...

Wintersleep Hotel, Aurum's private room. Days later, after reaching out to the camp

Multiple people were pressed inside a luxurious suite, which nobody could recognize as such anymore. It was now littered with plates of half-eaten junk food, strong tea to either relax or stimulate, and multiple ashtrays filled to the brim with ash or stumps of cigarettes, which half-smoked stumps could sell for multiple coppers.

Numerous pieces of paper were used as coasters under all those plates, cups, and ashtrays. After all, they were not usable anymore since they had notes and doodles on them. Besides them, on the coffee table were pieces of paper stacked onto a tower, with little statues standing on them so it would not tip over.

The curtains were closed, and their only light came from the candles or magic light balls, making the atmosphere rather ominous. The air slowly thinned as they continuously smoked, making them drink even more stimulating tea, which made them jittery, which, on the other hand, forced them to drink relaxation tea or smoke—a conundrum impossible to solve.

Calling the room chaotic was an understatement, especially for everyone working in such an environment. However, while they were from good households, they all left their manners and etiquette behind, as they only thought about the topic at hand, which controlled their last days, making them drop all their other work.

Aurum stood before a blackboard brought into the room with tons of gibberish written on it. It was barely seen, as different-colored chalk was used beforehand and only swiped away roughly, making the board incredibly streaky.

Unkempt and stressed, Aurum looked at Lila, "You can't be serious, are you?!"

Lila went through her hair but immediately pulled her hand away. She looked at it in disgust at how oily it had become after shortly touching her head, though she still continued the conversation, "What do you mean?..." She rubbed her hand on her dress, looking at Aurum stoically and tiredly, "...it cost at least that much."

Aurum abruptly opened his arms, his wings puffing out of distress, "It's twenty-five thousand large gold coins! While we are at it, you can also shove the Hero's fucking sword inside me!" He yelled while gesturing to the lively scene he described.

Lila rolled her eyes, "You could barely buy a replica, if at all..." She shrugged, "...but besides your clear degenerate tendencies of loving getting penetrated with legendary weapons, a military is quite a costly endeavor, genius."

Aurum couldn't believe what he heard, becoming more enraged, "Are you insane?! The twenty-five thousand are for how many damn militants?! Fifty thousand? Sixty or even seventy?! There is no way that the damn camp has this many!"

Ariana, who sat on the couch, leaned her head back, closed her eyes, and agreed with Aurum, sounding tired. She waved her hand in dismissal and gestured that it was nonsense.

"Lila, we will not get ripped off. We did the calculations, and an operation for five thousand militants will cost us two thousand large coins per year, including food, medicinal equipment, alchemical solutions, basic training, etc."

Lila looked toward her, raising an eyebrow, "Five thousand? There is no way they have so few combatants."

Ariana opened one eye slowly, looking at her in disgust, "Five thousand able fighters is a lot if they have a population of twenty thousand, which we presume should be around this much."

Lila pondered aloud, sounding casual, "Can we not force everyone to fight? I mean, they are not even really sapient beings. They are more like farm animals, right?"

Helena, who was lying on another couch, with her arm blocking her eyes, sounding tired but still chuckling, "Lila, shut the fuck up and get us more food and the jitter tea. I want the cherry one."

Ariana nodded, "I'll take the chocolate..." She chuckled, "...without Mr. Alexander, I will enjoy it as much as possible..." Still chuckling, she held her hand before her mouth, "...I apologize, but every time I drink or eat anything with chocolate, he looks at me with hate and envy."

Aurum nodded at her, thanking her in advance, "I will take the herb mix with milk and a lot of sugar."

Lila became enraged, stomping, "I am not your maid..." Glaring at Helena, "...why are you defending those vermin?!"

Helena was still chuckling and sounding careful, "You saw Mr. Alexander and his idealistic streak in the last few days. If you want to tell him how inferior they are, you have my blessing, but he will have your ass thrown out real quick."

For the last days, the fire-djinn half-sisters were careful around Alexander, knowing now too well that he had a soft spot for what they would consider trash. Thus, they had to act mindful when discussing the camp and refugees.

Sure, they hated them, but with Alexander having the last word and with them trying to profit from this endeavor, it was natural that they would shut up and instead use softer remarks to describe them, like degenerates. However, this irritated the young noble, too, and nobody knew why.

