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"Not enough for Merlin to make the decision. Without showing her true character, Merlin wouldn't have chosen the difficult choice."

"So, you're going to ignore her as she dies?" Gala asked, probing.

"Yes," Arthur nodded without much thought. "Once Rega grows, Vena will try to reclaim her position as a leader if she's still alive. With Merlin being the leader, grateful and cooperative, then the druids will have a proper relationship with Hidden City."

"Why didn't you help Vena from the beginning, making her grateful?"

"Using my powers to help her would have made her grateful, but the druids would have been the same: sheltered, needy, and unwilling to work with humans."

"Fresh blood in the leadership would make things easier."

"And," Arthur paused. "It would be easier to manipulate him. That's the world of politics, after all."

***

"The nobles here think all of your resources have been destroyed," Dia's voice came from the hand mirror. "That's your plan, I guess. But if they were destroyed, I'll rob a bunch of nobles and buy them for you."

As he listened to her words, Arthur's heart twinged. He missed how protective she was. Dia was a tough nut to crack, but once someone becomes close to her, she would protect them with all of her ability.

"For what you asked, things are going fine." Dia's following message began. "The nobles still detest me, but some of them covet my powers. Rinzo is helping me, and he found a maid for me. She's pretentious shit, but she knows what she's doing."

Arthur listened as he snickered. Dia went on about her stay in the capital, and she mentioned some attempts to remove Arthur from Lordship for incompetence. Solomon rejected all of them.

"Can it be that..." Arthur frowned. He didn't care if he was impeached, but Dia's reaction to those nobles would be disastrous.

"I wanted to kill them all." Dia's voice was scary to hear.

"That's my girl!" Arthur laughed, but he was honestly worried about her following words.

"But I decided that I will only memorize their faces for now, and then, I'll behead every single one of them after I..." Dia then rambled about gory stuff that made Arthur's stomach turn. When she finally noticed, she was startled. "Ah, sorry, haha. Where was I?"

Arthur smiled when she panicked. She then tried to talk about everyday things, but her fluster was obvious. After sending a few messages to her, Arthur turned to his legacy.

"How do I increase the estate size?"

[Clearing monsters from the area and setting up boundaries that are enough to ward off, at the very least, monsters of the mid-tier.]

'I see, so our walls need to stand strong against mid-tier monsters.'

This would be the minimum requirement to set up an estate size. However, Arthur found the process to be too troublesome. That's why he called for a conference the following day.

"The druids agreed to work with us," Arthur reported, and Courage's surprise was unmasked. "I'll work with them to supply the herbs and corps we need. But, before that, I have a proposal for everyone."

"Yes?" The Knight of Courage was intrigued.

"We need to establish a center of the city, where we'll be handling most operations. We can't keep having our conferences in a mud house."

"Well, yeah, but this is what we have at the moment." Manager Gruen frowned. "We don't have the workforce to build a mansion for us. That would be the same as those nobles..."

"That's why we won't be needing any people. Our headquarters will be in the forest, the giant tree that the druids are going to nurture."

"A... tree?" Ma blinked, leaning back in his chair. He even stopped taking notes. "That's truly unorthodox, but how practical would it be?"

"Practical enough to build a natural defense once it grows fully. The tree isn't like any others, and we can mold it to use it as the central pillar of our city."

"That would need a lot of planning and a creative mind," Gruen muttered. "But I don't see why it's not possible."

"Did you invite the architect?" Arthur asked Ma, who nodded and took out a parchment. "What did he say?"

"The architect replied that he'd be traveling toward us faster than the wind. But, before he agrees, he wants to meet the Seika of Living Beings."

"Why does everyone want to meet me?" Arthur sighed.

"A slave, a gardener, a kidnapper, a Seika, a Lorius, and a Lord," Gala said with a smile. "I can understand their sentiment. They want to see for themselves the man who beheaded a noble and got away with it."

"They will be disappointed then." Arthur shrugged. "I'm quite normal." He tapped his fingers on the table as everyone looked at each other.

"Yeah, normal." Gala held back a laugh.

"Ableism isn't tolerated here." Arthur frowned. But Gala simply shook her hand.

"Don't worry, Seika, the last thing someone notices would be your missing arm. They would be too intimidated by your eyes."

"When is the architect coming?" Arthur ignored her teasing and turned to Ma, who hurried to read the parchment, almost dropping it. 'Wait, is he scared?' Arthur blinked.

"The architect is coming today in the afternoon."

"That's fast." Arthur was surprised. "Clear out a house for him, and let a few workers decorate it. Take some of the furniture from the storage room."

"Are you sure he would agree?"

"He's coming all this way, of course, he will. If things go wrong, I'll just kidnap him." Arthur joked, but the rest of them nodded thoughtfully. "..." He was speechless.

***

Arthur walked through the camp and reached the smithies that the blacksmiths were building. Workers were moving about as Arthur watched the smithy get built brick by brick.

"Lord Seika?"

A feminine voice inquired. Arthur turned to see that a young woman with a ponytail was standing a few meters away. He interviewed her before. She was a blacksmith apprentice.

"You are, Rosa?" Arthur nodded. The young woman's face was surprised as her head bobbed up and down.

"Yes! I'm honored that you still remember my name, My Lord." She said with a grateful expression. Arthur couldn't understand how he would forget a name with his stats, but he didn't say anything.

"Is something wrong?" Arthur asked with puzzlement. "Oh, is this your smithy?"

"That's right, but I wanted to talk to you about something else." Rosa breathed in and out. "I want to suggest a way to procure the ores for our smithies. I know that we brought along enough to get us started, but a long-term solution is necessary."

"Go on?" Arthur was intrigued. He did have plans to procure ores from the mountain range, but he still liked the idea of people suggesting.

"My ability is seamless communication. It's useless in most cases, as we don't have a lot of foreigners because of the war, but..."

"Wait, does that communication work one-way or two-way?" Arthur was surprised. "I mean, can you only understand others or communicate both ways."

"Ah, it's a passive and active ability." Rosa was startled but answered. "Passively, I can understand others. But by using mana, I can communicate with others."

"You're hired!" Arthur gave her a thumbs up, but Rosa was confused.

"Hired? I didn't suggest my idea yet." Rosa was confused.

"Oh, right, continue." Arthur coughed.

"I want to talk to the Ogres tribe to mine for the city," Rosa said, and Arthur tilted his head in confusion.

"You can talk to other species? Uncivilized and unintelligent ones?" Arthur asked, and Rosa nodded. "Holy shit. I understand, but can you even convince them?"

"Well, faced with extermination, I think they would agree," Rosa said with a smile. As he heard her words, Arthur liked her even more.

"You'll be my secretary and the Auction House's announcer. Is that alright? We'll also go along with your idea." Arthur said, and before she could reply, they heard a screech from the sky.

The two of them looked upward and found a giant bird flapping its wings toward their camp. As Arthur squinted his eyes, he could see that there was someone on top of the bird.

"GREETINGS!!!"

A roar shook the sky, and its origin was the person standing on top of the bird. Carrying a large backpack, a man stood with his hands on his hips on top of the giant bird.

"Who is that?" Rosa muttered with shock.

"Well, I think it's the person that is going to outline our city," Arthur answered with a blank face. "I can only say that he looks... unique." Even though he said that, he knew it was an understatement.