Tyranny of Steel

Adela struggled to fall asleep, a lot had happened in the last few days, and she recently only became aware that her fiance had returned from the Lordship of Wildschönau after a botched assassination attempt. Yet other than spending many hours explaining the exact situation to his father, Berengar made no attempt to visit her. Instead, he went straight to the bath to cleanse himself of the filth that he had garnered throughout the time in the cavern. Afterward, before she could approach him and check to see how he was feeling, he went to his bed chambers, where he was reportedly resting. The young girl had heard that Berengar was injured and needed rest, but she did not know to what extent; as such, she worried deeply about his health.

The reality of the situation was Berengar's full attention during and after the bath had been captured by Linde, who was secretly bedding Adela's future husband behind the scenes. Nobody was aware of the illicit relationship between Berengar, and Linde, especially not Adela. She was not the type of girl to accept her future husband to be playing around with other women, even if she was too young to take their place.

Eventually, Adela could no longer take the heartache of being incapable of seeing her dearly beloved, who, as far as she was aware, was hospitalized in his room at the moment. As such, she got out of bed and dressed in a white lace nightgown that was appropriate for the time period. It was only after she had tidied her appearance did the young lady depart from her bed chambers and silently make her way to Berengar's room. Her actions, if spotted, would surely cause a misunderstanding, and rumors were bound to flare. Luckily for everyone involved, nobody had witnessed her depart from her quarters. She quickly found herself in front of Berengar's door, where her heart began to beat rapidly. She had never visited his room after hours before; she wondered if he was asleep or not. After taking a few moments to calm herself, she lightly knocked on the door.

...

Berengar was in the middle of playing with his favorite toy when he heard a knock on the door; he was in no position to answer it at the moment, as there was a divine beauty "sitting" atop his lap. He could not fathom who would possibly be at his doorstep at this hour aside from Linde. However, he made sure to motion with his hand to Linde to cease her activity and stay silent. After making sure the girl's lips were sealed, he just about called out to whoever was at the door when he heard a soft feminine voice with which he was all too familiar from behind the door.

"Berengar, are you awake? Are you okay? I didn't get to see you when you returned... Can I come in?"

Berengar quickly unsheathed himself from Linde and whispered in her ear with a voice so low Adela could not hear it from the other side of the door.

"Get under the bed, and take your nightgown with you!"

Linde did not disobey his commands, albeit she was a bit frustrated she didn't get to finish; she quickly hopped off the bed and grabbed ahold of her nightgown, which was scattered across the stone tile floor. She then crawled under the bed where she barely managed to fit in the crawlspace with her plump behind and buxom chest. Afterward, Berengar quickly put on a pair of trousers and answered the door. Adela was just about to leave when the door swung open. In her hand was an oil lamp that illuminated Berengar's bruised body, which caused Adela to become deeply concerned about his health.

The young lady gasped when she saw the condition he was in and instinctively touched his abdomen to check to see if Berengar was okay. Berengar, who was desperately trying to hide his lower region behind the door, could not help but feel awkward as the little girl touched his bruised abs. Eventually, he could no longer contain it and broke the silence between the couple.

"Ahem... You know you shouldn't be here at this hour."

Upon hearing Berengar's voice, Adela quickly realized what she was doing and retracted her hand away, where she tried to hide her sheepish expression.

"I could not sleep knowing that you were injured... I wanted to check on your condition."

Berengar looked at Adela as if she were a little angel. Unlike the vixen who currently lie under his bed which ran him ragged despite his injuries, this young lady was too stressed to fall asleep knowing that her fiance may be seriously injured. Luckily for her, he was fine, aside from a cracked rib and a few bruises. Personally, he has had had worse and barely noticed the pain except for when he laughed or breathed heavily, but he would never admit that to a pretty girl who was concerned about him.

Berengar smiled, and he explained his situation to the young girl who was kind enough to check up on his condition even if it ruined her reputation.

"I'm hanging in there; at the very least, it is nothing life-threatening. So you don't have to worry too much."

Adela immediately felt relieved that her future husband was not in any danger and smiled endearingly at him.

"Well, that is good, is there anything I can do to help?"

Berengar did not want to let the opportunity go to waste; it was a way to gain points with the little girl and tease Linde. As such, he invited the girl inside to his room to talk.

"Do you mind coming in? Since you are here, I have some things I want to talk about in regards to our engagement ceremony."

Adela's cheeks became flushed as she heard the offer; it was completely inappropriate for a girl like her to be in a boy's room after dark. Well, it was inappropriate for her to be alone with a boy in his room, period, but she had already done that several times.

On the other hand, Linde heard the words "engagement ceremony" and instantly began to scowl as she thought to herself.

'Ceremony? What ceremony? Is he throwing a party to celebrate his engagement? Why was I not invited? Why don't I get one? Why is master making me listen to this? How cruel!'

Her scowl instantly turned into a pout as she felt left out, she knew she was only his concubine, but it still pained her heart every time she saw Berengar act flirty with his future wife. Luckily for her, Adela refused the offer.

"I'm sorry, Berengar, I don't think that would be appropriate... I'll see you tomorrow!"

with that said, the little girl in twintails ran off back towards her quarters. It was quite an adorable sight; seeing her run off in embarrassment. Despite that Berengar said his thoughts aloud as he shifted his attention to Linde, who was crawling out from under the bed.

