"Here’s the offer. You sell me your iron and steel for 90% of the market price and in return, I will sell you wheat, rice, vegetables and meat at 90%. What do you say?"

"Deal!"

Once the negotiations were done, the group simply sat and talked about random things until the viscount glanced at Adrian and spoke directly to him.

"You should probably keep an eye on the merchants and the gangs in your territory. I’ve heard that the count does not like you and had sent these groups out to steal from your people."

Adrian nodded and smiled, "I knew that they were there to cause trouble but didn’t expect them to be from the count. I couldn’t do much because I didn’t have a knight until now, but I don’t have to put it back anymore. Though... I still don’t have an army to secure the perimeter of my territory to stop them from smuggling the ingots."

He thought thought about it, frowning slightly as he tried to come up with a plan.

Building an army was going to take a long time and Adrian didn’t have that luxury yet. Luckily for him, Alexander chuckled as he rapped on the table with his finger.

"I can lend you 200 of my soldiers for three months. Use this time to raise your own army and hire more knights. One is enough for a barony but if you wish to be truly protected, you’ll need more. Of course, you’ll have to pay me for those soldiers. They’ll be at your place in two days from now."

With the solution to his problem delivering itself to his door, Adrian stood up from the chair and grinned, "I’ll head back and start preparing then."

He didn’t even need to signal to Claire as she stood up right after he finished speaking and Aria grabbed herself another bowl of ice cream before stuffing it all in her mouth, only to have a brain freeze.

Adrian chuckled and shook his head before he picked her up and bid farewell to the others.

The journey back home took a few hours and Adrian simply waited for two more days until Alexander’s soldiers arrived at his place.

He had heard about the murder, but his hands were tied as he had no one to help him catch the gang. Claire alone wouldn’t be able to do much as no one really knew who killed the young man.

Claire stood beside him and his army looked at both him and Claire, waiting for orders.

"I want you all to split into two equal groups. You will secure the perimeter of this territory, especially the places that don’t have any walls. Group one will be on a day shift while group two will be on a night shift. Your groups will change shifts once every week." he said and the soldiers just nodded before they got to work.

Claire just stood there waiting for her orders, but none came. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

The same day, a messenger from Kaldwin’s estate delivered a package to Adrian.

He read the letter, looked at the bag of silver coins and the Royal Knight’s Training Manual copy.

"My father actually gave this to you?" Claire asked as she looked at the familiar book and Adrian nodded, "Yeah, under the condition that only I use it."

Claire nodded. This condition made sense as the manual was a gift from the emperor and there was no way that her father would distribute the manual for free and attract negative attention.

"You must have trained using this manual too right?" Adrian asked but the knight shook her head.

"This is just a mid ranked training manual in the knight’s academy. Don’t get me wrong, every knight manual is extremely valuable but due to my performance at the academy, I was allowed to pick a much better one. It’s called the True Knight’s Training Manual."

Adrian’s lips curved upwards as he looked up at her like she was a gold mine.

"Claire, would you mind if I read it?" he asked as he leaned forward slightly.

"I mean, I was going to teach it to you anyways. So sure. I’ll bring it to you in a bit."

Adrian nodded and while she got him the manual, he headed to his room, picked up an empty parchment paper and began writing on it.

The contents on the parchment was pretty simple and it was the change of tax laws.

Each territory could have it’s own tax laws and it was time for Adrian to use this to force the merchants and gangs to leave on their own.

He asked himself, "What is their main goal?"

The answer was simple: Half of them wanted to take everyone’s iron and steel at lower prices and sell them all out in other territories to make money. The other half probably would just give the goods to the count.

"Now... I just have to counter this with a simple move." he muttered with a wide grin as he chuckled like the side villain he was supposed to be.

"Mwehehehee... let’s see what they’ll do after this."

Soon, the notice was done and Claire had also returned. He took the True Knight’s training manual from her and gave her the notice, "Post it at the town square and announce it to everyone. I want the news spread by the end of the day."

Claire left soon after and Adrian went back to his room and opened his system interface before linking to his dungeon.

’Let’s see...’ he thought as he looked at the mana reserves, which was full and then the mana crystals stock which was pretty significant.

During the past month, he had continued to record how much mana each person had in comparison to a top F rank mage, who had a maximum mana of 100.

The results were actually pretty disappointing.

The difference between a regular person and a mage was extremely huge.

’I just need to check how much mana a knight has.’