Chapter 35: Aftermath
Chapter 35 Aftermath
After a group of pirate prisoners were taken to the basement, Paul realized that there was a stranger standing beside Schroeder, although his face was bearded and the clothes on his body had been torn and tattered, but at a glance, he could tell that those kinds of clothes were not affordable for ordinary civilians.
He spoke up and asked, “Schroeder, who is this?”
“Oh, I forgot to mention. He claims to be a member of the Southern Cape Bay Alliance Foster Family, who came to the Northwest Bay to explore a few months ago and was unfortunately kidnapped by pirates.”
The young man immediately bowed forward in a nobleman’s salute, his posture flawless.
“Lord Earl, I believe you are the lord of this place. Please allow me to introduce myself, my father is Marquis Foster who is a member of the Horned Bay Alliance Convocation, and I am his second son, Quiller Foster, on behalf of the Foster family, I would like to pay my respects to you and thank you for rescuing me from the pirates this time.”
Hearing the young man’s self-introduction, he managed to hold back his laughter and responded, “You are too kind! This is my part as a lord.”
This Marquis Foster was really good at naming, since he was a big shot in the Horned Bay Alliance Council, he must be engaged in commerce as well, but he even named his son “Loss”, although he knew that it was only because the pronunciation happened to be the same as the Chinese language, he still couldn’t help but spit out the name in his heart.
“You are Quiller Foster?” After the young man gave his name, the crowd of the Leachman Adventure Group all looked at him in unison.
“Precisely under me.” With a stroke of his hair, the young man said rather narcissistically that these guys were obviously civilians, and there was no need to speak to them as politely as he did to the Earl just now.
The regimental leader Meru Heimer was furious, “Ah… do you know how much effort we went through to find you.”
Quiller Foster was dumbfounded, his face full of questions, “Uh …… I wonder how many of you?”
“Ahhhhh! Can’t stand it, what a willful young master. Your family didn’t receive any news from you for two months, they are almost anxious to become ants on the hot pot, the Marquis Lord commissioned our adventuring troupe to look for you, only after we ran here did we inquire that you were trapped in a pirate’s nest, and in order to save you, we almost put our lives on the line as well.”
“Uh, it was my overly impulsive behavior that made my family worry.”
“Oi oi! The point of what I just said is in the last sentence ah.”
“Hm? What did you say?”
“I’m pissed off! I don’t care, when the commission was first made it merely said it was to find someone, it didn’t say it was to fight pirates. The commission must be doubled, no, it should be tripled from the original.”
Quiller Foster snapped his fingers and said with his eyes closed, “Heh, a trifle! I have always respected adventurers, and the Foster family will definitely fulfill your wishes.”
That attitude was as indifferent as it needed to be.
“You didn’t even ask what the price of the initial commission was!” Everyone in the hall, including Paul, instantly surged with envy and jealousy towards the tycoon.
……
As they spoke, the crowd of officers rounding up the leaky pirates in the Fulan Harbor arrived at the church one after another.
So Quiller Foster and the Leachman Adventure Group were arranged to go down to rest, the townspeople were also dismissed to go home, and in a room next to the hall, the battalion and company level officers were called together for a meeting.
Staff officer Joyce was in charge of tallying the results of the battle, he stood up and reported: ”Lords, the results of this battle are brilliant, the pirate gang Shark Gang was wiped out in one go. A total of one hundred and twenty-three pirates were put to death, all others including the leader of the gang, Shark, were captured, thirty-two of our men were sacrificed, and fifty-five were wounded to varying degrees.”
The officers exchanged words with each other and were very satisfied with the results of the battle.
Paul asked, “Is there any news about that pirate gang whose leader is nicknamed ‘Mud Loach’?”
Joyce replied, “We didn’t run into any of them in this battle, and based on the captives’ statements they seem to have run back out to sea early.”
Schroeder added, “During the pursuit of the sharks, several chests of coins they carried on board were also recaptured by us, a rough estimate of 2,000 gold coins, 6,000 silver coins and tens of thousands of copper coins.”
“Wow!” The crowd opened their mouths to express their surprise, not realizing that the profession of pirates was so “lucrative”, a small pirate group had plundered so much wealth. Paul is even more overjoyed, with so much money, he can do some things that he has long wanted to do.
“You can use this money to cast more cannons.”
“Recruit more soldiers.”
“Build more muskets.”
“And build our own sea power.”
Officers were commenting on what the money would be used for, and even Cecil was constantly giving him a wink, suggesting that his intelligence work would need more appropriations as well.
“But a lot of this money was taken from the coastal lords, shouldn’t it be returned to them?”
Someone suddenly raised such a question.
The room instantly fell silent, the heated discussion came to an abrupt end, and everyone looked at each other for a while before they all coincidentally looked at the Earl-sama.
Shit! Why are they all looking at me, why are they all looking at me? Of course my heart wants to return it to the people, but I don’t know if you want it or not, if you want to return it to the people, then of course everyone will be happy, but if you don’t want to give it to the people, wouldn’t it be against everyone’s wishes if I say it, would you throw me out of the window.
The earl’s heart was at war with the heavens and the earth. Oops! Who will first come forward and make a statement?
After nearly a minute of stalemate, the old knight Schroeder finally stepped forward.
“With our current means, it’s hard to accurately count the losses of each household, besides, the Shark Gang has been roaming the sea for many years, and some of the money is still robbed from other territories. If we allow the territorials to come and claim it, it will give many treacherous people a chance to fish in troubled waters. For example, if someone is clearly not robbed, but if he bites the bullet and says that he was robbed by pirates of the only silver coin he had on him, how should we handle it.”
The people have come back to their senses, oops, the old knight is right ah, maybe in the end there will not be a few money left, and even have to pour some of it in.
Cecil immediately said, “Yes, the common people are the most hateful, both cunning and greedy. When I was in charge of forestry, my biggest headache was those unruly people who thought of taking advantage of small gains every day.”
Unexpectedly, the young count burst into a rage after hearing this sentence, slammed the table and glared fiercely at the intelligence chief with his angry eyes, scaring him so much that he immediately covered his own mouth, although he still didn’t know what he had said wrong.
Schroeder continued, ”Therefore, I suggest compensating the lords who suffered losses through other means. For example, reducing a portion of the taxes, or building bridges and paving roads for the villages that were robbed, or sending people to make unannounced visits, and giving a certain amount of money only to those families that were indeed robbed and threatened their livelihoods, of course in some other name. This is all better than letting people come and claim them on the basis of just one side of the story.”
“Good idea!”
“Still, Lord Schroeder is far-sighted!”
“I second the motion.”
The crowd expressed their approval of Schroeder’s suggestion.
Paul was also deeply impressed, and when he saw that the crowd was in agreement, he hammered out, “Good! It’s settled.”
Last night, I read through the chapters I posted earlier, and felt that the writing was a bit lousy, and there were quite a few typos, so I returned today to try to fix them.
The other thing is that I feel that calling the main character’s first name ‘Paul’ seems to be a bit more palatable than calling the main character’s last name ‘Gladman’, and I’ll change it all together.
(End of chapter)