Industrial Revolution of the Mage Lords

Chapter 282 Harvey's Three Sins
More than half a month later, the Federation sent the second batch of commissions for the rescue operation. This time, they didn't pay with miscellaneous magic materials, but ten boxes of neatly stacked Orland gold coins.

The human countries and dwarves and elves in the southern continent all have different monetary systems. The seven wizarding kingdoms headed by humans and a dozen secular kingdoms of all sizes each have several independently minted and issued standard currencies.

But in terms of liquidity and currency value, it is still Orland, the most powerful of the Seven Wizarding Kingdoms, and Isengard, the secular kingdom with rich gold reserves.

This means that the Orland coin and the Isengard coin, both with a face value of one gold pound, are almost equivalent in value and can be circulated freely throughout the southern continent, with the highest acceptance.

However, a certain amount of fire consumption would be deducted from the gold pounds of other countries during the exchange, and a one-to-one exchange could not be achieved. Even the legally minted coins of some small vassal states and principalities were completely unacceptable in many large chambers of commerce and banks in the southern border.

Harvey was very satisfied with the Federation's generosity. This time he asked for a huge sum of 100,000 pounds for rescue costs. He thought that the Federation would have to bargain with him or just give him some inferior materials and supplies to deal with the matter casually. Unexpectedly, the second payment was a full 30,000 pounds in gold coins.

He had earned about 30,000 pounds in revenue from the Federation in the last vaccine transaction. This time, the magic network rescue operation was almost a zero-cost business, and the cost of the energy array equipment and materials was only over 10,000 pounds, which meant that he could receive nearly 90,000 pounds in net profit in the future.

This suddenly gave the city hall's finances, which were already stretched to the limit, a revival, and even Reiner couldn't help but sound a little cheerful when reporting on his work.

But the joy of the harvest did not last more than half a day. Two pieces of news from the south sent by Asdalen made Harvey angry again.

……

"My lord, those petty nobles who were temporarily detained and had their personal freedom restricted during the epidemic prevention work in Jackdaw Town a while ago actually jointly filed a complaint with Earl Feigen of Grizzly Castle and the Royal Court of Golden Glory City... that is, His Majesty the Grand Duke of Saint Valen."

Harvey asked in confusion, "Didn't I only detain them for two days before letting them leave town and return to their fiefdoms and Grizzly Castle? I didn't arrest them all..."

In fact, he knew very well what these petty nobles were planning. When the plague broke out, Harvey provided free epidemic prevention medicines to the people, but charged these nobles a large amount of treatment fees. The injection fee of the medicine was as high as 500 gold pounds per tube, which must have made those greedy guys resentful.

But the plague potion was made by Harvey, and he could sell it for whatever price he wanted, and no one could blame him for anything. So these small nobles gathered together and accused Harvey with another excuse - without the permission of His Majesty the Grand Duke and the lord of the fiefdom, he sent troops into Jackdaw Town, the family territory of Earl Fagan, without authorization. This was an illegal act that seriously violated the lord's fiefdom rights.

"So what? Earl Feigen sealed off Grizzly Castle during the outbreak and turned a blind eye to the lives of his subjects. Now he's gathering a bunch of petty nobles to bite me back. He thinks the blow he received from me wasn't enough, right?"

The church members in the town had been expelled back to Grizzly Castle by Harvey, but after helping Harvey control the spread of the epidemic, the town's Federation branch secretly returned to Daeus in batches where the situation was safe.

Jackdaw Town was now a lawless zone. Aside from the thousand or so permanent residents who remained, unwilling to leave, no official governing body existed. Harvey's staff, working in conjunction with two high-level forum spellcasters hidden in the shadows, had, in a sense, completely taken over the town. These territory staff, formerly refugees from the wilderness, held no notion of hierarchy. To facilitate subsequent epidemic prevention efforts and the continued acceptance of refugees, they had requisitioned most of the vacation villas and mansions of the town's nobles and small landowners to house the newly arrived refugees from the southern border, who were still recovering from the epidemic.

After all, it is winter now. If they continue to live in tents at a refugee shelter in such cold weather, they will undoubtedly freeze to death.

Some pragmatic territorial officials even demolished many empty wooden houses to fill the fuel needed for winter heating - their ideas were very simple. Since no one lived there anyway, they might as well use local materials to demolish the houses and use them for burning.

As a result, Harvey, the northern frontier pioneer lord, was undoubtedly accused of "three serious crimes" in the eyes of other nobles.

First, sending troops to invade the fiefdoms of other neighboring superior lords without permission.

Second, he allowed his subordinates to seize the private property of other nobles without reason, causing irreparable property losses.

The third is to follow the order of Grand Duke Saint Valen and the Church of Light to expel all spellcasters in the country, which naturally includes Harvey, the wizard lord who holds the pioneering order and is outside the border.

Perhaps considering that he had suffered an inexplicable loss at Harvey's hands before, and lost many of his family's private soldiers and trusted knights, Earl Feigen did not immediately launch a targeted action. Instead, he slowly assembled his troops in Grizzly Castle, as if waiting for the church to send reinforcements before looking for a suitable opportunity to attack Harvey.

Asdalen suggested calmly, "Two spellcasters stationed in Jackdaw Town asked me to ask you if they should rush directly to Grizzly Castle and secretly deal with Earl Feigen and the nobles who led the rebellion, so as to strike first and gain the upper hand."

Harvey slowly shook his head and declined, "That's unnecessary. The Union branch in Grizzlie Castle was intercepted by the Inquisition Army and priests sent by the city's church during their secret evacuation, and they were nearly annihilated. This means that Earl Feigen must have high-level combat forces from the church under his command. There's absolutely no need for us to risk our lives."

Moreover, the church and the nobles currently occupy the high ground of public opinion. If the spellcaster rashly attacks them, he will probably be directly accused of actively provoking the war. Harvey does not want to be blamed for being the spellcaster and the fuse that restarted the civil war in the church.

"Dispatch two 500-man battalions of Northern Army soldiers and an artillery battalion to Jackdaw Town to guard the main roads in and out of the town and the riverbank. This time, we'll wait for those fools led by Earl Fagan to come to us and be beaten."

In addition, Harvey asked his personal guards to fetch pen and paper, and personally wrote a sarcastic reply letter to Earl Fagan, refuting the unfounded accusations against him word for word, with a single purpose throughout the letter:

You don't agree, right? If you don't agree, come and hit me!

(End of this chapter)