Chương 21: Oracle Network

Lyra entered Alicia's office. She carried a kettle filled with tea, alongside boxes of biscuits that Alicia requested. Lyra placed them on the side of Alicia's desk as she silently read a clipboard with papers on it, which was a brief report that Maxim handed a few hours ago regarding the steelworks. A pleased smile appeared on Alicia's face as she finished reading while Lyra dutifully poured tea on her cup.

"You seem to be in good spirits, Lady Alicia," Lyra commented with a smile.

"I was worried that you were going to fall sick earlier." Alicia simply shrugged at Lyra's words.

"Me? Falling sick? I was just a little exhausted." Alicia placed down the clipboard and stretched a bit with a grin.

"But now that I've gotten a few more hours of sleep than I usually have, I'm practically bursting with energy!"

"I'm glad that my worries were unfounded." When Alicia's eyes glanced at the box of cookies, she immediately took some for herself. Their sweetness and chocolatey flavor, alongside their pleasant texture as they crumbled inside her mouth, made Alicia smile in delight, wiping off whatever was left of her earlier fatigue.

"It's so good. You should really try them out, Lyra!"

"I can take some? Truly?"

"Yes and yes. As much as you want." As Alicia savored the chocolate chip cookies, Lyra cautiously and shyly took some for herself from the box she opened. This one in particular was something Alicia bought home from Alsatia in a dozen crates. While it was indulgent, one thing that Alicia needed to fuel her newly found workaholic lifestyle was a lot of premium Alsatian sweets.

And so, it wasn't just cookies that she bought; she also bought chocolates, candies, and all other kinds of snacks she enjoyed whenever she stayed in Alsatia. Certainly, they're worth a few ducats. Even Lyra seemed to be in agreement, as Alicia could see her cute wings fluttering a bit as she ate a few cookies as well. It was rather brief, though, as after having her portion of the snack, Lyra turned a little serious. She was about to say something, then stopped, and then she mumbled to herself.

"Uhm…"

"What is it, Lyra?"

"Ah, well, you see, I was wondering what your plans really are now that winter's nearly over." Lyra usually never broached the subject of town administration when she interacted with Alicia. Though, ever since Lyra started training the staff hired by Alicia in the palace and since she began acting as Alicia's de facto secretary on day-to-day tasks, she must have been hearing a lot of discussions between Alicia, Vittorio, and Moshan and was thus starting to get curious.

Alicia rested her chin on her hands as she glanced at Lyra.

"Well, there's a lot you can look forward to. First of all, most likely, the palace will be busier and busier as time goes on. I need you to be able to scout good talent to promote in household positions," Alicia said, and Lyra nodded.

"I will. But why will Wintervale become much busier?"

"As you might have noticed, I don't really intend to keep this village as it is. To prosper, we need to connect with other towns and cities around us and do business with them. You know what that means, right?"

"There will be more visitors here, like that merchant earlier."

"Exactly." Alicia tapped the clipboard on her desk as she began explaining things to Lyra.

"I have a very ambitious plan for Orevogorsk. Once these steelworks are done, we will have the ability to produce a lot of iron and steel products for both export and internal use." Alicia looked back at her achievements so far.

"Due to everyone's efforts, our workforce is now improving their skills. All the construction guys can become workers later on in either the steelworks or in the lumber mill I'm planning to build. With the tools produced using steel with Maxim, we're going to be able to cut down trees and process them into good lumber, and then we'll have a furniture factory in no time. That way, we'll produce a manufactured consumer good at scale."

"And you'll sell this to the rest of Vael, Lady Alicia?"

"Naturally. Though, half of them will be shipped for sale to Alsatia. I need to maintain a constant stream of Alsatian currency to buy critical inputs and construction materials there. That will mean that during the next months, Orevogorsk will be on a constant buildup, and as our goods penetrate the Vaelrin market, I expect an influx of migration to this village."

"Eventually, Orevogorsk will become a fully fledged city in that case."

"Exactly!" Alicia was happy that Lyra managed to easily understand Alicia's designs for Orevogorsk. While it was hard to read, Alicia could tell that this realization meant that Lyra was now looking forward to more and more work as well. Now that Alicia thought about it, considering how good Lyra was at clerical duties, she could become much more useful later on. And so, for a good while, Alicia talked a lot with Lyra about her plans.

Alicia talked about how, once the steel mill was fully done, Orevogorsk Steel would rival the quality and quantity produced by great steelworks she saw in Alsatia. Then, Alicia talked about this eventually necessitating the opening of the mines she was surveying nearby. One day, instead of Alsatian ore and scrap being fed to her steel mill, Alicia would feed Orevogorsk ores to it instead to produce pure, 100% locally made Orevogorsk steel for both export and internal use.

