Road to the Crown

As soon as I received the ceramic cup - a sign of the wealth of this magistrate - I asked the secretary for a favour. I was in this world for only about two, three weeks, for now, so my desire for a coffee wasn't strong enough yet to make me lose my mind over it!

"Sure, give me a moment, sir!"

Waiting for her to finishing serving the drinks to everyone and leave the room, I observed the surroundings in search for something that could serve as a good example for one of the incentives I was going to offer to the mayor to sway him to our side.

With the girl leaving and my eyes locking on a set of antique-looking polearms on the wall of the room, I stood up and approached the mayor's desk.

"I understand what is going on through your head right now. Let me explain the situation properly to you then."

Taking a sip of the drink, I felt a pleasant warmth spreading through my entire body, only to be hit by the rush of the energy right after. Right, this body is not as used to caffeine as the one I possessed back in modern times, making its effects far greater than what I expected! With my mind clearing up in a single second, I lightly placed the cup on Vlad's desk before turning to the polearms I saw a moment ago.

"First thing first, I have a group of about fifty men ready to enforce our claims at any given moment. To be honest, if I don't give them a signal in time, they will start making their way towards the heiress palace, in order to force her family into doing as told."

Firing the first shot, I didn't even bother looking at the mayor, approaching the wall instead and taking the polearms from the handles they were hanging from. Turning my head to the Elemo, I nodded, only for him to recover a small pouch from his belt.

"Secondly, the most obvious thing. Elia is the true owner of this place, and if you decide to stand against her, I will make sure that the news of it will reach the ears not only of the Governor but the King himself."

As one of the major nobles on the provincial scale, I could contact the governor as I wished. While he ruled the entire place, the hierarchical structure of the Commonwealth still made him equal to me in theory, and my patron in reality.

"As for the third thing…"

Instead of explaining what I had in mind, I simply rested the polearms against the Governor's table, picked my cup and took another sip, just in time for the secretary fo Vlad's to return with a small cup of water.

Preparing myself for the loss, I gulped all the remaining coffee down, only to fill it again with most of the water from the cup that Marie brough. With only about a fifth of the container volume remaining, I took the pouch from Elemo's hand and filled the cup with white dust from it up to half of its height. Taking out a wooden spoon that everyone always carried on himself, I mixed the content of the container for a moment, before picking up one of the lances and submerging it in the now thick liquid inside the cup.

"You need to judge the benefits of it by yourself. And trust me, it has way more uses than you could ever come up with!"

Placing now empty yet still dirty cup away, I grabbed the other lance and pushed its ending against the wet part of its sibling weapon. With only a small layer of the thick liquid in place to hold them together, I had to wait with both of them angled properly to make a straight line for a few minutes, while exhaling my breath right on top of it. Barely two minutes later, the construct was now stable enough for me to put it back on the table and place two stacks of the papers from Vlad's desk on the dry part of the handle, to serve as a counterweight to the blades hanging down from the desk.

"Keep them like that for about half an hour, then make your decision. We will wait for as long in front of the magistrate."

With those words, I simply stood up and by pulling on Elia's hand, making sure that she would leave as well. I had no idea what kind of ideas might come to her pretty head without my supervision, and with how she had no idea what this grey dust really was, I preferred it to stay this way for now.

"Are you sure we should stay out in the open?"

Opening her mouth for the first time since she received the ring, Elia inquired about quite a reckless part of my plan.

"At this point, it doesn't really matter. With or without Vlad's help, we will take this place. Even if your family learns about our presence in the city, as long as we are officially registered in magistrate's book of guests, they can't do anything against us. What's more, if they are too dumb to realise this, we still have my retinue, waiting for the first sign of trouble to pick up the arms and turn this place into hell."

Right now, I wasn't really bothered by her previous action. Turning this whole thing into a simple business matter, allowed me to detach myself emotionally from the matter, and have a better look at the things from a calmer point of view.

There was no point hiding anymore. The worst thing that could happen, would be Elia's family attempting to take her or my own life, giving me the casus beli necessary to turn this place from a prosperous trade city with a proper income of its own to just an outlet of wares from Tarnow, only increasing the overall income directed to my treasury. Either way, I would win, so why bother trying to win by a landslide?

But with all that said, I still was quite sure that as long as Vlad had any bit of competence hidden behind his bald head, he wouldn't refuse my offer, not when seeing what this modern and enriched cement of mine could do. While the most optimal time required for it to finishing binding would be two hours, it reached the first peak of its durability after just half of an hour, allowing me to use this four times smaller time frame to convince the mayor to its usability.

Compared with currently used mortar, not only was it way stronger even after just half an hour, making it impossible to just crush it scoop the soft insides, it didn't require two entire days to even start working properly, not to speak that even during its binding time, it was already resistant to most of the elements!

Just as soon as the tower's bell started ringing the full hours, and assistant came out of the magistrate building with a piece of paper held high in the air.

"Message from the Mayor!"

Shouting madly as if his life depended on it, the young boy ran towards me, before passing a piece of paper with mayor's stamp on its bottom, before excusing himself and running back to the building.

"And?"

While she attempted to put a brave front, from how her hands were shaking, Elia was clearly nervous. After all, the content of this letter would decide whether she would take over the city in a rather peaceful matter, or through quite a lot of potential bloodshed.

After reading through the content of the letter, the corners of my lips crawled upwards on my face, as I rolled the paper and put it behind my belt.

"Mayor signed the transfer of the rights to the city on you."