Herald of Steel

Alexander himself was quite pleased with how the negotiations went. 𝚍ｎ𝚘ｖ𝚕.𝚝

Although none had jumped to say yes then and there, there were also no bullish nobles threatening him to fight to the death.

An event he would like to very much avoid given the recent happenings.

Although to be honest that might have been largely due to the copious amount of honey Alexander had laid out on the table in the form of economic benefit.

Hence, many nobles who had indeed come to Zanzan with the desire to flat-out reject Alexander and even die a martyr started having second thoughts right after seeing the second page.

Money truly did make the world go around.

Thus in the following three days, the group of 12 was engaged in many furious private debates, either with all of them present, or in small groups, where all kinds of colorful language and suggestions, accusations, threats, and curses were thrown out against each other as they tried to come up with a unanimous conclusion.

“Tikba! You dare betray your homeland! Your ancestors! Your oath! Have you fed your honor to the gods?” This violent roar was predictably uttered by Jamider (Earl) Yuusiq, who was the leader of the anti-Alexander faction.

And to his accusation Lord Tikba simply smiled and said eloquently, “His Majesty AM has lost the Eternal Holy City and three wars consecutively. I believe he has lost the mandate of the heavens. The gods cannot beholden me to my oaths.”

To which the much more vocally limited Yuusuq could only point his point finger at the shamelessness and repeat, “Yo..you…you.” in rage.

Following this, the nobles discussed every single of Alexander’s demands multiple times, with many disagreeing, disapproving, and discontent with at least a few of them, or just even just with one or two clauses in one of those points.

For example, in the neutral sections of the demands, they most definitely did not like the free trade demand because most could see they would import vastly more of Alexander’s new inventions than export their produce.

They were guaranteed to run a trade deficit.

The loss of coinage was another point of contention as it robbed them of their financial freedom, while the restriction on building new AM’s temples snatched their religious liberty.

And lastly, the ability for Alexander to investigate them if a merchant was harmed in their territory could be easily exploited to frame and then attack them.

All these points of dubious intent were clear as day to the shrewd group.

So if this was only what Alexander had to say, then many of these nobles would have considered rebelling.

Because it would be wrong to be fooled by these apparently weak nobles, believing they would not fight or resist.

For they all belonged to at least the outer circle of Muazz’s retainers and could be considered at least semi-zealots, and convincing them to submit by strong-arming them would not likely work very well.

Not when if Alexander was too heavy-handed, another crusader army might come looking for him.

Hence the second page was absolutely necessary to coax them.

Now, it had to be said, even before giving them the papers, Alexander had quite the confidence that the numbers quoted there would be quite efficacious in inducing a change of heart.

This was because when Alexander first discussed with Pasha Farzah the amount of money to give them, the old man was first a bit incredulous, finding it hard to believe that Alexander was actually being serious.

This was because even he, currently, perhaps the richest man in Adhania would not be able to stomach losing a total of thirty-three (33 million) ropes to twelve nobles every year for an indefinite amount of time.

That would be close to like 10% of his annual income.

But when Alexander said he was being totally serious, it made the old man truly open his eyes to Alexander’s productive and economic potential and it both made him scared of how the balance of power would change in Adhania due to him, but also glad that the boy was on their side.

So he then joked, “Brat, increase a bit of the money, and even if would consider working under you., haha.”

While Lady Inayah who was there with them too experienced a similar shock and added after Pasha Farzah with obvious admiration, “It is simply unbelievable that a single city can about produce one billion ropals worth of products annually.”

“I would have never believed it if I had not seen it. Even if it came from my own father’s mouth. And I fear my father will not believe it even when I tell him.”

The black mature woman then let out a sigh of admiration, while Alexander actually marveled at the lady’s grasp of mathematics and commerce when she was able to pretty easily estimate Alexander’s total worth of output.

She did this by first remembering that Alexander had promised to sell to each of them around 300 million ropals worth of goods over the next year.

And then she simply made the reasonable assumption that Alexander would at least keep half of his total stock for domestic use and to trade with other partners other than them.

So came the number of one billion, which to her actually seemed like a conservative amount.

And amazingly, Lady Inayah was pretty much on the dot there, as Alexander did estimate his total industrial output to be around that ballpark.

The Treasury Master of Adhania had sired a very worthy daughter.

While the man being praised put on a shy facade and lightly chuckled,

“Haha, Lady Inayah is embarrassing me. I’m not nearly as rich as you are making me out to be.”

“I am without a doubt losing a lot of money to those nobles in this deal. But I chose to do it as also a kind of propaganda to other nobles. It is very hard to do business when you are hated by everyone after, hehe.”

Part of this statement was completely true.

One of the other reasons why Alexander had decided to distribute his products at a discounted price besides sharing the pie so that the nobles would not rebel was indeed the simple reason for propaganda.

He hoped that other nobles would be enticed by Alexander’s generosity and trading opportunity to switch sides.

But he was also lying through his teeth when he said that he was losing money on the deal.

Because while he was not making as much money as he could, he was certainly not making a loss, and actually selling the products at a much higher price than their cost price.

But Alexander naturally kept all these a tightly guarded secret.

In fact the cost of the goods that Alexander produced was kept so under wraps that even the people in charge of running them did not know the exact values.

For Alexander calculated these numbers personally and only shared them with Cambyses and to a lesser extent Ophenia.

And it was the prices of these goods that proved to be the most decisive factor in deciding the choice of the nobles when they discussed whether to stay neutral or to join neutral.

Due to that, the nobles even chose to overlook the 1% tax humiliating tax, further reasoning that there was also the exemption from all other expenses regarding entertaining their superiors, which many actually calculated as having saved money on this deal.

And so as Alexander waited patiently for the next four days, eager to hear the nobles’ results, the day of reckoning finally came.

The group again met at the same place, same time, but with the exception that this time the four honored guests were missing as they simply saw no reason to be there.

So the meeting consisted of Alexander and his retainers, who had been largely overshadowed by the presence of the big four in the previous meeting and mostly stayed in the shadow then.

The meeting began shortly after exchanging some pleasantries and ended quite quickly.

Because it basically went like this.

“My lord, I Lord Tikba have decided to accept all your offers and proclaim His Majesty, King Ptolomy as the rightful king of Adhania. I beseech thee to allow me to join thy ranks.”

This was said by those choosing to submit to Alexander.

While the following was said by those choosing to stay neutral.

“My lord, I Jamider (Earl) Yuusuq have decided to stay disinterested and uninvolved in the ongoing conflict. I accept all demands on the first page and so I beseech thee that you accept.”

The former oath takers far outweighed the latter, 11 to 1 to be exact, as the only one to reject Alexander was Yuusuq, who stubbornly stuck to his oath no matter what.

In fact, he had even come here with the determined mind to rather die than submit.

But after a lot of cajoling by Tikba in the following three days, and under the pressure of being outnumbered 11 to 1, who at one point even threatened to implement a total blockade of his landlocked territory, the martial man relented.

Alexander was certainly very glad to see this lopsided result.

Even though he had somewhat expected it, it did not detract him from feeling a sense of accomplishment at having expanded his dominion to 12,000 sq km.

“Hahaha, great, great. Together we will make Zanzan great again.” He said as he got up to hug and shake hands with each of his new retainers.

And soon the date of the oath-taking ceremony was fixed.