out, he had been captured and reduced to slavery, only to be chosen by Eli from the slave market in Thorne City by sheer chance.
“My lord,” Old John said, pointing at a rough beast-hide spread on the ground and covered in charcoal lines.
“Look here. According to the traditional method, the lord’s castle should be the core and symbol of the territory. It ought to be the first thing built, with solid stone as its foundation. Only then will it be stable and imposing...”
He was trying to persuade Eli to prioritize the construction of a castle, even if it were only a rough first form.
Eli shook his head decisively and pointed toward several marked sections on the hide.
“No. The castle can wait. Right now, what matters most is the territory’s defenses, and making sure everyone—especially our labor force—has a place where they can sleep without wind or rain and truly rest easy.
“And quarrying and transporting stone is far too slow.”
His gaze swept over the wooden house frames currently being raised.
“We’ll use timber. It’s local, and it goes up quickly. We’ll follow the plan we already agreed on.”
He pointed at the drawing.
“This section here, near the high ground by the river, has the best terrain and is the safest. It will be the core of the residential district. Concentrate our strength there first and build rows of longhouses.
“Single-story. Simple structure. Double wooden walls packed with mud and straw for insulation. Thatched roofs, tightly pressed. Each longhouse will be divided into several independent units.”
“Also, over there,” he said, pointing toward an open patch of land near the future workshop district, “start building several large communal dormitories at the same time, the kind with open sleeping platforms, to give the newly arrived laborers a temporary place to stay.
“And the warehouse. The main warehouse must be built first. We can’t keep leaving our food and tools piled out in the open.”
“As for my lord’s residence?”
Eli smiled and pointed at his tent.
“This is enough for me. We’ll talk about that after everyone else has proper houses to live in.”
“Lord Eli is a benevolent lord,” Ella added from the side, her voice filled with new vitality.
“Yes, next time try telling me something I don’t already know.”
In his improved mood, even Eli found himself making a joke.
Old John looked at him.
“You are a great lord.”
Then he bowed respectfully.
“I understand, my lord. Everything will be done according to your will.”
He rolled up the beast-hide and immediately turned away, plunging back into the blazing work of directing construction.
“You are a—”
“Brandon,” Eli cut off the veteran’s flattery without hesitation.
“How are things progressing at the mine? Leon reported that they’re short of hands.”
Brandon chuckled.
“In reply, my lord, Smith Leon has more than twenty slaves and craftsmen working over there. They’re clearing the shaft and reinforcing the supports.
“They’ve already begun small-scale extraction. But he says miners truly are in short supply, and skilled hands are even harder to find.”
“Good.”
Eli nodded and looked toward the busy camp.
“Select another thirty of the strongest laborers from among them, including the newly joined ones, and put them under Leon’s unified command. The mine takes priority.
“Tell him not to throw away the slag or the low-grade ore either. It may prove useful later.
“And increase the soldiers guarding the mine to ten. Two shifts. We must guarantee its safety.”
“Yes, my lord!” Brandon accepted the order and left at once.
After making arrangements for the mine, Eli turned his gaze toward the edge of the dark green Nightsong Forest in the distance.
Wolfgang, along with his Wolf-kin warriors and several soldiers who had once been hunters, stood fully equipped and ready to depart.
They carried spears, bows, arrows, and ropes. Their destination was clear—hunting.
“Wolfgang!” Eli called out.
At the sound of his voice, the silver-gray wolf king strode over, his icy blue wolf eyes fixed on Eli.
“The forest is complicated. Be extra careful.
“Your senses and vigilance are the best protection the entire force has. Our goal is meat—as much as possible. But remember, safety comes first.”
Eli’s warning was solemn and sincere.
Wolfgang let out a low growl by way of response.
Then he turned away and gave a short wolf howl. The hunting party shot forward like arrows released from the string and vanished into the dense tree line.
Over the following days, the valley of Obsidian Territory resembled a vast construction site that never slept, day or night.
Under Old John’s efficient command, and with ample manpower thrown into the work, wooden longhouses began rising from the earth like bamboo shoots after the rain!
Near the high ground by the river, in the best-located part of the settlement, a row of relatively finer single-room wooden houses was built first.
These were assigned to Bol, Aika, Orlando, and the other knights of House Black, ten in all, together with the five newly joined Black Iron personal guard knights.
