Chapter 899 - Building the City (4)
Rhode had to admit that the Order Refugees who defended the tinder had indeed experienced extremely dangerous and tough battles with Chaos. More than half of his mercenaries were either injured or dead. The Bow Knights almost perished, but fortunately Lesa made it through. This problem with the Bow Knights was easy to solve since they were heroic spirits, after all. They could simply be re-summoned from the Astral Temple. On the other hand, the loss of his mercenaries left him feeling helpless.
In comparison, the Order Refugees were more on the unfortunate end. The fact that almost all the Bow Knights perished proved just how many of the Order Refugees could have survived safely. In the end, Rhode calculated that around 80 percent of the Order Refugees who defended the tinder were killed by Chaos and the remainder were either gravely injured or crippled. Currently, only the Order Refugees who remained in the shelter survived the crisis, but most of them were fragile seniors, women, and children, which limited the things that they could do. However, Rhode had no intention of letting them go. No matter what, they defended the tinder for years and he wasn’t that heartless to kick them away.
It wasn’t a simple task to build a territory. Even though he once managed a territory in the game, that was just a game, after all. All he had to do was set up taxes and wait for the money to roll in. Money in the game was worth nothing and players wouldn’t care where it came from, even if it was dropped from wolf or slime corpses.
But now, he couldn’t help but feel his head hurt as the overlord. Due to their secluded lives, the Order Refugees didn’t use gold coins for anything. The lives that they had been through sdfd similar to rigorous militarized management. But it was different now. Even if it was for bartering, commercial transactions were also a step in foreign economic exchanges.
Even though Rhode was a top player in the game, it didn’t mean that he was an expert in this field. He couldn’t come up with a conclusion after days of serious consideration. Under no other choice, he handed this matter to Marlene and ordered her to set up a complete financial distribution system that matched the outside world.
As for the mercenaries who survived, he promoted them to his elite squad because the fact that they lasted until the end in the battles against Chaos proved how capable they were. Although the battles were cruel, it filtered out the weak ones. When Rhode met his men recently, he realized that they all possessed unprecedented determination to battle. Besides, most of them actually broke through the limits of natives and reached above level 40. Although Rhode had less than a hundred mercenaries of this caliber, their strength was sufficient to form an elite squad to protect a country’s royal family.
Thereafter, Rhode spoke to Gillian and the others using the spiritual communications. Even though they couldn’t enter the city due to the temporary absolute wall of Order, Rhode managed to learn about the situation on the outside.
Inside the Land of Chaos, there was no perception of time for Rhode and his group. But in fact, more than four months had passed in the outside world and it was already late summer. Everyone was bewildered when they heard Gillian’s report.
Fortunately, the chaotic situations Rhode was worried about in his territory didn’t occur. Even though many people expressed their concerns in not seeing Rhode and Marlene around, this wasn’t a problem for Gillian who was a sly fox. Foxes were typically experts in lies and she found a formidable reason that cleared everyone’s concerns...
“Maternity leave?”
Rhode instantly felt as though his soul left him.
“Huhuhu. That’s right, Master. Isn’t this totally logical? Miss Marlene can’t continue her work as she’s pregnant and needs some time off. I think this excuse is perfect. As for her job, there aren’t any problems with me and Ann around.”
“... Forget it. Any other things going on?”
After remaining in silence for less than three seconds, Rhode decisively skipped this topic. He didn’t want to think about how Marlene would react when she heard this news. At this moment, he was more concerned about himself. ‘Spare the rod, spoil the child’ was perfect to describe this situation with Gillian. If he knew this would happen, he wouldn’t have left her in charge.
“Everything else is doing fine. The Country of Darkness stopped finding trouble with us after they signed the truce agreement. As for the Country of Light... Huhuhu... It seems like your chess piece is really useful, Master.”
