chapter 27

"You did what?!" Vandal eyes popped wide open as he stared at his own little brother, Leonard in disbelief, he was shock, and flabbergasted.

"Yes, I did just that…" Leonard replied as he took a sip from his cup and enjoyed a bit of cake that was brought in by the servant a moment ago.

"No no no no, let me get this straight...you just said that...you bombed the parliament hall of Free City State Republic? Literally…" Vandal was completely speechless now.

"You are correct." Leonard confirmed it with his own words.

"..." Vandal eyebrow started to twitched as time goes on.

"You are...insane...do you know that? I swear this will become a literal political "shit storm" for all of us here...especially for our father." Vandal facepalmed before pounding his head down onto the wooden table repeatedly.

"Don't stress it out too much will you? It's not the end of the world." Leonard tried to reassure him as he saw that Vandal reaction was a bit over the top.

"Not the end of the world? What the hell is this then? Father just sent me this and another letter saying it was a copied letter sent to him by the Republic!" Vandal quickly pulled out a letter sealed with a crest of the Welser family, but was broken when Vandal open it a while back, he pushed the letter to Leonard, it was a letter from Erik, their father.

"Hmm...it looks like...some form of bill asking for compensations for...damages to public buildings...and a long list of collateral damages…" he shrugged as he viewed through the long lists of damages properties and people, finally at the end, he saw the billing address, it was from the Free City State Republic.

Finally, the republic also ended it with a threat, they will take it as an act of provocation for first and foremost, the death of the ambassador and the terroristic style of attack on the Council of Elder, the republic will declare war on Duke Welser if the compensation were not pay in full before a certain due day, a month from now.

"Declaring war? They actually threaten us with war?" Leonard was surprised after looking through the "bill" carefully.

"What did you expect? You bombed their entire district and took out HALF of their parliament council members, of course they will either ask for compensation or outright declare war on you! That's what any reasonable person would do!...but hold on... I'm also surprise they actually took the time to draft this letter and sent it to father…" Vandal rubbed his chin as he went into deep thought.

"But tell me...what did they do to you that pissed you off so much that you decide to blow up a district and kill half of their council?" he asked Leonard.

"Their ambassador decided it was a great idea to take liberty with my subordinate, and on the count of espionage, well... I say it's only fair I sent a warning to them...right? Doesn't everyone do that?"

"No! We don't do that! At most we just sent the head of the spy back to them with a written message, that's about it!" Vandal almost choked on his drink after he heard of Leonard words.

"Oop?...but no worry, I'll solve it when problem arises...just sent them this letter."

Leonard pulled out an envelope from this inventory and handed it to Vandal, the envelope was tightly sealed by his own wax seal, a seal that he created out of boredom since he did not want to use the family seal for matter that involved his Necromancer identity.

"What is this?" Vandal asked in confusion as he looked at the strange wax seal in the shape of a smiling/grinning human skull.

"Just think of it as a way for me "apologize" to the Republic, they will understand."

"..." for a moment there, Vandal swore that he saw Leonard grinning to him as he handed him the letter of "apology".

As they finished off the matter of the Republic, Leonard had more to ask Vandal, the next topic they were discussing about was- of course the discovery of the energy crystal vein that bordered the Holy kingdom.

"I need to know the estimated worth of the entire vein you discovered a while back when I was away." Leonard became serious the moment he brought up that topic about the mine.

"Estimate worth? Hell even I don't know about it, the mine is huge! If I had anything to say for the estimation of it worth, I say about a million or so crystal for the yearly production." Vandal was grinning ear to ear when he thought about it all, a million yearly...that would be at least a billion gold coins...a billion! And that was only the lowest estimation, no wonder the Church would go so far as to tempt the Rosen to invade the Evergreen and helped them in the shadow so they can profit in the end.

"Fantastic! Look like I don't have to worry about spending money for energy crystal anymore! Since we now owned a mine for ourselves, Vandal- quickly set aside an amount and wire it directly to me, this is important, sent over as much as possible." Leonard say excitedly, a million...a million crystal, there is so many things that Leonard wished to try out with the energy crystal, enchantments, quick ways to power ups and many other volatile experiments.

"Oh right, yes- I remember now that you're a magic caster, so it should be beneficial for you, I'll draft out some for you later." Vandal agreed.

Now with all the important topics were discussed and done, the two brother spent some times together, catching up on the tiny details that they had missed out on since his own disappearance for a year, it was the same as always for Vandal, doing managements in one form or another, other than the interesting part of him personally investigate the reason the Church wanted the take over a chunk of their land so much and discovered an energy crystal mine in the process, there was nothing new.

However, it was completely different for his own father, Erik Welser, since Leonard had made a legion of zombie for him, the man was having the time of his life burning the Rosen kingdom to the ground, and of course- the spear...he had completely turned Leonard corpse spear into his own.

While they were discussing about the topic that Leonard had missed, Vandal also took this chance and asked Leonard about what he had done when he was away.

Leonard just retelling him his "epic" tale on the place called Aincrad, the floating fortress in the sky and how he slayed dangerous monsters and freed that world in the end.

In the end, Vandal just look at him with weird eyes, as if he thought Leonard was a crazy person.

Castle floating in the sky? What type of fantasy are you thinking of? Vandal wanted to ask if he was actually high on anything this morning or not, for him to tell him that type of crazy story.