Guardian and a small army of his stood on a shore waiting. This was the crucial moment which will signal peace or a continuation of the bloodshed. A single ship split from the large flotilla and sailed towards the shore. It did not dock in the harbour but sent a small boat instead. There were only four people in the boat. From their appearance, Guardian deduced that there were two warriors, a mage and a woman he had met before.

The boat docked ashore and the Islanders waved towards Guardian; they felt too nervous to approach his army. Guardian got the hint and headed towards the four leaving his forces on standby.

The woman was the one to speak first, “Congratulations, you did it.”

“Yes, I fulfilled my part of the deal. Do you intend to fulfil yours?” He asked her the question which had been bothering him quite a while now.

“First, we would like some sort of proof that all of the nobles are dead. Their decapitated heads would be just fine”

Guardian did not expect them to ask this, he did not think this through as well as he thought he had.

“Unfortunately this is not possible. Their corpses were taken by the mob and desecrated. Even if I collected that is left of them I doubt you would be able to recognise who it belonged too.”

“Hmm… That is fine, I trust you did your job properly, I can see the smoke from here.”

However, the smoke in she saw was not coming from the noble mansions but from other building which the thugs had set on fire a day ago.

“Do you mind us coming and having a look around?” The woman asked.

“This is a bit too soon. As you might have guessed already, even though I am the boss here the order is fragile. It would be disadvantageous to have foreign army men wander the streets. The people might get a wrong idea about me.”

“We understand, however, we cannot pay you until we know that we will be allowed to continue our trade here.”

“I can assure you will be able to. The nobles are dead and I am in full support of good trade. There is one thing which might help to speed things up. How about you sell some healing items for us. The peoples' pockets swelled up, thanks to recent events, and they are in desperate need of medicine. This also will help to patch relationships here, at least with some people.”

The poor were fine with the Islanders but city folk were definitely holding grudges. Guardian just hoped that he can keep those grudges in check. Further decreasing the town population wasn't desirable at all.

“Yes, we can do that.” The woman actually was thankful for this business opportunity, she assumed that they won’t need to pay taxes or share their profits at all.

“Then you can pawn your stuff here in the harbour. When I improve security, after a few days at least, then you will be able to venture into the city to confirm the death of nobles”.

“Deal.” The woman agreed to the conditions.

Guardian headed back to his men and told what will happen. The people were happy that there will be no more bloodshed and that they won’t need to fight against the superior foreign army.

Even though there will be no more fighting Guardian still had two big problems looming ahead of him. The first one was that there were too many injured who required healing, this will be sorted out by islanders and Aiu then she comes back from the swamps. The second problem was that the craftsmen and traders of this city were dead or fled the city. This place had a lack of talented individuals to produce items and create trade. This was the biggest problem now. In the end, the poor will just spend their money without investing it and will find themselves where they used to be. Guardian needed to find a way how to fix this.

Incidentally, the security was not an issue. A lot of people have witnessed his might and he became quite infamous, some respected him while others feared him, but most importantly no one would dare to oppose him directly.

Guardian dispersed his men ordering them to patrol the city keeping an eye on troublemakers. He headed back to prison ruins, Aiu should be back by now and he would need to help her to make a shedload of healing items.

In a relative peace, a few days went by. With the Islanders help the trade was back in the city. The city folk were still suspicious of foreigners but they needed the goods the Islanders had brought. Islanders were making huge profits as they were the only traders here, but this will not last for long, eventually other merchants, both from the sea and the land, will come back.

Everything was like Guardian and Islanders had agreed, nobles were dead and they could do their trade freely. This was the time Guardian asked for his reward, allegedly enough money to ransom a king. He found the woman at the harbour on one of the ships.

“It is time you pay me.” He was quite straightforward with all this.

“Yes, you did deliver. Give me a day to collect the money.”

“Also, I have a proposition in mind.” The woman gave him a look indicating that Guardian should keep talking. “The city needs skilled craftsmen so I have been thinking if you guys can help. What if I let some of you open shops here, rent and tax-free of course?”

