Since he had already pretended to be a passerby, Leonidas decided to play the part to the end.
He entered the inn nonchalantly with his guard and sat down at a wooden table not far from the door.
As soon as he sat down, he saw the black-haired noblewoman standing at the counter, saying something to the innkeeper.
Leonidas exchanged a knowing glance with his guard, and a faint, almost imperceptible smirk flickered at the corner of his mouth.
‘As expected, nobles are all the same. She’s probably throwing her weight around, trying to freeload.’
“Hey, innkeeper, is this bread made of gold or silver? So expensive?! Five coppers? How about three?” …
Leonidas was just raising his wooden cup to drink when he heard that.
His movement froze, and he nearly spilled the water.
He looked up in surprise, reevaluating the figure from behind.
‘What is this noblewoman doing? Bargaining? And there are nobles like this?’
“Oh, Lady Alicia, you know how it is!” the innkeeper said with a smile, her voice crisp and loud.
“The Great Disaster just passed, the rebels are causing trouble, and there’s hardly any grain right now. This white bread is a rare commodity!”
“Hey, I didn’t realize you were so silver-tongued, innkeeper,” the woman called Alicia said without giving up, pointing a finger toward the plates of the other guests in the hall.
“Then what’s that on their plates?”
“That’s emergency bread and meat cake stew. It fills you up, but the taste is far inferior—how could I serve that to you?”
‘Wait… is bread this expensive?’
Leonidas suddenly came to his senses.
He slowly put down the cup, his gaze sweeping over the few rye bread rolls he and his guard had just ordered, and his Adam’s apple bobbed involuntarily.
‘There are bad people among the common folk!’
Instinctively, he reached for the thin coin purse in his bosom.
The feeling of it made the corner of his mouth twitch.
‘The money I brought… wasn’t much to begin with. I still need to stay at the inn tonight, this…’
“Alright, alright, I get it! Five coppers it is!”
Alicia pursed her lips, looking pained, and tapped the counter reluctantly with her finger.
“Innkeeper, you’re even tougher than Prince Layne!”
Somehow, seeing this noblewoman suffer a loss made Leonidas feel a little less depressed.
He quickly lowered his head, using the act of drinking to hide the slight loosening of his expression, but his peripheral vision remained fixed on the noblewoman named Alicia.
Meanwhile, Alicia was extremely annoyed.
She had never lost an argument even when bargaining with Layne, but today she had somehow capsized in a gutter and fallen into the hands of a roadside innkeeper.
‘Even haggling over such trivialities?’
Andrew silently turned his face away and rolled his eyes vigorously.
The young lady ordered two more portions of stew.
Carrying the plates, she and Andrew found an empty table near the back and sat down.
Just as she picked up her wooden spoon, a faint, peculiar sensation suddenly crawled up the back of her neck.
She paused barely perceptibly, her gaze swiftly sweeping toward the adjacent table—two woodcutters dressed plainly, looking like traveling companions, were burying their heads in the simple food before them.
‘…Was it my imagination?’
She frowned and withdrew her gaze.
‘No, those two actually ordered bread too! The tall, thin one only got one piece, but the burly man has three in front of him—that’s twenty coppers! Do woodcutters earn that much these days?’
The guard looked at the bread with a troubled expression and sighed quietly.
“I didn’t expect it to be this expensive. We’ll have to sleep on the street tonight.”
Leonidas had also just caught that sweeping gaze and was inwardly on alert.
He hadn’t expected his companion’s inadvertent complaint to conveniently provide an opening.
He immediately went along and sighed, “Let’s think of another way. In these chaotic times, sleeping out in the wild isn’t safe.”
‘So they’re just unlucky outsiders who got cheated!’
Hearing this, the young lady relaxed her guard slightly.
‘I’ll need to discuss ways to stabilize prices with Lemeng when I get back.’
“Sigh, it’s all the fault of those damned rebels!”
Andrew grew more and more frustrated as he thought about it, letting out a heavy sigh.
“We just made it through winter, and now this. Who knows how much spring plowing will be wasted this year.”
Andrew’s words were like a stone thrown into water, immediately stirring up a ripple of discussion.
The surrounding diners started chattering, all their remarks aimed at the rebels in the north.
“You said it! We barely made it through winter, and the granaries are almost empty. I heard those murderers up north burn houses and steal grain—they don’t even spare the livestock…”
“I’m in the fur trade. I was supposed to go north to collect goods in early spring, but now? The roads are all cut off!”
“It’s all their fault! Now we can’t even afford a decent loaf of bread!”
Listening to these accusations from all sides, Leonidas silently clenched his fingers on the edge of the table.
He lowered his eyes, staring at the bland vegetable soup in his bowl, his jaw tight, but he didn’t utter a word.
On the other hand, the burly guard beside him visibly heaved his chest twice.
His hand on his thigh suddenly gripped the axe handle at his waist, veins bulging on the back of his hand, his face flushed red—he seemed about to lose control.
Leonidas lightly kicked the guard under the table, signaling him not to act rashly.
“Andrew, that’s not right to say.”
Ignoring the heated discussion among the diners, Alicia frowned and sighed softly.
“If the common people could survive, why would they rebel?”
Leonidas and the burly guard froze, quietly observing Alicia.
“As the saying goes, water can carry a boat, but it can also overturn it. The Empire, the nobles—they’re all just passengers on the boat.”
Alicia lowered her head, slowly stirring the stew with her spoon.
