Chapter 42 : Chapter 42
Chapter 42. Wealth and the Journey Home
The uproar that followed Lucerne City’s change of rulers gradually settled.
Eli stood before the window of the now-empty and disorderly lord’s manor, his white hair stirring in the breeze that slipped through the broken lattice.
He swept his gaze across the somewhat desolate streets below. The surviving citizens of Lucerne City had all shut their doors tight.
Now and then, a few bolder ones peeked out through cracks in their doors, their eyes filled with numbness.
“Bol,” Eli’s voice rang through the empty hall.
“Take trustworthy men and thoroughly confiscate all the properties and estates in the city belonging to Grumm and his followers.
Register everything and sort it by category.
Remember this. Be quick, but be orderly as well. The people are not to be harassed. Anyone who disobeys will be dealt with under military law!”
“Yes, my lord!” Bol rubbed his bald head and grinned broadly.
Eli, meanwhile, walked behind that wide desk made of some unknown material and sat down.
The surface was littered with dossiers, parchment letters, and crude account books.
He casually picked up one ledger and flipped through it. In crooked handwriting, it recorded the coming and going of looted grain, ironware, bolts of cloth, and other supplies.
He set the ledger down and picked up another document.
It was a rough population register, apparently compiled not long after Grumm first seized Lucerne.
It showed that at the time, the city had still held a population of a little over three thousand seven hundred.
But now...
Eli’s gaze drifted toward the dead-silent streets outside the window.
After Grumm’s brutal rule, followed by the chaos and flight caused by this siege, the population left in the city was probably barely more than a thousand.
Heavy footsteps broke Eli’s train of thought.
Captain Buck strode in.
“Young Master!” Buck’s voice carried a trace of excitement.
“We found it. Beneath the lord’s manor, in a deeply hidden secret chamber. Grumm’s treasury.”
A sharp light flashed through Eli’s eyes. “Lead the way!”
Under Buck’s guidance, Eli passed through the twisting corridors of the lord’s manor.
They arrived before a concealed door hidden behind a thick stone wall and a disguised storage shelf.
Two Black Crow Knights stood guard nearby, alert and motionless.
The hidden door was pushed open, and after descending a narrow flight of stone steps, they arrived at a stone chamber of roughly thirty square meters.
When the torchlight drove back the darkness and illuminated the entire room, even Eli, with all his mental fortitude, could not help but catch his breath.
Gold.
A blinding flood of gold.
Near the inner side of the chamber stood more than a dozen heavy oak chests, stacked in neat rows.
Several of them had their lids half open, revealing gold coins inside, gleaming seductively in the firelight.
At a rough estimate, there had to be no fewer than three thousand of them.
Besides the gold coins, several other chests contained fine silverware and jewel-encrusted ornaments of exceptional quality.
“We’ve struck it rich, Young Master.” Even Buck, who had seen much in his life, could not help but sigh in amazement again.
Eli’s fingertips brushed across the hard, cold coins, and immense waves stirred within his heart.
For the Black Territory, which was still recovering from devastation and needed food and money in every direction, and for the newly taken Lucerne City as well, this windfall was no different from fuel in a snowstorm.
Recruiting refugees, purchasing plow oxen, forging weapons, strengthening the city’s defenses, compensating the dead and wounded...
There were simply too many places that needed this wealth.
Just then, a rapid set of footsteps came clattering down from above the stone steps.
Aika appeared at the entrance to the hidden chamber, his eyes shining brightly.
“My lord! The granary and the armory are both under control! A few of Grumm’s diehard loyalists guarding them tried to set the place on fire, but our men killed them in time.”
“We’ve already taken stock. The grain stores... aren’t much. Mostly wheat and some beans.
If we ration it carefully, it should only be enough to support the roughly thousand people in the city for a little over a month.
And most of it is old grain. The quality is not very good.”
A little over a month...
Eli’s brows drew together slightly. That was less than he had expected.
“I understand. You’ve done well.” Eli nodded, then thought for a brief moment.
“Aika, organize men immediately and open the granaries!
Register the households and distribute a basic daily ration to every remaining resident in the city.
Tell them this. Lucerne City has a new master, but they will not be left to starve.
From today onward, as long as they obey the rules and keep the peace, they will have a way to live!”
A trace of admiration flashed through Aika’s eyes. “Yes, my lord! I’ll see to it at once!”
After Aika left, Eli’s gaze fell once more upon the room filled with glittering wealth, though his mind had already calmed considerably.
He walked to a small table in the corner of the chamber, thick with dust. On it sat a pen, ink, and several rough sheets of papyrus.
He picked up the pen, dipped it in ink, pondered for a moment, and began to write upon the papyrus.
“To the honorable Military Commander of the Western Frontier, Marquess Marcus Hohenzollern, and to Sir Lucius La Roche, Governor of the Western Frontier...
...Your loyal Eli has already recovered the lost lands of the Western Frontier.”
Afterward, Eli Black Hohenzollern La Roche solemnly stamped it with the Black Raven Crest seal that represented his identity.
“Oranden!” Eli called out.
“My lord!”
“Find a carpenter with decent skill and have him make a sturdy wooden box immediately. Line the inside with quicklime.”
Eli pointed toward a round object wrapped in oilcloth in the corner.
“Put it inside, seal it well, and then—
send two guard knights at once to Thorne City.
Have them deliver this letter and that box into the hands of Marquess Marcus or Sir Lucius personally.
Tell them this is Eli Black’s report of victory after recovering Lucerne City!”
“Yes, my lord!” Oranden accepted the bronze tube, excitement gleaming in his eyes.
