“Of course she did. She always keeps her promises. In fact, she talked to me about it just a few hours ago. She also ended up admitting to meeting you in the soulscape and planning things behind my back.”

  Mercy says “Ah, so this was a punishment for sneaking around behind your back?”

  “Not so much a punishment so much as me getting even a little. Besides, I like teasing people I care about, so I had to know how you would react. If you are really here for what Lin said, then you will have to get used to it, Mercy.”

  Mercy says “I can handle it, just as long as you keep calling me Mercy and drop the formality!”

  “There is no point to the formality, as I said I haven’t had my coronation yet. In fact, no one even recognizes my kingdom yet. I haven’t even unified the beast tribes yet, I am only a king in name.”

  Mercy says “A coronation doesn’t matter, neither does the crown. All that really matters is if the people see you as the king and from what I have seen, they do. I have only seen a few of your people, but they definitely believe in you. I doubt that you have anyone trying to claim that you aren’t the king. Be glad that you don’t have any nobles trying to claim the throne from you!”

  “Did you have that problem? If you give me a list, I can make them disappear!”

  Mercy says “I have already handled it, but thank you.”

  “Alright. If you do have any problems, you can come to me.”

  Mercy says “You have already done plenty! I wouldn’t have my throne without your help!”

  “As much as I would like it to have been that way, I didn’t do it for you. That was entirely due to my hatred of your father.”

  Mercy says “Not true. If that was the case you wouldn’t have saved my rebels and helped us take the capital.”

  “You mean the capital that I blew up?”

  Mercy says “That wasn’t your fault, that was the shadow demons’ doing. Besides, you did a lot to help us rebuild. If you hadn’t found the secret vault, we would probably still be trying to gather the funds to pay for the rebuilding. Not only were we able to completely rebuild the capital, we had enough funds to make improvements all across the kingdom!”

  “I just got lucky. You should really be thanking the first queen for hiding away so much gold. Although, I am fairly curious as to how she managed to amass so much. I don’t suppose you found her diary or anything like that?”

  Mercy says “No, unfortunately not. I would also love to know where all that gold came from! There is no way it was gathered through taxes, that would have been recorded. The only thing I can think of is that she found a gold mine and kept it a complete secret somehow.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “That would make sense, but it makes me wonder where it might have been and if it completely played out.”

  Mercy says “Me too! A gold mine would allow me to replace what I took from the vault. It would be nice to leave a safety net for whoever rules after me.”

  “If she didn’t leave a diary, then your best bet would be to hire survey teams to search the kingdom. It would be expensive, but it would probably be worth it. Even if they don’t find the gold mine, chances are that they would find other useful resources.”

  Mercy says “I have considered it, but finding the funding for it after everything else has proven difficult. The kingdom’s tax income still hasn’t recovered from all the chaos my father caused. Because of that, I have to be really careful of my spending. There is still some gold left in the vault, but I have been leaving that in case of another emergency.”

  “That is a good idea. I know you probably won’t accept money from me, but your trade income should be increasing soon. In fact, trade across the peninsula should be increasing quite a bit soon.”

  Mercy says “Why is that?”

  “Because soon I will be opening a trade route with an empire on the main continent. It will bring in new goods and opportunities which should spread all over the peninsula.”

  Mercy says “New trade is great and it will eventually increase tax income, but it also comes with risks. Letting the main continent know how to reach us carries some big risks.”

  “Not in this case, not only is the method of travel going to be completely under my control, but I already have an alliance with the empire.”

  Mercy says “Here you are complaining that you aren’t a real king, yet you already have an alliance with an empire?! You were just messing with me, weren’t you?!”

  “Maybe a little, but it is true that a lot of things have yet to be made official. There is a lot of work to do and I am constantly short on time.”

  Mercy says “Welcome to being a ruler! Get used to that feeling, because it is pretty much permanent. The best advice I can give you is to find people you can trust and dump as much responsibility on them as they can handle.”

  “I am working on that, but it takes time to get a government established. I am building everything from scratch and there are other things that I need to take care of at the same time. My biggest concern is how to keep all the tribes and other races interacting peacefully.”

  Mercy says “Unfortunately, that isn’t something I have had to deal with so I cannot offer much advice. About all I can think of is to keep them busy. If they have other things to do they will have less time to cause trouble.”

  “I have been doing what I can. I have created a lot of new jobs, but thanks to the refugees from the empire my population is growing too fast.”

  Mercy says “Yeah, we have also had a lot of refugees entering my kingdom. Luckily, we have the room for them since we lost so much population previously. Even before my father’s stupidity, we had a lot of empty land.”

  “From what I remember those lands aren’t exactly tamed. You will need to have the army clear them out and secure them. Do you have enough people for that? Also, be careful with the refugees, not all of them will be good people. I have had my people hunting the bandits, but they aren’t the only problem.”

  Mercy says “I don’t have enough people to clear all the lands out at once, but I plan to do it in stages. Also, I am aware and have people keeping an eye on the refugees to filter out the bad ones.”

  “If you want, I can loan you some troops. It would be a good chance to get some seasoning for my newer troops.”