Lila looked distressed at the table, looking for something, while continuing to talk, "Fine, I will not call them vermin..." After a moment, she took a piece of paper and showed it to everyone, "...however, we have the perfect plan! If we force ten thousand of them to fight, take the rest of the gold, and hire mercenaries from our fiefs, we can easily fulfill the quota, and it would cost us at most twenty-five thousand large gold coins."

Everyone chuckled, dismissing her entirely, while she became more distressed for unknown reasons. However, Helena was the only one who suddenly became tense. She turned around, still lying on the couch, and looked at her sister as if she were an idiot, "What quota? What did you do?"

Aurum and Ariana mostly ignored them if they said something that made no sense. Lila and Helena were foreigners, and they expected they would sometimes misuse words. However, this time, Helena somehow understood her very differently from the others, meaning that the context was probably more profound, making the whole room tense.

Lila shrugged, smiling like a little puppy, wanting to be praised, "What do you mean? What did I do? I asked Papa to ask the clan leader for support."

Helena squinted at her, the air around her becoming tense, "What do you mean?..." She slowly stood up from the coach walking to her, "...quota? Support? Do you mean the merit one?"

Lila nodded happily, "Yes! It's...." However, before she could end her sentence, Helena slapped her, "Moron!"

Lila took a step back, panic all over her face. Helena was coming closer, pocking her chest aggressively with her index finger and almost growling, emitting an aura that felt like a fire slowly getting out of control, "Listen here, you bimbo. You will take the quota back and apologize! I will not accept this gamble!"

As Lila was pressed against the wall, she nodded slightly, murmuring something in her language. Helena looked at her in confusion, only to explode in rage, screaming back in their language.

The aura of every race was unique, as was the one Helena emitted, with Aurum and Ariana getting slightly confused, feeling like this for the first time. While the aura of beast-kin came from the inside, mostly from their pheromone gland, the aura of djinns manifested around them. This was why it suddenly felt like they were inside an oven, slowly baking and flooded with emotions of anger and wrath.

However, Aurum was the first to break his confusion. He immediately ran toward them, trying to separate them before things got worse, "What's going on?!"

Lila looked ashamed to the side while Helena glared at her. She tried to clarify while holding herself back, slowly dispersing her aura, "She made a bet."

Aurum raised an eyebrow, confused, "So?"

Helena rolled her eyes, "I don't know how to translate it, but a bet has a particular meaning for how we do things in the clan."

While Aurum was confused, Ariana immediately understood, trying to explain the confusing culture, "I think she is describing a merit bet. It's common for clans in fire-djinn culture to give branches a chance to increase their status so they could get more responsibility and, with that, more economic support, freedom to act, and so on. Like with us, the fastest way is through successful military operations, but they have a bizarre and convoluted military structure making it very hard to do so..."

Helena interrupted her, sounding strict but still amicable, "I respect your culture and expect the same from you. So I would prefer you exclude insults while explaining it so well."

Ariana looked towards Helena, nodding in an apologizing manner, "Pardon me, I am just tired, and it wasn't my intention to insult your beautiful culture."

With Helena smiling back, Ariana continued explaining, now looking more careful after every word, "However, they have a different military structure from what we in Mal-Gil know..."

Ariana's explanation became complicated, but in short, djinns had built a structure of distrust, making them conscious of each other. In the Eros Alliance, there were multiple clans, which could be seen as equivalent to higher nobility, with those having branches of smaller clans, like lower nobility.

While Mal-Gil's lower nobility could build militaries and their aristocrats, in general, had much more autonomy to act individually, as seen through Moorgrel, which was basically a semi-autonomous region in the Mal-Gil Empire, djinns had a much more strict top-to-bottom approach.

The alliance leader had absolute control over everyone's military, and it was usually the clan with the most military power. Everyone was forced to conscript a certain number of their people, train them, and prepare them for the leading clan's use.

From there, the individual clan heads were also allowed to have a military, but it was forbidden to have only their people, making them as diverse as possible. It was a mechanism to make them distrust each other to avoid any coup d'etat from happening.

Regardless, they could use it almost freely, only needing permission from the leading clan. Now, do the branches have a military? They don't, except for guards, who would protect their property and family. Yet, they were forced to conscript some of their people, sending them to different militaries for training.

This was the rough structure and easy at first glance; it had a million more asterisks and weird edge cases Ariana couldn't be bothered to explain.

