Chawbigton was Waralia County's capital city. A kingdom had its capital city as a symbol for power, and under the kingdom was the princedom, dukedom, etc. Every territory had one provincial capital city to manage said territory.
Chawbigton was the County's capital city. It had a population of more than 200,000 people and expansive economic opportunity bloom in this city.
The streets were filled with people buying and selling with carts pulled by powerful beast, transporting people and items all over the place. It was a perfect functioning society with a satisfying economy.
On the center of the city, was a large palace where Heled Waralia, Count of Waralia, lived. He was currently in the reception hall, dimly lit with barriers all over the wall to prevent any sound from coming out.
Seated in the seat of honor, Heled sat straight with a perfect posture. In front of him were the leader of wealthy merchants that had helped him in building the city from scratch. He trusted merchants more than nobles.
Nobles always had the intention to rise up the ranks and would find ways to stab your back. Merchants were simple. All they want was money and that was it.
"Fahnin is death. Townbone and Marldon has been taken," Count Heled started the conversation with a heavy topic.
The four wealthy merchants looked down at their table and frowned. They had never faced any situation like this before. Most of the problems they faced before could easily be solved with money. But a 12 year old warlord with his golem army suddenly appeared to threaten their lives. Not only that, he even took two cities in a short amount of time.
The four wealthy merchants did not know if they could solve this kind of problem with money alone.
"A golem master is hard to defeat. Even Diamond Rank magicians would not want to deal with them," Dakar, one of the wealthy merchants, said.
There was a large gap in strength between ordinary magicians and a special type magicians. It might not look that different at first, but a golem master could literally kill dozens of magicians while staying at home. This also applied to curse-type magicians, and dark-magic magicians.
They could even harm someone they had never ever seen before.
No one wanted to get the attention of these type of people.
Sure powerful magicians could defeat ten or even more warriors of the same rank, but they would still refuse to handle a golem master.
Count Heled said in a calm voice: "According to our spies, the enemies only bring one hundred golem to capture the city. All the guards surrendered the moment one of them was killed."
That was all a lie. A lie not created by Count Heled, but by Corduul. The Mechanicum not only manage to read information within the brain, but they also able to rewrite, delete, copy, and even replace memories. One of the reason why they were so confident in the loyalty of their super human was they were inserted with false memories.
The moment they were taken by the Mechanicum, they were no longer the same person.
They also used this technology to cure trauma and depression. Simply by removing the triggering memories had been proven to solve the problem. After they done the procedures, the soldiers were battle-ready once again.
But now, they used that technology to spread misinformation for the enemy.
And Count Heled was very confidence in the information that he obtained.
"Count Heled's spies have never been wrong before," Palelance said. "If they only use 100 golems, then we need to hire more than 200 magicians to fight them."
"That would cost us a lot," Wyverngrip said.
"It is fine," Buultad consulted. "Consider it as investment to secure our future profit."
Count Heled had let the four wealthy merchants and their family to create some sort of monopoly in the territory he ruled. Of course, they had a lot of businesses and stores set up all over.
Because of that, the livelihood of his territory became their concern as well.
His problem was their problem. This let him had four financially-powerful, well-connected, and intelligent, organized group working by his side.
He knew he could fully trust them as well, because they needed him.
"In situation like this, can't we ask for help from our neighbors?" Dakar asked.
All of them looked at him weirdly.
"My… my bad."
Everyone knew that the moment they asked for help, they would be underestimated and Count Heled might even be removed from his position.
Every nobles had to solve their own problems. They could pay other nobles to help, but they would rip him off. Kingdom of Withokere was literally the second most smallest kingdom, so everyone wanted more territory for themselves.
"Let us invite 200 magicians to defend the city," Dakar said.
All of them agreed to that proposal.
…
All over the place, mechanical robots and golem tread the land. When they encountered a village, they approached it, and gave everyone food and supplies before leaving without any word.
The villagers were of course confused. They tried to talk to the golems, and even invited them for tea, but they said nothing and left immediately.
This phenomenon happened all over Waralia County, and even in the neighboring province which was Northingia Earldom.
It was very weird phenomenon and everyone was talking about it.
And it did not only happened once, but for a whole week. Every single day, a hundred robots and golems or so would visited all the villages and gave them supply.
They even fixed broken roofs, fences, doors, and the roads.
Dirty water that was unsafe to be drink, or a lake that was full of dangerous beast with Gold Rank to Platinum Rank strength near the villages were also taken care of. The dirty water became crystal clear. It was so clear, that the villagers could not believe it was real.
The dangerous animals on lakes were also gone of which the villagers now had access for drinking, swimming, and even fishing.
Corduul was confused by this as well, and he asked Aldred.
"Master, what is the purpose of this operation?"
Aldred smiled as he looked through the window of his 7 story-tall office. "This place will be mine sooner or later, so I want the people that lived here get to know the golems and the robots, and know that we are not the evil men. In fact, we are the good guys."
"You wanted to instill ideas in their mind, indoctrinating them to perceive you in a good light."
"I don't like the way you said it, but yeah, that was the idea."
"We can simply rewrite their memories if that is what you wish for, master."
"Nope. I don't even know how long would it take to rewrite the memory of millions of people. Besides, it feels too artificial that way."
The phenomenon soon reached the ears of Count Heled and his allies.
And all of them were confused of what the golems were doing.
"They give food and supplies to villagers… that's all they do every single day."
Even Count Heled began to frown and could not think of a single reason why the enemy did this.
