Chapter 778.3: Laxi's Entrance

The cell door slammed shut, but even the door panel, a finger’s width thick, couldn’t keep the miserable screams from leaking through. The officer ignored them completely. Expressionless, he walked outside and saluted Laxi, who was standing at the entrance to the prison.

Seeing his trusted subordinate approach, Laxi returned the salute and casually asked, “How’s it going?”

The man’s name was Shawa, and Laxi had appointed him commander of the Assault Team.

The so-called Assault Team was another force, besides the personal guard, that answered directly to him.

Unlike the guards, it was a combat unit primarily tasked with special operations. Infiltration, sabotage, assassination of key enemy personnel, and purging enemies within their own ranks were among its responsibilities.

Most of its members were young men aged 15 to 18, with Moon Clan youths making up a particularly large proportion. Most had been born slaves, had neither fathers nor mothers, and were absolutely loyal to Laxi himself.

Laxi, in turn, treated them well. They were not only equipped with New Alliance-made LD-47 assault rifles, but also possessed a small number of ballistic breastplates and even Exoskeletons. He was also training them as a reserve pool of junior officers.

He had established such a unit partly because the Moon Clan Resistance Army genuinely needed one and partly because he was imitating the New Alliance’s administrator.

Most people in Port Gallon were learning from the New Alliance, consciously or otherwise, and Laxi himself was no exception. Back when he had still been the head of the militia, he had heard that the New Alliance’s Administrator maintained a Guard Corps. From then on, he had begun thinking about forming a similar unit of his own.

Now that he had resigned and joined the guerrillas, finally gaining the freedom to put his ideas into practice, he had seized the opportunity to turn everything he had envisioned into reality!

A unit that moved like ghosts could serve as a powerful deterrent not only against enemies, but against dissenters within their own ranks.

Although the Assault Team wasn’t that big, its firepower was no weaker than a battalion from the Xilande Empire. The destruction of the Tassen River embankment had been their handiwork.

Of course, there was no chance they were going to drink that dirty water themselves. From the very beginning, Laxi had intended to pinch the noses of the nobles and force the entire bucket down their throats.

“He hasn’t confessed yet, but he should soon.” Hearing his boss’s question, Shawa grinned, his face filled with contempt. “The Empire’s nobles are all spineless weaklings, and the higher-ranking they are, the worse they get. I barely touched his face and he pissed himself.”

Pathetic.

Shawa himself had once been hung outside Camp Rowell for three days and three nights. Even when the sun had baked him until only a breath of life remained, he hadn’t begged for mercy.

Back then, he had followed Laxi in capturing Camp Rowell. He had personally hanged the prison warden from the tower, taking revenge on the man who had destroyed his family.

He still remembered Laxi pointing at the prison warden hanging from the tower and saying that one day, he would hang all the Empire’s nobles. From that moment onward, Shawa had decided to follow the man before him.

Whether they were nobles of the Sun Clan or nobles of the Mammoth Clan, they were all nobles of the Empire!

Their persecution of the Moon Clan was the same, and their estates had certainly kept no shortage of Moon Clan slaves. In their eyes, Moon Clan people were livestock penned in a sheepfold. Naturally, Shawa had no reason to show those nobles any courtesy.

Besides, compared with what he had suffered at Camp Rowell, a few savage beatings were practically merciful.

Laxi nodded expressionlessly, then asked, “Have you found Daxina?”

That man had been the general of Mammoth State’s local army. Originally, they had planned to pin the blame on him, but unexpectedly, he had escaped rather quickly. Whether the flood had swept him away or he had simply fled, no one knew. In any case, they hadn’t caught him.

Making Bamut take the blame was somewhat forced, since Bamut himself was a great noble with plenty of land along the Tassen River.

By comparison, it made far more sense for Daxina to have done it.

[An incompetent general misjudged the force of the Tassen River. In an attempt to drown the moonfolk trapped against the riverbank, he ordered the embankment destroyed, only for his clever scheme to backfire and kill him instead.]

At least logically, that story held together reasonably well.

Shawa shook his head. “Not yet. But he shouldn’t have gotten far. His entire formation has already been routed.”

Not finding him was troublesome, but Laxi didn’t concern himself too much with it. He simply gave the next order. “Keep looking.” After a pause, he continued, “Also, send separate letters to the Assassin Gang and the League. Start by telling them that a new government has been established in Mammoth State and inform them of our victory. Then mention the disaster and humble ourselves a little. Ask whether they have any surplus grain. If they can lend us a hand, the residents of Mammoth State will be deeply grateful.”