So, how would the branches be able to use militaries? They would make a so-called merit bet. They could borrow the military of a clan head, and depending on size and timeframe, they would stake a proportional portion of their assets. If their operation were a success, their rank inside the clan would increase, and with it, like previously mentioned, all the positive aspects.

In the past, there was constant war, with djinns having their people decimated. As such, this somewhat bizarre system was implemented, making the military of the clan heads less efficient on purpose. However, the positive was that they were also much more stable as they couldn't be too aggressive and attack another Eros's Alliance clan head since they commanded such a mixed group, with at least some coming from the territory they would want to attack.

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When Ariana finished, looking proud with her chest protruding forward, everyone looked at her, confused and flabbergasted. She, however, only humphed, "What? I read everything I could get my hands on before moving here, including everything about our allies and their customs."

Aurum ignored her, looking at Lila, now stupified, as he tried to analyze the half-sister's quarrel and make an educated guess after listening to how it was roughly structured, "So, let me guess: You made your Dad wage quite a bit, and now you want to increase the chances by putting as many refugees and mercenaries on the battlefield as possible, trying to achieve the most as not to lose any assets through the merit bet?"

Before Lila could say anything, Helena answered him, still angry, "Yes, and this moron also talked to my Father, convincing him, too...." She turned to Lila, increasing her aura again and making it feel like they were baked, like a pie, in anger, like a furious pie, "...I want to know what you waged exactly, you piece of trash."

Lila was sweating heavily under the pressure but stammered nonetheless through her sentence, "I..." What followed were five minutes of stuttering and her realizing that she had made a grave mistake. Her stake was their businesses and part of the supply chains they were freshly trying to build up with Alexander for the alchemical ingredients he would buy for miscellaneous projects. All those together were extremely valuable since the demand increased monthly, with them selling ingredients they did not need for an immense amount of gold.

Almost nobody knew about it; only Helena and Lila discovered that Alexander used the raw materials on one of their islands to make something else that brought a lot of gold. Their branches only sold those to Aurum's Mother, not thinking much about it.

After she finished, everyone was silent until Helena panicked. Still somewhat calm, she asked her, "How much territory do you need to get into the black so we don't lose our fucking golden goose?!"

Lila opened her mouth, and everyone couldn't believe what they heard. The territory she would need to justify how many military personnel she borrowed was insane. Again, it was proportional to what she waged.

Their branch would need to reach a certain value, which was assigned to specific islands by some kind of council. Depending on size, resources, etc, the islands could be precious, making them worth conquering, like the ones with the fire-djinn-specific dungeon.

However, the problems were numerous. For one, while nobody said it, the Eros military was only good at the hands of the alliance leader. At the same time, every clan head only received broken-up and mixed pieces of it, making it highly inefficient for them to go into a battle. Only defending was somehow manageable.

Thus, the merit bet became a trap for ambitious idiots like Lila. This was also why she wanted to use every resource she had to win the bet. Yet, it was an almost all-or-nothing bet, and Helena did not understand how she could convince both branch leaders, one of them being her Father, to agree to it.

However, if they genuinely won the merit bet, their price would be extraordinarily massive, as they would easily push other branches away and take their resources. So, until now, Helena was still somewhat calm, but she suddenly remembered something unpleasant, trusting her moronic half-sister that she got tricked.

She turned around, glaring at Lila, "How much?"

Lila now looked much more disturbed, "Wha..." Helena interrupted her, coming closer, but this time without emitting any aura, but her voice was enough to pressure her, "I want to know who bribed you to take it."

Lila looked to the side, ashamed, mumbling, "It wasn't a bribe."

Hearing that, Helena grabbed her throat while yelling before Aurum and Ariana could stop her, "Everyone back off!..." Now she emitted all her aura inside their tiny domain, making Lila barely get any air, "...somebody invested in you to take the bet, who?"

Lila, barely able to say something as her throat was pressed together, croaked, "Rita."

Killing intent suddenly filled the room. Aurum and Ariana jumped toward Helena, pulling her away. She let them do it, not resisting at all. She stared blankly at Lila, dispersing her aura.

Aurum looked confused at Ariana, "Hey, what's going on here?!"

Ariana snapped back, her lizard tile swinging wildly, "Why are you asking me?! Do I look like I know all their damn intricacies?!"

However, before they fought further, Helena smiled widely, laughing hysterically, "Hahaha! This dumb bitch made a deal with a rival branch who paid her some gold so she could start a merit bet..." She looked to the sides, forcing herself out of Aurum's and Ariana's hold, "...let me go! I will not kill this dumb whore."

