Chapter 100 Westram has changed
The people of Naples used two criteria to distinguish between the "upper class" in big cities and the "lower class" in rural towns: one was whether there was electricity and gas, and the other was whether there was a landline telephone.
They have electric lights, gas for heating and water, and when asked for contact information, they can calmly give their home landline phone number in addition to their home address. This is the standard portrait of the middle class in the big cities of the Napoleonic continent.
Why do we add big cities before the middle class?
Because in small towns like Kammer in the Principality of Shiga or Westerme in the Kingdom of the Rhine, even if some blocks have access to electricity due to the cheap power plants near big cities (power plants are usually near big cities), gas pipelines and telephone wires cannot be pulled in - the construction and maintenance costs are too high, and gas companies and telecommunications companies cannot do such a loss-making business.
In a big city like Innadeli, there are only a few blocks with sufficient electricity and gas supply, and the ringing of telephones can only be heard in wealthy areas.
For most Innadri citizens, if they wanted to contact their families when they were away from home, the only means of communication they could rely on were letters and telegrams - the latter only required the existence of a local telegraph office.
Of course, there was no telegraph office in Westham... Although some blocks in Westham had electricity, the Postal and Telegraph Company did not believe that the business revenue generated by this small town could guarantee a return on investment - the income from the post office here could barely support the director and three postmen, and the surplus sent to the headquarters was pitifully small.
However, over the past ten days or so, the Westham Post Office has been doing much better, with a large number of letters traveling back and forth between Westham and Innadri, and a lot of stamps have been sold.
That morning, when it was still dark, Porsha Lowry, a 23-year-old young postman, went out wearing a windbreaker and rushed to the post office.
The postal industry in this world is not dominated by the state. Like electricity, gas, and telephone lines, it is managed by powerful nobles in various countries and is a private profit-making unit.
The post offices opened in various places are like chain stores. The director is the store manager and the postman is an employee. They have no intersection with the local administrative departments. Even if the mayor wants to send a letter or a parcel, he has to pay honestly.
When Porsha Lowry entered the post office on South Martin Street, the director and two other veteran employees were already there.
After a brief greeting, the director began to assign tasks to the three postmen: "Laurie, you go into the city today. Matt, Ben, you deliver letters to the countryside."
"Hey, man!" Matt raised his hands and shouted after hearing the arrangement. "Why is Laurie going to town again? It's my turn now, isn't it?"
The director glared at Matt impatiently and said, "When you can do what everyone else does, without getting delayed on the way and returning on time on the same day, I'll let you go."
Matt was indignant, but ultimately remained silent.
There was a horse-drawn carriage and three bicycles for mail delivery. Normally, postmen would deliver mail to the town and surrounding villages by bicycle. The horse-drawn carriage to Innadri was only used once a week or two.
No one likes delivering letters to the countryside, and when the authorities have accumulated enough letters and parcels, the three postmen are looking forward to driving to Innadri on their own - they can get two meal subsidies and take a tour around the city of Innadri , who doesn't like that?
Porsha did not dare to show any pride under the jealous gaze of Matt, an old employee. He only clenched his fist in excitement when he came out of the bureau and went to the car rental company next door to pull a horse-drawn carriage.
When the post office did not need the carriage, it would leave the horse and the vehicle at a rental company, which could also bring in a little extra income.
With the help of two old employees, the carriage was filled with letters and parcels. When Porsha sat in the driver's seat and prepared to set off, Ben took advantage of the opportunity when Matt, who was panting, was not paying attention and winked at Porsha.
Porsha remained calm, nodded slightly to Ben, shook the reins and set off.
Next... Posa first went to Ben's house and took a package weighing more than ten pounds wrapped in an old bag from Ben's wife; then he went back to his own house and asked his brother to take out the cardboard box hidden in the closet from his room...
The postage was very expensive. A letter to Innadri cost three copper coins, and parcels were charged by weight.
Taking advantage of the time to go into the city to smuggle contraband is a tacit gray income among small town postmen; if there is more space on the car, the postmen will also find one or two passengers in advance who will pay for the ride.
Matt is a guy who likes to eat all the food for himself. In the past, when it was his turn to drive into the city, he was always unwilling to share some of the benefits with others. No wonder Porsha and Ben teamed up to exclude him.
The post office's horse-drawn carriages and bicycles are all distributed uniformly by the postal company's headquarters. The vehicles are very sturdy, and the horses are not ordinary horses, but one-horned gray horses with mixed Warcraft bloodlines. These horses are short and stocky, with short and thick limbs, and are covered with a layer of gray hair of varying lengths. They are not handsome, but they have great strength and endurance, and are more than cows. They are commonly used horses for travel between cities.
