Chapter 525: Observation

Cecil arranged the most comfortable accommodation for the guests from the royal capital—not in the lord's mansion, but in a separate building under the government affairs hall near the lord's mansion. It is said that the building was built to welcome important guests and was called the "Autumn Palace" by the Cecilians because it was only inaugurated this autumn.

This novel arrangement once again made the visitors feel the difference of the Principality of Cecil.

Duchess Victoria leaned slightly lazily on the soft and comfortable couch, relaxing her limbs and muscles that were slightly stiff from travel and dinner, and carefully observed all the furnishings in this room - frankly speaking, here The furnishings of the hotel do not match the word "luxury". Although the things are beautiful, they are not in the same style as the rooms in the Silver Castle, but the things here are still impressive.

All the lighting facilities here rely on magic spar as the core. This cheap and simple light-emitting device is difficult to popularize due to the constant injection of magic power, but it is a kind of thing that can be seen everywhere in Cecil; the room is warm like spring, But the fireplace on the west side was not lit. Obviously, the fireplace was not a heating facility, but a decoration. The real heating here is solved by something called a "magic heating system"; hanging in front of the large French windows With large and bright curtains, the weaving technique of the fabric is very strange, the stitching is simple, and even has a cheap feeling, but its neatness is amazing, as if a skilled old weaver is weaving without sleep. For such a cheap and simple fabric...

The black-haired maid Maggie stood behind Victoria and massaged the tense muscles on the hostess' shoulders with a gentle hand, feeling the muscles under her fingers relax a little, the black-haired maid said softly: "You have been observing Everything here."

"Really? So obvious?" Victoria's tone rose slightly, and her body stretched out more lazily - she can maintain the most perfect state in any unofficial occasion, but now is the time for her to relax, She sighed, "I regret that I didn't bring a mediocre and shallow royal aristocrat to act as a 'flower protector' - he can ask this and that about every novelty on my behalf. There are too many here. Things I don't understand, but I've asked too many 'whys' along the way."

"There are indeed a lot of novelties here - but it seems to be just a variety of magical devices, not more advanced than the magic mechanism you set up in Winter Castle, isn't it?" Maggie said her opinion, "The Cecils use magic spar lamps for lighting, so does the inner court of Winterfell, their gates can open automatically, so does your mage tower, ah, they also have a magic car that can drive automatically - no more than a dragon The blood horse can run faster than your white-feathered griffin."

Obviously, in the eyes of this black-haired maid, her mistress was so confused by Cecil's dazzling "tricks" that she paid too much attention to those novel and interesting magic devices, but Victoria shook her head: "No, Maggie, you don't understand—I'm not amazed by any of the Cecil devices, what really amazes me is that they have thousands of each of them."

Maggie's fingers on the mistress's shoulder paused for a moment.

"Archduke Gawain is pushing supernatural powers to everyone, he's breaking down the line between superhumans and ordinary people, and the scary thing about it is - not only is he qualified to do it, he's done it," Victoria said. Sitting up, his expression became serious, "I don't know how he did it..."

The black-haired maid didn't answer, and the duchess didn't expect to hear the answer from the maid, she just shook her head: "Maggie, bring those 'newspapers', I want to take a look again."

"Yes."

A stack of newspapers was delivered to Victoria, looking at this kind of thing that was also unheard of elsewhere, she couldn't help but sigh softly: "Let's start with literacy for the common people..."

The envoys from the royal capital from the north have never come into contact with this kind of thing called newspaper, but it has already entered the sight of every ordinary person in the south, and everyone can read it. It is unbelievably cheap. The "confidential" intelligence information was spread openly in the Principality of Cecil, including the price of food, the appointment and dismissal of officials in various places, and the construction of new towns - these things that should belong to the nobles alone, here Let civilians discuss, as long as they learn basic literacy skills in school.

The rest of the embassy probably hadn't noticed what was called a newspaper, but Victoria had noticed it as early as she left the Rock Fort and passed through Conder City - a "newsboy" was hawking the print down the road. , The Duchess on a whim ordered someone to buy one, and then she was deeply shocked by this thing.

Her eyes quickly swept through the content about prices, construction, and current affairs news, but she thought of the experience that she had difficulty trying to obtain statistics on transit merchants before leaving Pompeii Territory.

But more than these contents, the Duchess was more concerned about the commentary articles on current affairs in the newspapers.

"Maggie... you know? If we have this in our hands, we don't even have to consider the question of whether the nobles and citizens will support the Crown Prince of Wales when he is crowned," Victoria raised the newspaper in her hand, her tone full of helplessness, "We even It can make people in the East start to doubt their lords and princes."

