“Let me also install the Silver Vein while I’m at it.”
He drove his consciousness, and a perfectly square silver box appeared in Raphael’s hand.
“No…”
Raphael looked at the lightweight little cube, a surge of concerns rising.
“If I use it here, what if it blows up the prison?”
He recalled the instructions for using the box: place it at the center, then drive with consciousness.
‘Maybe the meaning is that by placing it at the center, the vein would form around that point.’
With that thought, Raphael left the guillotine and walked out of the prison.
As he looked out, a vast expanse of land stretched before his eyes.
A straight road extended from the prison gate into the distance, eventually vanishing into the endless horizon.
Not far away, a stream ran alongside the road, converging together into the Silver Dragon River outside Starfall Bay, and finally into the Great Inner Lake.
That stream happened to lie within the prison’s newly added territory.
To avoid affecting the water source, Raphael deliberately went to the opposite corner of the stream and deployed the vein there.
Following the instructions, Raphael placed the box on the ground.
He drove his consciousness.
The moment his senses drew near, the box suddenly split open.
The shell dissolved into the air like melting snow, and a blinding silver light burst forth from within, then burrowed into the earth.
That white light tugged at Raphael’s nerves, guiding his spiritual perception as it too plunged into the ground.
The smell of soil and grass roots kept surfacing in his nostrils.
His vision blurred, flickering between silver light and darkness.
His mind felt as if it had plummeted from the nine heavens into an abyssal valley.
A transcendent sense of weightlessness made Raphael feel as though he had left the human world and drifted into a boundless, ethereal cosmos.
Then, a piercing whistle resonated through his entire body.
He heard a distant sigh, as if from four billion six hundred million years ago, a barren wasteland.
He heard the earth rise and fall, gradually crumbling apart in that lonely, endless era.
Thirty trillion tides of ebb and flow had carved ancient imprints into every corner of this land.
Mountains and rivers, surging waves everywhere.
Heaven and earth interwoven, ravines forming states.
Sun rising and moon setting, day and night alternating, stars shifting, sun and moon about to fade.
Each exhale carried the starry miracles hidden in that distant void.
Each inhale carried the undulating memories spanning hundreds of millions of light-years.
Then, the earth began to shake.
Without a doubt, that light had spawned a vast Silver Vein deep underground!
The entire prison began to tremble violently because of it.
Inside the prison.
Estina had just washed her face when she stumbled and fell to the ground.
The dormitory building was shaking.
“This is—!”
Estina scrambled to her feet and ran out of the dormitory, shouting as she went:
“A Dragon’s Roar, it’s a Dragon’s Roar, run!”
The entire prison fell into chaos, the girls’ screams piercing the sky.
Meanwhile, Liliya, still fighting the horde of ghouls, took a few steps back.
She turned her head and looked toward the prison.
The look in her eyes instantly became much more resolute.
—
The shaking lasted for over ten minutes.
Raphael slowly picked himself up from the ground and staggered back to the prison.
Fortunately, the tremor had caused no substantial damage to the prison.
But the panic it inflicted on the people inside was very real.
Dragon’s Roar—that was what this world called an earthquake.
It originated in the distant past, an age still ruled by magic.
The dragons that soared through the sky—their roars could cause the earth to tremble, even split apart.
One thousand two hundred years ago, the last dragon was slain by Saint Jocelyn, one of the Twelve Saints.
Dragon’s Roar had since been passed down as another name for “earthquake.”
After calming everyone’s emotions a little, Raphael had to get back to work.
There were countless things to handle.
First was the issue of the prison’s operations.
Just thinking about the prison’s debt gave Raphael a headache.
Weaving cloth would take ages to earn enough to pay it off.
Moreover, the debt had interest—the prison’s monthly revenue probably couldn’t even keep up with the interest on that six million Crown debt.
But without production, there was no money.
Even with the Silver Vein right beneath their feet, they needed funds to dig the mine shafts.
He’d have to make do with the current equipment first and scrape through this month.
Next was the promised improvements for the half-bloods.
That would cost a large sum of money and take a lot of time.
Then there was the matter of forming a private army.
He had originally planned to wait for Liliya to come back before preparing, but Raphael really didn’t want to keep those useless mercenaries in the prison any longer.
Besides that, there were reforms, Sophia, the Shadow and Silver Statue in Death Row, the research institute, and so on.
Raphael wished he could tear himself in two—there were just too many problems to solve.
“Then I’ll have to make Estina suffer a bit more.” Two streams of tears flowed from the corners of Raphael’s eyes.
“Even if it’s tough, it’s the employee who has to bear it!”
And so, a great mission was entrusted to Estina.
Raphael handed her the reform plan he had written earlier. She stared blankly at the document, a bit dazed.
“No… more vacation?” Estina asked, stunned.
Hearing this, Raphael pursed his lips.
“It’s not that there’s no vacation. It’s a slow release, a delayed release—a planned release.”
“Consider this seven-day holiday as compensatory leave.”
“Compensatory leave?” Estina had never heard that term before.
“That means you shift your current vacation to later.”
“For example, if you move these seven days to Holy Sacrifice Day, plus the three days of Holy Sacrifice Day, you’ll have ten days in total.”
“Go harder—work two more days of overtime, then you can piece together a half-month vacation. Wouldn’t that be even better?”
“The more overtime you work, the more vacation you get. The more vacation you get, the less overtime you work.”
“Therefore, the more overtime you work, the less overtime you work.”
“Work hard—the prison won’t treat you badly.”
Raphael’s words moved Estina.
Ten days… half a month… even a month!
Putting aside the facts, this was too humane!
[Ding——!]
[Estina’s loyalty has increased]
Individual Name: Estina
Position: Chief Guard
Loyalty: 79
Loyalty Change: 78 → 79
Watching Estina pick up the document and happily run out, Raphael felt like something was about to grow on his head.
He touched his head. “Tsk… I still feel like I’m missing a hat.”
For now, Estina’s loyalty was high enough, and her abilities were sufficient.
Entrusting her with the heavy responsibility of reforming the Half-Blood Ward would serve as a tempering exercise.
As for himself, there was still one task he had to handle personally: selecting half-bloods to form a half-blood unit.
He arrived at the Exercise Yard.
Because of that little play they had put on, Tina couldn’t show too much respect or enthusiasm toward Raphael.
She could only ask coldly, “Lord Warden, are you preparing to form the unit?”
“Of course. I always keep my promises.” Raphael smiled.
The two understood each other without needing to say a word.
What a pair of sly mice and brittle sharks.
However, from Safitiya’s perspective, Tina was negotiating and maneuvering with the prison as the representative of the half-bloods.
Ah, truly a chosen leader!
The reality of the two: