Chapter 161: Mercury

The cold Water Season arrived right on schedule, and Black Castle Town was bustling with activity and overflowing with excitement. Just over ten days prior, the ant swarm had finally been purged, and reconstruction work in the Centaur Hills was about to begin. The York family and their vassal families were recruiting commoners within Black Castle Town, and those unattached freemen flocked eagerly to the recruitment stations, desperately selling themselves to the stewards of the noble lords. The York family possessed immense power and owned the land of the entire Centaur Hills. The news—whether true or false—that the York family was recruiting subjects ignited the people's enthusiasm, and everyone wanted to carve out a place for themselves in the new order.

Monkey walked despondently toward his family's shack; he had just been rejected yet again. This was the seventh time Monkey had been turned down by the steward in charge of recruitment. His physique was too frail, unsuited for heavy labor. The ant disaster had altered the fates of many: some laughed, and some wept. Monkey belonged firmly to the category of those who wept bitterly. His sphere of influence had vanished into thin air, his property confiscated, his house razed to the ground, and his mistress had abandoned him, leaving him once more a penniless freeman.

Monkey had always been a freeman, and he used to think there was nothing wrong with that status. During his glory days, he had lived better than most vassals; he had subordinates, wealth, women, a private residence, and status—everything he could possibly desire. It was only after losing everything that Monkey truly understood the importance of status. Without status, there was no security, and in the face of disaster, freemen possessed the weakest capacity to resist risks. Right then, Monkey saw fat Wedge, the owner of Amber Street, being beaten mercilessly to the ground by his own laborers. Before the disaster erupted, fat Wedge had been quite a figure, possessing businesses, backers, and wealth—and those laborers had often been harshly mistreated by him. The York family had issued a decree of war, and all of fat Wedge's goods and property had been requisitioned, leaving him with nothing but his status as a freeman. Consequently, fat Wedge was now suffering a brutal revenge.

Monkey shivered, pulled the hood of his cloak down to hide his face in the shadows, and quickened his pace. His makeshift shack was not far away, and his young sister was waiting for him inside. Monkey began to consider whether he should leave Black Castle Town as soon as possible. The York family's war decree had been lifted, and this was the time for grievances to be settled and grudges avenged. He had countless more enemies than fat Wedge.

Just as he approached the shack, Monkey's heart sank to the bottom. Several burly men surrounded him, and their leader was none other than his old acquaintance, Sasha, Lord Balor's number one enforcer. After Balor's downfall, Sasha and a few trusted confidants had moved to the freemen's camp outside the city. Monkey had not sent men to hunt them down, never expecting that this leniency would finally spell disaster.

"Sasha, it's you? Where is my sister?" Monkey asked Sasha with a cold face.

"Lord Monkey, Miss Elsa is quite safe." Sasha bowed mockingly to Monkey, then dealt him a heavy, vicious slap across the face. "When you betrayed Lord Balor, did you ever imagine this day, Lord Monkey?"

"Brother!" A delicate figure threw herself into Monkey's arms. Monkey tightly embraced his only remaining family member and comforted her, "Elsa is fine, brother will protect you."

"Sasha, for the sake of our past friendship, let Elsa go. I'm begging you," Monkey pleaded with Sasha.

Sasha flashed a sneering grin and said coldly, "I don't call the shots on whether you two siblings live or die. Let's get moving together before it gets dark."

Leaving Black Castle Town, Monkey and his sister, under the armed escort of several burly men, trudged step by heavy step toward the south. As dusk fell, they came upon a carriage parked by a campfire, with a dozen figures gathered around the flames.

"Hey, Monkey. You're here too." A blurred figure with a familiar voice called out to the approaching Monkey.

"Fermi, it's you? Red Wolf, Mia, Spider, you're all here too?" Monkey asked in astonishment as he spotted many old acquaintances in the crowd. Like him, they had all once been Balor's capable subordinates, and all of them had brought their families as well.

Shifting his gaze to a hooded figure sitting by the campfire, Monkey said bitterly, "Lord Balor, I never expected you to still be alive."

"Surprised, are you? I'm surprised too. I never expected that the one to succeed my position wouldn't be Fermi, but you." Balor pulled back his hood, revealing the features of Lord Balor once again.

Fermi muttered resentfully, "He just got lucky and managed to cling to Baron Wimbledon's coattails—oh wait, Viscount Randle now."

*I'm the one who clung to the Randle family's coattails; what Monkey grabbed onto doesn't even count as a finger!* Balor complained silently to himself. Seeing the obvious relief wash over Monkey's face, he felt a surge of irritation and barked, "Beat him!"

With a cruel grin, Sasha raised his mallet-like fists and rained blows upon Monkey's face and body. Monkey curled up on the ground, protecting his head and face, and obligingly let out miserable screams that provoked cold jeers from the onlookers. Only little Elsa covered her mouth, her eyes brimming with tears in a deeply pitiful display.

"Stop."

Sasha halted his blows and stepped behind Balor. Monkey lay on the ground groaning in agony, while his sister Elsa clung to him and wept without stopping.

"Cut it out, you two siblings can drop the act now."

Balor sneered. Monkey immediately stopped groaning, and Elsa wiped away her tears, flashing a flattering smile at the crowd. Monkey would steal and get beaten, and Elsa would put on a pitiful act—it was precisely this repertory of skills that had allowed the siblings to wander all the way from the Eastern Province to the Centaur Hills.

"Such a great performance! I remember Elsa is only eleven years old, right? That level of skill is almost catching up to mine," Mia remarked with seductive, glamorous fascination.

