Chapter 819

Seven days and nights flowed by like water.

Baron Lambert, perhaps choosing punishment over indulgence, ignored my polite invitation to meet and hid away. So thoroughly that even Sir Shane couldn’t be found.

In the end, I had no choice but to release the “hunting dog” known as the Judge to track him down… or rather, his whereabouts.

He was someone I absolutely needed.

The administrative hero who would save me from the mountain of paperwork. I couldn’t just let him go. That’s why I unleashed the Judge.

If he thought he could escape my grasp, I had to teach him that such optimism was a delusion.

“Miss, stop daydreaming again.”

“Ah.”

As I twirled my pen, speculating when Lambert Siegel would be dragged in, Leonor, with her uncanny ability to notice when I was lost in thought, shook her head and scolded me.

“Focus on the work. We need to finish quickly so we can check on the kids’ training.”

Leonor sighed, tapping the piles of documents on the desk.

Eleonora, sitting across from me, didn’t voice any complaints, but her gaze was like that of a squad leader who had just caught a private sleeping on guard duty.

In short, she was looking at me like I was a failure.

Her icy stare was so cold it made me shiver, as if the frigid winds of the Sky Mountain Range had suddenly blown in.

Don’t… don’t look at me like that…!

Muttering a silent sigh, I cursed Leopold for putting me through this. May his lost hair roots sprout anew on his chest.

—

When I decided to establish a nation, I thought to myself.

If I left all the practical work to the experts, my only job would be to guide them in the right direction.

I realized that was a huge misconception when thousands of documents piled up on my desk like a mountain.

Initial proposals to realize the directives I had given.

Revised secondary proposals after review by Eleonora, Leonor, and a few other officials.

Separate documents analyzing expected profits and impacts, and how to secure necessary resources.

Work logs recording the progress of directives and unexpected problems.

And finally, lengthy reports analyzing the final results, their effectiveness, and future improvements.

Just giving one directive resulted in five or six types of documents pouring in, to the point where I was starting to feel genuine fear.

While I could delegate specific planning and detailed instructions to others, the core documents required my personal review and seal.

As a result, for the past week, I’ve been so overwhelmed with endless work that I even dreamt of approving documents.

“Someone, please cast a mental blessing on me. At this rate, I might develop document phobia.”

“There’s no such phobia.”

Eleonora, pinching the bridge of her nose, sighed and replied.

She was probably telling me to stop talking nonsense and get back to work.

Honestly, the eyes that once guarded me like a prickly hedgehog had turned into looks of pity in just a few days.

I tried throwing my pen and swimming through the piles of documents, or ‘accidentally’ dropping a cigarette to burn them all, but… even so, treating me like a failure was a bit much.

It seems Hersela’s comment about me warping the personalities of those around me wasn’t sarcasm but a plain truth.

—

While establishing the nation, I made some adjustments to the existing laws and systems to ensure Hestela didn’t inherit the Empire’s flaws.

At the same time, I didn’t forget to throw some carrots to keep my supporters satisfied.

For example-

“We’ll adopt the Astraea Church’s criminal laws. However, we’ll lower the severity of punishments by two levels.”

Execution by burning becomes hanging. Life imprisonment becomes 50 years. Cutting off both arms becomes just one wrist.

The Astraea Church’s criminal code was remarkably systematic, befitting the laws of those who serve the Goddess of Order and Justice, but the punishments were excessively harsh for the crimes committed.

Thus, while borrowing the Church’s laws, I weakened the severity to more realistic levels.

If I were just a simple priest, I might have been branded a heretic for tampering with doctrine, and even if not, those within the Church who harbored grievances would have fiercely criticized me…

But who could possibly object when the Saintess herself says it’s right?

As long as I didn’t touch the core doctrines, arguing for a bit of mercy for those who committed minor crimes was a perfectly acceptable stance.

In fact, it was more than acceptable—it was praised.

The Church’s clerics cheered, saying, “This is what a Holy Kingdom should be!” and “Praise Astika!” while even non-clerics praised me for being merciful for a Saintess of the Order Church.

The carrot I threw to the Church wasn’t just that.

“Remember the territories we swept through? Assign our Church’s priests and paladins there. Investigate the clergy who were already rooted there.”

The order to send the Astraea Church’s clerics to bring order to the chaotic, lordless territories.

Additionally, if the existing religious forces weren’t welcoming, they were to be excluded.

Wouldn’t that cause friction with other Church Orders?

Well, that would be the case if the existing religious forces in those territories were upstanding priests.

But how likely was that?

Heretics, cultists, rapists, and rebels. It was hard to find a lord who wasn’t scum, so the likelihood that the priests in those territories were upstanding was slim.

If the priests in those territories were truly good and faithful, they would have either died under mysterious circumstances or been significantly weakened by the lord’s suppression, quietly crushed.

To live comfortably in a criminal’s territory, one naturally had to form deep ties with the criminals.

So, even if the Order Church’s clerics I sent exposed their misdeeds and expelled them, other Church Orders would likely express gratitude rather than opposition.

—

The system I touched wasn’t just the criminal law. No, compared to other reforms, the criminal law was barely touched. Especially-

“The current governance system is too inefficient. Just because of their father’s bloodline, even incompetent fools get to play lord? That’s why everything’s a mess.”

The existing governance system, the feudal system where nobles inherited and managed territories, was a problem I wanted to address.

For the past month, I had clearly seen the harm incompetent and corrupt nobles inflicted on the world.

Thus, I decided to designate all of Hestela’s territories as Royal Direct Territories, and instead of hereditary nobles, appoint administrators who had proven their abilities through qualification exams to oversee and manage each region.

In other words, whether commoner or low-ranking noble, anyone who could prove their ability could rise to a high position.

“Treating nobles and commoners equally? Even for you, Miss, isn’t that a bit difficult? The backlash would be immense. Even His Majesty the Emperor might find it hard to defend you.”

“Equality? To become an administrator, one must pass a qualification exam to prove their ability. That itself is far from equality.”

Noble children, who could learn all sorts of knowledge from private tutors from a young age, and commoner children, who had to help with farming from the age of ten.

It’s obvious which group would perform better. Education requires family wealth.

“If you start from different points, and still lose to a farmer’s child, then just stay home and squander your family’s wealth. I can’t stand the sight of such incompetents draining my nation’s potential.”

The nobles would rebel? Let them try.

After seeing dozens of nobles tied to the execution pyre, any noble who still had the guts to oppose me would either be the most rebellious of rebels or utterly incompetent, unable to survive under the new system.

Dealing with such people would be no trouble at all.

“Too radical, but… it makes sense.”

Eleonora, who also didn’t care much for nobles, nodded in agreement with my opinion to weed out the incompetent ones.

“Though I’m not sure what kind of exam could prove a lord’s qualifications.”

She was skeptical about the effectiveness of the qualification exams, but that was something for the practitioners to worry about, not me.

“That’s for you to figure out. You’re much more skilled at that than I am.”

“…Ha.”

Perhaps deeply moved by my trust, Eleonora gave me a heated look, her words stuck in her throat.

Her gaze was so intense it felt like it could pierce through even my divine protection and wound me.