And then, there were the new seed crops that Alicia was slowly starting to buy up in great quantities from Alsatia. Carrots, leafy greens, and a variety of other root vegetables would all be perfect for planting during spring or summer and then harvested in the fall, ensuring that Orevogorsk wouldn't be too reliant on wild game and food from outside.

As long as Alicia continued her exports of high-grade monster cores and, eventually, quality furniture, steel products, and other commodities with good profit margins, Orevogorsk would boom in economic might, attracting more and more people to work its land and factories and maintain a growing city. She was essentially going to copy how developing countries in her home world caught up to richer countries like her original homeland within the span of mere decades.

Once, her father force-fed economics textbooks to her, and she reluctantly accepted to look better to him and her family, but now she was going to implement them for real. It was for the betterment of her people, who lived such miserable lives. One day, they would have a city to be proud of. Indeed, Alicia's plans were beyond ambitious, and when Alicia was done talking to Lyra about it, the woman seemed to stare at Alicia with wonder.

Though there were hints of doubt still present in the succubus's eyes, Lyra had seen what Alicia was capable of doing in winter. Next, I'm going to show you what we can do in the warmer months.

"That's why, for now, I'm going to need to go back to Alsatia again to develop more trade contacts," Alicia said to Lyra as she finished up on her snacks.

"Do tell Vittorio and Moshan about this."

"Of course." Lyra, having peered into the grand ambitions swirling in Alicia's mind, skipped out of her room with barely contained enthusiasm. Alicia was smiling ear-to-ear as she watched Lyra leave to continue her work, hoping that this talk would motivate her to work harder. But her smile faltered a bit when she noticed a system notification. Ever since she arrived in this world, Alicia's system notifications had always been about progression in the black crown's abilities.

Since she vowed not to use it, progression was slow. But it seemed that the number of Vaelrin who considered Alicia their leader improved her mastery of the black crown. It appeared that more people within Orevogorsk became new believers in Alicia's leadership, and that finally pushed her mastery of the [Black Crown] to unlock [Memory Wipe]. She checked it briefly. As usual, it was a disturbing ability that allowed her to wipe a Vaelrin's memories.

Her [Memory Wipe] was currently limited to deleting one day's worth of memory at the moment, but this was still rather concerning. Its powers were only going to continue to grow, and Alicia wondered how she would resist the temptation of testing it. I wonder. Is this why the Vaelrin called the demon king Abraxas the Great? That man, from Alicia's memories of playing Worldfall Online, was beyond evil, not just against mankind, but also to the Vaelrin.

He probably brainwashed his people, turned them more vicious, removed their memories, and controlled their worldview so he could send them as villainous fodder against players like her. Lyra's face earlier flashed in front of Alicia. The thought of it, the thought of anyone using the [Black Crown] to turn someone as kindhearted as her into a demonic enemy that was all too common in Worldfall Online, was unthinkable. Alicia shook her head, closing her system notification.

Instead, she focused her mind back into what must be done for her people. She needed to begin work on opening the next ambitious project of hers: opening a lumber mill and then producing furniture using said lumber. The trees around Orevogorsk must be cut to make space for expansion, and so as to not waste them, they must be used to make profits. As usual, the answer, Alicia believed, lay in the developed land of Alsatia. And so, after a few minor preparations, Alicia teleported back to Alsatia.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. She took the newspaper she bought earlier from that newsboy, which was made by a newspaper company called 'Enterprise Daily Herald.' Though, as Alicia suspected, it was actually the Oracle Network in disguise due to their similar logos.

Determined to get access to that network, and thus, expand her contacts from what Princess Lucille vetted, Alicia set out for their headquarters to find out for herself whether or not the Oracle Network was alive and running.

"Rubicains and Lysards clash again during a pro-Third Estate gathering at Lorienval's 3rd arrondissement, leading to four fatalities and a hundred injuries from both sides. The Rubicains insist that they were only there to protect workers at the event, while Lysard leaders accuse Rubicains of inciting violence against noble properties. Both sides claim that the other side started it first, though the Interior Police's investigations say that a Rubicain member was the first to attack a Lysard member with a baton."

"Deputies hailing from the Third Estate shot down the proposed tax hike on commoners demanded by the war minister for the fifth time. As a result, nobles of the Estates General angrily stormed out of negotiations about reducing noble tax-exemption privileges, ending sessions until next week." Princess Lucille grumbled as she put down the newspapers in her hand while having afternoon tea.

It was truly sad that, in the absence of her father's normally stable rule, her people were starting to tear each other apart as each day passed. Now, there were even organized militias from both sides that routinely engaged in meaningless yet unnecessarily violent scuffles that disrupted public safety. One of them was made up of radical commoners, the Rubicains, and the other was the Lysards, funded and organized by Lucille's bastard brother to support the interior police in dismantling opposition in Alsatia.

