CHAPTER 39: MEETING

That night, I sat in my headquarters office, healing potions doing their work on my cracked ribs. The pain was manageable now. Mostly.

Damian entered with tea, he’d taken to bringing me tea when I was thinking. Said it helped me focus.

He was right.

"Young Master, the faction meeting is in an hour. Everyone’s been notified."

"Good." I sipped the tea. It was good, Damian had gotten very particular about his tea preparation. "How are people reacting to the news about Adrian’s pressure campaign?"

"Its mixed reactions from what I can tell, some are nervous. Most angry, but none talking about leaving."

"Yet."

"Yet," Damian agreed. "But Young Master, they’re more committed than you think. I’ve been watching them. They chose to be here. That means something."

"Does it? When the pressure gets real? When their families are threatened?"

"Then we’ll handle it together." Damian set the tea pot down. "You’re not alone in this anymore. Stop acting like you have to solve everything yourself."

I looked at him. Really looked at him. When had Damian become so confident? When had he stopped being just a servant and become... this?

"When did you get so wise?"

"Someone had to be, Young Master. You’re brilliant at strategy but terrible at accepting help." Small smile. "I figured that was my job."

I paused..

"Thank you, Damian."

"Always."

After he left, I pulled up the system interface.

```

[DAILY SUMMARY]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

COMBAT PERFORMANCE

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Survived S-rank opponent: ✓

Impressed said opponent: ✓

Earned respect: ✓

Sustained injuries: ✓ (manageable)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

RECRUITMENT PROGRESS

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Seraphina Valorheart: 30% (significant progress)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

FACTION STATUS

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Morale: Stable despite pressure

Loyalty: Strong (average 79%)

Capabilities: Growing

Unity: Tested but holding

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INCOMING THREATS

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Economic pressure: High

Bureaucratic warfare: Imminent

Social isolation: Beginning

Period: 1 week critical period

```

"You think I can pull this off?" I asked the empty air. "Navigate economic warfare, recruit the holy knight, and keep my faction together while Adrian tries to tear us apart?

"While this world tries to kill me?"

But of course, nothing answered my question. And I did not have the time to ponder it even more as a knock came at the door.

Lucille entered, moving silently as always.

"Meeting’s starting soon. But first....." She dropped a folder on my desk. "Intelligence report. Adrian’s full strategy. One of the twins intercepted communications between his advisors."

I looked at her in surprise, opened the folder and read quickly.

Economic sanctions. Family pressure. Bureaucratic traps. Social isolation. All carefully planned.

"He’s thorough," I admitted.

"He’s desperate," Lucille corrected. "People who are winning don’t need to attack on five fronts simultaneously. He’s scared of what we’re building."

"Good. Scared opponents make mistakes."

"So do we, don’t get overconfident."

"Since when do you give pep talks?"

"Since I realized I actually care whether you survive." She moved to the door. "Don’t make me regret that."

☆☆▪︎▪︎☆☆

An hour later, all core members gathered in the main hall. I could see the tension in their postures. They knew something was coming.

I stood before them, the intelligence report in hand.

"Adrian’s making his move," I said without preamble. "He’s using economic pressure and bureaucratic warfare, with social isolation. He’s coming at us from every angle."

I laid out the details and watched their faces as they processed.

When I finished, only silence remained.

Then Drake spoke up. "So what do we do?"

"We fight back. On our terms." I pulled out a map. "Isabella, you have economic counter-strategy?"

Isabella stood, moving to the map. "We bypass traditional suppliers. I have contacts in Silvermere Federation, they are merchants independent from Aetherian noble influence. Cost thirty percent more initially, but will remove Adrian’s economic leverage."

"Do it. Thomas, give me the financial projections."

Thomas consulted his ledger. "We can absorb the increased costs for three months. After that, we need the Silvermere route generating income, not just spending it."

"Understood. Marcus, the communication crystals?"

"Done in four days, not two weeks. Already have prototypes working." He grinned. "Told you I’m good."

"The registration requirement?"

Damian spoke up. "I researched legal options that we can use. We can register as a legitimate business entity, not a student organization. Different regulations and different oversight."

"Would that work?"

Thomas nodded. "Already consulted three lawyers. It’s legally sound. We become ’Ravana Security and Trade Consortium."

"That’s..." I blinked. "That’s actually brilliant."

"We had time to prepare," Thomas said modestly. "You’ve been busy getting your ribs broken."

The scattered laughter that followed broke the tension.

"What about the social pressure?" Someone asked with a worried tone. "Some of us have families that can be threatened."

"Document everything," Lucille said flatly. "Every threat, every pressure point. We’ll need evidence. And....." She looked at me.

"And we protect our own," I finished, my voice like seel. "Anyone threatened, report immediately. We have resources and we’ll use them."

Kira raised her hand. "What if they escalate to violence?"

"Then we respond proportionally. We’re not victims." I met her eyes, my face calm. "But we’re also not aggressors. We defend, we don’t attack first. Understood?"

Nods around the room.

"This is going to get harder before it gets easier," I said. "Adrian’s betting that pressure will make you abandon me. Prove him wrong."

One by one, each member voiced commitment. Some enthusiastic, some slowly, some quiet but firm.

But all committed.

```

[FACTION MORALE CHECK: PASSED]

[AVERAGE LOYALTY: 78% → 81%]

[UNITY UNDER PRESSURE: STRENGTHENING]

[ADRIAN’S PREDICTION: WRONG]

[YOUR LEADERSHIP: EFFECTIVE]

```

As the meeting broke up, some people lingering to talk strategy, I felt something unexpected.

Hope. Since I came to the world, I’ve not had a moment of peace as I have to keep running around, gathering people and information just to keep myself alive.

Although, it might sound cold that he was looking for pawns just to survive, wasn’t he also doing them a favor? Almost all of them are those that have been written to diem

Even then, he couldn’t blame a flickering warmth that bloomed inside him.

Maybe... just maybe I won’t be crushed my my new reality.