Free Web NovelChapter 238: Viscount Moore
Touching down in the open fields of Lord’s Manor in Port Calden, Lucas’ eyes were drawn to a young, brown-haired woman, standing at the head of the welcoming delegation.
This woman wasn’t the prettiest, nor the strongest individual present, a First or Second Step Sea Establishment Practitioner by Lucas’ estimates, but she certainly had the strongest presence, making it obvious who she was.
Viscount Victoria Moore, great granddaughter of Orson Moore, Lord of Port Calden and current head of the Moore Family.
Unlike Richard Baker, who was the very definition of a hands-off ruler, Victoria was deeply involved in both the day-to-day and long-term operations of her territory. She was particularly concerned with financial matters, directly overseeing both foreign trade as well as domestic expenditures.
Every major project that happened in the Moore Viscounty, from new villages being pioneered to dock-yards being expanded, had to be personally reviewed and approved by Victoria.
Many people thought of the current Viscount Moore as a workaholic and more a merchant than a proper noble, but such talk never bothered Victoria. From a young age, she had been enthralled by tales of her great grandparents and had in turn dedicated all her time and effort into making the Moore Family more prosperous, just like they had.
It was Victoria’s greatest dream to one day see her family promoted again from the rank of Viscount, to Count, finally allowing the Moores to stand on even ground with their neighbours to the north and south, the Carlsons and Bakers.
As far as Victoria was concerned, while the Carlsons were worthy of respect, the fact that her Moore Family wasn’t even considered equal to the Bakers was an unforgivable insult.
Thinking about how she, despite being the Lord of an equally large, equally populous, and significantly more prosperous territory, still had to bow politely in greeting when she met Count Richard Baker just because he was a higher noble rank than her, made Victoria’s skin crawl.
Richard’s repeated attempts to get Victoria into his bed also didn’t do much to improve relations between the two families.
Finally, after nearly a decade of dedicated efforts, including increasing her territory’s tax revenue and wooing members of the ruling elite in the Royal Capital, Victoria had received word that the Moore Family’s promotion would be taken up for debate in the Council within the next year.
It was a crowning achievement that was unequalled by anyone in the Moore Family since their founding 119 years ago, and when she had been informed of this decision, Victoria had celebrated greatly, to the point she became dead drunk for the first time in her life.
Everything had been looking up for Viscount Victoria and her Moore Family, until 17 days ago, when a mushroom cloud rose up in the south-west above the Great Western Forest.
That evening, as she was in the midst of mediating a trade dispute between a few local merchant groups, Victoria felt a disturbance in the World Qi around her, like a wave washing over her. This was a bit concerning to her, but not as much as the deal she was currently negotiating, so she ignored it and carried on as usual until a few minutes later when the Commander of the local garrison barged into her office without even bothering to announce himself.
Victoria Moore had known Commander Finley her whole life, as he had been serving as leader of the Port Calden Garrison for over 50 years now. The two of them were even close enough that in private, Victoria still called the old man ’Grandpa’. freewebnσvel.cѳm
In all that time, though, Victoria had never once seen Commander Finley looking as panicked as he did that night, which immediately caused her to become alarmed.
That alarm only grew stronger when the grizzled old Commander half-dragged Victoria out into the yard where she could finally see the source of the odd World Qi disturbance she felt before.
Although she could tell that whatever caused the massive mushroom cloud was hundreds of kilometres away from Port Calden, Victoria Moore was under no illusions that her domain wasn’t going to be severely impacted by the fallout of this crisis.
Her mind churning rapidly, Viscount Moore issued a flurry of orders, mobilizing her family’s guards, the City Watch, City Garrison, local adventurer guilds, and every other asset she could to begin fortifying Port Calden as well as to rescue as many people as possible from the towns and villages under her jurisdiction.
The first signs of unusual Wild Beast activity outside Port Calden appeared only an hour after the initial blast, with significantly increased activity occurring sometime after midnight.
