Walter returned to the tavern after he finished his delectable gourmet meal. However, just as he reached the stairs to make his way towards his room, he was instead stopped by a voice calling out to him.
“My lord! Please wait.”
“Yes?”
Turning to face the owner of the voice, the tavern maid, Jane, he found that she had a somewhat large box that was the size of two fists in her hands. With a somewhat cheery voice, she spoke.
“Somebody told me to give this to you.”
So it finally arrived.
Smiling, Walter silently accepted the box before he went up the stairs and entered his room. After putting the box away in his drawer, he started moved towards his taverns window as he fell into his usual contemplation. So far, almost everything has gone according to plan. Everyday he raked in the profits of Project Green Thumb while Thyvin continued with his necromancy research.
As he thought this, his eyes gazed past the city walls and towards the lands beyond. From here, he could vaguely see the miniscule silhouette of the Valhan Mountain Range. Due to its biodiversity, that mountain range was frequented by adventurers, hunting both low and mid-level monsters.
It was also where the majority of Walter’s ‘operation’ was based.
After a few days, the skeleton goblins were able to find more suitable caves for ‘goblin farming.’ Now there were seven artificial goblin caves of various sizes producing goblins at a rapid pace. All seven of these caves were constantly managed and protected by the ever growing undead goblin horde.
This ‘goblin farming’ system set up by him and Thyvin was not only cost effective but it was also self-sufficient. They didn’t even need to return to Valha’s mountainous region after the first expedition ended with the creation of the first artificial goblin cave. The skeleton goblins, under orders from Thyvin found and created more artificial goblin caves on their own.
This, on top of the fact that the skeleton goblins were also extremely cheap and expendable made them the perfect labour force. In a similar manner to a factories of the industrial revolution, there existed a ‘production line’ for the mass production of goblin hides. Except, instead of human labour, they were rather replaced by mindless skeleton goblins.
The process begins with the deaths of any newly spawned goblins who were ‘born’ into their adulthood. From there, their bodies would either be skinned for their hides or stored away for use in the creation of more greenskin pods. Those goblins who were skinned were also later brought before Thyvin and raised as more skeleton goblins.
Thanks to their teeming numbers and obedient undead nature, the skeleton goblins produced countless goblin hides everyday. However, that was also the full extent that skeleton goblins could contribute to the production process.
Since it would be too risky for the skeleton goblins to stray too far from the caves, their movement was largely limited to the mountain range. Instead, the transport of goods were facilitated by a joint effort of Thyvin’s skeleton knights and Broker’s men. Of course, the latter of the two was completely unaware of the former’s true nature.
The skeleton knights carried the crates filled with goblin hides from the Valhan Mountain Range to a seemingly insignificant village. Under a combination of bribery and duress, the village leaders agreed for their fishing lodge to be used as a smuggling hut at night when their fishermen went to sleep.
From there, Broker’s men would transport the crates to Belmud via cheap river barges. Most of the details pertaining to how the goods were smuggled into the city from that point were left to Broker to decide. To prevent Walter’s scheme from being compromised, only he and Thyvin knew about where the hides ‘originated’ from. Broker was only responsible for peddling the goods.
However, it was also because of their reliance on the skeleton knights for a majority of their transportation efforts that Broker’s sales stock was limited to roughly thirty crates a day. Although it was an increase to the previous twenty per day, it still underutilised the full capacity of Project Green Thumb’s productivity.
In fact, the current production rate produced more goblin hides than the transport capacity of the skeleton knights.
That meant that a majority of the goblin hides rotted away in storage due to the efficiency of their current transport system not matching the demands of their production rate. This significantly lowered their profits. While they technically still earned a lot of money, it was only a mere fraction of their earning potential.
Such logistical problems was one of the major issues that Walter wanted to tackle first. If he couldn’t rely on the skeleton knights who were low in number and if he couldn’t rely on the skeleton goblins whose movements were limited the mountains, then he must rely on another form of labour.
Walter turned his gaze away from Belmud’s city wall and the lands beyond and instead surveyed the bustling streets full of people below. Looking down at them, the answer to his logistics problem could be those men and women outside right now. But Walter already ruled out human labour as an option. If Broker wasn’t allowed to know about the artificial goblin caves, why should anyone else?
That left Walter with only one other option. Monsters. Monster ‘employees’ who were loyal to a satisfying enough degree and possessed a reasonable level of intelligence.
And he already had a monster in mind.
His eyes shifted away from the people and instead gazed at the disgusting gutters of the street. His focus lay not on the shit-stained gutters but on the skittering rats that populated them. Desperate but tenacious creatures who will literally eat shit if it means survival.
There existed a particular monster which was similarly tenacious like rats when it came to survival. Although, it would be a lie to say that their tenacity was the only feature this creature shared with rats.
But as much as Walter wanted to recruit those aforementioned monsters, he currently lacked the funds to do so. While he still earned a lot of money compared to a common peasant as well as the middle class bourgeoisie, he still could not afford to invest in recruiting the aid of this particular kind of monster.