"Maybe I teased her a bit too much... What do you think?

When he saw tears starting to form in the girl's eyes, he could not help but laugh to himself.

"Did I tease you too much too?"

After he said that, he held the girl in his arms and carried her back to his bed, where he spent his waking hours making it up to the young woman.

...

Before he knew it, a whole month had passed, and Berenger could no longer feel any pain in his ribs. Though he would still try to take it easy for the next two weeks, he was essentially healed from his injuries. During this time, things went as planned. The mines were overhauled completely and seized by the von Kufstein family in reparations for the attempt on Berengar's life. The von Wildschönau family suffered greatly from the loss of the mines, their professional army, and 1500 peasants, which despite the rumors that they had all died at the skirmish at mining town, nobody had ever found any trace of the mass graves. Berengar was truly a master at hiding bodies.

Berengar's exploits were advancing wonderfully; by now, the fields within the vicinity of the town of Kufstein were fully irrigated, His chemical laboratory was up and running, and he began to produce various things within it. Though he still lacked a dedicated team of chemists to work full time on chemistry, he managed to work on some small projects when he found the time. His flax farms and textile factory were either fully operational or close to completion. The labor force of Kufstein had grown quite rapidly after the implementation of irrigation, which allowed Berengar to open up a separate production line for agricultural equipment like the steel plow, the combine harvester, seeder etc. On the other hand, After the skirmish at the mining town, the volunteer militia was on a recruiting spree; they barely had enough time to equip their soldiers properly. By now, Berengar's artillery battery was full, and he had a total of 800 infantry. He was getting very close to his goals.

His spy network had produced great results, as Linde was able to uncover a long list of names of those who were in bed with Lambert, and Berengar was currently in the process of figuring out who to conspire against first. Linde had even managed to spread the web that was his informants to the other regions of the Barony of Kufstein. Rumors began to spread of the heroism Berengar showed in the face of death, how he was no longer a sickly lord, and how he was a benevolent lord to his people. This was all due to the network Linde had set up; she wanted to get rid of those filthy rumors regarding her lover as quickly as possible. Though they still prevailed among the nobility, many of whom had met Berengar in the past and had poor first impressions. The common people were more inclined to believe the rumors Linde spread, how he survived an assassination attempt only to lead a volunteer force of peasants armed with hand cannons to defeat the professional forces of Lord Ulrich von Wildschönau. Of course, the rumors she spread were greatly under exaggerated at first; over time, they had evolved to a point where they practically mirrored the truth of the battle.

Currently, Berengar was observing himself in the bathroom mirror; it had been a little over three months since he had been reincarnated in this world. He started out as a borderline emaciated, sickly youth. Now he had grown firmly into his body, which was well-toned with muscle, and though lean, he looked extraordinarily fit. He figured with the way this body was designed, he would never be as muscular as his past life, but that was fine, considering his princely face would not look well combined with the hyper-masculine body of a soldier. It would be a damn shame to ruin his regal appearance with the obsession of becoming a warrior again. He was not a soldier in this life, but a Nobleman, and one day maybe even an Emperor.

His ambitions had grown wildly since the battle with Ulrich's forces. He had no desire to be Holy Roman Emperor. Instead, he had the desire to carve an Empire of his own from the German-Speaking regions. It was still four centuries too early for the German Empire to come into existence, but he would speed up the process in this timeline. As a man of German descent in his previous life, and an Austrian noble in this life, he felt it was his destiny to unite the German people into one cohesive Empire. He was a strong believer in the concept of the nation-state and felt that complex multi-ethnic, multilingual Empires were a lot more difficult to manage and would eventually become unstable. He did not know why, but seeing his peasant forces crush the feudal army of his enemy awoke something in him, he felt it would be a damn shame to squander his knowledge in a small region like a Barony, after all in all of the strategy games he played in his old life, he was never content with being in charge of a minor nation.

For now, those lofty ambitions would have to wait, his engagement ceremony was in a few days, and it would be an exceptional occasion. Not only were his father's vassals and their family's going to arrive in Kufstein, but also the Count of Steiermark and his family, as well as the Count of Tyrol. Linde forced Berengar's hand and thus he invited her father to arrive, not because she particularly cared about respecting the alliance his family had forged with her father, but because she wanted an official invitation, rather than just being present. She no longer cared about her father's ambitions; he was not a man fit to be Duke, let alone King; but in her eyes Berengar was.

By now, some of the families had already arrived and were lodging in Sieghard's estate. He was deeply concerned about a lack of rooms for guests, and as such, during the past month, he had a special lodging area built for the excessive amounts of families who would be arriving. The areas were essentially Chateus designed by Berengar; they appeared similar to Castles but did not have the defensive structures and were quite luxurious. They could very well afford the expense after the massive sale of steel.

After Berenger had finished admiring his appearance in the mirror and gotten properly dressed in his opulent attire, he slicked back his hair with pomade and left the bathroom. Today was a new day, and he had many guests to greet alongside Adela. There were also many on the list of his enemies that appeared, and he would do his best to come to know their weaknesses in the following days. Not a single soul who plotted against him would escape his fury.