A few days later, a magnificent carriage, escorted by several cavalrymen, entered Wischeim. The carriage was emblazoned with the royal crest of Leithanien.
The carriage stopped before the temporary headquarters of the Workers' Party. An arrogant official in a silk formal suit stepped down from the carriage, supported by an attendant, and disgustedly covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief.
"Excuse me, where is Mister Lacey?"
The official asked in a voice like an aria, his eyes darting around, making no effort to hide his disdain for the place.
"I am the special envoy of Her Majesty the Empress, here to proclaim an edict on her orders."
Taylor, who was in charge of receiving guests, was shirtless and drenched in sweat, directing workers moving lumber.
Hearing this, he wiped his face with a large, rough hand and answered gruffly, "Wait."
With that, he turned and walked into the headquarters, leaving the envoy standing there, utterly bewildered.
The envoy's face turned the color of beet root. When had he ever been treated this way?
He represented imperial authority, the supreme Empresses of Leithanien!
A moment later, Lacey and Serafina emerged together.
Lacey was still dressed in simple work clothes, just a bit cleaner, with a peaceful smile on his face.
He glanced at the exasperated envoy and the opulent carriage behind him, and understood everything.
"I am Lacey. My apologies for keeping the envoy waiting," he said calmly.
The envoy snorted heavily, finally regaining a shred of his dignity.
The edict's content was not complex. In essence, it lavished praise on Lacey's achievements in Wischeim: purging the Witch King's remnants and pacifying the populace.
And, in the Empress's personal name, Lacey was ennobled as a Baron of Leithanien and granted a small town near Wischeim named "Greyiron Town" as his official fief.
Ennobled as a noble?
Mister Lacey is going to be a lord?
A small commotion rippled through the surrounding crowd. The eyes of some showed confusion and unease.
The man they wanted to follow was the Lacey who led them against the oppression of the nobility, not another new noble to lord over them.
Some of the quicker-witted people said, "This must be a scheme by the higher-ups! They want to use a title to pull Mister Lacey away from us! To sow discord among us!"
Someone immediately agreed: "That's right! They just want to make us doubt Mister Lacey!"
Nearby, the old blacksmith Hans, who had remained silent until now—the first worker in Wischeim to stand up and support Lacey—spoke up in a rough voice:
"We ain't stupid. We know what kind of man Mister Lacey is."
"He helped us fill our bellies, find work, and send our kids to school. That's all real! The folks up top give him an empty title and expect us to stop believing in him? In their dreams!"
His words were like a stone cast into a lake, sending out countless ripples.
"That's right! Uncle Hans is right!"
"Even if Mister Lacey becomes emperor, he'll be our workers' emperor!" a young worker shouted, drawing a round of good-natured laughter.
"What does this prove? It proves Mister Lacey is doing such a good job that even the Empress is scared and has to resort to this to win him over!"
The envoy's face darkened as he overheard these discussions.
Lacey, however, accepted the ennoblement with a smile.
After the envoy departed, Lacey said to Serafina and Taylor beside him, "They've given us a key of legitimacy. We'll use it to open more doors."
"But for now, we can no longer afford to charge ahead blindly as we did before."
In just over a month, from the trial in Salem, to taking Wischeim, to subduing Fink County without bloodshed, and now gaining Greyiron Town through ennoblement, the Workers' Party had expanded at an astonishing rate, but it had also sown countless hidden dangers.
Unstable foundations, impure ideology, and a loose organization.
That evening, Lacey convened a meeting of the Workers' Party's core members, including Serafina, Taylor, and Gertrude.
Well, not Arturia.
"We must temporarily halt our expansion," Lacey said, getting straight to the point.
He began assigning tasks.
"Miss Gertrude, I need you to deal with the neighboring nobles."
"I don't need you to befriend them. I just need you to let them know that the Wischeim Workers' Party is a neighbor that plays by the rules. We only care about matters within our own territory and, for the time being, won't get in the way of their profiteering."
These words were meant for potential enemies, buying time for internal consolidation.
Although the incident with Fink County had just happened, that pig of a viscount had delivered himself to their doorstep. The Workers' Party had acted in self-defense; it couldn't be considered active expansion.
"Serafina," he said, turning to his most capable lieutenant.
"I'm entrusting the party's internal organization and development to you."
"Member screening, ideological education, and the selection and training of cadres at all levels must be systemized immediately. I need detailed files on every member. I need to know the strengths and weaknesses of everyone in our ranks."
"Also, our welfare policies—education, healthcare, and so on—the current scale is far from sufficient. I need you to come up with concrete, actionable plans."
"Taylor, the Workers' Picket Team needs to expand, but more importantly, it needs to improve in quality."
"Don't think of yourselves as the City Guard. You are the armed force of the working class, the guardians of the new order. I need you to have not only strength, but also discipline and intelligence."
Everyone accepted their assignments, an unprecedented sense of urgency and purpose rising within them.
After the meeting, everyone left to get busy, leaving Lacey alone in the empty office.
He walked to the map of Leithanien on the wall. Salem, Wischeim, Fink County, and Greyiron Town—the four places he had marked with red circles—were so tiny on the vast map they were almost negligible.
He knew that ennobling him as a baron was just a casual move by the Twin Empresses.
They wanted to turn him into an obedient dog, to put a leash on him and have him bite the enemies they pointed at.
But what Lacey wanted to do was far more than that.
He wanted to become the hand that moved the pieces.
And to become the player, territory and armies were not enough.
He needed an ideology—a belief that could unite the will of all people into a single cord, a faith that could set all of Leithanien ablaze.
He opened his desk drawer. Inside was a thick stack of manuscript paper.
In the dead of night, Lacey sat under a lamp, recalling everything that had happened since he came to this world.
The arrogant face of power in front of the Trullinczentyr Academy of Arts, the muddy trenches and the wails of his comrades in the War of the Four Emperors, his parents' cold bodies upon returning home, and the sham trial of the Purification Committee that twisted black into white.
Scene after scene flashed through his mind, finally settling on the countless pairs of expectant eyes outside the iron bars of the Salem prison.
He took a deep breath, picked up his pen, and on the first page of the manuscript, wrote down two words.
*My Struggle*.
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