Lord of Estaria Page 9

“Now, all the goods from the hideout are yours,” Empress Nalisia continued after taking another piece of paper. “But the hideout itself cannot become your property. And you can’t take his lands in the south either.”

  I expected that much.

  “However, the mansion he bought in the city is yours now. We already interrogated his household, and then apprehended his first wife and two sons, since they were accomplices who took part in illegal activities. They will be executed later today. As for his second and third wives, and children, they were stripped of their status and thrown out.”

  A mansion. Finally!

  “The servants, mages and guards who knew of his wrongdoings were turned into slaves and are now your property.

  As well as a brothel, general store, and clothing shop. He used that to sell some of the stolen goods, mixing them with the ones he purchased legally. But you will have to wait for those until we interrogate all the workers.” She then took another piece of paper. “Now, regarding the merchandise in the hideout, the Empire is ready to purchase all at reasonable prices...”

  “Your Grace,” I interrupted her gallantly. “I will take the money, jewels, crystals, mansion, slaves, and the brothel and other shops.”

  “What about the rest?” She seemed intrigued. What would a person do with all of those good if not sell them?

  “It is a gift for the Empresses.”

  She dropped her jaw and looked at me like I was insane.

  “Are you serious?” Empress Kilie had the same expression, and I couldn’t blame them. I too would be surprised if I didn’t know the reasons.

  “My boy is such a great man.” Empress Sozida said with pride.

  “That must be the biggest bribe in the history of the Empire.” Nalisia closed her eyes for a second. Damn, she saw through me. “But I guess it’s fine since everyone does it. Though, the other nobles will be irritated.”

  ***

  We left the office after I signed some papers and became the official owner of the mansion and businesses.

  “Is there something on my face?” I was annoyed as Lillian glanced at me the from time to time.

  “A smile.” She said and put a finger on her cheek. “I thought that all you wanted was more money, but then, when you could get an enormous sum, you decided to give it away.”

  “Lillian, you don’t get it.” Lina was holding my hand like she usually does. “That’s Darling’s evil smile, he’s probably already planning how to get more money.”

  Bloody hell! As expected from my kitty!

  “A scheme,” Nistry’s fox ears twitched with curiosity. “I wonder what could it be?”

  “Girls, I need you to pay attention for any rumor concerning a war.” I said when we went out of the palace grounds. That’s right, I wanted info on wars, or enemy nations. Anyone that I could rob in the name of justice would be fine.

  “War? You want to participate in one?” Lillian just didn’t get it. “There is a chance of gaining some prestige and achievements, but I haven’t heard of an enormous monetary prize. Unless you capture the enemy king or a high-ranking noble.”

  When I saw that all the girls agreed with her, it made me feel so ecstatic. They still don’t get it, and I doubt anyone would. Which is a great thing since the enemy would also be clueless until it’s too late!

  Do you people really thought that I wanted to charge from the front? Attack a massive army, only to capture someone for ransom? When you want to secure a water supply, do you take the river or the source?

  “So where are we going?” Milia yawned. “I would like to get some sleep.”

  “To see my new mansion, and if there are available rooms, we can sleep there.” Then I looked at the map that one of the scribes draw for me. “It should be in this street.”

  The properties in this part of the city were surrounded with walls and usually had a couple of private soldiers guarding the entrances.

  While we were walking past one of the mansions, I saw three beautiful Ladies getting out of a carriage. They were really pretty, so I wondered if it would be fine to spy on my neighbors. Maybe I would need to secure more mice.

  “And that is how his evil smile looks,” Lina was explaining my face expressions to the other girls. “Since he saw those girls, he must be thinking something like: ‘I could send off my undead bird to her window tonight, and watch as she changes her clothes’. Of course, she also might be taking a bath at that moment, or doing you-know-what, it’s all the same for him.”

  “Well, I guess that most men are like that.” Zania nodded to herself. “The only difference is that our husband is shameless and he would actually do that.”

  “He is a strong male,” Mistyn, the wolf-kin girl said in my defense. “And with his perverse magic, I suspect that he could keep a thousand girls happy.”

  “But it can also be dangerous.” Milia said, and they all looked at Roxy, the dog-kin girl who was following close behind me. I decided to give her that name, because it sounded nice. And as for her real name - I didn’t ask, nor do I give a shit about it.

  Judging that it would be troublesome to involve myself with their arguments, I simply ignored them and kept looking around.

  I will wait patiently and strike when they don’t expect it. Oh, yeah. I still had plans for them, and I am absolutely sure that they won’t like some of that stuff.

  My new mansion came into view after a couple of turns, but I couldn’t see much of it since it was surrounded with a 10 feet high, stone wall.

