Chapter 455: House Goldenshield

For kilometers, the walls encircled everything.

Concrete streets sprang up from the ground one after another. Tall houses, similar to those in Goldenveil, began to appear in every direction around the City Lord’s enormous mansion.

The ground trembled slightly with each new building, a low rumble rolling beneath their feet.

The stags of the cavalry unit snorted and stamped their hooves restlessly. A fine dust hung in the air, carrying the scent of fresh concrete.

Lucius watched it all in silence.

Soon, the dark concrete walls swallowed the view completely. With towers every few dozen meters, they rose about fifteen meters high and five meters thick, reinforced from the inside with steel and concrete.

It was a beautiful city.

It had a harbor big enough for several dozen large vessels, its own shipyard, and, basically, everything a city in the Eternal Forest needed.

The damp breeze from the harbor carried the sound of water lapping against the pier’s new pilings.

At the top of the wide central gate, blank banners fluttered in the wind. But they wouldn’t stay that way for long.

Soon, they would give way to the banners of House Goldenshield, with their golden shields. The House that Lucius would found right there.

Of course, Ethan’s work wasn’t finished yet.

He built roads connecting Goldenshield to Goldenveil, established a rail network, and organized a tram system for the city’s public transportation. The tracks cut across the new streets in straight, well-planned lines.

He wanted to build a cathedral there as well, but Arwen wasn’t with him, so he set the idea aside.

Even so, those few structures had already used up almost all of that month’s instant-build allowances.

When he checked, his fortune had dropped to just twenty million gold coins. A sigh escaped his lips.

Then he turned to Lucius.

"The fifty thousand additional citizens currently at the Goldenveil military complex will be sent here shortly. Take command of this cavalry unit and maintain the city’s defense for now. Once the Seventh Legion is assembled, I’ll send it to protect you."

Ethan looked at the city walls, still devoid of a single soldier, and added:

"For the time being, the Third Legion will move here to guard the city."

The new Lord Goldenshield nodded, but his eyes remained fixed on the mansion just a few meters away.

Before long, that would be his new home.

His wife, naturally, wasted no time.

Alongside Alice, she entered the new house and set out to explore every corner.

Their footsteps echoed through the empty halls. Every now and then, a muffled exclamation escaped her as she discovered yet another room, another balcony, another staircase so wide it seemed unreal.

She was a commoner, the daughter of poor farmers, and had never had much to her name besides her own beauty.

Her husband, a third-stage specialist at the time, fell in love with her and made sure she would live a comfortable life. After the two moved to Goldenveil and he joined the army, she became one of the city’s most prosperous women.

Still, she had never dreamed of anything so magnificent. Her fingers glided over the smooth, cold walls as if she needed to touch everything to believe it was real.

While the two women explored, the two men took a moment to themselves.

They sat down on a pair of stools and opened a bottle of Green Fairy wine, passing it back and forth. The wine flowed warm and sweet down their throats.

"You lived in the Kingdom of Burning Ice for quite a while, didn’t you?" Ethan asked, twirling the bottle between his fingers.

Lucius was sixty years old. For a fourth-stage specialist, who could live to be five hundred, he was still relatively young.

Unlike most of Goldenveil’s population, he had arrived in the city as an adventurer, right in the early months of the first winter, and had eventually decided to settle there.

"Yes, my lord. I lived in the city of BelaFlor. Have you heard of it?"

"Yes." Ethan nodded with a smile. "Son of a prostitute?"

Lucius’s face hardened for a moment. His jaw clenched, and his gaze drifted to some spot on the floor.

"Don’t be ashamed; I don’t judge men by their origins." Ethan shrugged and took another sip. "But yes, I know BelaFlor. One of my uncles took me there once. Well... it’s a place full of establishments where single men can relieve the stress of long journeys."

"Indeed." Lucius nodded.

He took the bottle when Ethan passed it over but didn’t drink.

The silence hung heavy for a few seconds before he spoke again, his voice lower.

"My mother is still there... I’d like to send someone to fetch her."

"So what are you waiting for?" Ethan raised an eyebrow. "You’re a tribune, the leader of a battalion of a thousand men, and one of Goldenveil’s highest-ranking officers."

"Using army soldiers for personal gain is a crime, my lord." Lucius chose his words carefully.

"And letting your mother live as a prostitute isn’t?"

Ethan didn’t look away.

"For her to still be alive and working, she must be a third-stage warrior with exceptionally high longevity, right? Even so, she won’t live past one hundred and fifty years."

"I’m not telling you to be corrupt, just to follow your heart. If you’d reported this matter to Doran, he wouldn’t have hesitated to let you send a small mounted group to rescue your mother. With the Lord Commander’s permission, it’s not a crime."

Ethan stood up, brushing the dust off his clothes.

"Well, now that you’re a Lord, that hardly matters. You’ll have your own soldiers soon enough. Once you do, don’t wait. Send someone to fetch your mother and give her a life of dignity."

He pulled a pouch of gold coins from his inventory and held it out to Lucius, the coins jingling heavily inside.

"For a third-stage being to be in this situation, she’s probably bound by a slavery contract, isn’t she? Use this gold to pay for her freedom and..."

Ethan paused and pulled a small token from his inventory. It was the Blue Tower mage’s symbol that had belonged to his mother.

"If they refuse to sell her, just show them this. They won’t dare disrespect a fifth-stage mage."

Lucius didn’t know what to say.

He stood there, holding the gold and the token between trembling fingers. The pouch felt far heavier than it actually was.

He looked at Ethan with a complicated expression, swallowing hard, before finally smiling.

That was his lord.

Eternal Lord of Goldenveil.

A man worth dying for.