"Are you trying to distribute something like that in Saint Sunil...or the Plains of the Holy Spirit?"

Victoria's voice was full of exhaustion: "It's useless, our people are illiterate - and the nobles of the Holy Spirit Plain and the royal capital will not allow the farmers to put down their hoes and run to read and read, and then question them after understanding the truth."

She only said half of it, but didn't say the rest: if she hadn't seen a lot of information about Lu'an City with her own eyes, her own thoughts are actually similar to those of the royal capital and the nobles of the plain...

No, it would be better to say that once the nobles in the royal capital and the plains knew what happened in Luan City, they would not dare to let the people read or write.

A breeze blew from the side, Victoria stopped talking with Maggie, she looked towards the corner of the room and nodded slightly: "Dark Crow, you are back."

A figure in black soft leather armor emerged from the air. The royal shadow guard "Dark Crow", who once belonged to Francis II and is now under the orders of the Duke Regent, bowed and saluted Victoria: "Duchess, there is no one around this building. Weird."

"It seems that our founding hero is upright and upright," Victoria nodded, but she couldn't help but swept across the "newspaper" at hand, and then she looked at the Royal Shadow Guard not far away, "Did you find out anything?"

"Besides us, there seems to be another group of visitors in the city. I heard that they are a group of merchants, but they live a certain distance from the 'castle' and have to cross the post in the middle. We were afraid of being discovered, so we didn't go. Investigate."

"A group of businessmen..." Victoria said lightly, as if talking to herself, "It is rumored that the founding hero really likes 'business'... He rose rapidly by relying on the power of businessmen."

Dark Crow lowered his head: "Are you going to track down the businessmen?"

"No need, it's not a wise move to alarm the host's other guests," Victoria shook her head, then her eyes suddenly fell on the shoulders of the dark crow, her voice turned slightly cold, "Besides, you have already been discovered."

"...Ah?!" The dark crow was startled, and then noticed the sight of the hostess. The royal shadow guard immediately turned his head and finally noticed something strange on the back of his shoulder. A small piece of paper was found in the gap of the armor.

Seeing the contents of the note, the Royal Shadow Guard's face changed greatly:

"Yo, take a walk? - The Shadow Goddess's daughter stays."

"The Duchess—" Dark Crow immediately fell to the ground, with shame and a hint of trembling in her voice, "I... I'm careless..."

A blood-coagulating ice pick seemed to have formed on the back of his neck, and the Royal Shadow Guard felt that his nerves and blood were getting cold a little bit, but in the next second, the bone-chilling feeling receded like a tide. He heard the Duchess's voice coming from the front: "Get up."

Dark Crow broke out in a cold sweat and stood up as if he had been reborn, while Victoria opposite him sighed: "Grand Duke Gawain Cecil once trained Anzu's first batch of royal shadow guards, and there must be the strongest around him. The big shadow master works for him, and it is normal that you are not an opponent. After canceling all the covert operations, the shadow master who never showed up just gave us a warning this time, but when Cecil opens up, I am afraid that It's not just a warning."

Dark Crow breathed a sigh of relief, although he really wanted to say that he should know the "Daughter of the Goddess of Shadow" who left a note on him, but the other party is not a master of shadow at all, and I am afraid that when they fight head-on, they are only stronger than the goose. But as an adult of normal intelligence, he now wishes that the mistress could overestimate the half-elf's power as much as possible...

"Now that you've been found, do something else," Victoria continued, "you'll leave the city first, and the day after tomorrow you'll be officially entering the city with our second convoy, and then you'll be in Cecil City— —Go to those places where you are allowed to visit, and I want you to focus on three things.”

"Please order."

"Observe how Cecil manages 'people', and understand why their efficiency is so high; observe what ordinary people here usually talk about on weekdays, and understand what they see as the Duchy of Cecil Finally, observe their market, I want you and the other shadow guards to record everything they sell in their market, including the approximate price changes, and then inquire about the origin of those things and the daily sales situation, and also There's the way they manage the market."

"Yes."

The shadow of the dark crow disappeared into the air. After a while, Maggie looked at her mistress: "You mentioned the Cecil market last... Do you want to understand how Duke Cecil's business works?"

"That's one of the purposes," Victoria nodded, "but the more important thing is to figure out how strong Duke Cecil is after laying down this land—our way from Rock Fortress to Cecil City, all the way It's all planned, and all we can see is planned -- the market is the only way we know about the rest of the South."

How many cars and boats does Duke Gawain have, how many cities have been completely controlled by him, how many areas are directly connected to the roads of Cecil City, how many gold coins are flowing on this land every day, and these gold coins can support How many troops... These things can be estimated from the market.