Novel Full Chapter 864 - Taming the Fifth Year - Price of Family
Chapter 864 – Taming the Fifth Year – Price of Family
Or those old nobles would just nod and agree and promise cooperation, then do nothing. May find technicalities and procedural delays and reasons why action had to be postponed.
They responded to Arturo because Arturo could and would go over their head directly and make them look obstructionist. The secondary family couldn’t do that without creating political incidents.
Which meant that for the next few hours, critical decisions would either not get made, or would get made poorly by people who couldn’t enforce them.
The secondary family simply didn’t have the weight to handle them appropriately when they decided to be difficult.
His shoulders were already aching anticipating what he’d find when he returned.
The work mountain that was already considerable would have converted into something genuinely overwhelming, important decisions that had been postponed awaiting his return accumulating to the point where it would take weeks of effort simply to reach the state where he could see his desk surface again.
Budget allocations frozen because he hadn’t signed off. Military promotions delayed because protocol required his review. Legal disputes festering because the secondary family didn’t have authority to make binding rulings.
And beneath those visible problems, the invisible ones. The morale issues when people felt abandoned by leadership. The power plays when nobles sensed vacuum. The small inefficiencies that would multiply into large ones if left unchecked.
“You’re thinking too loudly,” Selphira said without turning around.
She was riding her White Serpent.
Arturo rode alongside on his Qilin, a Gold 2 beast that could maintain 80 kilometers per hour indefinitely and sprint to 200 if necessary.
“I have reasons to think loudly,” Arturo responded.
“You’re worrying about the castle.”
“Among other things.”
Selphira finally looked at him. Her expression was… amused? Sympathetic? Hard to read.
“The castle will survive a week without you. It’s survived centuries… Buildings are good at that.”
“It’s not the building I’m worried about.”
“The nobles.” Not a question. “We can whack them together when returning…”
Arturo smiled with that mental image, took a breath… Let it out slowly. Trying to release the tension that wasn’t actually helping anything.
It was going to be a nightmare.
But at the same time, there was a part of him that felt genuinely happy not having to be buried in that work for a while.
Being able to concentrate on the singular, direct objective of saving his brother instead of balancing dozens of conflicting priorities simultaneously was almost like vacation in a certain twisted sense.
No delicate negotiations with nobles who took offense at absurd reasons. No reviewing financial reports that revealed deficits requiring creative explanation from their owners explaining such thefts and his investigations to fine them. No mediating disputes between families that had been feuding for generations and expected him to somehow resolve conflicts rooted in grievances from before he was born.
Just go, find Victor and bring him back.
It was straightforward in a way his normal work never was, clarity of purpose that was refreshing even when he knew it wasn’t really a vacation but a dangerous operation where things could go terribly wrong considering the implications of Victor’s capture.
Still, a simple objective.
Either they got Victor back or they didn’t. Either the operation succeeded or it failed. No ambiguity… No need to satisfy 12 different stakeholders with contradictory requirements, nor compromises that pleased nobody and solved nothing.
Just one goal… One chance to do something that actually mattered in an immediate, tangible way.
Arturo hadn’t realized how much he’d missed that until this moment.
Administrative work was important. Critical, even. Civilization required bureaucracy the way a body required a skeleton, invisible when functioning properly but catastrophic when it failed.
But it wasn’t immediate. Signing a document today might prevent a crisis 6 months or years from now, but you’d never see the crisis that didn’t happen. Never get credit for the disaster you prevented through boring, methodical preparation.
This, though? This he’d see, this he’d feel and this mattered in a way that transcended spreadsheets and procedural compliance.
Victor was family. And saving family was the simplest, purest form of purpose.
“How long do you think this will take?” he asked.
“Depends on what Orion wants.”
“And what do you think he wants?”
Selphira smiled without humor. “Everything… But he’ll settle for less if he’s smart.”
“And if he’s not smart?”
“Then we get Victor back and Orion doesn’t get anything. Including breathing privileges.”
That was one thing Arturo could count on. Whatever else happened, Selphira wouldn’t leave without Victor. One way or another, this would be resolved.
The question was how much it would cost.
And whether they could afford to pay it.
Arturo felt the tension building in his shoulders again. The kind that would turn into a headache by evening and wouldn’t leave until he could finally focus on one thing at a time instead of juggling dozens.
They were surely walking into a trap. That was the assumption they’d operated under from the moment they decided to come.
Rebel nobles wouldn’t have captured Victor and then invited Yano’s leadership to come “negotiate” his release if they didn’t have a plan to exploit the situation somehow.
It was transparent to the point of being insulting. Like a child hiding behind furniture and assuming you couldn’t see them because they couldn’t see you.
But that didn’t mean they could simply ignore the threat when Arturo’s brother was genuinely in danger.
Some traps still worked even when you knew they existed. Sometimes especially when you knew they existed, because knowing made you cautious, and caution could be exploited just as easily as ignorance.
They’d brought a small group as Orion probably anticipated they would, logistical limitations making it impossible to mobilize a massive force without compromising the city’s defense.
But Arturo’s insistence on bringing more tamers instead of fewer had resulted in them bringing 35 instead of 25 that Selphira had initially suggested as sufficient.
It was a compromise between security and practicality, a number providing significant backup without becoming so large it became a problem for the city defense’s coordination.
35 people was small enough to move fast when needed. Large enough to form proper tactical formations when combat started. Diverse enough to cover multiple specialties without overlap becoming redundant.
Still not many considering they might be facing a complete rebel army that had been entrenched in that last Goldcrest territory for months.
But bringing 20 like Victor had brought when he left on the mission that resulted in his capture seemed like intentionally repeating an error that had already proven disastrous.
And Arturo had no intention of walking blindly into the same problem expecting different results. That was the textbook definition of insanity, and whatever else Arturo was, he wasn’t insane.