Chapter 10

When Elia opened her communication crystal she told me about the response she was given. While a few smart ones bowed their heads a few power brokers stood up and began to argue. The elven council was stunned when the resistance heads burst from the intense heat they suddenly felt in their skulls before dying.

She stated “This is the point we are making. The races have become unruly children, and it is time for your elders to remind you of that fact. You are children; I have sat over this nation long before the grandfathers of the eldest of you were born. To you the destruction of the Noble elves is a myth, a tale told by fearful elders, to me it is a still bleeding wound on the Elven race.” There was bickering in the background.

“Quiet! You speak to me like we are equals? This is even more proof the elven race is led by fools and children. You lead your people down a path to destruction and this is your first and only warning. A Noble will be coming to oversee this nation from the capital. They have the authority of the Nobility and thus can level this entire city if it strikes their fancy.”

“You will rule with their oversight and you will begin a national change of policies to draw this nation back from the mismanagement of fools. We are willing to give you one, and only one chance. Otherwise we will remove you in order to save this nation. Do you understand!?”

“Then prepare yourselves. Tell your cronies and sycophants that the power that you all revel in is now gone. You have used and abused this nation to the breaking point.” There was silence. “Oh, and don’t think of running away. As we speak the Nobility of other nations are being given the same talk. How their leadership survives is up to the tolerance level of the Noble assigned to them.”

A gate opened up and Elia walked in livid. “It pains me to see what my people have turned into. I had hoped they were rebellious, but they are instead willful and insane. It was very hard not to simply cleanse the entirety of the ruling class and then drag the gutters for people of higher morals.” I opened my arms and she ran to me and began crying.

“Master, I don’t know if I would have the strength to do what I had to do today without your love and support.” I kissed her head and gave her a slight rocking motion. “You did what you and the others are supposed to do. It’s not easy, but your actions today will save untold numbers of lives in the future.”

We got messages that both Benson and Stefan were staying in the human nations till we built our central posts there, and a new leadership could be installed. It seems their leadership considered themselves on the level of the heroes and drew arms against the Nobility.

On the last front the dwarven council welcomed the Nobility and the smith’s guild, the second most powerful block in the nation, fell all over themselves at the sight of the hammer. Grendel made it clear that the elder dwarves would be ashamed of the current leadership. That knowledge caused them to all resign in order to save what little pride they had.

Over the next few months we slowly moved forwards with the foundations of the new international system. The reality that slavery was to be abolished caused a massive uproar. The human nations were ready to revolt, or at least those wealthy enough to own slaves these days did.

With the increase of the cost of even beast folk slaves going higher and higher most humans had learned to do without slaves. This meant the overall economic impact was greatly defused. Everyone from agriculture to industry had never had that many to begin with, and so losing the beast folk as slaves didn’t impact their bottom line as much as it could have.

Then a new problem came up, but one I was ready for. All these free slaves had no idea what to do, and the level of resentment and bigotry kept them from gaining a life. That is where the people of my towns came into play. With years of running through the two human nations buying many of the slaves, meant that I had three cities containing thousands of free slaves.

These wonderful people volunteered to aid the newly freed slaves in finding new lives. This was something I have been preparing for since I had knowledge that prepared me for the fact that slaves will usually have it worse with freedom than they did slavery.

And this change didn’t come without cost to the innocent either. We did our best to be prepared but some of the places that produced beast folk slaves killed much of their remaining stock rather than allow them to go free. Thus the classification of criminal slaves began.

Rather than have a quick death those who killed, or ordered the deaths of the slaves in their possession, ended up with a nasty looking slave mark and were sent to do hard labor for life. To make sure this wasn’t abused, only the nobility could judge a person for such a punishment.

My world’s history taught me great lessons about what we faced. When we were done separating the slaves from their former masters, we saw the desire from many to return to the places they were once slaves. Kind masters from all walks of life now found themselves in the same role they had before. Many slaves didn’t like freedom so for the cost of living expenses many went back to their former lives, just with more rights.

Some we had to bring to the dwarven nations as they had no place to go back to. This would mean that they would be constant victims for abuse. Most had little or no idea about family or connections so we set them to new lives in the dwarven kingdom.

Then Elia had a great idea. The area our towns were within was quite large. There was an equal amount of land going nowhere on the elven side of the border. What if we combined then into a small nation for the beast folk?

