A grey pigeon hoots happily at its cage. Josiah Koha reads the message that the pigeon had sent.

His face, already pale from the cold wind whitens as his eyes scan the message. He stuffs the parchment into his pocket and runs down the stairs, past several shocked guards and maids, storms through a small group of courtiers and into the royal palace.

The guards upon seeing him snapped to attention and pushed the doors to the main chamber open. King Carmine was seated on the throne, a scantily clad whore sitting on either of his laps, as he sucked one of their teats.

The documents on affairs of the realm have been swept off the table. Another girl laid on it, her legs wide open, tempting the young King.

“I have grave news! King Louvre Gerheist has passed on!” Josiah shouts and the King looks up, his eyes darting to Josiah Koha, his Spymaster.

The Spymaster, who was nearly 60 had white hair and wrinkles, dressed in an unremarkable grey robe. He had served his father before him and often come with no great tidings at all, which Josiah was quick to remind, “I am a Spymaster after all.”

“So what if that old fart dies? This means that we have a better chance of taking that lousy country, now that the Lion of Gerheist is dead.” King Carmine said lazily before one of the girls teasingly offered her chest to his tongue again.

“My King, this means that his son, who has always advocated a stronger position against us will be taking the throne. I suggest that we place our soldiers under Duke Fantasia and Duke Clark on alert at once.” Josiah, who was used to such sights, said loudly and the King reluctantly removed his mouth from the girl and gave an overly dramatic sigh.

“My dear Spymaster. That king who barely sat his bum on the throne will not think of starting hostilities so soon. In fact, he should be sending us tribute! Right? We are the powerful ones in this realm, are we not?” King Carmine said loudly and one of the girls giggled, “You’re the powerful one…” as she traced her finger along his stomach.

“My King, the Gerheist soldiers are well-trained, well provisioned and due to recent events, have become increasingly defensive against us. I urge that you refrain from—“

Well, more of the fact that you are a bloody idiot who sent troops to a kingdom whom we were extremely friendly with at a point of time, thought Josiah as King Carmine ringed a bell.

A courtier hastily ran in, “Anything for you, my King!”

“Send a messenger to the new brat, the new King Gerheist. Tell him I expect 20,000 gold coins in payment to our treasury so that we can maintain good relations.”

The courtier hesitated as Josiah protested angrily, “My King, you will be insulting the Kingdom of Gerheist and it is unlikely that they—“

“Silence! I am the King!” King Carmine roared and threw his goblet of wine at Josiah.

Josiah swallowed the words he wished to say and he bowed, before leaving.

One day later, the Spymaster had disappeared. Some say he retired, some say he was executed at night.

However, he would pop up in history at a later time… Yet, that was a tale for another time.

Lawrence decided that the current gold coins he had from the RPG game ought to be melted down. In his basement, which he had happily been able to expand beyond his wildest dreams thanks to the extremely adept construction system that Lawrence inherited from the game.

Now, he had built an advanced forge that would allow him to melt down gold en masse. He also had a greenhouse going enchanted with magical light that would act as daylight so that he could grow all forms of seeds that he had in his inventory.

Next, he also had an alchemy room so that he could craft some potions once in awhile. He realized that only the herbs from the game actually had any real effect. Anything crafted of items from similar properties in this world was useless or significantly weaker.

The Tower of Mercy has swollen in ranks from the number of herbalists and nurses. Many were disbelieving at first of the free treatment promised there but now, people from around Tears and Black Bay Village travelled to have their ailments examined.

Lawrence frequently dropped off herbal harvests and health potions in the Tower of Mercy to the nurses there. As refugees gradually trickled to a halt as Lawrence has imported all of them, he took efforts to create cultural integration programs.

However, Lawrence has overestimated the cultural differences between the people from the Carmine Kingdom and Boulesky. The people were extremely similar, with slight differences in tradition and culture and the latter having an extremely strong emphasis on honour, which was a trait that something that the people of the Kingdom of Carmine appreciated.

The former on the other hand, had a tradition of respecting the elderly, which Lawrence noted was quite similar to certain aspects of Confucianism. It seemed that the coming together of the Bouleskians and Carminians reminded Lawrence of how Singapore was like, a tolerant multicultural society.

On the other hand, Lawrence has slowly levelled the soldiers to 15, which meant that theoretically, they should be able to out fight Kaisenberg. On the other hand, Lawrence, Kraft and Eveline Evergarden have gathered day after day to come up with a suitable design for the city walls.

The usually silent Kraft completely shocked Lawrence when Eveline suggested that the walls forfeit archery towers in favour of trebuchets. The usually silent man pushed back almost immediately, explaining what he envisioned for the walls to have.

Kraft laid down a plan called Operation Unthinkable.

The operation puts forth the theory that an enemy strong enough to smash through King Carmine’s Royal Army, Count Boulevard and Lord Black and turns the region of Black Bay to a frontline city.

Kraft’s plan is on the assumption that the enemy has a 20 to 1 numerical superiority. Lawrence had brought in the food reserve numbers from Craig, who had assisted Jacob in compiling them.

The food reserves in the city would be able to sustain the entire population for six months at the current time.