Aftermath

After the pirate captives were taken to the basement, Paul noticed a stranger standing next to Schroeder. Although his face was covered in stubble and his clothes were tattered, it was clear at a glance that such clothes were not something ordinary civilians could afford.

He asked, "Schroeder, who is this?"

"Oh, I forgot to mention. He claims to be from the Foster Family of the Horn Bay Alliance in the south. He came to Northwest Bay to explore several months ago and was unfortunately kidnapped by pirates."

The young man immediately stepped forward and performed a noble's salute, his posture perfect.

"Earl, I presume you are the lord of this place. Please allow me to introduce myself. My father, the Marquis Foster, is a member of the Horn Bay Alliance Council. I am his second son, Quiller Foster. I extend the highest respect from the Foster Family to you, and thank you for rescuing me from the pirates this time."

After listening to the young man's self-introduction, he barely managed to suppress his laughter and responded, "You're too kind! This is my duty as a lord."

This Marquis Foster really knows how to name people. Since he is a big figure in the Horn Bay Alliance Council, he must also be engaged in trade. To name his son "Quiller" (Fortunately - Kuile in Chinese, sounds like "loss" or "in the red" in Chinese), although he knows that it is only a coincidence that the pronunciation is the same as in Chinese, he still can't help but complain inwardly.

"You are Quiller Foster?" After the young man announced his name, the members of the Lichman Adventurer Group all looked at him at once.

"Indeed, it is I." The young man smoothed his hair, quite narcissistically. These guys are obviously commoners, so there's no need to be as polite to them as he was to the Earl just now.

The leader, Meru Heimer, was furious: "Ah—do you know how much effort we spent looking for you?"

Quiller Foster looked blank, his face full of question marks: "Uh... who might you be?"

"Ahhh! I can't take it anymore, what a willful young master. Your family hasn't heard from you for two months and they're as anxious as ants on a hot pot. The Marquis commissioned our adventurer group to find you. After we ran here, we found out that you were trapped in a pirate's den. We almost lost our lives to save you."

"Uh, I was too impulsive and made my family worry."

"Hey, hey! The main point of what I just said was in the last sentence."

"Huh? What did you say?"

"I'm so angry! I don't care, the commission only said to find someone, but it didn't say anything about fighting pirates. The commission must be doubled, no, it should be three times the original amount."

Quiller Foster snapped his fingers and said with his eyes closed, "Hehe, no problem! I always respect adventurers, and the Foster Family will definitely fulfill your wishes."

His attitude couldn't have been more indifferent.

"You didn't even ask what the initial commission was!" Everyone in the hall, including Paul, felt a surge of envy and jealousy towards the nouveau riche.

While they were talking, the officers who were mopping up the remaining pirates in Franklin Harbor arrived at the Church one after another.

So Quiller Foster and the Lichman Adventurer Group were arranged to rest, and the townspeople were dismissed to go home. In a room next to the hall, company and battalion-level officers were summoned for a meeting.

The adjutant, Joyce, was responsible for compiling the results of the battle. He stood up and reported: "Gentlemen, the results of this battle are brilliant. The Shark Gang pirate group has been wiped out. A total of one hundred and twenty-three pirates were killed, and all the others, including the bandit leader Shark, were captured. We suffered thirty-two casualties and fifty-five were injured to varying degrees."

The officers exchanged glances with each other, very satisfied with the results of the battle.

Paul asked, "Is there any news about the pirate group led by the leader nicknamed 'Loach'?"

Joyce replied, "We didn't encounter their people in this battle. According to the prisoners' confessions, they seemed to have fled back to the sea long ago."

Schroeder added, "When we were chasing Shark, we also recovered several boxes of coins that they had loaded onto the ship, roughly estimated at 2,000 gold coins, 6,000 silver coins, and tens of thousands of copper coins."

"Wow!" Everyone opened their mouths in surprise, not expecting that the pirate profession was so "promising," with a small pirate group looting so much wealth.

Paul was overjoyed. With so much money, he could do some things he had wanted to do for a long time.

"We can use this money to cast more cannons."

"Recruit more soldiers."

"Build more firearms."

"And establish our own naval power."

The officers expressed their opinions on how to use the money, and even Cecil kept winking at him, implying that his intelligence work also needed more funding.

"But a lot of this money was stolen from the coastal residents, shouldn't we return it to them?"

Someone suddenly raised this question.

The room suddenly fell silent, the heated discussion came to an abrupt end, and everyone looked at the Earl at the same time after exchanging glances.

Damn! Why are you all looking at me? Of course, I want to return it to the people, but I don't know if you want to. If you also want to return it to the people, of course, everyone will be happy, but if you don't want to return it to the people, wouldn't I be going against everyone's wishes if I said it? Would you throw me out the window?

The Earl's heart was torn. Ah! It's killing me, who will stand up and express their opinion first?

After staring at each other for nearly a minute, the old knight Schroeder finally stood up.

"With our current methods, it's difficult to accurately tally the losses of each household. Besides, the Shark Gang has been rampant on the seas for many years, and some of the money was stolen from other territories. If we allow the people to come and claim it at will, it will give many treacherous people the opportunity to fish in troubled waters. For example, if someone was clearly not robbed, but they insist that the Pirates stole the only Silver Coin they had, how should we handle that?"

Everyone came to their senses. Ah, the old knight was right. Maybe there wouldn't be much money left in the end, or they might even have to subsidize some of it.

Cecil immediately said, "Yes, the common people are the most detestable, both cunning and greedy. When I was in charge of forestry, the most troublesome thing was those troublemakers who were always thinking about taking small advantages."

Unexpectedly, the young Earl was furious upon hearing this. He slammed the table, glared at the intelligence director with wide eyes, scaring him into immediately covering his mouth, although he still didn't know what he had said wrong.

Schroeder continued, "Therefore, I suggest compensating the people who have suffered losses in other ways. For example, reducing some taxes, or building bridges and roads for the villages that were robbed, or sending people to investigate secretly, and only giving a certain amount of money to those families who were indeed robbed and whose livelihoods are threatened, of course, under other names. This is better than letting people come and claim it based on just one side of the story."

"Good idea!"

"Sir Schroeder really sees far ahead!"

"I second that."

Everyone agreed with Schroeder's suggestion.

Paul also deeply agreed. Seeing that everyone agreed, he made a final decision: "Okay! It's settled then."

Last night, I read through the previous chapters and felt that the writing was a bit bad, and there were many typos. I'm going back today to try to fix it.

Also, I feel that calling the protagonist by his name 'Paul' is more natural than calling him by his last name 'Greiman', and I will change it accordingly.