Chapter 484 - Request and Reply

Claude didn’t dare to bet that there was no person who could create something similar to the gunpowder to decrease the rate of misfire. Should that really come to pass, he wouldn’t even have any tears left to shed. So, he decided he couldn’t allow the demand to be followed through.

“How should we respond to the demands?” Bernard asked.

Claude chuckled. “Why do we even have to respond to what they say? We’ll give them a set of demands we’re willing to compromise on and that it. We’re going to bargain like we do at the markets. They make an offer, and we make a counteroffer. If we can’t agree on the terms, we can go our own respective ways.”

“Alright, let’s leave it at that. Let us discuss what sort of conditions we’ll have for the royal capital,” Bolonik decided.

Soon, the executive committee came up with a response. They agreed to change the designation from autonomous region back to the colonies, but insisted that the self-governing council and war administration be kept in place. Additionally, they agreed to pay the 500-thousand-crown tribute. However, mineral ores had to be bought by the kingdom, though at a discounted price of 70 percent.

As for the two corps of the region, they would fund themselves and remain under their own jurisdiction as they had been decreed to protect the colonies by Stellin X. For the calculation of merits earned during the war, the royal capital was urged to hurry up with the process instead of dallying and fiddling around with it.

Regarding the fleet, it was the spoils of the colonial troops and was now under the jurisdiction of the war administration. While they could help the kingdom’s ministry of the navy form their own new fleet, they refused to hand their own fleet to the ministry. The new rifles weren’t brought up at all. It was a clear sign for the nobles to forget their ludicrous ideas and move on.

“What if they don’t agree?” Bernard ask.

“We’ll leave them hanging then. It’s not that we have to rely on the mainland for anything now anyway. The most they can do is to not give us our promotions, not that that would affect us in the least. Our troops are long used to the unfair treatment by the royal capital. It would be surprising if they really agreed to our terms. I’m sure I’ll start to wonder if the sun will rise from the west next,” Claude plainly said.

Little did he know that the response they sent sunk like a rock into the sea. There wasn’t the slightest bit of an echo from the kingdom. However, Griffon’s corpsman, General Hadro, wrote a letter to Claude from Whitestag that the bigwigs were flaring with rage and calling the autonomous region traitors, proclaiming that they would be the kingdom’s first target to punish after they recovered.