Shortly after Marilla left the lord’s bedchamber, silence returned to the room. From time to time, only the sound of paper tearing was heard as Cyrena went through the letters.
After Cyrena finished reading all the letters, her expression turned grave.
“I’m afraid the situation has taken a turn for the worse as we feared, Lady Solana,” Cyrena informed with a heavy tone. “Among these few dozen invitation letters, one came from High Witch Beth, and two came from the Lord of Wolfwater and the Lord of Eastcliff.”
“News of Sunpeak Town has finally spread beyond the neighboring regions and attracted the attention of the other regional lords. If we continue refusing all invitations, we’ll also offend these powerful lords and a High Witch on top of that.”
“Even if I continue to borrow my mother’s name, it won’t have much effect on these witches. They are more powerful than my mother,” Cyrena added.
“It doesn’t matter if we offend them all, Cyrena,” Solana replied.
“We’ve already offended too many people by holding onto Vahn’s properties. Adding a few more people to the list won’t change anything. Have you forgotten what happened to poor Lady Dahlia here?”
“These greedy and lawless people aren’t afraid to use underhanded means to force us to sell Vahn’s properties to them,” Solana stated with a grim look.
The reason the central town area remained mostly decrepit and old wasn’t due to a lack of redevelopment funds. Actually, they did lack funds for all the buildings.
Still, they had enough to kickstart the redevelopment project on at least a few buildings.
However, the biggest problem was the lack of materials. They couldn’t procure building materials without merchants trying to rip them off with ridiculously jacked-up prices, all in a bid to acquire some prime building shares as collateral.
Dahlia volunteered to seek reasonable sellers outside of the region. But before she made it very far outside of Sunpeak Town, she was ambushed and beaten to a half-dead state by ‘bandits.’
However, Solana wasn’t so stupid as to believe that normal ‘bandits’ ambushed Lady Dahlia.
“The invitations from these merchants are no different from traps, and the same goes for invitations from High Witch Beth, Lord of Wolfwater, and Lord of Eastcliff,” Solana continued.
“If we accept their invitations, we would have to leave the estate and meet them at their place. However, I am willing to bet that we will be ambushed on the road by their competitors.”
Solana was a strong Senior Witch and a Sword Master, but even she couldn’t handle too many opponents at once, especially not when she was worn out.
“Doesn’t that mean even if we want to sell Teacher’s properties to them, we can’t?” Cyrena asked with a frown.
“That much should have been pretty obvious by now,” Solana answered before mentioning, “We refused to sell Vahn’s properties to them for so long due to the low market value.”
“However, now that the market value is countless times higher, they aren’t willing to purchase the properties at such prices and always try to downplay the costs.”
Most of the merchants were just small-time businesspeople.
They only wanted to buy cheap and sell high for quick and easy money. They were not interested in developing the land and opening up businesses for long-term profits.
As for the wealthier merchants that were willing to purchase properties at the current market prices, they were only interested in the ones that weren’t for sale—the ones Vahn had reserved for his own development plans.
Only very few had been willing to purchase the properties on sale at the current market prices.
Yet, even after they acquired the redevelopment funds from selling off the few properties and lands, they couldn’t spend them for actual redevelopment.
“If only Aeliana or Headmaster Astoria was here. With their power, these merchants wouldn’t dare act so lawlessly,” Solana sighed.
However, she didn’t actually believe her daughter or Headmaster Astoria could completely reverse or avoid their current predicament. At most, they would only be able to ease the situation.
After all, she was still the acting lord of Sunpeak.
Most merchants and lords wouldn’t openly oppose another lord in their own territory, even if they were unhappy with the missed opportunity to profit.
And yet, the merchants and neighboring lords were becoming more bold and lawless by the day. Still, they were crafty enough not to leave behind evidence.
Even if Solana wanted to find Dahlia’s assailants and punish them, she didn’t know where to start. She had made too many enemies in the past month.
The merchants were unlikely to sell each other out and most likely to make her investigation difficult.
Nevertheless, the heavy atmosphere turned depressing once Aeliana and Headmaster Astoria’s names were brought up.
It had been over a month since Vaan’s group headed for the Thousand Fog Mountains without further news from them.
Very few people came back alive after disappearing inside the Thousand Fog Mountains for a few weeks, let alone a whole month.
Solana and Cyrena did not hold much hope that the group was alive, but they didn’t want to give up believing.
‘Teacher, where are you? Please come back. We need your wisdom,’ Cyrena silently prayed.
Even she could tell the current situation was not normal.
She felt like many hidden and powerful forces were eyeing Sunpeak Town and wanting to swallow it whole.
Strength alone wouldn’t be able to solve the problem.
“Ugh…”
A pained grunt was suddenly heard before Solana and Cyrena shifted their attention to Dahlia, who had finally regained consciousness.
“You’re finally awake, Lady Dahlia,” Solana sighed with heartfelt relief. “I was beginning to think you would never wake up. You were unconscious for seven days straight.”
“Seven… days?” Dahlia uttered weakly. She recalled her attack before she wondered, “How am I still alive?”
“You were very lucky, Lady Dahlia. The townspeople found you in a pool of blood outside the town and brought you back,” Solana stated.
“I did use healing magic on you, but it was mostly thanks to Cyrena’s potions that kept you alive. But, honestly, we weren’t sure if you would make it. We don’t know if your attackers purposely left you half-dead or they just failed to finish you.”
“Right, I shouldn’t be asking you while you are still recovering, but do you remember who attacked you or how many of them there were?” Solana asked shortly after.
“I…” Dahlia furrowed her brows.
