"What are you guys thinking?!" Qiu Yue slammed on the table which frightened the advisors once more. "Oh my god, I really cannot believe it." She lowered her head in disappointment and shook her head. This was definitely harder than she had anticipated.

"What seems to be the problem, Qiu?" King Sol asked in a gentle tone rather than an imposing one and hoped that he did not offend her in any way. However, Qiu Yue ignored him and sat down right beside him and started to write her own notes while the advisors could only keep quiet staring at her in silence as they heard the sound of intense scribbling.

"I understand that a lot of your advisors are freshly recruited, but they should have been around to see how to work this job. I can't believe you need me to point out all your flaws. It's as if you are on thin ice without even realising it and slowing. Let me point it out for you. You have approximately three months worth of dry food stockpile according to the population that you quoted me. Your coffers might be high currently, but considering the fact that the orcs have crippled every other goblin kingdom, you are left with only the humans to trade with." Qiu Yue stood up to grab the region map that was placed on the far right of the table.

"Your relationship with the humans has always been shaky to be blunt. Assuming they even ARE willing to aid you in trading, you might gain an additional two months of dry food stockpiled according to the amount of food that they had been trading with you for years. Also, you can be damn sure, that they are going to skyrocket the prices they are going to charge you. After all, they should clearly understand, that you will be forced to pay up." Qiu Yue walked towards the Economy advisor's secretary and requested for the notes that the poor goblin had been taking down.

"Resource wise, King Sol has had the foresight to found the kingdom in a location with rich forest and mines, so we are mostly self sufficient in terms of metal works and construction. Food and manpower, however, are an issue." Qiu Yue took a marker out from her storage ring and started to jolt some figures on her palm.

"At the very least, you enforced the conscription law strictly. This way we can call up military reserves anytime but it also leaves the kingdom with the old, the woman and children if we are not careful." Qiu Yue now requested the military advisor's secretary to surrender his portion of notes.

"Unfortunately you guys did not phase out old equipment nor introduce new equipment to your soldiers in a long while. Most of your resources were diverted into tangible products which are beneficial for trading purposes, allowing the kingdom to amass a large amount of wealth. I am not saying it's not wrong, but a quick glance over the numbers of your account books reveals that there are obvious signs of manipulations indicating massive corruptions done by your predecessors. From what it looks like, Your Majesty, it seems you've been aware of this, is that correct? " Qiu Yue diverted the question towards King Sol.

"I..yes. It has come to my attention I, however, would like to iterat-" Qiu Yue stopped him and shook her head.

"You are surprisingly honest, Your Majesty. The accounts are pristine clean on your end. I think I roughly get the situation and what sort of predicament it could have possibly lead to if you had openly addressed those corruptions." Qiu Yue remembered Jin informed her that King Sol had been in poor health almost all the time and was sure the advisors had been taking advantage of that. If not for the fact that the Three Generals were his friends, the corrupted advisors would have likely tried to overthrow King Sol in a military coup themselves.

"However, that does not change the fact that your previous advisors were corrupted. Military Advisor, I suggest ordering a raid in their premise as soon as possible to retrieve records of their financial assets and seize any valuables kept in those advisors' houses." Qiu Yue wanted to recover as much gold for the war funds of the Kingdom.

"This is blasphemous! Those families are currently mourning their dead and you want us to be the bad guys and raid their house for the sake of gold? Why must I listen to you?! You are just a female humanoid scolding us and barking orders at us! You did not give us a speck of respect at all!" The Military Advisor shouted in retaliation and Qiu Yue smirked that this is now going as what she planned. (The goblins were mainly a male dominated race, hence they looked down on Qiu Yue.)

"Even though your King had asked you to cooperate, you are still disobeying? Do you really think if we were spies, that we would point out all your faults for you?!?!... Fine. I do understand your reluctance to follow orders of someone you have just met. Let me prove to you, that I have every right to be here, and to command you. I heard from the castle guards that you have an ancient rite of battle if things do not get resolved, right? The one who loses will have to obey all wishes. So how about this? Why don't you all fight me? That's right. Each and every one of you can attack me in one go. My condition: Listen to every fucking order I give. If I lose, I won't force you to ransack those houses, instead, Jin here will provide one million gold coins to the kingdom and we will stop complaining about a single thing." Qiu Yue pointed at Jin and the System gave an estimation to Jin.