“That sounds tempting but there must be a catch. What do you want in return?”

“I want your craftsman to take apprentices for two years and teach them their craft. Essentially I would allow you to have a monopoly here for two years until you trained people for me. That is the catch, after two years you would no longer profit but until then…”

“I see. I will ask others and let you know what they think. All I can tell now is that it is possible, but it will probably be our people from the core of the island, not sailors and merchants you see now.”

“That is fine with me.”

This was easier than he thought it will be. Now he still had to visit a particular person, the fallen noble. He needed him to help the people here to open up businesses. The noble had connections and knew people, so Guardian hoped that he can help out. What he planned to do was to convince some of the people here to invest their newly acquired wealth in small trade business. The beastmen and others would use their money and spend it on goods in other cities and bring them here, and the other way round. The noble was useful because he could write introduction letters and refer the beastmen to trusted traders. This was also in the nobles interest too, for any successful trade he would get a small reward. Guardian hoped that this would motivate the man, he knew that the nobles had a hunger for money and the man in question just recently lost everything he had. The nobleman would need money to fund his expensive habits and Guardian gave him the opportunity to earn some.

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The talk was short and the noble agreed straight away. There was a visible aversion to the fact that the lowly beastmen will be trusted with trade, but the man had no other choice but to accept. All Guardian had to do now was to gather the people and tell them his plan. A stern warning had to be put in place too, well a reminder of sorts. He had to make clear to the people that if they did not work and use their money wisely their new wealth will melt away in a matter of months and they will find themselves poor and hungry again. He did not want to be blamed for that like the nobles were; he did not want to be at the receiving end of the rebellion.

He employed his thugs and city guards to spread the word and gather the people at the market district. He waited there patiently for the people. Then he began talking. In his talk, he promised that the guards will be paid by him like they were paid by the nobles, but this time they had to patrol the poor district too and treat everyone equally. Also, he warned that if he found any corruption in the form of favouritism or bribery he would deal with it personally. The guards had a hint of what it meant, probably finding the person in question turned into the ash. Then Guardian encouraged the people to take apprenticeships and start their own businesses, warning them what might happen if they did not follow his advice. He ensured that those who followed his guidance would not go hungry.

For now, people were feasting because they had money but later who knew what will happen. Also, he made it clear that Islanders are now welcome here and are under his protection and those who disagree can come and ‘talk’ it out with him.

The last thing he did was to offer some work, this was mainly for the ones who did not participate in plundering and were still poor like before.

Guardian had some coin already and he will have a lot more later. He decided to spend it on a few projects. First, he wanted to employ a large group of people who would go into swamp and forest to gather herbs for him. Secondly, he needed people to build and fix some things, he wanted the prison ruins converted into a fort. He had already made it his base and all it still needed was a good expansion and better defences. Incidentally, he planned on turning the slum district into the new city centre, the old one was kind of in ruins now.

Lastly, he made it clear that the ones who managed to avoid the plundering and remained moderately wealthy are to be left alone and allowed to continue whatever they did. He had no intention of taking their property or taxing them to death. He wanted to make sure that the ones who lived in the city centre can continue to do so in peace, only under new leadership.

The talk was over and he dispersed the crowd.

Cynthia approached him, he wondered what she wanted.

“As you can see things will be different. What do you intend to do?” He asked her before she had a chance to even great him.

“I will stay and observe you. You are not as kind-hearted as I tough you were but you are not evil either. I can see why you did what you did, but still, I do not approve your methods.”

“As long as you do not oppose me we can remain friends.” He wanted to remain allies with her.

“Friend you say… I don’t know about that, but you did help my grandfather.”

“So did the potion work?”

“Oh yes, it did. The sickness is gone and grandpa regained some of his mana; he can even cast spells now. But still, it is not like it used to be. He needs more of the potion for a complete recovery; he finished the bottle.”