After handling the matter of the messenger, Eli surveyed this manor that had just changed hands, along with the chamber full of gold and silver.
Wealth was good, but foundations mattered even more.
He needed to stabilize Lucerne City as quickly as possible before returning to the Black Territory. There were still... more important matters waiting for him there.
“Captain Buck.” Eli looked toward the Gold Tier knight he trusted most.
“Lucerne City has only just been secured. The people’s hearts are unsettled, and it needs a strong hand to hold it in place. Brandon will temporarily oversee civil affairs. You will remain here with half of the Black Crow Knights, along with the fifty elite infantrymen Bol leaves behind. Once I return to the Black Territory and finish handling urgent matters there, I will bring reinforcements and supplies and formally take over Lucerne City’s defenses.”
Buck answered in a deep voice, “Rest assured, Young Master. As long as I’m here, the city stands. Nothing will go wrong in Lucerne City.”
Eli nodded and said no more.
He cast one final glance over the chamber full of wealth, then turned and strode out of the dark underground treasury and back toward the sunlight.
Wealth was only a tool. The key was how it would be used to strengthen him.
Two days later, Eli set out on the road back to the Black Territory with Clark, Wolfgang, Aika, the remaining twenty-odd Black Crow Knights, and seventy Black Territory infantrymen.
The column now had several more wagons with it, loaded with part of the gold taken from Lucerne City’s treasury, along with other supplies.
When the familiar wooden palisades of the Black Territory camp and the bustling sight of construction in the distance came into view, a warm current called belonging quietly flowed through Eli’s heart.
The soldiers stationed in the watchtower at the camp gate spotted the returning force from afar and immediately sounded cries of celebration and warning horns.
Yet the moment Eli dismounted, before he had even planted his feet firmly on the ground,
a short, broad figure shot out from inside the camp like a cannonball and seized his arm.
It was none other than House Black’s chief master craftsman, Master Glenn Parr.
“Ha! Boy! You’re finally back! Quick! Come with me!”
Master Glenn gave Eli no chance to speak at all. He grabbed his arm and dragged him off toward Nightsong Forest.
As he went, he babbled incoherently, “The mine! The mine! Hurry!”
Eli could not help laughing at the sudden “assault.”
He gestured for Clark and the others to settle the troops themselves and allowed Master Glenn to practically drag him all the way toward the mining site.
Passing through the busy logging area and the already-beginning-to-take-shape residential district, they soon arrived at the hidden canyon that had been placed under heavy guard.
The entrance to the mine had already been widened and reinforced. Master Glenn pulled Eli along and plunged straight into the brightly lit tunnel.
The deeper they went, the colder the air became.
Strange mineral veins began to appear in the rock walls, flashing faint purple or silver points of light.
At last, they came to a halt before a massive underground cavern that had been temporarily reinforced and brightly illuminated.
The atmosphere here was entirely different.
Scholar Alva and several assistants were standing there,
carefully using all kinds of instruments to probe a mineral vein in the wall that shimmered with captivating silver-white starlight.
That ore vein was like a living river of stars, flowing through layers of deep black, unyielding rock.
“Do you see it?! Boy! Do you see it?!” Master Glenn excitedly jabbed a finger at that brilliant silver-white mineral vein, his spittle nearly spraying into Eli’s face.
“Mithril! The highest-grade raw mithril ore!
Its purity is so high that I haven’t seen the like more than a handful of times in my life!
...Damn it all, this is mithril! You brat...
Just what kind of absurd luck have you stumbled into?
A treasure like this hidden in a godforsaken place where not even birds would shit!”
A rare trace of excitement appeared on Scholar Alva’s normally rigid face.
“Young Master, the preliminary survey results are astonishing.
The reserve is far beyond expectations, and the quality is of the very highest grade.
But the difficulty of extraction... is equally enormous. It will require—”
“It requires people!” Master Glenn cut him off directly, his eyes blazing as he stared at Eli.
“A lot of people! Men who understand mining, and men who don’t but have strength! I need workshops built here! Smelters built here!
This vein alone can become the capital of your rise.
But the prerequisite is enough people—enough of them, and obedient enough!”
“There will be people.” Eli’s voice was steady and powerful. “Leon!” he called out.
Leon, the Mining Officer, who had been assisting Scholar Alva from the side, stepped forward at once. “My lord!”
“From this moment on, set aside every other matter at the mine!”
Eli pointed toward that dazzling mithril vein, his gaze sharp.
“Your only task is to devote yourself fully to assisting Master Glenn and Scholar Alva!
If the Master wants people, you will draw the most reliable and strongest slaves and freefolk from the camp!
If he wants tools, you will coordinate with Old John to have them made!
Whatever is needed, as long as the camp has it, this site gets priority!
And everything here must remain absolutely secret! Everything in this place is now the Black Territory’s highest-classified secret! Do you understand?”
“Yes, my lord!”
Master Glenn looked at Leon, then at Eli, and at last a satisfied smile spread across his wrinkled face.
“Good lad! Stick with me from now on! I’ll show you what a real grand undertaking looks like!”
By the time Eli dragged his exhausted body back to the lord’s manor after arranging everything at the mine, night had already fully fallen.
The room was lit with pine-resin torches, and the light was warm.
A slender figure stood quietly by the window.
She said nothing.
She simply stood there in silence, as though she knew he would definitely return, and had been waiting for him all along.
Eli stopped in his tracks and looked at that quiet, familiar figure in the firelight.
The exhaustion of the past several days seemed to be silently soothed away in that single moment.
A warm curve slowly rose at the corner of his lips, and he walked toward her.
“I’m back.”