Chapter 542: Revenge

Now, one might think that there was no need for the Head Treasurer herself to constantly be involved in such ’mundane’ financial matters, but Lucas had made an agreement with his Master that made avoiding such responsibilities impossible for Quinn.

According to the deal Lucas struck with Celestina, in exchange for 70% of the profits from any joint business they conducted, project proposals he submitted and she approved would be given first priority for review and approval by the Balfour Family.

Celestina probably never imagined that Lucas would try to start over a dozen business and work on over 100 projects all at once... but that was precisely what he did, and there were no signs he was going to be slowing down anytime soon.

This had resulted in Celestina stamping ’urgent’ and ’high-priority’ on all the paperwork he sent her, which in turn meant Quinn had to deal with every single one of these requests personally, as only she, as Head Treasurer, had the authority to move such large sums of money at a moment’s notice without first checking with her superiors.

Understanding that any attempt to shirk responsibility here would only further enrage the Head Treasurer, Lucas’ next thought was to try to apologize, but between being shaken back and forth like a maraca and being half-choked to death, speaking was proving to be just a little bit difficult.

Ultimately, the best strategy Lucas’ addled brain could come up with was to simply endure until Quinn had calmed down.

Hopefully, Allina hadn’t been lying to him about this young woman normally being soft-spoken and reserved.

.....

And so, about half-an-hour later, after finally getting everything off her rather modest chest, Quinn Oxley let out a long sigh, feeling more refreshed than she had in months.

Discarding Lucas like a mouldy sack of wheat, the young woman flipped her shoulder-length blonde hair and sauntered off with a big smile on her face.

The menace whose name the Head Treasurer had seen countless times on funding request forms over the past 9 months had lost consciousness by this point, while Marco and Adam were still pretending to be one with nature, so Allina took the initiative to ask, "When would you like to reconvene?"

"The next shift-change for the mines is at 5 o’clock, so we can meet then," Quinn replied casually, not even turning back to look at her good friend and benefactor who had brought her enemy to her.

.....

And that, was how Lucas ended up bruised and unconscious in his bed after being betrayed by Allina.

As for why Allina had fed Lucas to the tigress, her reason was really quite simple.

Revenge.

Lucas had enlisted her help to acquire the... necessary information about his Master and Junior Sisters to properly size the dresses and undergarments he had made for Christina’s 16th Birthday Banquet.

He had purchased Allina’s help at the cost of 3 sets of custom-made bras and panties to help her keep her ’significant assets’ in place during battle, all paid for by Lucas himself, of course. The boy had also sworn not to reveal the source of his information and to take full responsibility if Celestina ever found out the truth.

However, Lucas had blabbed the truth to his Master almost immediately after getting caught.

As punishment for her subterfuge and for leaking top-secret information about her commanding officer, Celestina had sentenced Allina to 10 days of cleaning duty in and around the Raging River Legion’s base.

Allina had, of course, protested as such work was normally done by civilian employees or by low-ranking soldiers who had failed to meet training standards, not by the Army’s Vice-General, but Celestina was adamant.

When Allina had then grumbled under her breath that Celestina had worn her new bra and panty set every day since she acquired them, and had thoroughly enjoyed being the centre of attention in her dazzling new dress, she had received an additional 10 days of cleaning duty, for a grand total of 20.

Needless to say, Allina kept her mouth shut after that and served out her sentence. It was a dirty, smelly, unpleasant experience that she had not had to endure in decades, and it was very much not appreciated.

Still, if that had been all, Allina probably would have found it in the deepest, darkest depths of her heart to forgive Lucas; after all, trying to keep Celestina in the dark about all this had been wishful thinking from the start.

What Allina really couldn’t overlook, however, was that nearly a month on, Lucas had only delivered a single pair of under-armour to her, citing a lack of available materials and labour as the reason for the delay.

More than a little annoyed at her irresponsible little brother breaking his promises, Allina decided he needed a bit of ’punishment’ of his own, so after hearing about Quinn’s condition from her good friend Pauline, she had hatched this little scheme.

That said, all of this was just a bit of innocent fun for Allina, at Lucas’ expense; it in no way meant that their trip to Torren Ridge wasn’t a serious one.

Although they weren’t obvious yet, there were signs that a sufficient supply of iron and other important metals required to support the myriad of projects Lucas had started was beginning to become a problem.

Ever since Lucas landed in Misty City, met Old Braxton, and the two eccentric inventors started upgrading the Balfour Family’s forges with the seeds of industrialized production, the demand for all kinds of metals had been steadily growing.

On top of that, the 3 agricultural machines which the Balfour Family had partnered with the Carlson Family to produce had already proven incredibly useful, and the demand for seed drills, harvesters, and threshers was exploding as the forces involved in their ’beta-testing’ requested more ’samples’ to work with.

If they were this popular already, once full-scale implementation of the machines began, orders would probably expand exponentially.

It wasn’t just metals, either.

Thanks to Lucas’ various initiatives, all kinds of natural resources like wood, clay, and stone were being consumed at much higher rates than before in the South East Province.

If one also took into account the wide-scale infrastructure improvements kicked off by Second Queen Natasha, then it wasn’t an exaggeration to say that the demand of all kinds of materials in the Rockwell Kingdom had never been higher, perhaps with the exception of during the last great war.

Through various reports his trusty Head Manager had given him, Lucas had noticed rising costs and delivery delays beginning to pile up and realized what was happening.

He had already anticipated material shortages happening when he first embarked on his current industrialization projects, but he never expected them to appear so quickly.

It seemed the various supply-chains of the nation weren’t nearly as robust as he had first anticipated.

Something had to be done, and quickly, or the problem would soon spiral out of control, leading to terrible consequences both for Lucas’ ambitions and for the Rockwell Kingdom as a whole.

Unfortunately, Lucas didn’t have a quick, easy way to address all these issues, partly because there simply weren’t easy solutions to such big problems, but also because he didn’t completely understand the situation on the ground.

He needed to do some in-person research and speak to the people actually responsible for the production of raw goods.

As such, Lucas assigned a flurry of new tasks aimed at mitigating these resource shortages to his top Managers and collaborators, extra work all of them were positively thrilled about, while he too shifted his attention from making progress on his various projects to ensuring that materials for said projects wouldn’t suddenly dry up.