Ch.39Imperial Special Forces (4)

“Administrator. Are you alright?”

“Uuugh, Mr. Jack…. I’ve been waiting for you day and night, never forgetting…”

“It’s only been one day.”

“I was going to kill myself if you didn’t come… but I’m so pathetic and dazed that I even failed at dying…”

“Why would you die when I’m still alive?”

“From now on, I’ll live the rest of my life only for you, Mr. Jack…”

I seriously doubt whether this woman is actually listening to anything I’m saying.

Still, I’m glad she didn’t die.

Though she probably couldn’t have died anyway.

Looking at it now, what she dropped wasn’t a knife but a letter opener.

Rather than a knife, it’s just a very dull modern plastic cutter—if she really tried to stab herself with determination, she might die, but that wouldn’t be easy.

“Get up. We have a lot to do.”

“Alright… To proceed with our marriage…”

“I’ve brought about seven hundred freed slaves. This is no time to be like this if you want to receive these people.”

“Se-se-se-seven hundred?!”

Shocked by the number, the Administrator staggered into my arms.

“I’ll… I’ll just resign starting today…”

“Resign? What are you talking about? You even passed the Imperial civil service exam.”

“But… receiving seven hundred people is beyond my abilities… Even taking in the Zilke refugees last time was overwhelming…”

“I’ll help you, so cheer up. Besides, what would you even do if you resigned? Go back to your hometown?”

“I’d just… marry Mr. Jack… cook meals at the shop and raise children…”

“Who would let you do that?!”

Mirella, who had rushed over, grabbed the Administrator by the waist and pulled her away from me with all her might.

“Are you really an administrator who gets paid by the kingdom?!”

“It’s an empire, not a kingdom, Miss Mirella…”

“Kingdom or empire, what’s the difference!”

“Wait, wait!”

I waved my hands to stop Mirella.

“Administrator. You’re an imperial civil servant, not from a kingdom?”

“Yes… I’m sorry… I passed the Imperial exam but came to a kingdom’s territory and caused this trouble…”

“No, no. That’s not what I meant.”

My goodness, she passed the Imperial central civil service exam, not a kingdom’s?

That means she must be incredibly smart? But why on earth?

It’s truly baffling. Depression is a terrifying illness indeed.

Anyway, that’s not the issue right now. We need to accommodate all those people approaching the village.

“Let’s convene the village council. We have mountains of work to do.”

I immediately summoned the village council members to the meeting hall.

Seven hundred freed slaves. We need facilities to accommodate these people.

“But did all of them say they want to stay in our village?”

Sir Hostante asked.

“On the way here, I called representatives from each village they lived in before being captured and asked about their intentions. They all agreed. They have nowhere to go right now, and above all, they’ll receive free housing and farmland if they come to our village.”

“That’s right. If they go to other cities, they’d have to rent and gradually pay back, which would be a burden for people with nothing.”

“Exactly. All these people are coming to our village. With this, we can meet the population requirement for a Tier 3 city. The problem is…”

“The problem is housing for these people. Hmm.”

The council members quickly exchanged opinions.

Currently, our village has three logging sites that produce substantial timber.

However, with seven hundred people arriving at once, our inventory is far from enough to build houses for everyone.

We need to increase the logging sites and production. And we need immediate housing.

“The good news is that it’s early summer, so the weather is warm. Let’s first identify empty houses in the village for distribution, and for the rest, we’ll build temporary shanties.”

“Then what’s the criteria for distribution? Everyone will want to move into the finished houses.”

“The criteria is whether they have children. Young people without children go to the shanties, families with children get the empty houses. That’s the right approach.”

“Then how do we solve the clothing and food problems?”

“We can empty the warehouses for immediate food. We can refill the warehouses quickly anyway. As for clothing, we’ll need to ask for donations from villagers for now. But we should send a trade delegation to Odelin City right away to purchase what we need.”

All council members agreed with my opinion. And the Administrator…

“Administrator.”

“Hmmmm…”

She’s just resting her chin on her hand, looking at me with completely relaxed eyes and smiling like an idiot.

“I need some money. We need to send a trade delegation.”

“Yes, Mr. Jack… Open it and take what you need…”

With the Administrator’s approval, I took money from the treasury.

The village treasury is completely full now, including the valuables seized from the slave traders.

I should send this with the trade delegation to convert everything into gold coins.

After getting everyone’s signatures on the hastily prepared meeting minutes, I finally stamped it with the Administrator’s official seal.

Now this becomes an official administrative order, and all actions taken to implement this order will be protected by law.

“Well, council members. Let’s move right away. People are waiting.”

With the signing of the minutes, the entire village began preparing to welcome the freed slaves under the council members’ leadership.