"User, one million gold coins is equivalent to a hundred thousand dungeon dollars. " Jin smiled weakly and nodded his head in agreement to Qiu Yue's plan.

"Heh! One million gold coins? That is pathetic and not even worth our time." The Economy Advisor snorted as he wanted to increase the bet of the ancient rite of battle. How could they lose? She was after all a humanoid with a slender figure. There was no way she had experience in fighting and she probably would make an excuse to let Master Jin fight against them.

"Alright, Fifty million gold coins. Jin here will not help at me all. Heck, let us turn up the difficulty. I will be fighting with one hand tied to my back, and I have to defeat every one of you. In return, all your ministries shall belong to me if all of you lose. What about it?" Qiu suggested but at this time, she and Jin did not know that Pei was already secretly using her Psycho cognitive abilities to influence the advisors, making them more rash than usual.

Yet the goblins were not stupid. They demanded Qiu Yue to show the money before they participated in the ancient rite of battle. This was because this rite was not just a promise to be made between either the goblins, orcs or the humans. It was similar to a magical binding contract between the two parties in order to settle their disagreement.

Qiu Yue looked at Jin and he sighed heavily and asked the group to meet at the throne hall since there would be no way to show the coins. In the meantime, Jin asked the System to convert the dungeon dollars into gold coins. "Can I change them back to Dungeon dollars later again?" Jin asked and the System replied positively, though it would be based on the market conversion rate with transaction fees added. Jin suddenly felt his heart tighten as he slowly accepted the fact that he needed to part with the money he earnt to the System.

When the goblin advisors along with King Sol reached the throne hall, Jin was pulling large suitcases out of his storage watch like some magic trick while Qiu Yue assisted in opening the suitcases one at a time. The goblin advisors' face turned white when they saw the mountains of gold coins neatly stacked in each suitcase and their mouth even drooled a bit from this sight. King Sol noticed the desires of his advisors and shook his head. He could only trust that Jin and Qiu would be able to set the goblins mindset right.

The freshly recruited goblin advisors had not seen the humanoids in action and they only heard stories of the male humanoid Jin's prowess in the art of fighting. They eventually came to an agreement amongst themselves and agreed to participate in the ancient rite of battle asking King Sol to initiate the contract. According to their risk assessment, they felt that if they ganged up against Qiu Yue, she should not be able to stand a chance at all.

However, they did not know that Pei was the one riling up their emotions of greed for the money in front of them nor that she was the one fanning their anger for enduring all the insults Qiu Yue had been hurling at them for the past hours. Their goblin pride had been insulted. They were appointed goblin advisors after all! Respective leaders of a specialised ministry for the glorious Goblin Kingdom! Not just mere nobodies that could simply be lectured by someone else!

Jin started to notice that his bracelet was glowing slightly understanding that Pei must be doing something, though he decided not to interfere since fifty million gold coins were at stake. As long as the advisors were to fight against Qiu Yue, everything else should be smooth sailing.

"Then I shall initiate the following. You goblin advisors of mine will be fighting against Qiu in a free for all combat. Should Qiu win, she will be granted full access and confidence of each ministry, your future fate as advisors will also depend on her judgements. Her orders will be absolute! However should she lose, she will surrender fifty million gold to the treasury of Gob Gob Kingdom." King Sol stated as he cast a magic circle on the floor with the ring glowing red.

"Step in to confirm these conditions for the contract for this Rite of Battle." King Sol invited them. Both parties willingly stepped forward to affirm the participants. "I hereby proclaim to act as the arbiter for the contract and declare it valid to be resolved by the end of the day." King Sol finished and the magic circle slowly faded away. The goblin advisors saw that there was a red triangle being embedded on the palms of their hand as well as Qiu Yue's.

The advisors smirked as they decided to battle at the Castle's Outer Courtyard in an hour's time. The secretaries needed to return to their houses to gather their weapon, armours and other miscellaneous equipment. At that point, the advisors had distanced themselves from the humanoids and started discussing how they could best coordinate with each other to take down Qiu Yue. All had been trained in military thanks to the compulsory conscription law and some were even old buddies during their stint in the army. Therefore their discussion got sidetracked every now and then while reminiscing about the old days only to return to the kind of possibilities they might encounter fighting against her. Some assumed she had magic on her side to even the odds, while others felt she must be in possession of skills with area of effect that would make her confident against a large group of goblins.