When the carriage pulled by the one-horned gray horse left the town, Posa saw the wandering skeletons again - they seemed to have just returned from outside the town, with dew still on their bones, shining in the early morning sun.
These skeletons, carrying half-full woven bags on their backs, walked into the town gate in a carefree manner. When they passed by horse-drawn carriages, they curiously turned their skull faces, which they could never get used to seeing, and stared at the one-horned gray horse pulling the carriage, making strange "KABAKABA" sounds.
"This horse is a first-level magical beast."
"Don't even think about it. You can't brush it if you have a green name."
Posa tried hard not to look around, and only dared to look back after driving the carriage out of the town.
I really don’t know how long these skeletons will stay in the town... Although he is very happy that the cheap and good goods brought by the new lord have increased the income of the post office (many townspeople mailed cloth to Innadri’s relatives), Posa really doesn’t want his children to grow up in the "company" of skeletons all over the town.
"Good luck always comes with bad luck." Muttering a Rhine proverb to himself, Posa cheered himself up and waved his whip.
The journey of sixty kilometers would take more than three hours even for a carriage pulled by a one-horned gray horse. By the time Posa arrived at Inadli, it was almost noon.
The post office's carriage was painted green, and the standard windproof cloak that Posa was wearing and the post office uniform under the cloak were the most deviant city passes. The city gate officer just glanced over here, waved his hand and let him pass.
Posa drove his carriage into the city and went to South Street first, where he handed Ben and his own "private goods" to the owner of a grocery store - the owner was Ben's brother-in-law. He would ask his son to deliver these secretly smuggled private letters, parcels, etc. to the paying customers, and to sort out some letters and parcels that also did not buy stamps and give them to Posa to take back.
Posa got off the carriage, stacked the thick package on the cardboard box and carried it into the grocery store, telling the owner: "This time it's not a letter, it's good stuff that Ben and I bought in Westham. You put it on the shelf for us."
Ben's brother-in-law is a fat middle-aged man. His eyes lit up when he heard this: "Are they those 'dead cloths'?"
Not long after the new lord sent people to sell Westham's cloth publicly in Martin Street, some of it flowed to Innadri and spread among the lower-class citizens.
The solid, fine, colorful and intricately patterned cloth, at an incredibly cheap price, naturally aroused heated discussions among the lower-class citizens; if the red-light district in Westham had not been closed, the lord had not been replaced, and the rumors of the undead active in broad daylight had not been circulated, countless small businessmen would have rushed to Westham with their money.
Porsha nodded somewhat proudly.
It was not easy for him to save enough cloth for this cardboard box. All the money of his family of more than a dozen people was spent, and they took turns to line up on Martin Street every day...Except for leaving five meters of cloth for his wife to make a skirt, he took the rest out.
Ben's brother-in-law hurriedly untied the bundle, took a look at the surface of the cloth, and smiled, confidently saying: "You can come back to get the money when you go back. I guarantee that I can sell them all in one afternoon!"
"Then I'll trouble you." Posa nodded with a smile, "Don't forget, I won't sell rice for less than 20 copper coins."
"Don't worry!" Ben's brother-in-law patted his chest.
After coming out of the grocery store, Posa drove the carriage straight into the Innadri Post Office.
The Innadri Post Office was much larger than the Westham Post Office in terms of both building specifications and staff size. Not only did it have a telegraph office window, it even had a large courtyard inside the office that could accommodate six horse-drawn carriages. Letters and parcels from more than 20 towns in the entire Innadri territory would be transferred here, so it was naturally incomparable to a small town post office.
In the past, not many people would care about Posa when he came to the Innadri Post Office. But this time, as soon as he parked the carriage, several people gathered around him.
"Hey, Laurie, what happened to Westram?"
"Is your new lord a dark magician?"
"I heard that Westram is full of undead?"
"I have an uncle who went to Westham and never came back. Have you seen him?"
The chaotic voices made Posa not know who to answer first. Just when he was confused, the chief shouted from the second-floor window to save him: "Is it Westham who is coming? Come up quickly!"
Posa confessed his crime to a group of local employees and trotted into the post office building.
In the office, the chief, whom Posa had only met a few times, asked with concern, "Has the new lord of Westham affected the business of the post office?"
"Well... yes, business in the bureau has improved a lot, and many people come to mail packages and letters." Posa said nervously.
"I mean, has the new lord ever interfered with you?" the Chief asked again.
"No." Posa shook his head quickly, "The new lord and... the new mayor of the undead town have never come to the post office once."
When Mr. Chief heard the word "Undead Mayor", he gasped with a pale face: "Ms. Gold Coin... The mayor of Westram is also an undead?!"
