The Pleasure Lord

Sea Shell Island.

The sun rises as a canopy of gold, bright amid the blue, bidding the stars to take their nightly rest. As darkness surrenders, every color changes from tinges of charcoal to a vibrancy. Dawn sent shimmering rays over the placid ocean, bestowing a golden path from the shore to the horizon.

Today, was a new beginning for all the residents of the Seashell island. Especially, for the people residing inside the city under the rule of the Frey Family.

They were in for a rude awakening early in the morning when suddenly an unknown militia group numbering five hundred were let into their city by the city patrol guards.

Soon those unknown people raided the manor of the Frey family and captured the family members of the Frey's that stayed inside of it.

Then they ordered the residents of the city to quickly assemble at the largest open space inside the City.

That was where they got informed about the identity of the unknown militia by the man named Cyrus.

That same man then broke the news to them about their city changing rulers from today onwards.

From now on, they will only obey one person and that is Lord Alex Mordrake.

Cyrus did a good work on portraying Alex as a talented, kind-hearted, genius, and people-friendly Lord to all the residents of the city who were listening to him.

Though most people did not buy it, but when Cyrus announced that they would not have to pay any tax for straight six months and the personal income tax after that would only be amounting to just six percent, which is very very low if compared to what they would have to pay before to the house of the Freys.

Also, to those who were concerned about the captured soldiers from their city, Cyrus told them that they would be released and brought back here by tomorrow.

Boom!

The crowd instantly erupted into thunderous cheers.

Though they had no knowledge of how their new Lord would really treat them future; for now just this much was enough for them forgetting about their previous Lord completely.

...

Back to the Merchant Union city.

Alex heard from Cyrus that the Frey city has been peacefully taken over. Alex can now truly be said to have unified the whole island and brought it under his control.

He can now develop it as he likes. As for the time being, he ordered the puppets to not let anyone leave the island without his permission, even if they are foreign merchants or traders that had come here from the islands near them for trading and business purposes.

This lockdown will only go on for two days. Blackbeard and his men were appointed to do the patrolling around the island for the time being. Of course, while doing so they will not fly the black flags with a skull on them as that would be stupid.

But there would be no restriction on the movement of common people residing anywhere on this island.

Alex thought that he would need some more manpower so he bought another thousand puppets from the money he gained from the manors of his defeated enemies and also because his faith and merit points had seen yet another increase after he won two battle in a single night and became famous all over the island.

Now Alex has around three thousand and two hundred puppets under his command in total. The extra thousand puppets were divided between Blackbeard, Cyrus, and Tagor.

Cyrus had two thousand puppets under his command while Tagor and Blackbeard had five hundred each. But this division was not permanent because the puppets would take on different responsibilities as per the different situations.

Also, the extra two hundred artificial puppet personnel were given the responsibility of only protecting his family and friends all the time.

Soon two days passed by.

In these two days, Alex visited the former Frey city to let the common citizens see the face of their new Lord and also to hold the public trail of the Frey family.

Since the third brother of Levan Frey was the only one to be captured alive, only he was punished and beheaded for the crimes committed by him, his brothers and also his father towards the common citizens under their family rule.

Also, Alex changed the name of the city as he did not always want to call it by its past ruler surname.

Alex simply named it, Windmoor city. The residents actually liked it very much.

After this, Alex appointed a mayor(puppet) to look after the city in his stead.

Alex returned back to the Merchant Union City while visiting every village that came in between his journey.

Now Alex wanted to hold another public trial for the Merchant Union city but he was still waiting for Violette's decision as that would change things a little.

Apparently, she had not even stepped out of her manor for the past two days for some reason.

Therefore, Alex decided to deal with the war prisoners such as President Kon and the other four council members of the Merchant Union after five days as that was the deadline which Alex had given to Violette for making her decision.

...

After two days of lockdown, the foreign merchants and traders were given permission to leave and go back to wherever they had come from.

Their businesses were hurt big time since they had visited the island when it was going through the biggest of its upheavals.

Well, it was true for most of them since they were not able to dupe the residents of this particular island off their materials for cheap because of ongoing war and one other thing.

Usually, the foreign merchants traded with grains, salt and a small number of metal tools in exchange for precious Demon beast materials gathered by the people of this island just because the former stuff such as grain, salt and metal were lacking and in-demand here since it was an island lacking in such everyday goods while the Demon beasts were abundant on this island.

Though it was understandable that the transportation cost would raise the price of these goods that the foreign merchants would bring to the island from the subcontinent; but what they demanded was at least triple the actual cost that the merchants would have in transportation.

Anyway, this time Alex didn't let them carry on with their past established norm of doing business since he didn't want his citizens to pay more to these foreign merchants.

For the time being, Alex released the stock that the Nobles and had gathered in their warehouses. As to meet the future needs of his citizens, Alex had other ways to easily solve this problem and even make a good amount of legit profit out of it.

In the coming days, he is going to send a team of puppets to the Belmont subcontinent for various different purposes.

With these foreign merchants leaving the island, they also brought the news of a new young lord coming to power and unifying the biggest island there is in the archipelagos of islands.