His work on the Teleportation Gate was important and he was doing it for their sake as well, but honestly, the girls just wanted to spend more time with him now than ever. Serilla especially since she's been having those odd mood swings due to her pregnancy.

During the break time, Cecil spent time with his family and also helped out with his father's work in managing the kingdom.

They provided ample rewards to the soldiers that took part in the recent war against Merkruz and the two cities that they had obtained were already given to their subordinates to manage.

The Sciezle family was given the rights to manage Central Light City and was also given the task to monitor the Silvaria Branch families that were going to be moved to this city. West Wind City was going to be managed by the Coppernium family.

The trade routes that they had acquired were also going to be managed by them since they were the ones in charge of the kingdom's economic sector. With the new trade routes that lead to places other than just the Regulus Kingdom, more and more government companies could be established to manage a sector of the trade that they would be conducting.

With the announcement of such things, more citizens began looking for employment or start a company on their own. The kingdom didn't monopolize all of the benefits they got from the war and shared it with the entire populace.

The kingdom needed to rebuild West Wind City since the army had laid waste to it during the war so the government announced that they needed volunteers who wanted to rebuild and reside in the city located outside of the kingdom. It was well received by the citizens since many were curious about the outside world and due to that, there were many applicants.

In the past years, the valley was growing too crowded for everyone to live in so they expanded outwards but even then, the valley was already growing much too crowded again. There was also the problem of monsters within the No-Man's Lands so it was hard for citizens to migrate from one city to another.

Of course, Cecil had suggested some things like forming their own Adventurer Guild that would issue out rewarded tasks to volunteering citizens, who wanted to become adventurers, to periodically kill the monsters.

Cecil was already an experienced adventurer so he knew the ins and outs of becoming one. He was also aware of the ranking system's purpose so he needed to research a bit more on the monsters within the No-Man's Land before he could establish his kingdom's Adventurer Guild.

He didn't want Alterna's Adventurer Guild to come into their kingdom due to their special circ.u.mstances, but he wasn't all that averse to the concept of it. After all, it was basically like a volunteer army of citizens who would do menial tasks that the army couldn't do just to receive a few coins.

Cecil was going to take advantage of this system to urge the citizens of the kingdom to train and stand up for themselves against the monsters that were threatening them. He was also recently informed that there were a few martial arts masters residing in the kingdom who were against joining the army but were for defending the kingdom.

They didn't join the army but would volunteer to defend the kingdom in the case of a monster attack. Since they didn't want to join the army, then maybe the adventurer guild's reward system would instigate them into going out into the lands and kill a few monsters for the kingdom.

Kaiser thought it was a brilliant plan so he approved of it. Most of the areas near their kingdom's lands have already been doc.u.mented in the kingdom's archives so the information was handed over to Cecil and he quickly started ranking the monsters, plants, and materials based on how rare they were and how much the kingdom needed them.

The Kingdom's Adventurer Guild was only going to be running tasks that were beneficial to the kingdom. They weren't going to be like the normal Adventurer Guilds of Alterna that took in requests from just about anyone who weren't criminals and as long as they paid gold.

So due to this, they decided to call it the Kingdom's Guild instead of the Adventurer's Guild. Cecil had also issued another request for the kingdom and that was to build a fis.h.i.+ng city at the impossibly large lake located close to the valley.

When Cecil decided to visit the lake for a bit, he found out that the whole area of the lake was about a few tens of thousands of square kilometers. It was pretty deep too and he noticed that there were many aquatic monsters living in them.

However, just as many aquatic monsters there were, there were also many edible species of fish and seafood living in it. The important thing was that not all of the aquatic monsters living in the lake were aggressive. There were plenty of them that were rather pa.s.sive and neutral.

The only problem for the Silvaria kingdom in establis.h.i.+ng a city there would be the land monsters whose homes occupied the areas near the lake. Well, since Cecil wanted to build a city there, there was a need to purge a few of these monster homes.

That was the recent ongoing and developments in the kingdom. Things were going on track and today, Cecil was going to be administering the punishment to the branch families directly involved with the attacks on his family.

Quite a few had been wiped out in his initial attack on their residential complex. Naturally, when the surviving members of these families healed from their injuries and woke up only to find them being punished for their involvement with Kuran's plan, they were enraged because they had already lost their families and were now being punished regardless.

Cecil didn't care at all and only threatened to just straightforwardly end their lives instead of punis.h.i.+ng them. All they had to do was work in the mines for a few years before being banished from the family and the kingdom thereafter. It was up to them to decide and frankly, Cecil didn't really mind having to kill a few of the disobedient ones or the ones who straightforwardly asked for their death.

