Elliot's eyes lit up.
"Where did the news come from? Is it reliable?"
"From the Imperial Palace. It's reliable. The Night Watch Bureau and the Dome Institute imposed controls on the Imperial Capital to ensure the festival went smoothly. Now that it's over, they'll naturally ease those controls gradually."
Elliot secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
If the controls remained as strict as before, he really would have struggled. After all, he no longer had just a handful of believers to keep secret, but several thousand. The difficulty was on an entirely different scale.
Even with Eleanor secretly helping, it would have been very difficult.
That took care of his biggest problem.
Elliot thought for a moment, then brought up another matter:
"There are a few Machine Priests I think highly of. I'd like to transfer them to the church in the Hearthfire District. Would that be possible?"
During last night's battle, several Machine Priests had chosen to side with Elliot.
The Reforging Flame and the Sterling Family were nominally independent of each other. Elliot's influence was limited, and the Machine Priests clearly intended to keep their distance from him.
He needed to protect those men, or their lives in the Church would probably become difficult.
Conrad hesitated. "Transferring them to the church might be troublesome, but we could find a reason to station them at the factory."
"That works. Let's do that."
Elliot nodded.
There was still plenty left to handle at the factory, but the family no longer needed to intervene. It would be more convenient to let Vanessa and the others deal with it.
His influence over the Hearthfire District worked from the top down, while Vanessa's Esoteric Cult worked from the bottom up. His degree of control over the Hearthfire District would be unprecedented.
Elliot's gaze