Said opposition mainly came from the Third Estate, a faction made up of wealthy and professional commoners at the Estates General, representing free towns and cities that weren't controlled by noble demesnes in the countryside. So far, they bitterly opposed the war minister's plans of raising taxes to strengthen the imperial army, and they also hated the idea of letting him become emperor and further trampling on their interests, such as lower tax rates and low trade barriers.

As a result, the commoners of the Third Estate were Lucille's de facto allies, making up the bulk of the country's 'legitimist' faction. Yet, because many of them were commoners who probably also secretly despised the monarchy, she had very little control over them. Incidents such as this therefore happened a lot.

"I was thinking, if you're so concerned about this, I can simply ask our partners in the Third Estate to make the Rubicains avoid confrontations," Lucille's knight, Lorraine, proposed.

"As much as I appreciate the support of the commoners, it wouldn't do if their rogue actions taint your image."

"Don't," Lucille rebuked without hesitation.

"Telling them to avoid confrontations might as well imply to them that I'm blaming them for this, and then what, I'll lose the commoners's support too?"

"You're right. This is far too difficult…"

"Indeed it is. At the very least, there are a few bright spots for us." To be specific, Lucille's artificial spirit project was starting to do well. That made Lucille smile a bit. Since she was given the title crown princess, Lucille's father gave her a chateau a few miles south of Lorienval.

Right now, she was here, having a quaint afternoon with her knight, but deep inside the Chateau d'Montclaire were Lucille's laboratories and workshops, all conducting research and development into artificial spirits and producing them. Her first finished model, a mass-produced artificial spirit that she called 'Ember,' was set to fire affinity.

They weren't exactly strong yet, as Lucille still hadn't figured out how to use higher-grade cores to create artificial spirits, but her Ember model was cheap, requiring only D-grade cores and an automated ritual line she personally designed for them. Due to their name and the fact that they were mindless constructs only responding to Lucille's commands, she labeled them with E alongside their number in the production line. Lucille intended her first production batch of the Ember model to reach up to E-1000.

Each of them could hover around in swarms, appearing merely as balls of bright fire, yet they were capable of flinging intermediate fireball spells and blaze rods. Lucille didn't have an army, but Lucille was an industrialist at heart, studying magic and engineering diligently day and night so she could combine them.

One day, she was definitely going to create more than these mindless artificial spirits and create stronger, fully sapient, or at least autonomous ones that could rival powerful individuals, even those at levels 300 or 400, which was the usual upper limit of people nowadays. The problem was, she was at a bit of an impasse about how exactly she would do that.

She was burning through a lot of high-grade monster cores on failed experiments to create artificial spirits with C or B-grade cores, which was her next objective. That meant she was constantly needing Alice's supply.

"At this rate, we'll have something to rival the war minister in no time," said Lorraine, praising Lucille's progress." If we maintain this rate, then yes. But I'm still not sure about how reliable my monster core supply is. At all."

"Are you finally going to tell me to investigate Ms. Kasperska then?" Lorraine suddenly smiled deviously, as if she had been waiting for this opening for ages and was fully ready for it. As for Lucille, she just shook her head adamantly.

"No can do. I don't want to offend her," Lucille said.

"But, I do admit, she's a bit too enigmatic for my comfort."

"It appears to me that even you are convinced that a solution must be found. Even a compromise solution." Indeed, Lorraine was right. Lucille was making compromise solutions about the questions she had for her business partner. Since Lucille didn't want to offend Alice, and also because she wanted to get background checks on the person giving her the most crucial inputs for her project, she had to essentially 'investigate' her indirectly.

So far, Lucille's efforts had been limited to checking records about ongoing dungeon-clearing operations, both inside and outside the country, and to Lucille's surprise, there weren't many of them, and if there were, there were very few operations targeting red and purple dungeons, which was most likely the source of Alice's high-grade cores. On the other hand, black dungeons were out of the question.

Even the Imperial Army struggled to hold back the strange creatures—colloquially referred to as 'devils' due to their distorted and anomalous properties—that were coming from them. Areas around black dungeons were also heavily distorted by miasma, a corrupted version of mana that only began to appear in concentrated quantities a few decades ago, said to be capable of bending the fundamental laws of physics, warping space-time, and corrupting the environment.

Such dungeons were usually threatening enough to many countries that when they appeared, the best that governments could do was to contain, evacuate, and manage the zones around them that were either taken over by devils or contaminated by miasma. Since miasma also corrupts the mental and physical state of living creatures after long-term exposure, usually, expendable Vaelrin of the Demon Brigades were the ones being sent to frontline duty against them.

As such, it was impossible that Alice was sourcing her monster cores from clearing operations against black dungeons or normal red or purple dungeons. Yet she had so much! It was all too suspicious, yet Lucille couldn't accept risking her relationship with Alice by investigating her directly.

"The only option I have left is the Oracle Network," Lucille said, tapping her table anxiously with her gloved finger.

