Lord of Winter: Beginning with Daily Intelligence

The stench of blood in Grey Rock Castle had not yet fully dispersed.

Outside the castle, the cleanup was still ongoing.

The monsters’ remains were dragged off the square; flamethrowers and high-pressure water guns were used in turn, trying to wash away the dark red meat paste clinging in the cracks between the stones.

The air was thick with the smell of blood and sulfur; when the cold wind blew, it felt like it was welling up from some deep well that had yet to be sealed.

Yet Louis still decided to hold the merit and rewards council here.

Grey Rock Castle had once been where the Remont Clan discussed military affairs and divided spoils; now it was being used again, only with a different group of people, and a different banner.

When the door of the Platinum Assembly Hall was pushed open, the warm air almost crashed into them.

The fire in the hearth burned bright, candlesticks were lined up in a row, and light flowed between the white stone pillars.

The amber-gold wine the Remont Clan had cellared for fifty years was opened bottle by bottle; the liquid poured into cups, glimmering with a gentle and tempting hue.

The family crest that had originally hung on the wall had already been taken down; in its place now flew the flag of Red Tide.

A huge parchment map was spread across the center of the long table.

The map almost covered the entire Gray Rock Province; tiny flags of different colors were densely planted on it, as if it were being carved up anew.

The Northern Lords took their seats one after another.

Their cloaks were not yet fully dry; one could still smell that lingering reek of blood.

But their gazes had long since been firmly locked onto that map.

Count Albert held his goblet, his fingers trembling slightly.

This old noble who had endured in the Northern Territory for over sixty years was now staring fixedly at the vast stretch of land encircled in red on the map, his Adam’s apple rolling up and down uncontrollably.

That was the Red River Valley, one of the most fertile tracts in Gray Rock Province; its annual yield was worth three years of total output from his Northern Territory lands.

Before the council, Louis had already hinted to him in private.

The amber-gold wine in his cup swayed gently, nearly spilling.

When the allocation began, the hall fell silent.

Louis stood at one side of the long table, holding a pointer in his hand, like a perfectly sized dining knife.

He looked at the map, and at those eager, restless eyes.

“Count Albert.” Louis tapped lightly on the map with the pointer. “Your cavalry charged hard; this Red River Valley fief goes to you.”

After a brief pause, Albert’s breathing clearly hitched; he almost stood up on instinct. His voice trembled a little, but it was firm: “I will gladly die in service to Red Tide.”

Louis moved the pointer again: “Viscount Yorn, the Iron Rock Mine fief in the west is placed under your name.”

Yorn almost bounced up from his chair; the goblet shook in his hand and nearly spilled.

He swallowed hard, his voice muffled yet unusually earnest: “Boss… I—I, Yorn, am with you to the end.”

“Viscount Brom, the Bridgeport fief on the south bank will be taken over by you.”

“Count Henderson, the Arabek fief is under your jurisdiction.”

…

When the lands of the Northern Lords had been divided, the pointer paused for a moment, then dropped onto the other side.

In that row of seats, it was not nobles who sat.

They were all Knights bearing the Sun insignia, most of them men who had followed Louis ever since he first arrived in the Northern Territory.

“Lambert.”

Lambert snapped his body straight, almost instinctively thrusting out his chest.

His breathing clearly quickened for a beat, but his eyes burned with a startling brightness.

“The Violet Valley fief in the northern section of Gray Rock Province, together with its attached farmlands, is temporarily placed under your custodianship.”

No title, but a solid stretch of land all the same.

Lambert opened his mouth as if wanting to say something; in the end he only nodded forcefully, his throat tight.

“Remore, the Jade River fief comes under the jurisdiction of the Defense Bureau; you’re in charge of the garrison.”

…

The Knights whose names were called stood up one after another.

What they received was not titles, but duties, territory—promises Louis was fulfilling one by one.

Most of these men had nothing when they followed him into the Northern Territory back then.

Yet now, both in the Northern Territory and in Gray Rock Province, they already had places that belonged to them.

As for titles, those could only be granted by the Emperor.

No one at this table brought it up, because they all knew it was only a matter of time.

With each point of the pointer, a wave of barely suppressed commotion would ripple through the hall.

It was the irrepressible sound of swallowing, and the faint yet hurried clink of colliding goblets.

They all understood.

This was no symbolic reward; these were tangible lands, veins of ore, tax rights, and people.

Portions carved off on the spot from the corpse of the Remont Clan.

Louis’s movements were neither hurried nor slow; he carved with precision, and in a way that convinced everyone.

When the last region had been divided up, no one in the Platinum Assembly Hall bothered to conceal their emotions any longer.

Wine was drained in a single gulp; their gazes moved back and forth between the map and Louis.

In this moment, the same sentence was carved deep into the heart of every noble and Knight seated here.

Following Louis doesn’t just mean staying alive—it means striking it rich.

But everyone present knew very clearly that the biggest share of all was not on this table.

The biggest share of all was not on this table.

The core tax rights of Gray Rock Province, the port system, the final decision-making power over the main ore veins, were all still firmly in Louis’s hands.

Those critical nodes that would be enough to decide the direction of the next ten years had never been put on the table for discussion from the very beginning.

Because they all understood that without Louis, even this meeting today would have been impossible.

Don’t mention sweeping south and crushing the whole Gray Rock Province—just taking Gray Stone Fortress alone would have been something none of them would even dare imagine.

