After breakfast was over, three of us headed out together.
The only person who didn't come with us was Cecilia who had to go and train her subordinates. She had an unwilling look on her face as she headed off to the training field, but she knew that this was her duty, so she still went.
As for the three of us, Haley, Baroness Rose, and me, we were heading to where Haleye's people were.
Baroness Rose and I hadn't gone yesterday because of the time that we had spent together, but we still needed to go and inspect the goods that had been brought. Even if we trusted Haley, we still needed to see if it was properly unpacked and stored since this was something that involved the lives of our citizens.
So we didn't waste any time heading over.
When we arrived, we found that there were many people who were currently working hard even though it was early in the morning.
They were all working on securing the goods and making sure that they were properly stored.
Not a single person dared to slack on their task since they knew that this was something that would involve the survival of their family over the winter.
With how diligent everyone was being, there really was no need for us to inspect what they were doing. They all made sure that they were doing everything correctly since it was their lives at stake here.
Since that was the case, all we did was talk with Haley's employees a bit, or rather Baroness Rose talked to them while Haley was away taking care of some things.
She didn't ask them anything about the delivery, all she asked them about were personal questions about Haley.
To my surprise, I found that the employees were more than happy to talk about Haley.
All of them were talking about her with happy smiles on their faces, but the way that they spoke of her…was a bit strange.
Instead of talking about her like she was their boss, they talked about her like she was a child and they were the parents. They happily talked about all the things that she had done and shared many different embarrassing stories about Haley.
While this felt like Haley was getting the short end of the stick, it was interesting to see how much they cared about her.
This wouldn't have happened in a normal company.
The company that Haley ran seemed more like a family than a company.
When Haley came back, Baroness Rose looked at her with a wide smile and eyes that seemed to favour her even more.
Haley was confused when she saw this, but she still let Baroness Rose take her in her arms.
The unpacking of the goods and storing everything took the rest of the day and Haley's group stayed another day to plan out the new store.
While her employees were surprised by the fact that she was planning on building a branch store here, they fully supported her.
There were even a few that looked at me with special looks, as if they could already guess everything. Though none of them had any hostility towards me.
There were also a few that secretly came up to me to ask me to take care of Haley.
I could only awkwardly agree that I would.
After the two days, Haley left with her people to go back to Alandal City to prepare everything.
She promised that she would be back before winter came.
But it took over two weeks for her to get everything ready.
During this time, Shaka and his men also arrived in the town.
Baroness Rose quickly arranged for Shaka and his men to work with Cecilia who was the captain of the town guard. Working together, they arranged a new department for Shaka and his men who reported directly to me.
This department was in charge of gathering information in town and in the surrounding area. They would make sure that there was nothing harmful in town or the surrounding areas.
They would be our intelligence network.
During the time that I had spent with Baroness Rose after coming back, I had already told her about the Shadow Garden matter.
While she was surprised to hear this, she supported me in this decision.
Then she told me a few things about Shadow Garden that she had heard from her father, the count.
This included the fact that if Shadow Garden wanted me to join, I wasn't able to resist because they had immense influence. A baron like me would be crushed before I was allowed to resist this.
So that was why she supported me in the first place.
But she also warned me that this would be a slippery slope and that I had to be careful since she had heard about the many people who had lost their lives in this organization.
I didn't need her to remind me of this since I already knew this…
After all, I knew what would happen in the end for this organization.
But for now, Shaka and his men were certainly a welcome addition to our town.
In just a week, they had already rooted out a bunch of spies from other nobles in our town.
We had thought that we would be safe since we only had a small territory, but it seemed that the nobles around us weren't as forgiving.
It seemed that we couldn't let our guards down at all.
Then two weeks later, Haley came back with some of her employees.
She had finished taking care of matters in the city so that she wouldn't need to be at the store anymore and now she had brought everyone here to make a branch store.
We had already picked out a place for her, so all that was left was to build her store.
With this new store being built here, it would mean that everyone would have access to a bunch of new goods and their lives would improve.
It was just too bad that something interrupted the construction of the store.