"But I don't know if I can trust them."

"You intend to make them act as your proxy?"

"Well, it is an alternative to us personally doing the investigations and getting caught…" Lorraine smiled.

"That doesn't sound half-bad, Lady Lucille. If you wish to do this, we can go back to Lorienval and request their services. While I never formally hired them once, I do have contacts within," Lorraine offered.

"... As long as Ms. Kasperska doesn't find out, I guess," Lucille said, sighing.

"Alright. Fetch me my cloak. I don't want to be recognized going near them."

"As you wish." A few minutes later, both Lorraine and Lucille boarded a short train ride to Lorienval. So that they would be out of sight, they both used clothes that were enchanted to cloak their faces and features.

It was a bit of a risky move considering that the Interior Police, controlled by Lucille's bastard brother, would be very suspicious of individuals cloaking themselves and were routinely patrolling the streets, but it was surprisingly easy to avoid and keep the Interior Police's attention away from them. Both Lucille and Lorraine, after all, were high-level elves capable of many tricks and magic to keep themselves inconspicuous.

On the other hand, the interior police were mostly normal humans with low levels whose daily job was beating up protestors or thugs depending on where they were patrolling. And so, they managed to sneak their way to the headquarters of the so-called 'Enterprise Daily Herald,' the legal front organization of the Oracle Network. The main building of the newspaper company was largely normal, staffed by human clerks and workers who ran the press or wrote the daily news that they peddled to the masses.

Known for its broad appeal for both middle-class citizens and the urban laborer, the Enterprise Daily Herald's unique content was its editorial sections about daily spats between elites, their crimes and conspiracies, and other nasty 'rumors' that the average citizen loved to read over their morning breakfast.

Drama sold after all, and while the Enterprise Daily Herald usually claimed that they were just writing entertainment to avoid trouble, the truth was that because of their ties to the Oracle Network, they might as well be selling the truth as mere 'opinion.' Eventually, both Lucille and Lorraine were pulled out of the official parts of the building by a special employee who wore a cloak that also hid their features. Then, they were guided to a staircase below where the Oracle Network truly operated.

"We, unfortunately, have no information about this 'Alice Kasperska' person," a masked employee of the Oracle Network said as they talked in a dark-lit room.

"We will have to conduct an investigation on your request." Separated from the rest of the world with layers of magical wards, most likely constructed inside a pocket dimension, this place was the epitome of the shady veil of the Oracle Network. Even the man in front of Lucille wasn't human, as far as she knew, but rather an eastern Vulphean, a beastfolk subrace known for their fox-like ears, nine tails, shapeshifting abilities, and powerful illusory magic.

It was the same with most other employees of the Oracle Network that Alicia saw. Many of them were a part of the elder races, like elves, dwarves, and elite beastfolk subraces. Many of them had levels as high as Lucille and Lorraine, and they all hid their features. It was as if she was in a den of assassins rather than a normal information guild. Yet, even they were in the dark about Alice. She would really need to order an active investigation.

This felt wrong, truly wrong, but Lucille couldn't remain anxious and unsure forever about her 'friend,' especially since she was entering a succession crisis. She had only one option in the end.

"Alright," Lucille sighed.

"I'd like to commission an investigation into her, then. How much would that cost?"

"None at all. We sell information. Since we have not given you information, you owe us nothing."

"Really?"

"It is our own failures that caused this request, not yours. And we would look into this Alice Kasperska person on our own regardless of your request. Why should you pay for something we were already going to do?"

"Oh. Thank you."

"Also, how do you expect us to put a price on the information if we don't know what the information is yet? What if I gave you a price, only for the information we get to be priceless? We would be taking quite a loss, wouldn't we?"

"Ah…"

"I jest," said the employee with a chuckle.

"When we have information, we will contact you, and as thanks for bringing this hole in our network to our attention, you will get a significant discount on all information relating to Alice Kasperska." Lucille nodded, happy that the Oracle Network wasn't going to fleece her just yet when she was coming out empty-handed. Not that she trusted them either, but, oh well, they didn't seem half bad. They were just… shady.

After that brief encounter, Lucille and Lorraine both returned back to the headquarters of the Enterprise Daily Herald. Lucille was starting to get tired, so she asked Lorraine to pick up the pace since she wanted to rest in her chateau early. But she froze as the two reached the lobby. Inside the newspaper company's headquarters was none other than Alice Kasperska.

Unlike Lucille, she was wearing her usual clothes, without disguise at all, and she was talking to the same employee that guided Lucille to the Oracle Network earlier. W-why is she here? Then, as if her luck couldn't get any worse, Alice turned, her eyes locking straight at Lucille's panicked eyes. It was at this point that Lucille realized that her cloak's enchantment failed, because Alice was cheerfully smiling as she waved at Lucille.