When he had talked to all of the five noble families, Roland felt slightly relieved.
When he leaned back into the chair, Nightingale took the initiative to step behind him, putting both her hands on his shoulders and began to massage them.
From the moment of defeating the Duke, up until he had taken over the Lord’s Castle, had needed merely one day.
Things were going much smoother than he had initially thought, the moment after the Duke had died, most of the people had chosen to surrender. For mercenaries, it was more usual to change their sides during the war, so they just kneeled on the ground, saying that they were willing to fight for the prince.
So the mercenaries became responsible for guarding over the surrendered knights and nobles, while the First Army was responsible for guarding the mercenaries. Like this, the big group moved further towards to the east, and in the afternoon at 3 p.m. they finally arrived at Longsong Stronghold. When the guards saw the head of the dead Duke and the other captured nobles, they had immediately opened the gate, letting the 4th Prince into the city.
Roland didn’t wait until all the nobles were gathered, giving them the chance to welcome him with great fanfare and to declare him as new City Lord, instead he immediately left for the Lord’s Castle.
The castle was placed in the middle of the city and looked like a city within the city. When he entered the castle area a small skirmish broke out, Nightingale had to use an explosion cachet to blow open the entrance to the flower garden. Within the garden, more than twenty guards loyal to the old Duke tried to stop Roland from stepping in, but they all were quickly killed by the First Army. However the guards had still been able to use their hand crossbows, resulting in five injuries of which two had been seriously injured, fortunately Nana had come along with the military operation and had quickly been able to heal them.
In the meantime, ten personal guards used this opportunity to take the rest of the Duke’s family to flee through the backdoor, but they were still spotted by Lightning and were captured soon afterwards. The Duke’s wife and her two sons hands were tied and were waiting to be judged – even now they were still in the dark, ignorant of the fact that the Duke had been defeated.
When Roland gained control over the Lord’s Castle, Border Town’s First Army immediately swarmed out and took over the castle district. When comparing the Lord’s Castle in Longsong Stronghold with the castle in Border Town, Roland had to admit that the stronghold’s castle had a much more magnificent shape. It had a hexagonal outline with six watchtowers on its wall, and a five-story high tower in the middle – during this era it was really rare to build places that were this high. Within the castle grounds, there were also the residences of the castle’s inhabitants, warehouses, stables and everything else they needed, the Duke even had his own personal prison under the castle’s basement.
He put the valuable prisoners like the Duke’s family into this exact prison, the civilians were all freed, while the mercenaries had their weapons confiscated and placed into the castle garden or it’s free rooms. At the same time he also picked out some leaders and paid them to keep watch themselves – in Roland’s eyes, the Northern Slope Mine would be the best destination for these opportunistic people, but at the moment he still had more important things he had to do.
Until now, he had still to do the most important task after a battle – which was commonly known as looting the corpse.
Roland together with a witch kept looking over everything over and over again inside of the castle, he hadn’t even let go of the God’s Stone of Retaliation he had found in the vault. After they had searched through everything, the gain was really impressive. Just within two boxes they had discovered in the basement, he found already more than 10.000 gold royals alone. Within a hidden chamber in the bedroom Nightingale discovered several scores of eyeball sized gems. Echo found another chamber hidden behind the fireplace, which wasn’t only filled with a variety of gold crafts, such as the scepter, the crown, etc., there were also many pieces of dazzling jewelry, neatly hung on the wall on a wooden frame.
This were all the Duke’s personal financial resources!
When Roland saw all this great wealth in front of him and compared it with the five hundred gold royals he had gathered in the last two season, his heart was filled with myriads of regrets. He wasn’t prepared for how alluring the feeling of looting was, if he didn’t come from a highly developed industrial era, he most probably would have kept everything for himself.