Even though they were speaking through the spiritual communications, Rhode imagined Gillian’s cheeky expression now. As expected, he received information from her about the state of the Country of Light. It should have been the crucial period for the election in the Country of Light. However, there were unimaginable conflicts and riots going on.
The cause of the conflicts came from the Light Parliament. As the competition of the elections became fiercer, the reactions of the people became much bigger. It was due to this that parliament members Nakvard and Greig erupted in a violent clash. The former believed that humans should unite and face the future together while the latter expressed that they should chase the immigrants back to where they came from and not allow them to suck the finances and resources of this country like leeches.
This naturally caused an uproar between the immigrants and people. The natives of the Country of Light expressed that the immigrants were disrespectful of their culture and traditions. Not only that, but the immigrants were also lazy and committed crimes everywhere, turning their tranquil city into a criminal nest. Besides, in addition to Greig’s statements, many people thought that the reason why the Country of Light’s military lost to the Country of Darkness wasn’t because the enemies were too strong; instead, it was due to the greed of the immigrants! The immigrants should be chased out of our country and go back to where they came from!
This went without saying that it was unacceptable for the immigrants. The immigrants retorted that they risked their lives to come to this country and swept the streets of litter as poorly-paid cleaners. Without them, this city would perhaps be turned into a mountain of trash by the people who thought so highly of themselves!
You push the jobs that you hated to us and aren’t willing to work hard and find jobs yourselves and now you’re accusing us? You command us when you need us and treat us as rubbish when you no longer need us? Do you think we’re some pushovers?
Under such circumstances, the supporters of Nakvard and Greig clashed on the streets. Even though such scenarios also happened in previous elections, they weren’t as serious as this. People needed an outlet to vent their frustrations and it was due to this that the violence level in the Country of Light rose to a new high which involved many injuries and even deaths.
But what was more unexpected was that as the violence continued, the non-human races in the neighboring territories uncharacteristically united and announced to leave the territorial control of the Light Parliament. They didn’t want to tolerate the tyranny of the Light Parliament anymore and had even chased away the humans who invaded their land in the past.
The Light Parliament was stunned that the situation became this critical.
The non-human races held no rights or interest in the Country of Light all along. As long as one wasn’t human, one wouldn’t be protected by law. Therefore, it was common to traffic elves in the Country of Light and even most of the Battle Angels were forced to seek shelter in the Munn Kingdom, leaving the remaining Battle Angels hiding in the Dragon Soul Temple.
This had been happening for thousands of years. The non-human races had fought for their rights, but wherever there was oppression, there was resistance and wherever there was resistance, there was repression. All of their objections ended up in failure. But this time, no one knew why they suddenly joined forces. Not only that, but they also occupied the neighboring, empty military bases which were emptied after the war with the Country of Darkness!
The Light Parliament was in an immense headache. They wanted to dispatch soldiers, but they lacked them. But if they didn’t dispatch the soldiers, were they willing to watch the non-humans occupy their land? Although they could seek assistance from other territories, their reputation had become horrible after their loss in war against the Country of Darkness. Their signals for help were turned away by the overlords.
It was due to this that the Country of Light was in a complete mess. Previously, they had thought of stirring trouble in Rhode’s territory when he wasn’t around. But they were much more concerned about this predicament in their own country.
“It seems like Sonia did well.”
Rhode nodded in satisfaction. Before he left for the Land of Chaos, he was concerned that the Light Parliament would be up to no good while he was away. Therefore, in order to keep them occupied, Rhode requested for Sonia to cause trouble by inciting opposing parties during the election period. And now it seemed like Sonia was more successful than he hoped for.
“That’s right, Master. Miss Sonia did well. Your choice in this bitch is superb, I’ve got to say. Ah, by the way, she has something important to inform you personally so talk to her when you get the time, though I’m just thinking that she’s just gonna ask for her treat.”
“Got it.”
Rhode pondered in silence before nodding.
“I’ll get to it once my matter is done here.”
He lifted his head and gazed at the seven magic monster nests shown on the system interface.