They were not large, but they were private, independent, and reflective of status.
Farther out stood neat rows of paired-room wooden houses, assigned to the soldiers and craftsmen.
Two men to a room, with enough space and basic storage.
Farther still were several larger longhouses in continuous rows.
Each of these was divided into multiple independent four-man units.
They were assigned to those able-bodied laborers whom Eli had tentatively approved—men who had performed well and showed promise of eventually casting off their slave status to become freemen.
Though they still lived collectively, each unit was separate, and they at last had a small space of their own and a sense of belonging.
At the outermost edges, near the direction of the workshops and the mine, stood several huge wooden bunkhouses, long and narrow like military barracks.
These were the collective quarters of the five hundred slaves.
Each large house was divided by wooden partitions into several sections, with crude sleeping platforms in each section that could hold ten people.
The conditions were still simple, but compared with sleeping under the open sky or crowding into the filthy slave cages of Thorne City, the difference was like that between heaven and earth.
At the very least, this was a home that was dry, roofed, and able to shield them from wind and rain.
At the same time, news also came from the mine, though it was not entirely good.
Leon personally returned with several samples of freshly extracted ore. Sweat and worry covered his dark face.
“My lord, the mine shaft has been cleared, and extraction itself is going fairly smoothly.”
Leon set several pieces of dark red ore, mixed with a great quantity of gray-black impurities, upon the wooden block before Eli.
“But... the quality of this iron ore is too poor. There are too many impurities, especially this black associated ore. The content is extremely high.
“The pig iron smelted from this kind of ore will be very brittle. It contains too many impurities, and both its strength and toughness fall far short.
“It can barely be used to make coarse farm tools like hoes and plowshares, but if we try to forge weapons or armor...”
He shook his head, his face full of regret.
“I’m afraid it won’t even produce the poorest standard spearhead. It would snap the moment it struck anything.”
Eli picked up one of the ore samples and weighed it in his hand. It felt heavy, but its surface was pitted and dull.
His brows drew together slightly. This truly was a problem.
It seemed that expecting this iron mine to solve his armament problem in the short term was unrealistic.
Still, he was not panicked. There was also the mithril mine.
He waved a hand.
“Understood. Then prioritize the forging of farm tools. Make sure we have enough equipment for reclaiming the fields first.
“As for weapons, we’ll think of another way. Safety remains the first concern at the mine. Keep mining and stockpile the raw material.”
Although the quality of the iron ore fell short of expectations, the completion of the first batch of houses was still the greatest occasion of joy since the founding of Obsidian Territory.
Of course, houses alone were not enough.
What he still needed was people’s hearts.
In order to encourage his people, Eli decided to hold a grand assembly.
He wanted everyone to understand one thing:
Those who followed Eli Black would be rewarded.
When night fell, a great bonfire was lit on the open ground before Obsidian Territory.
All the people of the territory gathered beneath its light.
Their identities were different. Some were slaves bought from traffickers.
Some were natives of the Western Frontier, some were refugees taken in along the road, and some were soldiers and knights who had followed Eli from the start.
But at this moment, they shared one thing in common.
They were all subjects of Obsidian Territory.
As if by instinct, the crowd’s gaze turned toward the high stone before the bonfire.
There stood their lord—Eli Black.
The young Eli wore a long black-and-red cloak, and in the firelight his face shifted between brightness and shadow. No one knew what he intended to do.
When everyone had assembled, Eli finally spoke.
“Today is Obsidian Territory’s first celebration!
“We celebrate the completion of the first batch of houses in Black Territory.
“With houses, this land will become your home.
“And you, in turn, will become the true masters of Obsidian Territory!”
Yet the crowd below showed no reaction at all.
They merely looked at one another, some of them outright bewildered.
Become the masters?
What was that supposed to mean?
“Next, I will reward those who have been the most diligent and the most loyal.”
Eli gave them no time to think.
He accepted the sheepskin scrolls passed to him by Ella and Estor, and began reading out a series of names.
“Kend, Maidon, Hagenda...”
The slaves whose names had been called all shrank back, helpless confusion spreading across their faces.
In everything they had known before, being singled out by a lord usually meant punishment—
or even death.
Even though their present lord was a benevolent one,
they still had no idea what sort of change was about to descend upon their fate.