Free Web NovelChapter 236: Five Day Plan
There were 5 cities in the South-West Province: Southbridge, Yarrel, Iron Rock, Port Calden, and Herald City.
Each of these cities was located on the Belton River, as it was the main waterway that connected the South-West Province to the Royal Province, and by extension, the rest of the Rockwell Kingdom. However, Iron Rock, Port Calden, and Herald City were primarily situated on the river’s western banks, while Southbridge and Yarrel were located on the eastern shore.
Given the nature and magnitude of the threat which had appeared in the wake of the explosion in the Great Western Forest, Celestina had determined that there was no way they could reasonably secure anything west of the Belton, so the only choice was to evacuate all the kingdom’s citizens north or east.
Celestina had always been a bit of a maverick who broke rules when she felt they were getting in her way, but this was such a massive undertaking that even she felt reluctant to implement it until she at least consulted with the Royal Council. Unfortunately, with the ongoing situation in the capital, especially the involvement of the Imperial Overseer, it seemed that wouldn’t be possible.
If they continued to just hunker down and wait, and another Seventh Order Beast appeared, Yuki’s mother wouldn’t be there to save them again.
The time for half-measures was over; decisive actions needed to be taken. fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm
As such, when Celestina gave the task of drafting an evacuation plan to Lucas, she hadn’t just meant for him to consider Herald City, she had told him to account for every single settlement which was currently at risk.
Now, 6 days later, Lucas was detailing the ambitious plan he had concocted, "By using a combination of river convoys composed of civilian and military ships requisitioned from the South-West, South, South-East, and Royal Provinces, along with large-scale ground caravans, it should be possible to evacuate every single remaining citizen of the kingdom who is still west of the Belton."
"How many people are we talking about?" One of the leadership council members asked.
"According to the latest estimates, about 200,000," Lucas replied succinctly.
Murmurs filled the meeting hall as the gathered members discussed this unprecedented mass-migration amongst themselves, and it wasn’t long before more questions began popping up.
"Most of the outlying towns and villages would have already evacuated to the major cities, which are all located on the banks of the Belton," a certain Baron from one of the local towns spoke up to ask, "Why, then, do you think it will take 5 whole days to move everyone to the eastern shores? Wouldn’t it just be a matter of having the civilians cross the various bridges?"
"I understand your confusion," Lucas acknowledged the old Baron’s point, before correcting him, "However, you misunderstand, my Lord. When I say ’evacuate’, I don’t mean throwing people across the river and then leaving them to their own devices. Doing so will only lead to chaos and desperation, which will soon breed banditry and violence."
Signaling to his assistant, a certain silver-haired princess, Lucas had a large map of the Rockwell Kingdom hung on the board behind him and began pointing to several different locations, "The first phase of the plan is to send envoys to the cities in all the surrounding Provinces to request ships and supplies. The rest of the Tartans we have available will simultaneously be used to sweep the known villages and towns west of the Belton and get any stragglers to evacuate towards the cities."
"As this is going on, we set up Evacuation Centres in Herald City, Port Calden, and Iron Rock where members of the military and local city administrations will be responsible for receiving every single citizen that needs to be relocated and assigning them to specific pre-planned evacuation routes."
"For those who have the means to independently resettle themselves, the kingdom will give them an allowance of food and coin and send them on their way."
"Those without such means will be grouped into 4 different categories; those only willing to move to established settlements in the South-West Province, those willing to pioneer new settlements in the South-West Province, those willing to move to established settlements outside the South-West Province, and those willing to pioneer new settlements outside the South-West Province."
Hearing the broad strokes of Lucas’ plan, many in the hall were initially impressed by the boy’s meticulousness, but they some noticed issues.
"How do you plan to pay for all of this?" A female merchant asked, her thoughts naturally drifting towards financial matters, "You say that it is the kingdom who will be offering food and coin, but how exactly are you going to make that happen?"
Glancing over at his Master, Lucas met eyes with Celestina and received a faint nod from her. Confirming he had her support, Lucas boldly stated, "In the interest of expedience, the Baker, Moore, Carlson, and Balfour Families will provide the upfront funds and resources for this operation, while the Rockwell Kingdom itself will reimburse them for the expenses in the form of direct compensation and tax reductions over the next 5 years."
"Those 4 high-and-mighty noble families actually agreed to this?" A local city administrator blurted out incredulously.
Having worked for the Bakers for a few decades now, he was well aware of how stingy Richard and Arnold could be, so he found Lucas’ claims here to be a bit difficult to believe.