Fortunately, thanks to many years of solid governance, Port Calden was able to weather these initial incidents without much difficulty, even having the spare capacity to send out rescue teams to help bring in villagers and townsfolk who were fleeing to the city for shelter.
By dawn of the next day, the population inside the walls of Port Calden had doubled and was still swelling at a steady rate.
Viscount Moore and her advisors all knew that no matter how resilient the city was, it wouldn’t be able to accommodate so many refugees for long; however, the idea of turning their own subjects away and letting them fend for themselves was also unacceptable.
The Moore Family was still young, and its heritage wasn’t deep, so a major failure right now would almost certainly doom them.
It was as she was worrying about such issues that a Skyship appeared, bearing an ambassador from Marquess Celestina Balfour.
Commander Dylan was a High-Rank Spirit Initiate in his prime and was much stronger than the local Garrison Commander. Dylan also had the weight of a Marquess and General behind him, so when he spoke with Viscount Moore and strongly encouraged her to continue bringing in refugees from across her territory, Victoria complied without any serious complaints.
Just knowing that one of the strongest masters in the entire kingdom was nearby and dealing with the situation allowed Victoria to relax somewhat.
And so, Viscount Moore repeatedly sent out large numbers of troops from Port Calden to clear the roads and open up safe passages for the surrounding populace to reach the city.
On the suggestion of Commander Dylan, Victoria also began heavily recruiting from her citizens, building up an additional militia to help defend the city while her strongest troops were out.
Thanks to this rapid response, most of the settlements within 2 days journey of Port Calden were safely evacuated.
That, unfortunately, was where the good news ended.
The further away the towns and villages were from the city, the harder it became to reach them and the more exposed they were to the beasts pouring out of the Great Western Forest.
Initially, the casualty rate among civilians was less than 1%; however, on the seventh day after the crisis began, when Port Calden’s troops finally made it to the town furthest west of the city, all they found were smoking ruins.
Even from afar, Commander Dylan, who had personally led this rescue mission, could faintly sense multiple intimidating auras lingering inside what remained of the town and swiftly ordered the 1,000 troops he was leading to withdraw.
There were many objections to this order, as no small number of people among the troops had friends or family who lived in this town or its surrounding villages, but Dylan refused to compromise, knowing that pressing forward would only result in pointless deaths.
Besides, as far as the Raging River Legion Commander could tell, there were no human Life Auras left in this town, which made sense seeing how it had been attacked by multiple Fourth Order Beasts.
Ultimately, when a final count was done, Viscount Moore was informed that nearly 12% of all the subjects in her domain had been killed, a number that weighed extremely heavily upon Victoria.
She went over and over it again, trying to find where she went wrong, or what more she could have done, but in the end, Victoria sadly concluded that this was the best result she could have hoped for.
It was a harsh reality, but one the young viscount had no choice but to accept.
What’s more, she couldn’t afford to dwell on those who had already perished as the living still needed her now.
The next 9 days were spent in a mad scramble to maintain order with the now extremely overcrowded Port Calden. While some 20,000 people had fled on their own, heading north via road or boat, that still left nearly 70,000 people crammed into the city, straining its resources and infrastructure to the breaking point.
On top of that, several large-scale beast attacks had occurred, the most significant of which was when a pair of Fifth Order bears had driven a horde of hundreds of weaker beasts to the city’s walls.
Fortunately, this wasn’t some kind of coordinate assault and more a mad stampede, but it still caused great pressure on Port Calden’s defenders. During the battle, Commanders Dylan and Finley kept one of the giant bears pinned down while the regular soldiers used a number of powerful ballistae to handle the other.
In the end, the two bears retreated; injured, but not dead. Whether they would return or not was uncertain; only time would tell.
After that day, Victoria Moore was forced to wrestle with the possibility that she wouldn’t be able to hold onto Port Calden. She had tried requesting aid from Marquess Balfour and the Royal Capital, but both had refused for mostly unspecified reasons, frustrating her greatly.