Wine cups were raised one after another; Count Albert was the first to stand up.

The old nobleman held his cup, back straight as a rod, a hint of relief in his eyes: “If not for you, my lord, in this lifetime I wouldn’t even dare think about the gates of Grey Rock Castle.”

Viscount Yorn immediately stood up after him, the chubby man’s face flushed red, and he practically downed his glass in a single gulp.

“A place the Remont Clan guarded for three hundred years, overturned by you in a single campaign—on that, I, Yorn, recognize your lead.”

Count Brome only raised his cup, clinked it from afar with Louis’s, and drained it: “Getting this far is the biggest correct bet of my life. My thanks to Lord Louis.”

“Lord Louis’s favor will not be forgotten.” Several Knights who had already been granted fiefs also stood up.

Lambert didn’t speak; he only nodded hard, his fist clenching unconsciously at his side. The excitement of this moment was difficult to conceal.

As the wine went down, breathing quickened; someone kept lowering his head to look again and again at the markings on the map, as if confirming that those names and lands really did now belong to him.

They all understood clearly that they were watching, with their own eyes, a new order being nailed down on this table.

Louis remained where he was, expression still calm.

Only when the voices naturally subsided and everyone calmed down again did he speak once more: “Regarding the governance of these new territories…”

He had barely begun when Count Albert was already raising his cup ahead of him. “My lord, whatever you do, don’t let us manage them ourselves.”

The old nobleman spoke with unusual crispness, but there was a hint of deliberate restraint in his tone. He knew perfectly well that if they really each ruled as they pleased, Louis would never approve the proposal to begin with.

“Since those bumpkins from Gray Rock Province are now under our names, the Red Tide Code must be enforced on them at once. Every day of delay is a seed of disaster.”

Viscount Brome immediately picked up the thread, his expression open: “To be frank, of course we’d like to manage them ourselves.”

He sighed, then bowed slightly toward Louis.

“But if I let those idiot sons of mine manage these lands, the result would be nothing but embezzlement and uprisings, and in the end you’d have to clean up the mess anyway.

My lord, please, you must send Red Tide commissioners to take charge. We take the dividends, you handle the order—each gets what they need, and we all save ourselves the headache.”

Once he said this, the atmosphere in the assembly hall actually relaxed; a few nobles murmured their agreement.

It wasn’t that they didn’t want to hold governing power. Everyone present had, at some point, quickly weighed the possibility of managing things themselves in their hearts.

It was just that even if this thought were spoken aloud, it could never win Louis’s nod.

What he wanted was stability across an entire province, not simply to swap in a new batch of Nobility to keep making the same mistakes.

Besides, managing it themselves was all toil and no credit. They’d have to maintain Knights to suppress uprisings; taxes would shrink as they were skimmed at every level, and all the curses would land squarely on their heads.

Handing it over to Red Tide, however, was an entirely different set of accounts.

The Agriculture Bureau was more professional than they were at farming; the Trade Bureau could sell the same goods at a higher price; the Defense Bureau would be responsible for public order and suppression of unrest… all the risks were clearly compartmentalized.

The ledgers were transparent, the dividends fixed, the settlements punctual.

All they had to do was wait for the results.

After these years of good faith, Red Tide’s credit stood harder than gold.

Louis took all of this in, very satisfied with the Northern Lords’ reactions at this moment.

His gaze briefly swept across the map, but in his mind he had already begun tallying his main gains this time.

First was territory and population.

Gray Rock Province being incorporated into the Red Tide system meant that the actual area under Red Tide Territory’s control had practically doubled overnight.

More important than that was the stretch of continuous plains.

From this day on, Red Tide would no longer be constrained by the Northern Territory’s bitter cold and grain imports. In his hands he now grasped one of the most stable granaries in the western Empire.

This was not just a matter of having enough to eat.

This was the foundation for whether or not he could fight a prolonged war.

Next came population.

The hundreds of thousands of farmers, craftsmen, and vagrants in Gray Rock Province would, after being digested by the Red Tide system, soon turn into labor. People would no longer be the bottleneck for Red Tide.

Then there were the seaports and trade routes.

Once Gray Rock Province’s ports were plugged into the Red Tide system, products from the Northern Territory and Red Tide’s industrial goods would gain a far broader dumping ground.

And the treasury left behind by the Remont Clan was the most direct fuel.

Centuries of accumulation—gold, Magic Crystals, and rare materials piled up like mountains.

This wealth was enough to support the Red Tide Legion through the next round of Magic-guided Industry upgrades: mass-producing steam war chariots, improving artillery, advancing steamships, and even reserving room for more long-term plans.

Moreover, today at dawn, the “Daily Intelligence” had already flagged more hidden resource points for him.

Unexploited hidden magic ore veins, Magical Beast nests of special value, and several underground facilities deliberately sealed off by the Remont Clan.

Developing all of these was now only a matter of time.

Last, and most important, was that Ancient Dragon corpse—heartless, yet still intact.

That was not a power that could be toyed with at will.

But Louis would not repeat the Remont Clan’s mistake by using it for human experiments.

Even so, something of that nature was a priceless treasure in and of itself, and he intended to hand it over to Merian’s alchemy team for development.

The gains this time were enormous.

Louis’s expression remained calm, but inside, he was already giddy with delight.