There were no empty seats. The powerful people of the city were waiting for the start of the procedure.

“Since everyone is here, let’s begin.”

Nei Roland stood up and looked at the audience.

The moment he stood up, the atmosphere changed and Nei Roland felt many attentive and piercing gazes landing on him.

“As you already know, river patrol and garrison squads on river Blue got attacked by monsters. We have lost control over the east part of the river. They destroyed most of the patrol ships with half of the crew returned to the docks. According to intel, monsters are mostly sea-orientated and unlike past migrations when they destroyed everything on their way to a certain destination, this time they capture our block posts, camps, and forts and then fortify them. They already blocked the river with something like an enchanted chain. For now, everything looks like, they have a commander and most likely have no plans to leave. You should all understand what it means.”

Many facial expressions changed when Nei finished his speech.

Nei was still standing when a red-haired woman with a band on her eye, the head of the Tenstone family known as Sophie Tenstone stood up and hit the table.

“Nei, what the hell! Protection and patrolling in that area was your family’s responsibility. Do you know how hard it was to convince dwarves to teach my family blacksmiths? He should be sailing on the river to Freinos city during this period. Tenstone family spent an enormous amount of resources to make a deal with Elder blacksmith. Now, a deal that my family was working for hundred of years to make is put at risk because of your family’s mistakes or inability. I don’t care why it happened, but if access to the Dwarf kingdom won’t be restored as soon as possible, and if that blacksmith dies because of your family’s mistake, Roland family will forever become my family’s enemy.”

Just as a woman finished speaking James Balkot, the head of the Balkot family and well-known opponent of Nei Roland took his turn to show his frustration.

“Nei, you bastard. My family made an order of a vast amount of armor and weapons from the Dwarf kingdom for the raid to the north. My retainers should be fine, but you will have to compensate us for all this time Belkot family elite units would wait till new armor and weapons wouldn’t arrive. I think that the Roland family should lose the right to patrol and protect half of the territories they patrol right now.”

Since Nei Roland was the head of the 2nd strongest family in the Freinos city, many people in the hall took their turns to show their frustrations. It was a rare chance for the opponents of the Roland family to harm his reputation. James Balkot proposed to take some of the Roland family’s rights and property as payment for collateral damage. Nei just stood with a stoic expression and listened to all accusations. While his supporters and allies began arguing back with opponents.

For a short period, the hall dived into chaos.

Darwin was sitting and listening to all words and arguments made by both sides, analyzing the potential reasons for today’s actions of every person in the hall.

There were 2 distinct sides among his vassals like Balkot’s family supporters and Roland’s family supporters. Besides, it was well-known that the Roland family was the most loyal family and closest to the Freinos family in the city.

After listening for 15 minutes, he sighed and looked at Kane Aus, the head of the Aus family, his loyal vassal, and nodded.

Just as another guest wanted to join a dispute, a freeze quickly passed through the room.

Kane Aus coughed and looked at the actively arguing people.

“I know that losing a trade route will cause many problems for everyone in here, but you missed one important detail. You forgot about Trade Union’s trade expedition that will happen next year.”

Instantly, the expressions of many people changed.

“You know how hard it was to convince ambassadors, merchants, and officials to use our trade route on the river Blue. If our trade route won’t be safe, trade expedition would choose another one. You should understand how certain people would act and soon if we don’t solve this problem, we risk losing the status of an official Trade city, recognized by Trade Union with all its benefits. Without such benefits, there would be fewer merchants, much fewer adventurers, and less income. Everyone will suffer losses that would be bigger than the current ones.”

Being a strong mage and successful, respected merchant, Kane’s words had a tremendous impact. Most of the people in the hall made deals with him or made deals, using his help and contacts in the past.

While everyone was in deep thoughts, silently sitting up to now man, Darius Hellas, the head of the average noble Hellas family, opened his mouth.

“Do you have any suggestions?”

Kane looked at a brown-skinned man with black hair and nodded.

“I think Nei has his own plan to solve our problem. Right?” said Kane, moving all the attention back to Nei Roland.

Nei Roland nodded.

“Since we finally moved to discussions on how to solve the problem, let me provide you more information about monsters so that you could understand our current situation.”

Nei looked at Darwin Freinos and nodded to his aide. Soon, a bunch of people dressed in knight outfits entered the hall with a bunch of papers that they began putting on every table in the hall.

“This is all the intel we have. For now, It’s not much, but it’s everything scouts could gather before monsters started the scout hunting. The approximate number of monsters is about 40000 - 50000, most of which have robust bodies, then only a portion of them are shamans that can make blessings. Most of the monsters are nagas that fight in the melee and only a small portion of them can fight in the distance, but all of them are powerful enemies in the water. Now, please take your time and read all information in the documents.”

After 10 minutes he felt that most have already finished reading and were looking at him.

“Now, let me explain to you how everything happened step by step from the beginning. You can use documents I provided as reference material.”

Nei sighed before beginning his speech, providing his explanation of every detail that had to be known.

After several hours, he ended his speech with the following words.

“We will need 30000 knights and 4000 mages to solve the current problem, Roland family will provide 8000 knights and 200 mages, Aus family - 2000 mages, Freinos family - 5000 knights, 1000 mages, and several Great mages and knights. Everything gathered after the battle will be divided based on the merits.” Nei stopped his speech and looked at the audience, giving them some time to think.

“Balkot family will also provide 8000 knights.”

“Lepiz family - 1500 mages”

“Hellas family - 3000 knights”

“Tenstone family will send 500 craftsmen to fix armor, 500 enchanters, and 500 alchemists to help the army in the expedition.