Those people would help, he was certain of it.

“Yes!” Shawa’s expression turned serious. He snapped to attention, gave a military salute, then turned and left.

Watching his trusted subordinate depart, Laxi headed in the opposite direction. Accompanied by his personal guards, he walked out of Mammoth City’s prison.

Bamut was merely an explanation to be handed to the local survivors. It didn’t matter when that happened. There was no need to rush. The priority was to establish the new government. Otherwise, just as the Fierce Tiger Army officers had mocked them both openly and covertly, bandits would forever remain bandits and would never amount to anything.

The scale of the flood, which had exceeded everyone’s expectations, had given him an excellent opportunity. When he entered the city under the banner of disaster relief, he had taken control of Mammoth City almost effortlessly.

From local gentry and thugs to wealthy merchants worth fortunes, and even the nobles who had just been whipped, not a single one had refused to cooperate. They all responded to the Resistance Army’s call, dismissed the slaves in their households, and firmly supported every decision of the new government.

Well, they were so ready to dismiss their slaves partly because the disaster had struck so hard that they genuinely could no longer afford to feed them.

More importantly, every one of them knew that an enormous tide of refugees, swarming like locusts, was moving toward them.

Among them were slaves who had fled noble estates and free people who had lost their homes. Whatever their former status, hungry people were all the same, and they were far more frightening than a resistance army that merely looked like a gang of bandits.

The handful of household guards maintained by the wealthy would never be enough to stop them. Without a powerful army protecting Mammoth City, those refugees would devour them so completely that not even their bones would remain.

Bamut and his local army were finished. They had no choice but to pledge their loyalty to their new master, and cling tightly to his thighs.

Laxi was certain that even if he looted the entire city bare, not a single person would dare utter a word of protest. Of course, he had no intention of doing anything that stupid and thankless.

Mammoth City might be called a city, but the place was as poor as a giant rural village. Even the great nobles didn’t have much wealth worth squeezing out of them. It couldn’t compare at all with Port Gallon, which at least had the Kalaba Market.

Even if he robbed the place, there wouldn’t be much to take. It would only damage the League’s opinion of him.

Besides, the entire region was his territory now. Was there anyone who robbed themselves?

There were three things he intended to accomplish.

The first was abolishing slavery! Only by eliminating slavery could compulsory education be implemented, and only then could Mammoth State’s productive forces be liberated!

The second was to take advantage of Bamut’s defeat and the unprecedented weakening of the pro-Empire local nobles to seize the land they had accumulated!

Thanks to the flood, neither task would be particularly difficult. Most noble estates were located alongside the river. The most fertile land had long ago been enclosed by them. Now those estates were also the areas hit hardest by the disaster. Most slaves who hadn’t managed to escape had drowned inside, while the value of the land itself had collapsed to practically nothing. With only a little pressure, the new government could easily bring those lands under its control, without even needing to spill much blood.

Part of that land could be used to establish large farms directly operated by the government. The rest could be distributed among farmers and soldiers.

As for the final matter, it was the most important of the three.

Mammoth State was an agricultural province. Bullets and rifles couldn’t be grown out of the soil. If it wanted to escape poverty, it had to develop its own industry, and doing so required foreign currency injection.

Laxi had carefully read every issue of the Survivors’ Daily. Although he possessed no systematic understanding of industrial development, he at least had a vague idea of how it worked.

Port Gallon’s industrial takeoff had largely come from absorbing outdated production capacity phased out by the New Alliance, then using its advantages in population and raw-material costs to give those obsolete industries a second life on the soil of the Poro Province. Later, it had also caught the great historical tide created by the Mutant Slime Mold Research Committee as it established a new order across the wasteland.

Mammoth State might be starting a little later, but it wasn’t entirely without opportunities. The civil war in the South Sea had just ended, and the northern islands were waiting to be rebuilt. Their enormous infrastructure market stood in stark contrast to their equally enormous labor shortage.

Apparently, the local construction companies were even paying in Silver!

Mammoth City alone had 800,000 people, while the whole of Mammoth State had more than 10,000,000! The one thing Laxi lacked least at the moment was manpower, especially poor people who had no way to survive.

Slave trading might have been forbidden, but a certain disreputable gang member had already demonstrated through practical action that there were plenty of other ways to make money from people. Besides labor brokerage, there was also the option of labor dispatch...

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