The news that the new lord of Westham was the illegitimate son of a viscount had spread throughout the city a week ago.
The fact that nobles have illegitimate children is not news at all in this world - let alone nobles, businessmen and even the middle class with relatively considerable incomes all keep mistresses semi-openly.
There are many "inspirational" stories about outstanding illegitimate children being taken back to the main home by their aristocratic or wealthy fathers and receiving some of the family resources.
As long as there were no unpalatable rumors about his mother, such as being fickle or having a poor family background, the fact that a noble's illegitimate son became the lord of a place would not attract widespread attention; if the new lord of Westham did not come to power through the undead, this matter would not even be qualified to become a topic of conversation among the citizens of Innadri.
When it comes to the undead, the nature of the matter is different... Lords from all over welcome spellcasters to build wizard towers, but no lord will welcome black magicians!
Porsha Lowry didn't want others to regard his hometown as a scourge, so he weakly defended himself: "Even so...but these undead spirits haven't made Westram worse..."
By closing the red-light district, at least his wife wouldn't be looked at with prejudice by some bored villagers when she went back to the countryside to visit relatives - Westham's reputation was not very good before, and if a young woman said that she lived in Westham, in the eyes of others it would be as if she smelled like a prostitute.
What's more, the master of the undead, Lord Rex, is a very kind gentleman. He not only sells the best cloth to the townspeople at low prices, but also provides jobs for those who have no means of living in the town. Their neighbor, the old widow in her forties, can no longer get laundry work after the red-light district was closed, but at least she can still get lunch and dinner every day from the sanitation bureau.
"How bad can it get?" The chief misunderstood Posa's meaning and sighed pessimistically, "Don't rush back. Come with me to the City Lord's Mansion. His Excellency the Third wants to meet someone from Westram."
Porsha was stunned for a moment.
The Lord of Innadli, Adela III, wants to see him? !
Half an hour later, at the City Lord's Mansion.
Porsha Lowry, the butler of Baron Marcus, the former Lord of Westham, who had the highest status person he had ever met in his life, stood at a loss in the side hall of the City Lord's Mansion, not daring to look up at the lord who was sitting high above him on the main seat.
This was probably the first time in his life that Adela III met such a lowly town citizen in the side hall of his house. His eyes swept from Porsha Laurie's messy hair blown by the wind, his wrinkled and dusty postman's uniform, to his dirty shoes on the marble floor, and he frowned unhappily.
If he wasn't really curious about Westram's current condition... the Third would have asked the butler to kick out this unseemly commoner long ago.
"Look up, commoner." The Third said, pinching his nose, "Tell me what is happening in Westram now."
"Yes, yes, Your Excellency." Posa said tremblingly, "Westham, Westham is now controlled by those undead spirits. One of the undead spirits served as the mayor. A few days ago, he posted notices on the streets of the town, hoping to hire townspeople to work for them—"
"How ridiculous!" The Third slammed the armrest angrily, "Charlie Rex actually let the undead serve as the mayor?!"
Bosha was so frightened that his breathing stopped, and he dared not say the rest of the words...
The real owner of Innadal Territory is the Bartles family.
The small territories under the jurisdiction of Innadli also belonged to the Bartles family. Half of the population tax and agricultural tax of those small nobles had to be paid to Adela III.
In the final analysis... the Bartles family divided up small pieces of their territory for these small nobles, which was the same intention as the king's granting of territories to the great nobles: to manage the territory and the people on their behalf, to pay tribute according to the rules in normal times, and to provide soldiers and food when war was needed.
The king would send consuls to monitor the great nobles, and the great nobles would also send consuls to monitor the lesser nobles.
Charlie Rex took Baron Marcus's Westram by means of trickery and robbery. In a sense, it was just two dogs competing to serve the Bartles family... After all, they were all their dogs, and even if the black magician Yang was extremely disrespectful, the Third could reluctantly accept it.
Rex, the illegitimate son, took over Westram, and he didn't even bother to ask Adela III for his opinion on the mayor. No wonder Adela III was furious...
Knowing this, there was no need for the III to continue asking about Westham's situation. He waved away the frightened Porsha Lowry and asked the butler to recruit people from the city defense team.
The Third was not going to go to war with Westram... He was just teaching the disobedient dog a lesson in his own home, and there was no need to go to the extent of a territory war. He just planned to send the city defense team to "patrol" Westram and flex their muscles, so that the arrogant black magician and the illegitimate son who thought he had the support of the black magician would know who is the real master of the land of Innadli.
Bosha left the City Lord's Mansion in a daze, and kept asking the chief who brought him here: "Did I say something wrong, sir? Did I anger His Excellency the Third?"