“Adventurer’s guild will send 3000 warriors on par with an average knight.”

“Alchemy Guild will provide 750 puppets on par with an average knight.”

“Enchanter’s guild will provide 750 golems on par with an average knight.”

“Tamer’s guild will provide 500 tamed wolves with their tamers.”

“Since we have already formed the basis of the expedition, let’s move to the next question, and decide who will be in charge of command?” Nei asked, looking at Lord Darwin.

Darwin quickly moved his glance across every family’s head, returning his gaze back to the Nei.

“Roland family has the biggest experience of patrolling and protecting that area. Nei chose someone from the Roland family who has the biggest skills and experience. He will become commander of the expedition forces, other families will send one person to the headquarters to help the expedition commander solve the problem, send people that have enough merits to meet that positions, Freinos family will provide commanders to each expedition unit and an observer to the headquarters. Each family should provide a half-year amount of supplies for their own forces. Supplies will be put into Freinos family supply house and will come through supply lines. If your supplies won’t be used up when the river would be back under our control, these supplies would be returned to their senders. Those who would try to create problems during the expedition should understand that I will eventually find the culprits, so I suggest everyone make as much effort as possible to solve our common problem. Questions?” asked Darwin with a stern gaze that could pierce souls.

Darwin gave some time for guests while he was drinking a glass of water.

“What about the river fleet, my lord, will they take part in the expedition?” asked Neitone Lepiz in the mage’s robe.

“River fleet will distract some monsters from the actual battlefield. It will play a role of support and role of transporters in the safe areas, but don’t expect them to join the battle. They have already lost half of the crew.”

Darwin waited for several more moments before moving his gaze at Nei.

“Nei, everything regarding the expedition is on you. Just send me the documents. I expect the expedition to start in several months, now let’s move on to our next topics.”

***

Getting rid of another bunch of young girls, Theo didn’t notice that several hours have already passed.

It was already the middle of the night when a beautiful black-haired girl with Lucia appeared before him right when he finally got several free moments to enjoy the meals.

Grumping to another interruption between him and tasty crab in his inner thoughts, he looked at the new people that would try to talk to him.

A glance was enough for Theo to recognize his little sister Lucia together with Teresa Roland.

The girl before him was his childhood friend. She was tall, had black hair, purple eyes, and tender skin. Her figure was already showing 1st signs of growing up. She has changed significantly since childhood times, but Theo could easily recognize the owner of those purple eyes even if she wore a mask. Back in his previous life, they almost married, but everything changed when he lost his position, reputation and was put in jail. Of course, she supported him back then and helped as much as she could, but there were no longer talks about marriage from a certain point in time, and soon their ways parted, Theo was busy recovering while she left for another country for studies.

Seeing now an interesting person quickly eased up his boredom from chatting with many people he had no interest in.

Lucia nodded and smiled, leaving them alone, and throwing several sharp glances at nearby girls as a warning.

Taking a glass of juice, Teresa smiled and looked at Theo.

“How long has it been since our last meeting?” asked Teresa.

“Over 7 years, Tess. You have become quite a beauty. I almost didn’t recognize you.”

A hint of redness appeared in Teresa’s cheeks for a moment.

“The same applies to you. You are no longer a boy with whom I enjoyed playing in childhood.”

Theo smiled with a smile of a person remembering a distant pleasant memory.

“What a pleasant time it was, snow forts, snowballs, and games till morning to evening.”

A pleasantly nostalgic smile appeared on both youths.

“You were such a cry-baby, always crying when got hit by my snowball.”

“Well, it was painful, you know. Unlike me, who missed most of the time, you almost never missed. Though I was a loser most of the time, it was a pleasant time, anyway.”

Nodding to his words, Teresa took several sips of juice.

“How have you been? I heard that you have recently become adept after the long training and solved the problem with your body condition?”

“Better than before, I finally got a chance to stop being useless for my family and began learning magic. I feel amazing after years of struggle to awaken my mana heart that stopped in the middle, refusing to form fully. What about you? I heard many rumors.”

As if expecting this question, she sighed before smiling.

“Well, it’s not anything special. I just successfully became a mage, began learning to enchant and other stuff from time to time. Almost everything that you might have heard is most likely an exaggeration.” Said Teresa.

“I see. So what a friend of mine has in mind after she would leave the city?” asked Theo, falling to his curiosity.

“Well, never thought that a sheltered son of the Lord that is known for his strange personality and lack of interest in almost everything would be curious about my plans.”

“I usually ignore almost everything, but even I would get curious when heard servants’ talks about you being accepted to one of the Trade Union supreme academies. You know you became quite a topic by getting there in your age.”

Teresa took another glass of juice from the passing servant before returning her attention back to Theo.

“I just got lucky, and helped an important person during one of my adventures, so he returned the favor back by helping me take a different route that saved me a lot of time. What about you, you have only 3 years for becoming a mage before you would have to apply to one of the supreme academies? You’re already pretty tight on time, and fell behind most of your talented peers.” Asked Teresa, with a genuinely curious expression on her face.

“Yeah, I know, will work hard. My father wants to send me to Belgon supreme academy to continue the family tradition while mother to one of the magic–orientated academies, but I am not sure what to choose myself. Anyway, I still have time to choose.”

Just as Theo finished his last words, a sound of music began coming from another room, informing the guests about the beginning of the dances.

The surrounding people began inviting their own pairs and left to the direction of the music. Quickly realizing the situation, Theo put his glass away before looking at Teresa.

“Would you like to join?”