Chapter 3132: My Citizens

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Azorheim, Temporal Cave Valley Rest Stop, Aurzone Traven

“Your Highness, I am at your mercy,” Henricks replied, bowing his head. He seemed genuinely prepared to accept whatever punishment his liege decided to sentence him with.

I looked at Henricks and couldn’t help wondering, ‘What kind of ruler does he think I am? Was it just him, or did the others think the same way?’

I would like to believe I was probably the most generous Ruler Card that Card World had ever seen. After all, the New Empire’s economy was currently afloat largely because I was pumping my own wealth into it. The New Empire was an extremely young Sovereign State. It was barely functional, let alone capable of generating enough wealth to sustain itself.

Of course, the money I was providing wasn’t exactly free.

It was an interest-free loan that the New Empire was expected to repay once it became capable of doing so.

And the New Empire was basically mine.

…Yeah, I could see his point.

“Forget about it,” I said, waving my hand.

There was no reason to punish Henricks over something that had never actually been a problem in the first place.

Instead, I gave him an order.

“Bring a few Redfoots with you and move Mino to the Redfoot refugee settlement in the Yellow Plains before it’s too late. Don’t worry about things on my end. I’ll call you when I need you.”

Henricks had kept the Freedom Fighters’ old trade relationship with the Redfoots hidden from me before they became my dependents. As for why he hadn’t told me afterward, there had simply never been a reason for the matter to come up. And when it came to him secretly rescuing Redfoots from RedAlps, I honestly couldn’t care less about what he did with his free time.

If anything, he had done the right thing.

“Yes, my liege!”

Henricks answered with far more enthusiasm than before, as though I’d just lifted a massive weight from his shoulders.

After paying the bill, we went our separate ways.

…

I used the map I had memorized at the Inter-Realm Transit Hub to navigate through the valley toward the caves numbered ES3003 to ES3500. Fortunately, most of them were empty, which meant I could afford to be picky.

The numbering system was similar to the sector system used in the Inter-Realm City, even though the actual numbers were different. That made me suspect that there had to be at least one or two caves whose environmental rules and temporal flow perfectly matched those of Card World.

Naturally, I decided to look for them.

If I found an unoccupied one, excellent. If not, I would simply settle for another cave. Aside from minor variations, most of the caves were fundamentally the same anyway. Their environments could probably be optimized further, but I had no intention of wasting the time and effort required to do so.

Even with my Soul Pupils, identifying and adjusting all those tiny differences would take considerable time.

I wasn’t here to settle down.

I was here to finish my work and move on to the next request.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to search for long before finding an empty cave.

ES3030.

The moment I entered, I confirmed that its environmental conditions, temporal flow, and underlying rules were an exact match for Card World.

Perfect.

I immediately booked the cave and settled in without wasting another second.

Once everything was ready, I opened the list of requests and brought Hive Spirit into the process. By then, Hive Spirit had already optimized the entire list, grouping requests that required similar materials and resources together.

That meant we could purchase ingredients in bulk instead of buying them separately for every request.

A small adjustment, but when dealing with hundreds or thousands of requests, small savings had a habit of becoming very large numbers.

With everything organized, there was nothing left to do except start working.

My first request came from an old Card Master who was nearing the end of his life.

His request was simple enough. He wanted me to help extend his lifespan, either by helping him break through into a higher realm or by providing some kind of elixir that could give him a few more decades.

He wasn’t an exception.

There were thousands of requests just like his.

Some were children spending their hard-earned merits to extend the lives of their aging parents. Others came from spouses who couldn’t accept that their partners were approaching the end of their lives and were willing to spend whatever merits they had accumulated to buy them more time.

Technically, there was an easy solution.

I could create an elixir capable of extending the lifespan of Card Apprentices who had reached the natural limit of their lives, then mass-produce it. One batch could potentially fulfill thousands of requests at once.

Efficient, fast, economical, and complete time saver.

But I had no intention of doing that. I planned to diagnose each person personally.

Those who still had a realistic chance of breaking through to a higher realm would receive help with their cultivation, while those who had already reached their limits would be given the appropriate elixir.

It would take far more time, but there was a reason I was willing to spend it.

They were my citizens.

Some of these people had even come out of retirement and returned to serving the New Empire when it was struggling to establish itself. They had already given their time and strength to my cause. The least I could do was take their requests seriously instead of treating them like numbers on a list.

If I had intended to cut corners, I could have stayed in Card World and borrowed the Morningstar University’s timeline lift. There would have been no reason for me to come all the way to Azorheim, rent a temporal cave, and spend additional resources just to do something I could have accomplished far more conveniently back home.

I came here because I wanted to finish these requests properly. So I started with the first name on the list.