In fact, Arnold Baker himself, who was in the room, was barely able to keep himself from scowling when he heard this announcement, as it was the first time anyone had informed him of this impending financial burden.
However, just as the various parties in the meeting were beginning to grow restless, Celestina firmly declared, "I have agreed to this plan."
And that, was enough to silence everyone else in the room.
If Celestina Balfour, Matriarch of the Balfour Family, was willing to open her treasury, lower nobles like the Bakers, Moores, and Carlsons would have no choice but to agree as well, unless they wanted to insult the Marquess and her Family.
As for the Royal Family, it was an open secret among the strongest and most influential people in the hall that they too had a representative present, one who, despite her young age and current role as Lucas’ assistant, had quite a bit of sway with the king.
That said, even if Princess Christina’s word alone wasn’t enough, Celestina also had enormous influence with her former student, Nathanial Rockwell, that twisting his arm into accepting Lucas’ repayment plan wouldn’t be an issue.
With the financial side of things having been cleared up, the next questions were mainly related to logistics.
Having already experienced one mass-evacuation from Redwood Town, Lucas had a number of people who knew what needed to be done, and how it needed to be done.
The scale might be vastly different, but the fundamentals remained the same.
On top of that, Lucas had managed to secure cooperation from Steward Warren to use the Rising Sun Merchant Guild’s infrastructure and communication network. No one on the Blue Sky Continent knew more about how to move people and goods around than the Guild, so this was a huge boon to the boy’s plans.
Of course, this cooperation came with a high price-tag, but Lucas wasn’t planning on paying for it himself. Since this evacuation was a necessity for the Rockwell Kingdom, it would again be the kingdom that had to foot the bill, something Nathanial Rockwell and the Royal Council would certainly be ’thrilled’ to learn about in the coming days.
By the time Lucas was done giving the broad outline of his plan, evening had fallen, the two Regiments from the Raging River Legion had fully settled in, and the beast attack on the western gate had been repelled.
In the end, despite many doubts and reservations, the evacuation plan put forward by Lucas was adopted by the ruling council. They would still need to negotiate with Viscount Moore and Count Carlson of Port Calden and Iron Rock respectively, but with Celestina acting as a backer, it was unlikely that this would be a problem.
Having worked almost non-stop for the past 16 days, Lucas very much wanted to lie down in his bed and pass out, but unfortunately for him, now that his plan had been approved, his workload only increased.
There were many things Lucas could delegate to others as there was no shortage of competent people around him, but there were also many things he couldn’t hand over to others to handle.
As for why Lucas needed to personally oversee certain aspects of this plan, the chief reason was simply that no-one other than him had a complete grasp of the evacuation strategy.
It was at times like these that Lucas really envied the owner of his inherited memories and the world he came from.
In the other universe, recording and sharing massive quantities of information was as simple as pressing a button.
Here on Servist, it was a very, very different story.
Throughout the continent, over 99% of information was exchanged vocally or on paper.
Thankfully, papermaking was a well-developed industry with cheap, decent quality paper being widely available for relatively low cost; however, from what Lucas understood, printing was still in its infancy.
Stamping machines, like printing presses, were just beginning to appear on the Blue Sky Continent, while more advanced technologies like typewriters or linotypes hadn’t even been conceived of.
Writing was basically done by hand still, a painfully slow and tedious process, even for Spirit Realm Cultivators with their superior physical and mental capabilities.
There was, however, a fast and easy way to transcribe a large amount of information and share it with others; imprinting a Memory Jade, often referred to as Soul Jade or just a jade, using Soul Qi.
This method allowed a person to essentially store their own thoughts and memories into a piece of special crystal, facilitating the creation of extremely detailed records in mere seconds.
There weren’t any special requirements to ’read’ a Soul Jade, but unfortunately, these slips were difficult and expensive to produce and engraving them required one to be highly proficient in using Soul Qi.
Some Sea Establishment Realm Practitioners might be capable of this, but in general, only Soul Initiates ’wrote’ on Soul Jades.
These two factors greatly limited the usefulness and use of this method.
Just a couple of days ago, after all the extreme stress he experienced while escaping from Redwood Town, Lucas actually achieved a breakthrough to both the Third Step Body Tempering and Third Step Sea Establishment Realm, and with his unusually powerful Soul, creating proper Memory Jades was probably possible, but with no blank jades available, it was a mute point.
