Chapter 678: Schemes [Bonus]
Nothing Gregory had said seemed to suggest declaring war on Guiz City. What did a displacement plan have to do with that? But everyone here knew the context well.
Veron had been pushing for an assault on Guiz City for over a month now. That was because Guiz City, according to their intelligence reports, had both covertly and overtly been suppressing them in many ways.
This wasn't just through their businesses, but also by using their soldiers to coincidentally choke off their path toward natural resources.
By systematically handing out missions that took place in regions of interest, Guiz City was able to stop Cassarae from claiming most of the resources in the region.
The main issue was that they were using the Human population to do it, and they had a huge advantage. After all, it had to be remembered that the System Cities had a bird's eye view of the entire Territory. They knew where Dungeons, open-pit mines, and various other precious resources appeared long before Cassarae did.
And then, they would release the information to the Humans that called the System City home. Thanks to that, they didn't even have to fight themselves.
If Cassarae was uncareful, her village would end up overrun by the Humans of Earth. Most of them weren't powerful, but they had shocking numbers, easily in the tens of thousands. And among them, there were some truly fearsome characters, including the one other Viscount outside of Cassarae.
This was why starting a war was so foolish. City Lord Guiz would definitely find methods of agitating the population to fight against them.
In fact, he wouldn't even have to do much. If they thought Cassarae was trying to claim the city for herself, they would be livid like the Humans of the Woodland Territory had been.
The difference was that the Woodland Territory hadn't had a systematic effort to increase the population of Humans in the region, and... Sylas had had absolute power. Something Cassarae did not have.
All of that proved why it was an idiotic idea she had firmly rejected, but it didn't explain what the correlation was here. But Gregory would surely have his own little spin.
"That is but a certainty. You know as well as I do, City Lady, that displacement will not be easy. The City Stele cannot be moved without losing a great amount of Experience. In addition, all of the buildings will have to be rebuilt at a significant cost.
"Just picking up and leaving will do more harm to us than good. In addition, City Lady's father has done us a great service in gathering as much capital as he had, but the portion of sir's business in Guiz City is over 60% as we've had difficulty building trading routes elsewhere. "If we just move away from Guiz City, we'll lose key access to our wealth.
"The only way to mitigate these losses is by preparing a rainy day fund, and with all our expenses, there's no way to do that any way other than war.
"Everyone saw personally just how much our wealth spikes after taking over The Enclave. Unfortunately, back then the City Lady made the decision to sacrifice the City Stele in order to help upgrade our own village. That was the right decision back then, but now..."
Cassarae was entirely deadpan.
Her decision?
Back then, it was because Gregory lobbied for it that the City Stele was sacrificed.
She had ultimately decided to fight other battles during that time, so she had let him win that since she had no use for the City Stele. After all, she already had too much to manage, and giving the City Stele over to their own had given a huge boost to their level.
Because of that decision, they had gone from Grade 1 Common Village all the way to Grade 7 Common Village in such a short time. They were soon to upgrade to Grade 8, and would be just on the cusp of becoming an Elite Village.
Normally, Cassarae would completely lose her temper, but she just continued to listen.
"..."
.." Gregory sighed. "... In addition, although a migration is definitely the right move, because Guiz City has shown such antagonism toward us, will they let us leave even if we are willing to eat such losses? They will almost certainly attack while we are vulnerable. They have been angling to do so for a long while already. It's the smartest decision to make a pre- emptive strike to deal with them in one go.
"It would be like killing several birds with a single stone. There is no escaping this." Cassarae stood at the door, her arms crossed and her expression unreadable. However, any person could see that she was once again being driven into a corner.
Gregory's arguments were sound, even if he had been shifting the puzzle pieces on the board all this time to force this.
Ultimately, the saltwater was the biggest issue... and there was simply no easy solution for it. However... how could this war possibly be won? Setting aside the fact that City Lord Guiz would have the strength of a Quasi King Beast within City Limits, the Generals of Guiz City would already be upward of Level 40 by now, and there would be ten of them, not to mention thousands of other Level 30s under their charge.
And none of that even counted the Humans.
It was a suicide mission.
But what was she supposed to say? That they had no chance of winning at all? What would that do to the village's morale when they felt the only other option was to stay here until they were eventually starved to death?
As for why Gregory and the others would want them to take this path despite knowing better... well, that story wrote itself.
These days, Cassarae was realizing more and more every day just how right Sylas had been.
And the worst part?
Every self-created city across Earth was likely dealing with the very same thing.