  “Marquess Miller!” One of the soldiers at the entrance saluted when he saw me. “We are temporarily assigned to you, on orders from the Warden Empress.”

  “Wonderful.” Such a capable woman, it’s too bad that she doesn’t have a daughter. “I heard that there were some slaves. Are they inside?”

  “Yes, there are three servants, twenty-one soldiers, and five mages. The soldiers and mages were the ones you arrested in the hideout.”

  “Good, and who are they?” I looked at the eleven people that were a few yards away, watching us. Some of them looked like servants, and there were a few soldiers. I could even see three richly dressed women.

  “My lord,” a man in a black suit-like uniform stepped in front of the others. “I am Vacek, the former lord’s butler. We were waiting for you, hoping that you won’t dismiss anyone.”

  “Why would I fire you? If you were involved in illegal activities, you’d be a slave now.” The Empress told me that everyone was questioned, and taking the Empire’s toughness into account, these people should be innocent.

  “That is correct, my lord, but sometimes Nobles like to replace the previous servants with new ones. So we thought that some of us would have to leave.”

  “Nah, you all can stay.” If they make some trouble, I can always deal with it. But I sincerely doubt they would.

  They all cheered when I said that, and then the three women approached me. They weren’t top class beauties, but they weren’t average either.

  “Marquess Miller, I am Aliona Barow, the former lord’s second wife.” She curtseys and pushed the teenage girl in front of her. “And this is my daughter, Klaudia.”

  “A-a…” Sniff. “Pleasure...” Sniff. The girl was crying a moment ago, that much seemed obvious. It must be a rough situation for her.

  “And this is Dunya Kalsnik, the third wife, and her son Ilya.” Aliona introduced the other woman. She was in her early twenties and had a baby in her hands, which didn’t seem older than a few months.

  “A pleasure, my lord.” Dunya also had teary eyes, but at least she controlled herself.

  Oh, poor girls…

  Ha! I can see exactly where this was going. They thought I may marry them if they leave a favorable impression. Perhaps they even thought that I would just do it since I am young, and probably a compassionate person who would reach a helping hand when he saw a woman crying. And there were three beauties in distress, offering themselves to me. Just why wouldn’t I accept them?
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br />   They all done their hair, had low-cut dresses, makeup, and tried to look cute and vulnerable.

  “My Ladies, it is such a pleasure to see you in good health.” I said with a smile, and then waved my hand at the girls behind me. “And this are my lovely wives. I hope you’ll excuse my manners, but I can’t introduce all of them at the moment since it would take too much of my time.”

  Yes, there it is! I could clearly see their hopes crashing down. Panic crept into their hearts when they were confronted with the cruel reality. I already had so many young and pretty girls around me, so why would I even look at the three of them?

  “M-my lord, please. We have nowhere to go!” Aliona was openly begging now. “Have mercy, my lord!”

  “Really?” This kind of stuff always confused me. “Where did you lived before you got married? Don’t tell me you just popped out of the ground one day, and the good Baron picked you up like a mushroom.”

  “Our families are not that wealthy, my lord.” Aliona was frustrated now. “I came from a merchant family, and Dunya’s father is a knight. I… I can do accounting, my lord! I helped my… the previous lord with his household finances. Only the legal ones! I swear! The shady matters were left to his sons, I had nothing to do with them!”

  “Accounting? Humph! Is that all you’ve got?” I snorted in disgust. But I was secretly happy because I needed someone like that.

  “Please my lord,” Aliona fell on her knees, and the other two followed her example. “We’ll do anything! Please, don’t throw us away!”

  “Anything?” I asked, and the girls behind me groaned.

  Chapter 11.

  The next morning I felt some pressure when I woke up, and… Did I wet myself?

  “Good morning?” I said when I saw a naked Evrlir bouncing on my meat. “You are aware that this can be considered as rape, right?”

  “Uh-huh...” The half-elf moaned as she continued doing her thing.

  “Dear God, I love you.” I told her as I watched her hips moving up and down, then back and forth. Over and over again.

  Amara giggled at my comment, then she licked my earlobe. “Sorry, my lord. We couldn’t wait anymore.”

  “Don’t worry,” I put my hand on her butt. “Feel free to assault me whenever you want.”

  We had a few rounds of fun time until Polyana, the head maid, came into the room with two others, and my breakfast. She even pretend that she saw nothing explicit and asked us if we needed something else.

  Of course, the other maids weren’t that professional, so they averted their eyes and tried to hide their embarrassed expressions.

  Polyana was in her fifties and was one hell of a maid. She kept the place running like a clock. Everything had to be perfect, or it was a disaster – that was how she looked at her job.