"Indeed, the little girl is very talented," Spider echoed from the side.

Red Wolf, with his ordinary appearance, chimed in dully, "Her hands are very steady and flexible."

Balor smiled and asked a small boy beside him, "Paul, what have you observed?"

"Teacher, they are trying to distract your attention, which shows they are afraid of you and think they understand you," little, thin Paul said softly.

Seeing the ugly expressions plastered across everyone's faces, Balor burst into hearty laughter. These people were assistants he had cultivated out of sheer boredom; each of them had learned some scout techniques, even if they hadn't realized it themselves. Balor never imagined that the day would truly come when he would need them.

"This is Fermi. Just looking at his chubby, lovable appearance, you should know that he excels at mingling and striking up cozy relationships with others. Men, women, young, and old alike—very few people dislike him on first sight. No one would ever guess he is my most capable assassin."

Fermi bowed and scraped before Paul with a smile, his endearing and comical demeanor truly quite amusing.

"Mia and Spider, a brother-and-sister duo specializing in deception and disguise. Originally, they could only fool lowly freemen, but after learning some aristocratic etiquette from me, they've already defrauded quite a few small family merchant caravans."

Spider bowed gracefully to Paul, while Mia blew him a kiss.

"Red Wolf, ordinary in appearance, completely lost in a crowd. He is the best thief under my command. If he doesn't die or get crippled, he might surpass the greatest master thief I've ever seen. But he has one damn flaw: he can't control his hands. Hand it over!"

Red Wolf raised both hands and said with a wry smile, "Lord, I didn't steal anything! The fellow standing behind you is too terrifying; I feel like the moment I tried anything on you, he would have caught me."

Balor glanced at the blank-faced Quicksilver militiaman, then said to Paul, "This is why he is still alive today. Red Wolf's instincts are exceptionally sharp, and he can always sense danger beforehand."

"If he doesn't break the habit of relying on his instincts, he will die one day," little Paul said coldly.

Balor nodded, pointed at the bruised and battered Monkey, and said, "Monkey. Skilled at reading facial expressions, he is the smartest yet the stupidest of them all. If anyone else had inherited my position, the rest of them would probably be buried underground."

"Lord Balor, if I had inherited your position, at least one would have been left standing," Mia protested indignantly, while Spider nodded repeatedly in agreement with his sister.

Ignoring the banter between the brother and sister, Balor continued, "These five individuals are all very clever, yet entirely devoid of loyalty. Fortunately, they share one common trait: they value their families above all else. That's why I chose them in the first place. Now, they are your subordinates, and their families will remain under my care."

Little Paul stepped forward, sweeping his gaze across the pale-faced group. They were assassins, thieves, swindlers, camp followers, and thugs. Now, they were compelled to become the family's secret agents, just as Lord Victor had said: if you cannot choose your destiny, then embrace it.

"From now on, you are members of Quicksilver," Paul said loudly.

There was no such metal as quicksilver in this world. Victor had combined the words "water" and "silver" to coin "Quicksilver"—the name Victor gave to his intelligence organization, signifying that it permeated every nook and cranny.

At this moment, Victor did not yet know that Quicksilver had new members; he was currently observing an experiment at the Hill Camp.

Even before the ant swarm had ended, the Hill Camp had been cleared out, and those fallen bricks and tiles had become part of the mountain brick kilns. The Hill Camp now looked entirely different; 20-meter-high special brick walls had replaced the iron oak fences. Outwardly, these special bricks looked no different from ordinary grey bricks, but not even an ogre chieftain with limitless strength would be able to shake this special brick wall.

Numerous workshops and warehouses had been constructed inside the camp. Moldboard plows, arrows, crossbow bolts, chainmail, spears, short swords, sabers, round shields, raw sugar, refined sugar, coffee, and purple sugarcane wine were all produced and stored here. However, none of these were what Victor was focusing on. A large pool had been excavated in the center of the camp, and the dozens of fishmen inside that pool were today's protagonists.

This was Victor's first time observing fishmen up close. Setting aside their mouths full of sharp teeth and cold gazes, the species was actually rather cute. Whenever the alchemical militiamen threw pig offal mixed with pig blood into the pool, these short-armed and short-legged fishmen would squeak and scurry over to frantically fight and gorge themselves on the food. When the alchemical militiamen whipped the fishmen with spears, these low-intelligence orcs would roar and holler, their bodies secreting a sticky, slimy liquid. At that moment, a long-handled pole with a noose would pull a fishman up, and several alchemical militiamen would swarm forward, using brushes to scrape the slime from the fishman's body into a large wooden barrel. Once the fishman was on the verge of death, it would be tossed back into the pool.

"With this fishman slime, we can build a 100-meter-high fortress?" Victor pointed at the wooden barrel and asked.

Reynold nodded. "Yes, my lord."

The limit height for fortresses in this world was 60 meters, constrained on one hand by the weight of stone and on the other by the issue of adhesives. Meanwhile, the mortar mixed with fishman slime by the alchemical auxiliaries could vastly enhance the stability of special brick fortresses. Combined with the fact that special bricks weighed far less than stone, even an earthen mound like the Hill Camp could support a giant 80-meter-high special brick fortress. For the safety of the alchemical tower, Victor intended to build a fortress within the Hill Camp, though he did not need the kind of eye-catching, colossal fortress.

Victor recalled that Master Edwin had once introduced him to the Silver-White Tower in the Elven Capital, a structure left over from the wizard era that stood a full 100 meters tall!

*"Could the Silver-White Tower also be an alchemical tower!?"* Victor stroked his chin and muttered to himself.