Trade Route Completion
"Landor. What the hell is that bastard thinking?"
The word "thorn in my side" didn’t even begin to capture the sheer loathing the Duke of Phellings felt toward Landor.
He muttered irritably, fingers drumming nervously against the table.
Landor was a slippery eel of a man.
For nearly three years the Duke had hunted him relentlessly, uncovering a large portion of the hidden slush funds, yet he knew far more remained untouched.
The Duke had expected Landor’s next move would be to shift the remaining funds before they could be discovered.
Money left alone was hard to trace, but movement always left traces.
He planned to seize that moment and expose everything, dealing a crushing blow to Landor’s power.
Nothing had gone according to plan.
Instead of resisting, Landor had absorbed every attack, then packed up his entire force and remaining funds and retreated to the remote Baronate of Elond—the farthest, most insignificant backwater imaginable.
It should have been satisfying, yet the Duke felt only growing unease.
When Landor surrendered so easily, there was always a scheme lurking behind it.
"When the hell is that bastard going to report?!"
A week earlier he had dispatched a spy with orders to observe Elond in detail.
The man should have reported by now.
At that moment the crystal orb on his desk began to glow.
The Duke snatched it up at once.
"Report."
"Landor is pouring everything he has into boring a tunnel through the Raco Mountains."
The Duke stared in disbelief.
"What did you say?"
"He is excavating a tunnel through the Raco Mountains, Your Grace."
"A tunnel through the Raco Mountains? Is he trying to build a trade route to the west?"
Every citizen of the Empire had dreamed of piercing the mountains that separated east and west.
The sea route took a month; a tunnel would change everything.
Yet the sheer impossibility had always forced them to abandon the idea.
The Raco Mountains were infamous for their brutal cold and endless swarms of monsters.
"Has the man gone mad?"
Even as he spoke, the Duke realized the Iron Blood Coalition could handle the monsters.
With the northern nomads’ spirit magic, a tunnel might actually be possible.
Then reality returned.
"How would he even know where to dig?"
Adventurers had spent lifetimes mapping the mountains, and still no one had found a viable route.
The peaks formed a natural labyrinth.
To the Duke, Landor’s project looked like pure futility.
"The man is insane."
"There is more. He has mobilized the Coalition’s engineers for massive construction inside the Elond Baronate."
"Construction?"
"Yes."
"What kind of construction?"
"Large-scale inns, marketplaces, and roads connecting to neighboring regions. They are also building something rather strange."
"What?"
"An amusement… park? They are constructing some bizarre structure they call that."
The Duke’s expression darkened further.
"Has that bastard finally lost his mind?"
His confusion only deepened.
The lands around the Raco Mountains were poor, frozen, and forgotten.
Most local lords had long since abandoned their estates for the capital.
I offered the Emperor gold for the territories and received his approval, along with that of the former lords.
My domain expanded dramatically.
Then I offered gold to the gloomy residents.
Seven and a half million gold was more than enough to bring smiles to their faces.
"Work from ten in the morning until six in the evening. Meals provided. Seven silver a day."
The amount made their eyes spin.
I set them to work alongside the Iron Blood Coalition engineers, building structures and roads.
With a flood of gold, the ruined Elond Baronate began transforming into a city none of them had ever imagined.
Money worked wonders.
Neighboring lords had squeezed their people dry with heavy taxes.
Now I was offering unheard-of wages and building real infrastructure.
The locals were stunned.
Before long they began to revere me more than the Emperor himself.
I kept pouring money in.
Capital nobles called me mad for raising massive buildings in a remote mountain region.
They simply didn’t know what would happen in three months.
I continued the work they dismissed as folly.
In fact, I took it even further.
This place would soon see the highest foot traffic on both continents.
So why not add landmarks and entertainment?
"An amusement… park?"
Even Karia looked bewildered when I ordered the engineers to build one.
"What exactly is that?"
"We’re in the north. Plenty of snow. I’m making a ski resort. With an ice-skating rink."
"Ski resort… skating rink. What are those?"
"You’ll see soon enough, Karia."
The engineers and locals worked in confusion, but orders from Karia and me were absolute.
The generous pay helped.
Suitable hills and a frozen lake nearby began turning into a splendid leisure complex complete with luxurious lodgings.
Surrounding buildings grew into marketplaces and inns large enough for hundreds of thousands of visitors.
Once that was underway, I turned my attention to the roads.
"Make them flawless. The same standard as the Emperor’s roads in the capital!"
Spirit mages shaped stone with earth spirits while workers laid the blocks.
Cement was poured and left to set in the northern wind, creating roads of solid stone.
The scale of the project forced me to contact Karl Hansen in the capital.
"Send me twenty thousand reliable workers."
"What?! Where am I supposed to find that many people on short notice?"
"Not from the capital. Recruit farmers from the provinces and send them here."
"What in the world are you doing? Are you actually serious about building this trade route?"
"Yes."
Silence stretched across the crystal orb.
It was the silence of a man realizing his insane employer was truly going through with it.
I smiled brightly.
"Just send them. Quickly."
Karl wanted to strangle me, but the mental spell left him no choice.
A week later hundreds of carriages arrived carrying people desperate for work.
"You’ll really pay us at that rate?"
Most were half-dead from noble exploitation.
When I repeated the same generous terms, they accepted without hesitation.
"Karl, send me some merchant guild members too. People good with ledgers and accounting."
Karl no longer even protested.
He simply sent the requested personnel in weary resignation.
Word spread of well-paying jobs.
Farmers from across the continent began streaming toward Elond.
The nobles did nothing to stop them.
They assumed I wouldn’t last long.
"What a ridiculous waste of money. How long can this last without any revenue?"
Amid noble scorn, imperial and guild support, and the Iron Blood Coalition’s backing, I kept building.
More structures rose.
Roads stretched farther.
One by one, tunnels pierced the Raco Mountains.
"Monsters!"
The northern nomads, melting frozen earth with salamander spirits and digging with gnomes, screamed as monsters poured in from both ground and sky.
The creatures had never seen so many humans invade their territory.
They attacked without mercy—only to meet an even greater force.
"Kill them all!"
Wind spirit mages floated in the air, intercepting flying monsters.
Iron Blood Coalition soldiers in magic armor carved through the ground swarm.
"Activate aura!"
Pressing a button on their spears, soldiers channeled mana from their armor batteries.
Red aura blazed along the spearheads.
Shields glowed with defensive magic.
Forming tight ranks, they turned the monsters into pincushions.
"What are you standing around for? Keep digging!"
Once the monsters were cleared, Tamir Khan ordered his people back to work.
They shaped massive boulders with high-grade earth spirits into perfect walls.
"Bring the excavated soil here!"
The frozen earth, thawed and moistened, was used to build bridges and compact roadbeds.
Left in the mountain cold, it hardened harder than steel.
Three months had passed since work began.
Not a single death among the northern forces.
Everyone could feel the change.
"The temperature is different."
The biting cold was easing.
The air carried a faint warmth instead of only stone and snow.
They knew the final tunnel was nearly complete.
"Khan! A massive boulder is blocking further excavation!"
"Noas!"
Tamir Khan summoned his contracted supreme earth spirit.
The enormous hand of Noas gripped the boulder.
It trembled, then tore free with a grinding roar.
"It’s through!"
Tamir’s triumphant cry died in his throat.
Every soldier and nomad stood frozen beside him.
Beneath a brilliant sun stretched an endless green plain, fragrant and vivid.
They understood.
They had done the impossible.
The trade route connecting the eastern and western continents was complete.