At this moment, all profits made were split in even thirds among three major proprietors. One third went to Walter for use in expanding and managing the operation, another third went to Thyvin for him to continue his necromancy research, and the last third went to Broker for him to split among himself and his lackeys for their contributions in distributing and selling the goods.
“Hmmm..? What’s this.”
As Walter continued to stare out as he contemplated to himself, his attention was drawn by a commotion. The people in the streets slowly stopped whatever they were doing and made their way for the Belmud’s city square. His curiosity getting the better of him, Walter soon joined those people.
After fixing his appearance once, he left the half-empty tavern in a hurry and joined the crowds. When he reached the city square, he found that it was more densely packed than normal. The entire square was virtually filled to the brim by commoners. There were also those who decided against joining the ‘swarm’ of people instead looked downwards from one of the many balconies overlooking the square.
Walter was one of those people. After he confirmed that they were heading to the city square, he made a turn and entered Paulus’s Pleasure Palace. Despite the fact that he had already been there not too long ago, the waitresses readily prepared a table for him when they heard that he wanted another one of his ‘usual’ black coffee.
Sitting at the balcony which faced the city square, Walter was given a clear view of whatever commotion was currently occurring. What he saw surprised him, he saw men who wore chainmail armour mounted on their horses who seemed to be ‘herding’ the masses. After a short while, the crowd was forced to open a pathway towards the castle.
Evenly spaced out among this pathway were more men wearing chainmail armour, raising banners of the Eikthyrnir family. Half of these banners had a golden background with a black emblem of the Eikthyrnir family emblazoned onto the centre, the other half instead had checked black and white fields with a golden Eikthyrnir emblem placed at the centre.
These ‘bannermen’ lead up to the numerous Knights who stood at the direct centre of the city square with their backs facing the castle walls. Multiple yellow and silver ‘walls’ was formed from their shiny silver plate armour with golden capes as they stood in neat, orderly rows.
At the rightmost of the frontmost row of knights, there stood a man with long golden blonde hair that matched his golden coat. It was Thyvin’s older cousin, ‘Leistro Eikthyrnir,’ the son of Earl Giolstro Eikthyrnir and the heir apparent of the ‘Belmud Branch’ of the Eikthyrnir family, effectiving making him next in line to inherit rule over the city Belmud and its surrounding region.
According to Thyvin, his cousin was a respected and revered archmage who specialised in electromancy, yet here he was, standing as a mere greeter for someone else who was equally as or perhaps even more important. There was nothing else that Walter could think of that would warrant such a dramatic ‘welcoming ceremony.’
Soon enough, the recipients of this ‘welcoming’ arrived.
A long procession of knights atop their armoured mounts slowly came into Walter’s view. The sounds of hooves trotting rhythmically and armour clanking subtly echoing in the distance, growing louder as they drew closer. Thanks to his position at the balcony, he was given a rather useful overview of the entire procession.
Other than the two foremost knights, the other knights lined up in four long columns, each one consisting of about twenty-five knights each. At the very back, there were about fifty other men wearing simple brown gambesons who were either on horseback or drove carriages. They were probably the auxiliary force for these knights.
It was clear from a single glance that these knights did not belong to the Eikthyrnir family. Unlike the Eikthyrnir knights which mostly had a golden colour scheme with a stag as their ‘representative’ animal, these knights’ primary colour appeared to be bright orange with a dog as their representative animal.
Instead of a golden cape with golden plume feathers, their capes were bright orange with an orange plume feather attached to the top of their armet. Rather than rearing stags engraved onto their pauldrons, they had pouncing dogs and a silhouette of a dog’s face was carved onto their breastplates in place of the Eikthyrnir’s horned stag.
Most knights within the procession carried a lance with an orange ribbon which they pointed towards the sky while some knights carried a banner instead of a lance. Their banner consisted of a black snarling dog with large pointed ears and was contained within a white flame at the centre of a bright orange background.
Each knight remained impartial towards the crowd around them and only rode forward as they followed the leading knight. In comparison to the other knights, the leading knight’s armour was distinctively more unique and decorative. Instead of just one orange plume feather at the top of their helmet, the knight had several.
The steel plates of their armour itself was designed in a totally different manner to the others. The pauldrons and breastplate were all shaped to mimic a dog’s head. The ‘steel dog’ at the breast revealed its fangs as it snarled while the dogs of the left and right pauldrons barked and howled respectively.
What Walter found most intriguing however, was that this particular knight was actually a female. Although her face and body was concealed under her armour, her figure was considerably slimmer than her male counterparts.
Soon after, the one knight beside the female leader opened up a scroll in his hands. A few seconds later, he began to shout aloud.
“Announcing the arrival of her most esteemed and illustrious ladyship! Chivalric Knight of the King’s Royal Knightage! Wielder of the Coruscare Blade! Queller of the Dalnayan Rebellion! Arielle Vyatch!”
