The population had somehow increased, or at least, it looked like it.
He didn’t really know how since he never really told people to hire people or set up notices in different territories to drag people in here. But there were people everywhere. He just looked around the bustling streets with a slight frown, wondering how he got so many people in here.
He walked inside the estate gates and the first one to greet him was Damien.
His butler bowed and then stood straight.
"Welcome back, my lord. Everyone has been waiting for your arrival."
Adrian nodded and looked to the side where Cassius was waiting.
The financial manager immediately bowed a little.
"My lord, the Royal Financial Minister visited us a few months ago. It was mostly to investigate the tax issue but he ended up leaving with a highly positive look on our territory. He seems to like you. He also told me to tell you that if you need any help you can always write to him personally instead of the royal family."
Adrian nodded.
"Okay. Anything else?"
Cassius nodded right back.
"I have a few ideas and plans that I wish to discuss with you about the development of this territory and our businesses. And we were also attacked while you were gone."
Adrian just stared at him.
"We defended successfully and we have prisoners at the moment in the underground prison. You might want to look into what happened. The shadow squad has been the one taking care of this whole issue and they have not allowed anyone to go down there until now. I assume it is a serious issue that you might want to look into first before doing anything else."
"Okay, fine. I will look into it. Anything else?"
This time Damien spoke up instead of Cassius.
"We had an influx of a group of people who called themselves mages. We received around five hundred of them. Apparently they were hired by Lady Serena and they were promised a salary of one gold coin a week."
Adrian slowly turned his head to look at Serena.
"You offered one gold coin?"
Serena shrank back a little but nodded.
"You told me to get them to work for you no matter what. So I decided that if we needed a lot of mages it would be a great idea to just offer them a slightly higher price than how much other people would. This way we would have a lot more mages who would be willing to work for us."
Adrian nodded and did the math in his head. Even though he was insanely rich right now it sort of stung in a way.
’Five hundred gold coins every single week...’ he thought.
He took a deep breath and exhaled, ’Okay. Since I’m gonna pay them so much money it’s time to work them to the bone just as much.’
He looked back at Cassius.
"I’ll go visit the underground prison."
Then he glanced at Damien.
"Make sure that everyone gets settled in."
Damien nodded and made way for the others to walk into the mansion. Adrian just turned around and walked right out of the estate. He headed straight toward the underground prison which wasn’t too far away.
He walked into a small potion shop on the corner of a busy street. The owner of the place was a slightly older man around his forties who looked up from the counter as soon as the bell rang.
"Would you like a healing potion, sir?"
Adrian shook his head.
"No, I need an antidote."
The potion guy nodded and immediately opened the door that was behind the counter. He turned to look at Adrian and gestured. Adrian walked straight through the door into what basically looked like a regular storeroom. It had crates and shelves like any normal shop but Adrian just walked straight toward a trapdoor on the ground.
He pulled it open and stepped inside.
It was a stairway that started off narrow but quickly got wide. Adrian walked down for a minute before stepping out into a wide underground corridor. It was almost a five meter wide and magic torches were lined up every few meters to light up the pathway.
Adrian walked down this stone corridor for another minute until he finally reached a massive room.
There were multiple iron-barred prison cells lining the walls. Out in the empty open area in front of the cells were the people from his Shadow Assassin squad. The guys looked at him as he entered but they just acted like they hadn’t seen anyone. There was literally no reaction from them as they stood guard.
Adrian walked over. He looked into the cells and saw that the prisoners were being treated well by his people. And by treated well, it basically meant they were given the bare minimum to survive.
He stopped and looked around at the assassins.
"The leader of your group, come here."
Almost immediately, a guy dashed forward and stopped right in front of Adrian. He stood at attention and made direct eye contact.
"My lord."
"Tell me what happened."
The assassin nodded and told Adrian the whole story of the ambush. After explaining how they managed to paralyze and capture the enemy forces he got to the main point.
"My lord, after we did some investigation we can confirm that these guys are from the Ironhold Kingdom. We have captured a prince and a princess along with a group of knights and a group of mages. They are all valuable resources based on what we have been told."
Adrian nodded and looked around the room.
"Take me to the prince and princess."
"Yes, sir."
The assassin leader walked over and stopped in front of a single cell near the back where one guy and one girl were locked inside. He pushed the heavy iron gate open and Adrian walked inside.
They didn’t really look like a royal prince or princess anymore. They looked pretty beaten up. Not literally beaten but more like they had been rotting in this prison for so long that all of the "Noble Elegance" in them was completely washed away.