"Don't worry, the Third Life is not angry because of you." The chief patted the young man's shoulder and sighed, "Go back early and tell your chief not to let your family go out in the next few days."
After hearing this, Posa became even more scared...
He was just a small employee in the post office. No matter how scared or worried he was, it was useless. He handed over the letters and parcels in a daze, loaded the letters to be sent to Westham into the car, and left Innadri Post Office amid the strange looks of the local employees.
At the grocery store on South Street, Ben's brother-in-law came out of the store excitedly when he saw the post office carriage: "I'm a man of my words, Posa. I said I'll sell the goods by noon... Hey, buddy, are you okay?"
"I'm fine." Posa forced himself to get off the carriage. "How much did it sell for?"
Ben's brother-in-law brought Poshala into the store and came out with a small cash box full of copper coins.
Holding the heavy cash box in his hand, Posa's nervousness and anxiety suddenly disappeared and a smile appeared on his face.
"One more thing. Someone wants to hitchhike back to Westham. Is there room on the bus?" Ben's brother-in-law asked again.
"There's room." Posa nodded immediately. There was no reason to turn away the extra income that was delivered to his door.
Ben's brother-in-law charged 20% for his "private work" and could earn copper coins by picking up hitchhikers. The fat middle-aged man ran to see the empty seats in the post office carriage and immediately called his son to invite passengers who hoped to find a carriage to Westham.
Westham didn't have any decent pillar industries, and young people couldn't find a livelihood in the town, so working in Innadri was the best way out. The passengers who wanted to hitchhike this time were from Westham town, and Posa could call out their names.
A girl in her twenties who lived on the same street as Posa's family asked anxiously when she saw Posa, her childhood playmate: "Posa, is everything ok at home?"
"Of course it's okay, Caroline," Porsha consoled the neighbor girl as she helped her stuff her luggage into the empty space above the mailbox. "I just saw Aunt Winnie go grocery shopping in Martin Street yesterday. She looked fine."
The young girl Caroline breathed a sigh of relief, lifted her skirt and climbed into the carriage and sat down next to the mailbox.
Another young man climbed into the car behind Caroline, saying, "I said nothing serious would happen, otherwise the city lord would have sent the city defense troops over long ago. The fact that Posadu is still sending letters to Westham as usual proves that I was right."
The last two passengers laughed and scolded, "Don't brag, who was so worried that he couldn't sleep well for several days and was scolded by the supervisor?"
"That's right. If no one had pulled me back, I would have walked back on foot."
Posa's expression was not as relaxed as those of his peers, but he did not dare to bring up the fact that he had just been to the City Lord's Mansion and had witnessed the City Lord's rage with his own eyes - if something really happened, he would not be able to take the responsibility.
Carrying a heavy psychological pressure, Posa forced himself to close the car door and drove out of the city.
Along the way, several passengers would lean over the small window to talk to him and ask him about the situation in Westham. Porsha only dared to tell him the good things...
It was almost three in the afternoon when the carriage pulled into Westham.
This was the time when the market was bustling. Hitchhikers got off at the town gate and saw farmers coming into the town in an endless stream. The worries in their hearts were finally put down - except that the colorful lights on the big tree at the town gate were gone, the town was no different from when they left home to work half a year ago!
Even the militiamen guarding the town gate are familiar faces!
The people walking on the street are all old acquaintances.
“Aaaaaaaaaa——!!”
Caroline, a young girl who worked in a high-end restaurant in the southern part of Innadri, dropped the bag she was carrying and screamed heartbreakingly.
The other three young men were also terrified and huddled together tightly.
The farmers carrying loads and pushing wheelbarrows towards Martin Street, the townspeople carrying vegetable baskets, and... the two players walking out from the main street in the town, were all frightened by the tragic and shrill scream. They all stopped and looked around.
It was discovered that the one who made the scream was a young girl, who was pointing at the two undeads in horror...
"You scared me!"
"I thought it was something else, really..."
The farmers who were busy selling vegetables glared at Caroline who was making a fuss, muttered a few words in complaint, and continued to do their own things.
The housewife, whose heart was beating wildly at the sudden scream, rolled her eyes at Caroline in dissatisfaction.
The two ghosts realized that the cry was directed at them, and they made a "KABAKABA" sound, and it was unknown whether it was a protest...
Caroline herself, and the three young workers who were also frightened, were all stunned...
Posa, who hadn't driven the carriage away yet, was extremely embarrassed. "Didn't I tell you that there are many undead in this town now? If you're scared, just don't look at them. They don't interact with other people."
Caroline and three young workers were still in shock: "..."