Meanwhile, Jin returned all the suitcases into his storage ring and requested King Sol to lend them the guest room for Qiu Yue to rest before the duel which he granted immediately. The same guard brought them to the guest room they used and showed a thumbs up to Jin as if he was approving of his actions. What actions? Only the guard might know.

"Aaaaaghhh!!!" Qiu Yue screamed her frustration into the pillow before she finally relaxed on the bed heaving a sigh of comfort. "Sorry, I should have discussed this before proposing such a thing. Did I push it too far?" Qiu Yue gave a "pity this cute red panda" kind of face which instantly melted Jin's heart.

"I doubt so. After all you are just trying to help them, but they still disapprove. History taught us that logistics is an internal war we have to deal with consistently. No proper supply routes and the armies starve, no proper planning and we will be failing in our operations. We would lose this war before we know it." Jin reassured Qiu Yue as he sat on a large cushion chair and leaned his head at the side of the large chair.

"There were too many factors that were lacking in the combat service support. They have no discipline in this particular planning phrase and everyone is pushing responsibilities left right and centre. Honestly they kind of remind me of the Ministry. Even the way they ignore my expertise They have no idea how much work is needed in transporting their personnel, and there are currently no plans of any forward bases. Medical support is also sorely lacking and much more- ARGGHHHH" Qiu Yue took her half mask out and messed her hair up before she relaxed once more on the bed.

"So you simply decided to bet against the goblins so you could obtain total control." Jin smiled at the cuteness of Qiu Yue's pouting on the bed.

"I know I can be a control freak at times, but I cannot think of anything else to circumvent this situation." Qiu Yue places the pillow on her face as she takes a rest.

"Distance is not a factor at the moment since we are defending. However, there is a limit to defending. The resources here like I said previously will not support us in the long run since we do not have that many farms. Besides, the advisors also pointed out that winter is coming. If three month of food surplus is the best they can come up for the winter, we will be dead in our tracks." Qiu Yue continued to grumble to Jin.

"You are thinking too much right now. For now, you just stay calm and win this particular battle. Or else we will lose the upper hand in negotiations." Jin then beckoned to Qiu Yue as she required her own battle strategy for the upcoming duel too.

He and Qiu Yue reviewed her current abilities which was not much to begin with since she had always busy with work. Jin did pass her the manual that the System bestowed to him as a reward, the Radiant Red Panda in the Umbral Snow, but she did not have the time to read it properly. Even the small part she skimmed over was not making much sense at all. The complexity and in depth instructions clearly showed off the expertise of whoever wrote it, but without understanding it, it might as well have been written in another language.

"Candidate Qiu Yue requires to have the System imbued for her to integrate the cultivation manual. It was a safety measure created by the System to prevent misuse or abuse of the manual by other potential threats." The System noted and Qiu Yue could only shrug her shoulders.

"I think, the only way for you to win in this short amount of time is to have superior equipment than them. If they needed their secretaries to fetch their personal armour, it can only mean that those weapons and armour must be enchanted. I also overheard that they might have some magic prepared to restrain you." Jin warned Qiu Yue and started to suggest some equipment.

"I have asked King Sol about the rite of battle. Apparently, this triangle symbol works as a sort of resurrection spell that is granted upon those undergoing the rite of battle it seems similar to our resurrection methods but more of a magical nature. Therefore, the advisors will be going all out on you for sure. Luckily for us we have the best weapons supplier one could ask for." Jin was happy to be able to help out as he was more experienced in combat.

Qie Yue was aware that she was lacking experience in that battle department and decided to leave it to Jin "Recommend away. I will take whatever you say." Qiu Yue smiled sweetly as she stared into Jin's honest eyes for a while as he rambled away in his own self talk.

"I guess, you can change into this set of clothes. Stats wise, it provides more flexibility and allows you to hide things too." Jin passed her a singlet with shorts, along with a long coat similar to what Kraft was wearing. The unique thing about the long coat was that it could insert more temporary inscriptions compared to other sets of clothing. (Not to mention the jacket has a permanent cooling inscription which Qiu Yue would like very much.) The singlet and cargo shorts were her staple kind of fashion when she was with Jin back then and he simply chose the colours she preferred. Navy Blue and Bla