Chapter 633: To My Most Dearly Beloved

"To my most dearly beloved, times have been slightly frustrating recently."

"My business has suffered a number of small setbacks over the past few months; nothing too serious, but certainly enough to be annoying."

"I have recently ordered my subordinates to act more prudently and to avoid clashing with our local competition as I don’t believe now is the right time for aggressive expansion."

"Of course, if you happen to have any good suggestions, or even some useful advice, I would very much appreciate hearing it."

"Yours always, Blank."

Staring at the letter before him, Mr. Blank read it again just to make sure he had... expressed all of his feelings appropriately before he folded it, placed it in an envelope, then sealed it with wax.

A number of his recent letters had been filled with similar content, but maintaining regular contact was always important in fostering a good relationship.

Not that this letter was really going to his beloved; rather, it was a status report meant for his employer, the mastermind behind all the chaos going on across the Rockwell Kingdom.

Since the events in Misty City, where they had raided the Rising Phoenix Guild, Mr. Blank and his compatriots had been under nearly constant attack, but neither he nor the other leaders were all that concerned.

Why?

Because the Rockwell Kingdom’s efforts, at least their law-enforcement efforts, weren’t really that effective.

Other than the initial large-scale kingdom-wide raid, not much additional damage had been done to the organization, allowing it to function just about as well as it had for the past several years.

That said, the constant attacks on storehouses, smuggling ships, and minor hideouts was becoming annoying.

Mr. Blank had always known that they wouldn’t be able to remain hidden in the shadows forever, but he hadn’t expected to be exposed so quickly either.

Ironically, it was the explosion in the Great Western Forest, a disaster by any definition, which had alerted the Rockwell Kingdom to the presence of a malign force within their borders.

Now, given that Mr. Blank and his employer’s primary objective was to sow chaos and discontent amongst the population, a massive crisis like the one the explosion had set off should have been more than enough to compensate for their organization becoming exposed, but through some strange twist of fate, the situation played out in exactly the opposite manner.

Despite tens of thousands of ordinary civilians being killed, and hundreds of thousands more being displaced, trust among the citizens of the Rockwell Kingdom towards their leaders had actually never been higher.

Mr. Blank wouldn’t have believed it possible had he not seen it happen himself.

Every city he went to, every town he visited, every village he passed through had dozens of different recruitment notices, each one offering higher than normal wages to work on roads, walls, dikes, or other major infrastructure projects.

Craftsmen were also hiring in huge numbers, all of them trying to keep up with the Rockwell Kingdom’s seemingly endless desire for construction materials and tools.

Food, which also should have been an issue, was strangely more abundant now than it was before the disaster last year, all thanks to strange new pieces of equipment being deployed into the farm fields.

"Seed drills, threshers, and harvesters, was it?" Mr. Blank muttered to himself.

When he first heard about these things, he hadn’t thought much of them, imagining they were just a gimmick some no-name blacksmith, farmer, or noble had come up with looking to scam the uninformed masses of their money while not providing any real benefits.

One could imagine his shock, then, when on a trip to South-West Province, Mr. Blank stopped in Yarrel and saw how a massive field of wheat that should have taken 100 people 3 or 4 days to reap was completely cleared by a mere 5 harvesters in a single day.

Work was aplenty, food was abundant, and money was available for anyone willing to earn it.

With such ideal conditions, it was hardly surprising that the situation in the Rockwell Kingdom had not taken a turn for the worse, even though it was now dealing with an abundance of internally displaced refugees.

Rather than the Rockwell Kingdom army raiding a few unimportant hideouts, it was this generally buoyant mood amongst the commoners that was actually causing Mr. Blank a headache.

How was he supposed to recruit disaffected people and disrupt the kingdom’s stability under these circumstances? It was akin to asking him to convince people with warm clothes and full bellies that they were actually freezing and starving.

Not impossible, but definitely not easy.

What Mr. Blank really couldn’t figure out, though, was where the Rockwell Kingdom was getting all the money to pay for these projects.

A couple years ago, Mr. Blank had to make sure he kept enough Copper and Silver on him whenever he traveled around to pay for tolls or city entrance fees, but almost all of those were now gone, and from what his agents had gathered, many other taxes had also been abolished by order of the Royal Council.

But, without taxing the people, how was the government paying for anything, especially when they were offering such high salaries for what would otherwise be considered low-pay jobs?

In all his years working as a ’traveling bard’, Mr. Blank had never encountered such an odd situation before. It was making it difficult for him to come up with a plan of action, and in turn causing him quite a bit of stress.

Additionally, the kingdom’s law-enforcement raids may not be dealing much damage right now, but if they kept up, sooner or later, they would eventually hit upon one of their primary bases where real evidence could be found.

Either that, or someone with knowledge of the organization structure and objectives would be captured, tortured, and forced to divulge enough information to really cause problems. Though, certain ’precautions’ made such a scenario much less likely.

Still, knowing such a future was basically inevitable now, Mr. Blank needed to seek guidance from his superiors. He needed to know what they wanted him to do and what resources they could make available to him to carry out his mission.

In the mean time, like he had told the rest of his associates, laying low seemed like a good idea.

The year was coming to an end, and while the season of celebrations was certainly a good time to stir up some trouble, it was also one of the times when patrols were most active, so taking a short break to rest and regroup was probably the optimum course of action.

They had been at this for over 10 years already, and there had been plenty of setbacks and delays during that time, so another few months wasn’t going to make too much of a difference.

Patience was the key; after all, as long as they were the only ones standing at the end of the day, they would win.

.....

At the same time, at a rather lavish banquet inside a giant, opulently decorated castle, a group of individuals who would not look out of place at a royal ball sat around one of the tables chatting.

Each of them had a smile on their face, and an occasional burst of laughter could be heard coming from their group, but the topic they were discussing was anything but ’casual’.

"You’ve all read the reports from our agents in the field, what do you think we should do next?"

"Isn’t it obvious? Since we’ve been exposed, we should go on the offensive."

"I disagree. While it’s true that some of our operations have come to light, not all of them have. We should continue on in the manner we have been all these years. Acting rashly now will only complicate matters further."

"Hmph, you would think that way. You’ve always been a coward, and your indecision has caused us to miss so many great opportunities."

"And you’ve always been reckless and pig headed, causing us so many problems that we needed to stop and deal with before we could continue."

"What did you say!?"

"Enough! There’s no need for us to fight amongst ourselves. It’s true that the situation has become more... interesting, but it hasn’t grown beyond our expectations, and certainly not beyond our control. We still hold the absolute advantage."

"True. Even if we don’t make any changes to our plans, victory will still be ours."

"Indeed. They can struggle all they want, but in the end, they’re still just pieces on the board, while we are the players. We can ’remove’ them whenever we want."

"So, we do nothing?"

"I never said that. They may not have done so knowingly, but they’ve bared their fangs at us and cost us several valuable ’resources’. Such an insult cannot simply be ignored."

"As ruthless as always, aren’t you?"

"What do you suggest we do, then?"

"Isn’t it obvious? Since they have taken something from us, we just need to take something from them."

"Hahaha, good good! Some of my ’associates’ recently informed me about a potential opportunity to extract some... compensation. Let me handle it this time. I’ve recently developed a few now ’products’, but haven’t had a chance to test their effectiveness yet."

"Very well, run your tests. Just be sure to deliver sufficient results."

"Don’t worry, don’t worry. These new ’pets’ of mine are very, very obedient. Much more so than the last batch."

"En. For our glorious cause."

""""For our glorious cause.""""