“It’s precisely because we understand this that Prince Layne and I have done everything we can to implement the New Policy, trying to build a framework that puts the people first.”
“But the rebels are about to reach our doorstep, my lady.”
Andrew leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice even more, afraid to incite panic.
“Are you… planning to reason with those bloodthirsty mobs?”
“If it were possible, I’d very much like to incorporate them,” the young lady shook her head.
“The so-called rebels are nothing but farmers who can’t survive. Right now, what the Maximilian Family needs most is labor for land reclamation. I even plan to convince Lord and Master to give subsidies to farmers who open up wasteland, and for the first three years—”
She raised a slender finger, her tone resolute.
“One-tenth tax! In case of natural disasters, taxes can be completely exempted!”
Land reclamation subsidies! One-tenth tax!
Natural disaster tax exemption!
These words struck Leonidas like thunderclaps.
He couldn’t help but snap his head up, his pupils contracting as he stared intently at Alicia’s profile, even missing a beat in his breathing.
But only for a moment.
That suddenly kindled light quickly faded.
‘Too late. If two years ago… no, even just last autumn, those noble lords up north who bled the common people dry had even a tenth of this consideration…’
The horrifying image of his wife and children starving to death flashed through his mind, and a churning pain wrenched his stomach.
‘Perhaps none of this would have happened.’
The young lady stirred the stew in her bowl with her spoon.
This dish, made with a lot of emergency bread and meat cake and a few wild greens, was really unappetizing.
She made a face.
“Pity, but now the scale of the rebels makes reconciliation impossible. The Senate probably won’t be able to cover it up anymore.”
“You mean…”
Andrew leaned in even closer, his voice reduced to almost a whisper.
“What do the rebels… really want? Our Maximilian Family has been fairly good to the common people!”
“Then it depends on what kind of person the leader is. If he’s truly an ambitious general, then their goal should be…”
The young lady stopped fiddling with her spoon, tapping her fingers lightly on the rough wooden handle.
“March south to the Imperial Capital and overthrow the Empire.”
‘Impossible! Can this woman actually deduce the Grand General’s plan?!’
Leonidas lowered his head, trying hard to hide his surprise.
“They wouldn’t dare!”
Andrew seemed unable to accept it, his voice suddenly rising.
“The Empire’s centuries-old foundation, how could it possibly…”
“I didn’t say they would succeed,” the young lady pursed her lips.
“Don’t get so worked up. You might scare the other customers.”
Andrew finally realized he had lost his composure.
He shrank his neck, glanced around sheepishly, and lowered his voice again.
“Of course they won’t succeed. We’ll never let them cross our defense line even one step. Want to pass through Maximilian territory? Dream on!”
“We’ll definitely defend, but that’s not the key point.”
Alicia looked at his indignant expression, both exasperated and amused.
“Guess when the Senate’s Punitive Expedition Decree… will arrive on Lord and Master’s desk?”
“That’s right!”
Andrew’s eyes lit up, his furrowed brow suddenly relaxing.
“The Imperial Capital won’t sit idly by! They’ll definitely summon all the lords, even request the Guardian Grand Dukes’ armies to jointly encircle and suppress them!”
“Exactly,” Alicia nodded, but her tone turned grave.
“After all, the Freedom Army isn’t a regular army—just a bunch of angry commoners. Against the coalition of lords, their chances are slim… What a pity! After this battle, no matter who wins or loses, this world is ultimately going to fall into great chaos.”
‘What?!’
Leonidas’s hand on his knee suddenly clenched.
He gritted his teeth tightly, forcing down the shock and retort that rushed to his throat, his chest heaving violently a few times.
‘Great chaos under heaven? How is that possible? What the Freedom Army seeks is clearly to overthrow tyranny, end the chaotic era, and pacify the world!’
“Boss?”
The burly guard’s face twitched with anger, his hand pressing on the axe handle several times.
With just a look from Leonidas, he could pounce and silence that nonsense-spouting wench forever.
Leonidas only shook his head slightly, his gaze fixed firmly on Alicia’s back.
He wanted to hear what other “brilliant insights” this woman could spew.
“Great chaos under heaven?”
Andrew was equally puzzled.
“No way, it’s just suppressing the rebels. How could…”
“Now His Majesty the Emperor’s power is weak, and state affairs are controlled by the Senate. The various nobles scheme against each other, and the Church lurks in the shadows, watching covetously.”
Alicia picked up a head of garlic from the table and slowly peeled it.
“But before this, whether nobles or the Church, they had to conceal their power expansion. After all, the Empire’s legal authority still exists—no one dares to openly give others a handle against them… By the way, this inn actually provides raw garlic?”
Andrew almost howled in despair, putting his hands together in a pleading gesture.
“Lord and Master, consider it my Andrew begging you—please don’t go off topic, okay?”
“Fine, fine, back to the point.”
The young lady rolled her eyes and set the peeled garlic cloves aside.
“But once the mobilization order is issued, the nobles will freely recruit soldiers and buy horses. Even if the rebellion is suppressed afterward, what about the troops in the nobles’ hands? Take them back? Where would you take them back to? And who would dare?”
“The mobilization order essentially allows the nobles to become warlords carving up the land. By then, not to mention the Senate, even His Majesty the Emperor…”
Her voice trailed off, and she shook her head, swallowing the last half of that treasonous statement.
“So it can be said that the chaotic era is not blamed on the rebels, but it begins with them.”