  I was so impressed at how all of them were doing their best, that I gave everyone a 50% raise. But if you take into account that a lot of the soldiers were my slaves now, I would end up paying my servants less than the Baron, because he had to give money to all of them. Especially the mages, those guys were really expensive. Were… Hahaha...

  “Good morning, we were getting ready to...” Lillian, and the others walked into my room, and her eyes were instantly drawn to the bloodied bed sheets.

  Yes, two of my wives weren’t virgins anymore. And they were sitting at the table, having breakfast with me. Naked.

  “So there you are,” Lillian looked at the two. “No wonder Lina was suspiciously quiet.”

  “It was embarrassing!” Lina protested while covering her blushing face with her hands. Earlier, she rushed out of the room when Evrlir’s moaning woke her up.

  The girls left soon after; they had to visit Volseb & Voin to take measures for their new armors. I, on the other hand, had to go to the forest and make new Darkness Zombies.

  “C’mon Roxy.”

  “Woof.”

  There were so many monster corpses there when we arrived, that I had to Absorb anything below D-rank, and create only strong Darkness Zombies, which means that I would have a lot more corpses to sell.

  I took a break around noon, after drinking the tenth mana recovery potion. That stuff was awful. I hope that they will improve the taste one day. A cola flavor would be nice. Ah, a real cola would be even greater.

  While Roxy and I ate some sandwiches, several undead brought a broken Troll with them. The guy was literally in pieces, and soon I saw more zombies bringing another one.

  “What the hell?” Just what kind of monster did this? I concentrated and looked through the eyes of my undead. Most of them were miles away, hoarding dead monsters in other locations.

  I continue looking until I found the culprit. And crap, this was bad.

  My zombies were strong, but they lacked intelligence. That become more obvious when I saw them attacking a nest of Wyverns, some ten miles away.

  I ordered them to fall back and wondered what should I do while reading the information from my book about monsters.

  Wyverns were A-rank monsters, but you needed at least two A-rank adventurers to take one down. The scales on their belly and chest were softer, and a sharp B-rank weapon could pierce that part of their skin. Their jaws were so strong they could crash the bones of most A-rank monsters, and their claws were at the same level of strength.

  Their leather wings were a soft B-rank material, and one of their weak points.

  Once a wing is badly damaged, he won’t be able to fly, so the chances of killing it increased drastically.

  The eyes are weak points, but are also hard to hit.

  Name

  Alex Miller

  Mana

  S

  Strength

  A

  Speed

  A

  Dark Magic

  A

  Fire Magic

  C

  Air Magic

  C

  Water Magic

  D

  Earth Magic

  D

  My magic Elements are all too weak, aside from my Dark Magic. Even after Absorbing all of these weaklings, nothing increased.

  Should I hit them with Darkness bullets? But then I would need to use all of my magic since these monsters were massive, and I doubt that any will stay still and let me kill it.

  Also, if I use my Trinity Spear, I could pierce the Wyvern scales.

  But why the hell would I want to get close to a thing that could bite my head off?

  Throw the Trinity Spear at it? And what if you miss, genius?

  Now, for argument’s sake, lets say that I can beat one Wyvern without getting injured. Then, what would I do with the REST of them?! There’s more than twenty on that hill!

  Shit!

  Guess I’ll just avoid them for now until I have a good plan.

  I opened a Portal close to the hill and send a dozen rats and mice to look at the nest. Information is crucial for any kind of operation, no matter who the opponent was.

  My undead were redirected further north, and I appointed another location for them to bring the prey. Then I went back to finish with the piles of dead monsters.

  ***

  “Warehouse?” Elyn asked when I showed up at the Guild, and when I confirmed it, she called for additional help.

  Today I only had around 1500 monsters, for which I received 380 gold coins. Not bad, my undead minions were working in a place where adventurers rarely ventured, so there were plenty of strong monsters.

  The girls were already at the mansion when I arrived; they were drinking tea and eating cookies, while discussing something.

  “Did you had a big catch, Darling?” Lina avoided Roxy and threw herself at me. “Something happened? You seem lost in thought.”

  “Wyverns.” I said and sat on one of the four sofas. After I took some furniture from the hideout, I replaced the cheaper ones in the mansion with the more expensive. “I don’t really know much about them, and it’s not like I can approach one just to inspect it.”

  “Y
ou can,” Lillian suddenly said. “You know that we have Wyvern Knights, right?”

  “Eh, I think that I heard about that before,” I tried to recall where did I heard that information. “How strong are they?”

  It would be great if I could borrow them to exterminate the ones on the hill, but probably I’ll have to pay a ton of money for that service.

  “I know a few things, but it may be better if you talked to the commander of the Wyvern Order, he could… Hey!” Lillian yelled when I grabbed her hand and pulled her with me through a Portal.