“You know, we live down the street, and I’ve never even visited.” I responded lightly.

“What? I thought you lived in Chalm?” Garnet tilted her head.

“True… but I also have a property in the capital. That will be our home for tonight while we’re gathering forces. Elaya and Astria are putting a boundary over it that will keep Deedee from portaling right into our property. When Alysia had managed to make such a barrier, I had thought such a thing was rare.”

“They are rare. Master, just knows a lot of crazy people.” Miki sighed.

“I mean, if Deedee wanted to attack, she could just make it right in front of the property.” Carmine frowned.

“Well, for that we can have proximity alarms. They said they can put up all kinds of defenses. Even if King Aberis declared war on us, he’d have difficulty breaking into my mansion.”

“You shouldn’t be so paranoid that as to plan a war in the capital!” Lydia cried out.

“I’m not paranoid.” I laughed. “I’m just being thorough. You never know what might happen in the future, right? Well… here we are.”

Whatever else the girls wanted to say on that was cut off as we came to a certain mansion. Despite my flippant words, I actually had been to this mansion once before. This was the mansion of Lord Tibult. While Aberis wasn’t willing to dedicate any troops to me directly, he recommended a few people I could visit that could help. Many of them were nobles from the Southwest who had fled from the tyranny of the bandits.

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As much as I hated Deedee, I had to give her credit where credit was due. She managed to clean up the southwest of any bandits. Those that remained had been all but scattered according to the reports I got from my girls as well as the Capital. Of course, she had bungled the whole thing, not only letting Calypso get away but also losing the knife. The girls didn’t want to admit the mistake, but I found out the truth. If it was me, I never would have made that mistake. Of course, I still had the silvthril sword in my inventory. There would be a time where I’d kill Deedee with it. That was my little secret for the moment.

Besides all of that, Deedee had chosen to ignore all of the nobles that still lived in that area. Although they had fled, and many of the citizens might have been bitter about that, they were still the rightful governors of that area. Like me, Deedee had also evicted them from their homes. True, she hadn’t specifically said they couldn’t return, but she had apparently started a city called Deeksville in the middle of the territory, and all of the citizens were now treating Chalm as their governing power. Meanwhile, the people here hadn’t been asked to return and only found this out by the news that had only arrived recently.

This offended a lot of these nobles, who might have gladly fought to help reclaim their lands… when things were more in their favor. The way I saw it, Deedee had been too impulsive. They were an untapped resource. Most of them had a large retinue of knights, soldiers, and employees. If I could gather them all together, then that would make a substantial army. The biggest struggle would be explaining how I wasn’t the one who offended them.

The best way to do that, as advised by Prince Aberis, was to have a strong and influential noble already on my side. Once I had a Tibult sworn to fight by my side, the rest of these nobles will quickly offer their service toward defeating Deedee and reclaiming Chalm. Like that, I would have my army.