While rubbing her wrists, she glared at Lila, sneering, "Damn it. Now I can see why you have those ridiculously expensive accessories."

Lila wanted to say something, but Helena interrupted, "Shut up. Just tell me how much they gave you."

Lila, barely audibly, in fright, stuttered, "5... 5000."

Helena sighed in relief, "At least 5000 large gold coins, with this..." However, Lila interrupted her, "...average gold coins."

It was silent, with Helena standing still and looking at her half-sister. After some minutes of absolute silence, she went to the couch, sat down, and sighed, "We are fucked..." She looked embarrassingly at Aurum and Ariana interchangeably, "...we need a bigger investment, and I am ready to sign whatever you want."

Ariana was the first to become confused, also sitting down, asking, "Why?"

Helena tilted her head slightly, "Well..."

The next she told them was as basic as it could get. Rita, from a rival branch, was in contact with Lila. At some point, she always tried to give them gold here and there, trying them to agree to a merit bet. While it was called an investment that they had to pay back through resources, land, or gold, it was also something like a promise for her to start getting active regarding warfare.

Of course, they could pull everything back, pay the investment plus interest, send the military back, and compensate them for their short use. However, this would cost them a lot of standing, something Helena wasn't willing to lose. How someone was perceived was much more worth than wealth.

Other than that, she saw an opportunity with Alexander, who had wealth beyond anything their branches combined had. So before stopping everything, she wanted to try at least and negotiate being funded.

Looking at her sister, who was now sitting on the couch, making herself as little and invisible as possible, she also looked at Ariana, who smirked back, "How much do you need to win the merit bet, and what do we get?"

Aurum sighed audibly, rubbing his forehead, "This whole operation is kinda escalating, no?"

Ariana shook her head, "What do you mean? Let's first hear the offer."

Both looked at Helena, who became calm again, "I see. You are truly Mr. Alexander's retainers..." She straightened up and sounded as assertive as possible, "...twenty-five thousand large gold coins and you will get..." She smirked, "...whatever you honestly want, as long as my clan branch doesn't get into the red. I am not ready to lose face."

Aurum was the first to answer, crossing his arms, "Give us an offer."

Lila was about to say something, looking smugly, though Helena interrupted her, "Stop you moron, no bad faith..." She stood up again, walking around the room, thinking aloud.

"A more substantial supply chain for alchemical ingredients? It's new, and you will probably need much more in the future. We can make it our priority."

"Not enough."

"Mana items, spells, and all the magic stuff?"

"Not enough."

"The resources on the islands?"

"Nope."

She stopped, glaring at him, but still amicable in her tone, "What do you want then? I get that the investment is high, but everything has a price, and there should be something you need more than anything, right?"

It was clear that the Leonandra household, as they had nothing to do with it officially, couldn't take over any land. It was a purely private deal between Alexander and the other parties. The only groups who could profit from it by receiving land were the refugees and the branches of Helena and Lila.

The beast-kin side wanted to get the refugees out while trying not to lose any gold. Alexander had already promised to invest 5,000 to 10,000 large gold coins because he wished for this operation to be as smooth as possible while strengthening the relationship between the branches of Helena and Lila and Alexander as the next heir.

Better supply chains, knowledge, and so on were excellent, but it was nonetheless too little for an enormous amount of 15,000 more large gold coins, which could buy anything. Helena also understood that they acted too friendly with her as they could just let them fail and make a deal with another rival branch. Thus, she was calm, not trying to trick them or promise anything empty she couldn't fulfill, only realistic guarantees.

However, Ariana suddenly thought aloud, "Well, how about ingredients and manpower?"

Aurum and Helena looked at her, and Aurum nodded, "Got it. You need some sleep."

Ariana became annoyed, rolling her eyes, "What do you mean?!"

Aurum chuckled, "We already declined as it would not be enough. We would need, with inflation, around two to three hundred years to pay back the investment. It's useless."

Ariana sighed, "I get it, but I don't mean the official projects. Remember Mr. Alexander's projects he talked about that were forbidden?"

"The weird drug projects and the black powder?"

After Ariana became Alexander's retainer, she also signed a contract with her, and she could only talk about his projects if explicitly allowed. As such, she learned everything about his past, such as when he was forced to burn his ideas.

