Cecil arranged the most comfortable accommodation for guests from the royal capital - not in the Lord's Palace, but in a separate building under the Government Council near the Lord's Palace. It is said that the building was built to welcome important guests, and was called the "Autumn Palace" by the Cecil people because it was only completed in the autumn of this year.

This novel arrangement once again gives visitors a sense of the difference between the Duchy of Cecil.

The Duchess of Victoria leaned slightly lazily on the soft, comfortable couch, relaxing the muscles of her limbs, which had been slightly stiffened by the fatigue of the journey and the dinner, and carefully observing all the furnishings in this room—which, frankly, did not match the word "luxury", and although the things were beautiful, they were not at all the same style as the rooms in the Silver Castle, but the things here were still impressive.

All of the lighting here relies on magic crystals as the core, a cheap and simple light-emitting device that is difficult to popularize due to the constant infusion of magic, but in Cecil it is a thing that can be found everywhere in the streets; The room was warm as spring, but the fireplace on the west side was not lit, apparently not a heating facility, but a decoration of sorts, and the real heating here was provided by something called the "Magic Thermal System"; In front of the large floor-to-ceiling windows, there were large, brightly coloured curtains, and the fabric was woven in a peculiar way, with simple stitches, even with a sense of cheapness, but with a surprising degree of neatness, as if a skilled old weaver had been working tirelessly to weave such a cheap and simple fabric......

The black-haired maid Maggie stood behind Victoria, gently massaging the tense muscles on the hostess's shoulders, feeling the muscles under her fingers relax a little, and the black-haired maid spoke softly, "You've been observing everything here. ”

"Really? So obvious? Victoria's tone rose slightly, and her body stretched out more languidly—she could maintain her perfect condition in any unofficial setting, but now was her time to relax, and she sighed, "I regret a little at this time that I didn't bring a mediocre and shallow royal nobleman to act as a 'flower messenger'—he can ask this and that for every novelty in my place." There are so many things here that I don't understand, but I've asked too many 'whys' along the way. ”

"There's a lot of novelty here—but it doesn't seem like it's just a variety of magical devices, and nothing more advanced than the magic trap you set up in Winterhold, doesn't it?" Maggie said, "The Cecils use magic crystal lamps for lighting, and so does the inner court of Winterhold, their gates open automatically, and so does your mage tower, and ah, they have a magic guide car that can travel autonomously—no faster than a dragon-blooded horse, and no faster than your white-feathered griffin." ”

Apparently, it seemed to the brunette maid that her mistress had been so bewitched by Cecil's dazzling "tricks" that she was overly concerned with the new and interesting magical devices, but Victoria shook her head: "No, Maggie, you don't understand—I am not surprised by any of the Cecil's magic devices, what really surprises me is that there are thousands of them in each of them." ”

Maggie's fingers pressed on the hostess's shoulder paused slightly.

"Grand Duke Gawain is pushing the supernatural power into everyone, he's breaking the boundaries between the transcendent and the ordinary, and the terrible thing about things is that he's not only qualified to do it, but he's done it," Victoria sat up, her expression becoming serious, "I don't know how he did it......

The black-haired maid didn't answer, and the duchess didn't expect to hear an answer from the maid, she just shook her head: "Maggie, bring those 'newspapers', I'll look at them again." ”

"Yes."

A stack of newspapers was delivered to Victoria, and looking at something that was also unheard of elsewhere, she couldn't help but sigh softly: "Let's start with making civilians literate......

The royal envoys from the north had never come into contact with this kind of newspaper, but it had long since entered the eyes of every ordinary person in the south, and it was readable by everyone, and it was incredibly cheap, and many intelligence information that was considered "confidential" by the northern nobles was openly disseminated in the Duchy of Cecil, including the price of food, the appointment and dismissal of officials everywhere, and the construction of new towns—things that should have belonged to the nobles alone, were left to the common people to discuss, As long as they learn basic literacy skills in school.

The rest of the legation probably hadn't noticed anything called a newspaper, but Victoria had noticed it as early as she left the Rock Fortress and passed through Cont City, when a "newsboy" was selling the print along the side of the road, and the duchess ordered a copy to be bought on a whim, and she was struck by it.

Her gaze quickly swept over the news about prices, construction, and current affairs, but she thought of the difficulty she had before leaving Pompeii to get a statistical picture of the merchants in transit.

But what made the duchess more concerned than these were the critical articles on current affairs in the newspapers.

