The Lord's Troubles

Blake the Snow Bear was now very troubled; he couldn't understand what had happened on his territory.

He is the lord of Snow Bear Territory, having inherited his position from his father thirty years ago.

To be honest, his life over the past thirty years has not been smooth. The Northlands is bitterly cold, and there is a great demand for food production, water, and even heat sources.

Maintaining these normal production processes alone requires a great deal of his energy every day.

Not to mention the many other very upsetting things that happened.

His father was a conservative lord, and during his reign, he was extremely nervous when he heard that the Alliance had accepted other territories.

His father immediately ordered Artisan to produce a large quantity of weapons and equipment and to prepare defensive measures, as his father was determined to fight the Alliance mages to the death.

It was fortunate that his father did such a thing, otherwise he would never have been able to become the lord.

After their father made his decision, all his siblings were shocked by his astonishing idea.

They had visited the site where the Northern Lands Society had built the city; they had seen that once-solid city, which was now merely waved by a mage floating in the air.

The entire city wall and the castle inside collapsed and turned into ruins. The houses of all the villagers who had been driven out of the city also collapsed at this moment.

What shocked his siblings even more was that those mages were particularly skilled at building, rather than destroying.

Within three days, they saw a pillar taller than a mountain rise from the ground, emitting a terrifying temperature from its top.

These events caused his brothers and sisters to lose all confidence, believing that fighting the Alliance was a dead end, so they left Snow Bear Territory overnight and fled to an unknown place.

But what happened next was rather comical: the Alliance merely absorbed that piece of land, without touching any of the surrounding the Alliance.

His father could only lock up all the weapons and equipment and sell the surplus ones to recoup some of the losses.

However, the purchase of a large amount of weapons and equipment exacerbated the already precarious situation of the territory.

Blake shouldn't have inherited the lord's position, but when all his brothers and sisters ran away, only he, a seven-year-old boy, didn't.

This led his father to directly designate him as the next lord.

So, when he was a teenager, he succeeded his father to the position and gained the power of a lord.

However, the impact of his father's purchase of large quantities of weapons and equipment had not yet subsided, and he worried about the meager amount of money in his territory every day.

In the Northern Territory, there aren't many places to make money, and his father acquired so much weaponry and equipment thanks to the savings of generations.

When it came to him, he was penniless, possessing only weapons and equipment.

To make matters worse for his territory, the reputation of the Northern Lands Society spread throughout half of the Northern Territory.

At that time, he had just taken office and did not know how to handle tax collection, which led to his subordinates collecting taxes that were too harsh, making it difficult for the people to survive.

Just then, news came that there was a huge furnace at the Northern Lands Society, a place that was incredibly warm and spring-like all year round.

This led the desperate people to embark on this path and head to the Northern Lands Society.

You have to understand, these people would never have taken this path if they hadn't been desperate to survive.

Because those people were not Profession, and there were very few who could even be called apprentices, they were unable to withstand the monsters on the road and the harsh cold of the Northern Territory.

If they remain where they are, the monsters will not be able to breach the strong city walls, and the warm fireplaces at home will keep them warm.

But what's done is done, and even he can't send these things back to those commoners.

In that incident, approximately one-tenth of the territory's population went to the Northern Lands Society.

According to his estimate, half of them did not reach the Northern Lands Society for various reasons.

Furthermore, if it weren't for the fact that some of the people who set off earlier fed the monsters along the way, perhaps not so many people would have been able to reach the Northern Lands Society.

Blake sat in a fur-trimmed chair, gazing intently at the roaring fire, lost in thought.

The previous troubles were old, but the current troubles are even more perplexing, leaving him unsure how to cope.

In the past few days, a large group of unfamiliar faces have suddenly passed through his town, and they are not businessmen.

When he first heard the news, he was excited because these people could also collect a little 'toll'.

Driven by greed, he drastically increased the cost of entering the city in order to fill the financial deficit in his territory.

However, collecting this money is very difficult.

Those apprentice-level Profession are alright; even if two or three of his guards attack together, it's not impossible for him to take them down.

But who knew that among the crowd passing by, there were actually First Order Profession, and quite a few of them at that.

He was looking at the statistics of his knights, and his head was throbbing with pain.

"Ten guards were wounded, three were killed, and half of the wounded guards are unable to move..."

"Two of my four knights are already in bed."

This information had troubled him for a long time. Now he estimated that there were probably double-digit First Order Profession in the city, not including himself and his knights.

As a lord, he was not worried at all when faced with three or four First Order Profession, because of the bonuses his territory gave him and the power he could draw upon within it.

He could easily fight three or four First Order Profession and defeat them.

But who can tell him what's going on with more than ten First Order Profession? No matter how powerful he is as a lord, he can't possibly deal with so many First Order Profession!

To make matters worse for his territory, a strangely dressed man came to Snow Bear City and handed him a letter.

The man was wearing a blue-gray suit of armor, with epaulets on his shoulders that he didn't recognize.

When he opened the letter, he felt as if the sky was falling.

[The Goddess of Ocean Currents greets you, Lord of Snow Bear Territory:]

A bishop of the Goddess will soon arrive in Snow Bear Territory with a force of about a hundred men, hoping the lord will provide us with supplies; we will naturally offer corresponding rewards in return.

"A hundred men?!" Are they here to attack his Snow Bear Territory? And just the symbol of the Church of the Goddess of Ocean Currents alone is giving him a huge headache.

He had heard how fanatical those who believed in Deity could be, and how one could easily get into a conflict with them.

With so many things piling up at once, he doesn't know how to handle it.

Just then, one of his Knight Attendant knocked on the door and bowed to report something to him.

"My lord, the Battle Mage from the Northern Lands Society has arrived. She's here to clear out the Undead in that mine."

The Knight Attendant received no response. He looked up and saw the lord's unpredictable expression.