The people of Transia had won another military victory.
On the very day Murphy returned to Blackflame Pass, news spread like wildfire that the people of Transia had sent three thousand troops to face fifteen thousand gnolls head-on and destroyed the Cleaver Claw vanguard's position. After the legend of Fort Courage, it became another example of the Transians' fanatical devotion to war.
Some had even turned it into poems and catchy tunes about the Battle of the Plateau of Death.
This clearly wasn't something ordinary foot soldiers could have come up with. If Murphy had to guess, the Blood Rat Gang under Dorothy was behind it. Those rats from the gray areas knew exactly how to spread a reputation.
In fact, the Blood Rat Gang's most important job during this Black Calamity was to collect the Transians' victories and spread the word.
That was the battle for public opinion.
Just as Murphy stepped into Lord Heather's command post, a quartermaster at Blackflame Pass finally finished calculating the staggering quantity of military supplies the Transians had redeemed this time.
It was a terrifying figure, enough to make every quartermaster under Lord Heather spit up three liters of blood.
That was because the development team had indeed made a mistake in its "numerical design," but the mistake wasn't Murphy's. It was a "land mine" the vampire lord had quietly planted back when he and Lord Heather discussed how to distribute the spoils of war.
According to Lord Heather's understanding of warfare, even if the Transians were exceptional fighters, killing ten gnolls and kobolds in a single battle was already the limit. So she had generously set the reward for each gnoll at two honor points, and even agreed to the ill-intentioned Murphy's proposed "assist rewards" and "death allowances."
That was perfectly reasonable.