This was probably why she was still nice to him. His apprentice was the one who could make the potion and getting a monster core was not an easy task either.

“Would it be possible to get a new dose?” She asked him.

“So long as we remain friendly it is.” At first, he did not want this friendship thing but now he was the one clinging to it. After all, Cynthia’s skills and Rocky’s help were very handy. It would be a bummer to lose a powerful ally.

“Tfuu.” She let a sigh. “And I thought that you hate me for taking an opposing side or something. I guess we can continue as we did?”

“Sure. You did what you thought is best for you just like I did. Come and see me later, now I have to be somewhere else.”

Guardian went towards the harbour, he was keen to claim his reward from the Islanders. He did not need to wait long, a woman he was now accustomed to, had found him herself. She led him to her ship, outside it was a small clutter of chest. He opened one checking the contents, it was filled with gold and silver coins.

“How about the craftsmen?” He asked the woman.

“No one opposed to the idea, we will leave it to our people. Those who want to come will do so the next time we dock here.”

It was good news indeed. He asked the horned beastmen to help to bring his wealth back to his base. Not only there were too many chests to carry alone, but also he needed extra protection to keep it safe. Having so much gold felt uncomfortable. There were more coins than he weighted himself, a true king’s ransom.

The money was hauled to his room. He had entrusted Tiramisu to look after it until he secured a better place for it. Aiu was in the workshop working hard at making potions. He told her his plans about expanding the workshop, she will need to assemble a team of people to work under her. Even now there was too much work for one person.

“But I am not confident at bossing others. Can’t you select the people?” Aiu protested.

“No, I am busy as I am. You need to trust in your skills more. By now you know herbalism and alchemy better than I do. You are the only one who can teach them. Just pick the people you like and trust, then whip them to shape. Only if someone disappoints, you can refer them to me; I will deal with troublemakers.”

“Okay. I will work hard for this." Aiu paused to look at Guardian intensely "Will I get rewarded? Expanding and managing others sounds very hard, I better be rewarded…” She hinted about getting something in return.

Guardian did not know what she had in mind exactly but he had an idea. “Show me results and you will get what you want. I can ensure that.”

Aiu was pleased with Guardian’s response. She was able to distract herself with work for some time but it was not working anymore, her curly thoughts needed to be straightened out. She wanted to get the results as fast as possible.

Guardian left the workshop and sat down for a moment. He was in a deep thought, he had a lot of things needing urgent attention but he could not ignore planning for the future. He wondered how he should proceed. He was rich like never before, his current wealth probably rivalled the noble families’ before the people plundered them to oblivion. However, he could not just sit on gold like a dragon. He had to invest it so that money can make more money. So far he did most of the things on a whim and it worked, he was never a real merchant or a large business owner before. There were a lot of challenges ahead so he decided to work at expanding his sphere of influence.

To begin with, he would cement his rule over the city and strengthen his battle power. The times were turbulent and there was a risk that some other city will decide to overthrow him. Also, he would work at making allies, he had a good start with Islanders so far and he decided to continue a mutually beneficial relationship. In addition to that, he wanted to be both self-sufficient and economically strong, this was the hardest one to achieve but with time and help of the people who lived here he knew that he can do it.

However, he did not forget the most important thing, his thirst for knowledge, magic knowledge especially. He decided to continue his research, he will exterminate monsters and produce the mana crystals. Guardian already had one working prototype and he had no intention to stop at one.

The mana crystal acted like a powerful battery of sorts and he wondered if he can put it to a better use than firing overpowered beams. He planned on having it emit magical energy and simulating the environment similar to that of the magic place, like magic forest he used to visit. If he achieved that he could grow magical plants and monster locally. All of this was still a rough plan and theory, he stopped thinking about it and went to check on the people above.

By now there should be enough hands who willed to work for him. He needed to reinforce the prison with brick and stone, walls and towers. There were so many things to do and complete, it felt if he never will have any free time at all.