The Empress's Will to Live: System Help Me!-Chapter 21: Sacrifices

It was a straight buy, without thinking any deeper about it, because she immediately knew what she could do with it... and more than that, it was exactly what she needed, as if it had appeared at the right time, at the right moment. So she spent those two thousand points immediately, without thinking about the future.

"I want to use it right now!" Daisy said, her voice brimming with excitement. The fact that this Store thing was even real... it promised her endless opportunities... a whole new way of becoming an empress.

[System: Activating "Imperial Herald of the Majesty"]

[Please give the orders]

The hard part came after that... what should she say, what would actually work? What kind of message could turn the people to her side and more importantly, how could she make sure that once the three days of manipulation were over, they would still stand with her?

Three days wasn’t long. Hearing from the others that it would take weeks to reach those towns, it felt like three days wouldn’t be enough to make any real difference... or maybe it would.

"Repeat the same speech I addressed to my people at the main square. I want the message to spread to all border regions near the three kingdoms."

[System: Order successfully given. ’Imperial Herald of the Majesty’ has been activated. From this time on, it will remain active for three days straight.]

It was strange... she had expected something more. Some kind of magic, perhaps seeing the herald itself, its form, its presence but nothing happened. Not a single thing changed.

The System simply started the timer, and that was it.

"That’s it?"

[System: Exactly. The time has already been set, and the herald has already teleported to spread your message to the people.]

And indeed, it had activated and it was far greater than Daisy had imagined. In the store, the item had been nothing more than a horn icon and a name, but in reality, it was something enormous, something impossible to ignore and the people noticed it immediately.

The item itself was a single herald who appeared at the same time in different towns and villages that Daisy had selected, which meant it was everywhere at once. Like a script, a code, it delivered the same message every time. It couldn’t be stopped, it wouldn’t answer any questions, it would simply declare its message and then disappear... but its appearance was something else entirely. It was more Imperial than anything the people had ever seen before.

The first thing was the horn. It wasn’t a trumpet, but a battle horn, its sound so loud it hurt people’s ears in a good way. It felt like a message itself, announcing that something was happening, that something important had arrived. It was unlike anything they had ever heard, so overwhelming that it immediately seized everyone’s attention.

The horn was the first step of the manipulation. Its call dragged people out of their homes, away from their fields, summoning everyone to gather and listen. And when they came to see what it was, the shock hit them even more.

What they saw was an enormous black battle horse, a beast nearly twice the size of a normal one, and the man seated upon it was no less imposing. A towering figure nearly two meters tall, dressed head to toe in Imperial colors, deep red, adorned with golden decorations even the horse itself bore the marks of the Imperial. The dark going against the deep red, the golden trim around it, and the Imperial crest... it all looked imposing, influential, and when he began to speak, no, his voice was so loud that even those who stood way back in the crowd heard it, and it was like a siren. People couldn’t talk, people couldn’t think about nothing more, just the message. Their focus, their mind was focusing on him and nothing more.

The manipulation worked across all the villages and towns along the borders of the three kingdoms, and of course it worked, it was manipulation, pure and simple, control in its most effective form.

People without questions, without doubts, without worries, stood there in silence just listening. They didn’t know who he was. They didn’t question why he looked different from the heralds they had seen so many times before. Not a single question was raised.

There was only cheering, cheers that the Majesty was coming to save them, that Daisy stood with them.

But it was painful to witness. Women, men, children in deep starvation, their faces hollow, almost skeletal. Some didn’t even have the strength to stand and simply sat on the ground and their entire village felt like a ghost town. The fields were barren, empty of any kind of food. There were no animals left to slaughter... they were barely clinging to life and now, the voice of the herald seized that final spark of hope within them, holding it just before it could break.

And yet, it would only last for three days, nothing more which was the worst part of it all. In that short time, the herald’s words made promises to the people, and Daisy’s speech itself was filled with promises and change. Naturally, it was understood and interpreted that within those three days, Daisy would come to help them.

Which made it dangerous.

Still, she had her own plans to deal with it.

"Zarah, Böring!" She opened the door and they were all standing in the hallway. "Are there any soldiers near the three kingdom border?"

"Öhm, there is a battalion in Mjida, around four thousand soldiers, that is maybe seventy kilometers from one of the bigger towns."

Kilometer?

[System: The game was made easier to use, so it doesn’t rely on realistic 17th-century measurements. Everyone also knows how to read the clock and what it means.]

"Why didn’t you tell me earlier? They can go and make sure the people know what is happening! Send a pigeon with the message to go to the nearest town and tell the people what is happening, we can—"

"It is impossible." Zarah interrupted Daisy’s passionate voice.

"What?" She asked back but Zarah’s face and even Böring looked like that it was indeed impossible.

"That battalion came down from the mountains. They were the lookout and the front force if the three kingdoms tried to go through the mountain, but we called them back, which means they just climbed down the mountain. And the worst is that they don’t have horses, they’re on foot, and their food is low too." Zarah replied to Daisy, and it was right.

That battalion, also called the cursed one, the battalion that needed to go up those mountains and look out for any enemy movement if there was any... but in reality never was anything, just the snow blizzards, the rockfalls, the avalanches that claimed many soldiers through the years.

"They are extremely tired, Daisy," Böring began. "Not just that, they lost sixty of their comrades while coming down. I received the report yesterday. Even if they have the will to go, it will take nearly a week to reach their destination, as their bodies can’t handle the starvation, and almost every one of them has frostbites."

The worst part of ruling a vast empire was that there were no phones, no computers, no faxes to simply send a message. Everything had to pass through people or pigeons. But even if a pigeon made it, it would reach soldiers who were already exhausted and broken... but there was no other way to do it.

"How long would it take the pigeon to reach Mjida?"

First nobody answered, as Zarah and Böring indeed cared about their soldiers, cared about their well-being, and giving them an order to go would be the worst idea, as they might think that they are worth nothing but death... but they knew too there was nothing they could do.

"An hour, maybe." Zarah said, his voice low. He knew and even Böring that all those nearly four thousand soldiers would go because of the wealth and the honor promised to them, which also meant that many of them would fall along the way.

"Send it, then. I will personally award the soldiers with the Imperial Honor, and I will make sure that for the rest of their lives, they won’t need to work a single hour," she said, her eyes fixed on Zarah. "This is for the Empire, for the people. They are the last ones we can depend on. The Empire itself depends on them."

What sounded like an honor was, in truth, a suicide mission and everybody knew it, even Daisy herself. Just thinking about it, soldiers suffering from frostbite and starvation, forced to march for seventy kilometers just to reach a town and spread the word... it was truly a mission meant for death.

And that was exactly why she needed to give them something in return, wealth, honor, and recognition worthy of the sacrifice she was asking of them.