First, we needed to solve the housing issue.

We selected families with children and assigned them to empty houses in the village.

After the previous distribution for the Zilke refugees, all houses will be filled after this allocation.

We need to gather craftsmen and secure materials to build additional buildings as soon as possible.

For the remaining people, we used all the timber from the logging sites to start building shanties.

With about ten wagons seized from the slave traders and the Potion Knights all being from slum shanties themselves, construction progressed quickly.

Before sunset, temporary shelters for the freed slaves were prepared in the plains on the outskirts of the village.

We set up outdoor cooking areas and supplied food ingredients.

The village guards and knights will work in shifts to maintain security and provide support.

“Whoooa, there are so many people now!”

Brasya put her hands on her hips and stuck out her tongue as she looked around the shantytown.

“Do humans reproduce as quickly as pigs? How did they increase so much in just a few days?”

“They didn’t reproduce, we brought them from elsewhere. By the way, how are the pigs?”

“Oh, amazing news! The females’ bellies are all starting to swell!”

Brasya proudly announced while patting her lower belly.

“Gasp…! Miss Brasya, are you pregnant…?”

The Administrator stared at Brasya’s slightly protruding lower belly with wide eyes through her seaweed-like drooping bangs.

“Heeeh? Me?”

“Who’s the father… Oh, could it be…”

“Administrator. It’s not like that.”

I quickly interrupted the Administrator. She probably thinks I did something with Brasya since we live together in the shop.

“Administrator. Don’t think unnecessary thoughts. What else do we need to do to upgrade to a Tier 3 city?”

“Umm… We need defensive facilities, commercial facilities, a guild, an official market, improved roads, and secured water resources…”

“Please explain each one in detail.”

Defensive facilities include walls, watchtowers, and barracks for the guards.

The walls don’t need to be magnificent; even just setting up wooden palisades at key access points would be recognized.

But to upgrade further, we’d need proper walls.

Commercial facilities mean proper shops run by craftsmen, or artisans.

Blacksmith, carpentry shop, weaving shop, inn, brewery, medical clinic, and so on.

Additionally, we need a school, document repository, and public workshops.

As for roads, all roads within the village boundaries must be paved with stones, and water resources must be clean enough for the entire village population to drink without missing a day.

We already have some of these, but most need to be built anew.

Let’s try to recruit the human resources we need.

With this slave liberation operation, the village population has exceeded a thousand, and there must be some people among them who used to make a living with their skills.

We can select those people, build workshops for them, and tell them to do business.

The rest of the infrastructure is mostly civil engineering work, so it’s just a matter of investing money.

Alright. Let’s do this.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, at the slave traders’ stopover point that the Potion Knights from Starting Village had swept through.

Men with unified armaments were investigating the bloody scene.

They were a special detachment of the Imperial Army, tracking something over a long distance.

A slave trader who had been hiding in a secret shelter in the deepest part of the cave was dragged out by the soldiers.

“Lieutenant. Interrogate him.”

When the detachment commander with a red feather decoration on his helmet ordered, the lieutenant immediately kicked the slave trader in the solar plexus.

The lieutenant, who kicked the slave trader several more times as he doubled over in pain, asked a few questions in the Central language.

After repeatedly stomping on him whenever the answers were unsatisfactory, the lieutenant finally got some answers he wanted.

“He says an unidentifiable armed force raided them and took all the slaves.”

“Competing slave traders?”

“It doesn’t seem so. He says they were of a completely different race—perhaps a vigilante group that pursued them for personal revenge.”

“Hmm, vigilantes.”

The detachment commander looked around at the numerous bodies lying around.

“Central slave traders enslave entire villages. There’s nothing left for revenge.”

“I’ll interrogate him further.”

This time, the lieutenant drew a riot baton and mercilessly beat the slave trader.

Even though the slave trader was answering, the lieutenant completed the predetermined number of blows before finally translating the answer.

“People who poured red liquid? Coming through smoke that confuses the mind?”

The well-roasted berries abandoned in front of the cave were Mangamcho berries.

It seems the raiding force burned a lot of these in front, which contain tear gas components.

Red liquid that isn’t affected by tear gas smoke…

The detachment commander felt a strange sense of déjà vu.

Until recently, they had been on the tail of the Remugen mercenaries, troublemakers of the empire.

They were looking for an opportunity to ambush those who had settled in a baron’s castle, but one day they all disbanded and scattered.

When they belatedly entered the baron’s castle, the special detachment discovered broken glass bottles and traces of unidentified, half-made potions.

This seems somehow connected…

“Form search parties. Dispatch everyone to the nearest village. Our next destination is a village with an officially recognized potion shop!”