Helena now interjected, "Wait, Mr. Alexander wanted to make black powder?!"

Black powder was forbidden in many kingdoms, empires, and territories, but not everywhere, like in the areas where djinns reigned. While a cannonball was mighty, someone at Tier 3 could easily block it, and strong explosions were also quite useless. Usually, a ban was used to weaken commoners, especially the underworld.

Other than that, common thoughts were that most wouldn't need any instruments for warfare as their body was enough. Reaching the first body modification, they could barely be scratched by physical force, which came not from a fighter at an equivalent level.

Of course, there were specific ways to attack through mechanical force and explosions, inflicting even more significant damage on powerful opponents. Still, those were enhanced by alchemical solutions or enhancements to create such effects. However, simple black powder was usually not an effective way of warfare between militaries.

There were practical cases, but those were used by the dwarves and gnomes, who created gadgets that would require massive infrastructure and knowledge they didn't have. It was also helpful for eliminating monsters, especially for smaller towns that didn't have a way of defending themselves against monsters.

However, the formula wasn't widespread, with Helena looking at Ariana wide-eyed, "So, you are saying Mr. Alexander knows how to make black powder? The one which explodes?"

Aurum interrupted her directly, not caring about anything leaking out. They all signed a ridiculous contract, which silenced them entirely.

"Not gonna happen. It is forbidden."

Ariana shrugged, smirking at him, "Only in Mal-Gil, though."

As Aurum wanted to argue against it, he suddenly became silent, falling into thought. Ariana, though, continued, "We can create a supply chain. We will make parts of it in Moorgrel and send them to you..." Pointing at Helena, whose smile widened massively.

Ariana continued, "You create the rest with us and pay a good coin for it..." She looked at Aurum, who was still in thought, trying to explain, "...because it is not Mal-Gil, we are not obliged to follow the Empire's laws and better, we can create specific parts here, which have a multipurpose and sent them to the new territory, to create the rest of whatever they or we need. The formula is safe with us and we can deal..." She pointed at Helena, smiling at her, "...with you, by having you as our seller for other markets."

Aurum became intrigued, pondering aloud, "So, your solution to us getting something out of it is basically selling products we can't sell inside the Empire to other territories and obviously making it on the islands with the help of the refugees or Helena and Lila?"

Helena also chimed in, intrigued, "I am fine with such an arrangement. We have a much better connection to the Free Cities and can also sell your products there."

Lila also asked, confused, "Why do we have a better relationship?"

Aurum was the first to answer as it was pretty straightforward, "The Free Cities allow slavery, and when our kin liberated themself, they used this opportunity to free as many of our kin everywhere else, bringing them back to our Empire. Thus, we raided the Free Cities, killed not too little of them, and ultimately, a part of them allied with the First Servants, trying to stop us."

Helena waved her hand in dismissal, "Who cares about history? We talk business. So, let me be clear: you want us to create supply and manufacturing chains in the new territory so you can sell and create products you aren't allowed to sell and create in Mal-Gil?"

Ariana shrugged, "Yep, and obviously, secrecy is a must under any circumstances."

"Will Mr. Alexander agree to this?"

"He will."

"Oh yeah."

Helena now beamed with joy. "So, 25,000 large gold coins and..." Aurum interrupted her. "Calm down, and yes. We will provide the mercenaries, products, and so on for your manpower in creating certain products, but I don't think you get the formula."

Helena chuckled, obviously not caring: "Pfff, don't worry, and I don't care. All I want is access to this."

"For what, actually?"

"Well..." Her smile widened, "...there are a lot of smaller islands that could be taken over easily, and the more merit we get, the better standing we will achieve since this moron..." She pointed at Lila, who was frowning but didn't say anything, "...made quite the atrocious bet. With a strong start, we can immediately resolve our merit bet, and with every additional piece of land..." She shook her head, "...forget it, with enough land, we will be able to get our own clanhead."

Aurum walked to the table, took a piece of paper and a feather, and started writing, "Well, Master will be happy to hear that we now have three times the work for him."

However, Helena ignored his sarcasm, clapping once, "That's right! We need to talk with Mr. Alexander! I think he will love the idea!"

Ariana went to the coach, plopping on it, "Let's wait and see. Sometimes, even he finds such ideas crazy... I think."

...

A couple of hours later, Alexander's room

"Muahahaha! What a genius plan! It's time to move!"