Maggie...... You know what? If we had this, we wouldn't have to think about whether the nobles and townspeople would support the coronation of the Prince of Wales," Victoria raised the newspaper in her hand, her tone full of helplessness, "We can even make the people of the East start to doubt their lords and princes." ”

"Do you want to be in Saint-Sunil...... Or the plain of the Holy Spirit giving something like that? ”

Victoria's voice was full of exhaustion: "It's useless, our people can't read - and the nobility of the Plains of the Holy Spirit and the royal capital won't allow the farmers to put down their hoes and run to read and write, and then question them when they understand the reason." ”

She only said half of it, but she didn't say the rest: if she hadn't seen a lot of information about Lu'an City with her own eyes, her own thoughts would have been similar to those of the royal capital and the nobles of the plains......

No, it is better to say that once the royal capital and the nobles of the plains region knew what happened in Lu'an City, they would not dare to let the people read and write.

A breeze blew from the side, Victoria stopped talking to Maggie, she looked at the corner of the room, and nodded slightly, "Raven, you're back." ”

A figure in black soft leather armor emerged from the air, the royal shadow guard "Dark Raven", who once belonged to Francis II and was now under the orders of the Duke Regent, bowed to Victoria: "Duchess, there is nothing unusual around this building. ”

"It seems that our founding heroes are above board," Victoria nodded, but her eyes couldn't help but sweep over the "newspaper" in her hand, and then she looked at the royal shadow guard not far away, "Did you find out anything?" ”

"There seems to be another group of visitors in the city, besides us, I heard that it is a group of merchants, but they live some distance from the 'castle', and there is a post in between, and we are afraid of being discovered, so we do not look into it."

"A group of ......merchants," Victoria said lightly, as if to say to herself, "it is rumored that the founding hero was indeed very fond of 'doing business'...... He relied on the power of businessmen to rise quickly. ”

Raven lowered his head, "Are you going to track down the merchants?" ”

"No need, it's not a wise move to alarm the host's other guests," Victoria shook her head, and then her eyes suddenly fell on the crow's shoulder, and her voice turned slightly colder, "Besides, you've been discovered. ”

“…… Yes?! Startled, the Raven noticed the sight of the hostess, and the royal shadow guard immediately turned his head, and finally noticed something strange on the back of his shoulder, and he reached for it, only to find a small note in the gap in the leather armor.

Seeing the contents of the note, the royal shadow guard's face suddenly changed:

"Yo, take a walk? - The Shadow Goddess's daughter. ”

"Duchess—" Raven immediately prostrate on the ground, her voice trembling with shame and a hint of trembling, "I...... I was careless......"

A blood-clotting ice pick seemed to have formed behind his neck, and the royal shadow guard felt his nerves and blood getting cold a little, but in the next second, the bone-chilling feeling receded like a tide, and he heard the duchess's voice coming from the front: "Get up." ”

The crow broke out in a cold sweat and stood up as if he had been reborn, and Victoria, who was opposite him, sighed: "Gawain? Grand Duke Cecil had trained Ansu's first royal shadow guards, and he was bound to have the most powerful Shadow Master by his side, so it's normal that you weren't an opponent. The unseen Shadow Master only gave us a warning this time, but when Cecil opened his mouth, it probably won't be just a warning. ”

The crow breathed a sigh of relief, although he wanted to say that he should know the "Shadow Goddess Daughter" who left a note on him, the other party was not a shadow master at all, and he was probably stronger than the goose when he fought head-on, but as an adult with normal intelligence, he wished that the mistress could overestimate the power of the half-elf as much as possible at this moment......

"Now that you've been discovered, do something else," Victoria continued, "and leave the city, and the day after tomorrow follow our second convoy into the city, and then move around Cecil—to the places where you are allowed to visit, and I want you to focus on three things. ”

"Please command."

"Observe how Cecil manages 'people', find out why they are so efficient, observe what ordinary people here talk about most often on a daily basis, find out what they see the Duchy of Cecil like, and finally, observe their market, I want you and the other guards to record everything they sell in their market, including approximate price changes, and then inquire about the origin and daily sales of those things, as well as how they manage the market."

"Yes."

The figure of the crow disappeared into thin air, and after a moment, Maggie looked at her hostess, "You mentioned the market of the Cecil people at the end...... Do you want to understand how Duke Cecil's business works? ”

"That's one of the goals," Victoria nodded, "but it's more important to find out how strong Duke Cecil is after conquering this land - our journey from Rock Fortress to Cecil City is planned, and what we can see is also planned - the market is the only way we can understand the rest of the South. ”

How many cars, how many ships, how many cities have been completely controlled by Duke Gawain, how many areas are directly connected to the roads of Cecil City, how many gold coins are flowing in this land every day, and how many troops can these gold coins support...... These things can be estimated from the market.