We sat down with the dwarves, the elves (Elia), and the humans (Benson and Stefan). We worked things out and in a few days the new nation of beast folk was created. Allfolk was now the capital of the new nation and once news of this was made public the population of the new nation grew and grew.

As you can imagine this change didn’t happen overnight, but over the better part of a year. Thankfully nothing else popped up to take our attention away from this task. We created a uniform for the Nobles who would live in the various towns and cities. Jewel designed it from easily distinguishable clothing from earth.

The Nobles usually go around in rather elegant clothing when around mortals, but Jewel thought of a different look. Now people would know them by the unique earth military officer’s uniforms they wore. I thought it was odd until the other Nobles took a look and instantly fell in love with them. The stitching, the fabrics, and the color had even the old timers tossing their robes for these outfits.

When humans and elves saw beast folk in the uniforms they threw a violent fit until the beast folk eliminated them in a public and rather gory way. After that it was understood that there were beast folk among the Noble class. After all it’s not every day a small bunny girl can hop up and put her fist through a humans head while avoiding three separate attacks.

This kind of display made it clear that the threat of violence was not just words. Any threat to a noble was an instant death sentence. When people asked how a beast folk could be a noble the only explanation was that they had earned and proven their Nobility. The average person really didn’t have a problem with it, but the hold outs and the malcontents slowly began to form a resistance.

Word came to us through certain commoners that a town had been nearly taken over by these people. Within an hour the entire town was wiped from the face of the planet. Word quickly spread that not only was being part of being in the resistance met with death, but if you are too close or know about them and don’t report it, you could be caught up in the punishment.

Now fear was not the way I wanted to go, but I also knew that this world wasn’t like home. These people had power and didn’t like losing it. They didn’t mind cutting the throats of the innocent if it meant gaining power over others. That meant we had to deal with them in a way that stripped them of everything.

Two year later things were quiet. The major changes had been implemented and the shocks to the system had been mitigated through simple changes. People no longer feared the sight of a uniform, but instead considered those wearing one as society’s leaders. It wasn’t perfect, and it never would be because we were dealing with three races, three cultures, and the inherent differences meant conflicts. We Nobles dealt with those problems now.

Because I wasn’t up to the tactics we needed for the other nations I was focused on the development of the beast folk nation. I built a complex out of stone similar to the Nobles dwelling in Allfolk and used that as my base. The tens of thousands of beast folk that were starting to arrive in the new nation were given temporary housing, we also had to deal with thousands of humans that came with their loved ones to help settle the new nation.

I mapped out all the dungeons in our area and those sites became the places we would build towns. We had masses of trained craftsmen and workers who would now be turning their skills to building their own homes, their own nation, and their own economy. A site would be found and thousands of workers would descend on that location and build a city.

However these people didn’t build it for themselves. Instead, as they moved out, a new population would come in behind and settle the area. We built in areas previously part of other nations and built more towns and settled more dungeons. In these towns was found a Nobles warehouse. There people could find the goods they needed to settle.

From tools to seed everything could be found there, but it wasn’t free. Debt accounts were created and that seemed to worry people. However the debt could be paid by the town with the valuables from the dungeon. This led to more and more of the former combat slaves finding a means to become part of the communities they lived in. Diving was now a part of the daily life of a town’s citizens, not a group of people looking for power and fame.

With a little encouragement from me, the guild began schools for the young to learn the basics, as well as safe diving. They began to form parties as teens and were guided through the upper levels with adults. Once they were of age they could decide to be divers, farmers, craftsmen, or a hybrid of any of them. Many went into diving in order to pay up enough to get the equipment needed to take up another profession.

Travelers began to ask their local nobles if such a system could be started in their locations. Soon such schools were in every nation as well as the Noble warehouses. The young were learning to work with beast folk as teachers and mentors. This helped lower the biases even more. When your cute elf or beast folk teachers could take out scary monsters respect was earned.

With the fears of slavery nearly erased travel between nations increased as well. Older dwarves packed up and headed to the other nations to allow younger dwarves to take their place. Along with that more towns and cities had well trained craftsmen to depend on for goods. The beast folk’s farms grew exotic foods found nowhere else and that made their crops highly desirable.

The elves, master at magic, worked with dwarves to make magic items useful to the commoners of the world. Many of these ideas came from the great Elder Dwarf and the ideas were credited as tools of the past, when in fact they were taken from Items he had seen or bought online. Little by little the lives of the common people were becoming better.