Most of the surviving traitors had chosen to work in the mines and be exiled thereafter, but there were some who were disobedient and wanted none of that. Cecil didn't even negotiate with these ones and just went ahead with killing them.

No one voluntarily offered up their lives but this was a given. No one wanted to die after all. Even the main perpetrators of the scheme behind the attack on the main family silently chose to accept their punishment. However, when it was time for Kuran to step up to take his punishment, Cecil didn't even give him a choice.

"Elder Kuran, your choice... well, you won't have a choice. You're going to die today," Cecil plainly said.

"What? What're you saying?!"

The other branch family members who were being punished also couldn't help but protest at Cecil's judgment. He had given everyone else a choice in choosing whether or not to die or voluntarily receive their punishment.

However, towards the elder, Cecil didn't even bat an eye when he said that Kuran was going to die.

Eustace, Kuran's grandson, immediately spoke up and roared at Cecil, "What is this?! You allowed the other elders to choose to receive their punishments but you're not allowing my grandfather?! You're just being biased right now!"

"...who are you?"

"Huh? I'm Eusta—"

"Yeah, shut up, I don't care. If you speak another word, I'll silence you, forever," Cecil threatened.

"Urk..."

"Hmph, traitors should just keep their traps shut...or else I'll keep it shut for them."

"..."

After seeing Eustace cower and retreat back in silence, Cecil turned his attention back onto Kuran.

"Well, now, Elder Kuran... Are you ready to receive your punishment?"

Kuran only remained silent throughout the whole proceeding. He already knew that his life wasn't going to be spared like the others. He had been the mastermind of the whole plot so there was no way the main family was going to let him off lightly with just a light punishment of being exiled out of the family.

He could only sigh in defeat since he had been played with. He had lost and in a most convincing way. Times have changed and so has their environment and playing field. This was no longer Earth and the main family wasn't like how it used to be.

The main branch held all of the power, fully within their grasp. The branch families which used to have a large say in everything within the family due to how much companies and businesses they owned back on Earth no longer had that power since their a.s.sets were now gone.

Other than being leeches to the main family branch, they literally had nothing for them right now. It was too bad for Kuran since he wasn't patient enough. If he knew that Cecil had brought back some new opportunities for the branch families to regain that power then he wouldn't have gone against the main family in the first place.

Now that it was all too late, he could only regret his actions. His family was being punished to work like slaves for the kingdom only to be tossed aside and exiled later on once they served their sentence. The only saving grace in all of this was that he knew that his family would still be alive even after he died.

Just as Cecil's blade was descending on his neck, Kuran spotted Katya from the corner of his eyes. He then glared at her menacingly before he remembered.

'd.a.m.n, it was because of those Goldenia b.a.s.t.a.r.ds that I even went about betraying the main family!'

"WAIT! The Gol—" Kuran was just about to yell it all out but he was cut short.

The executioner's blade had already descended and beheaded the old man so he couldn't get his last words out. The Goldenias didn't partic.i.p.ate in this judging precisely because this was the Silvaria family's internal affair. Katya was present because she was now living with them.

If the Goldenia family's group had been present and Kuran had spotted them earlier on, he would have without a doubt spilled the beans regarding their part in the attack on the Silvaria main family already. During the past few days when he was imprisoned, Kuran had been too busy dwelling on his thoughts of regret and lament that he didn't even remember about the reason why he had even started down on the path towards his betrayal.

Cecil frowned when he saw that Kuran was about to yell something out earlier. The old man had been silent throughout the whole proceeding so Cecil couldn't understand why he had roared out like that just before he was about to die.

'He was looking at Katya...and if I'm not mistaken, he was about to say Goldenia?' Cecil thought.

Cecil turned to eye Katya and he couldn't help but narrow his eyes at her. Katya also saw him looking at her and couldn't help but tilt her head in confusion.

She looked innocent so Cecil pushed his thoughts to the back of his head. He had finally finished administrating the punishment to the branch families and wanted to quickly head back home to shower and cleanse himself from the dirty feeling of ending someone's life.

"I'll have Quinn investigate this... for Katya's sake, they better not be up to something behind our backs!" Cecil mumbled.

He had grown to like the young girl that was about his age. He liked her nature that was very much similar to his own. She was very curious about things and wanted to know more about magic and stuff like that.

They had been getting to know each other a lot more during the past few days and Cecil found it fun to talk to her on the topic of magic and spells. Lucia would also be there to share her insight on magic so it was all the more fun for everyone.

Only Serilla would feel left out since she wasn't much of a mage like the rest of them. However, she did enjoy having a chat with Katya from time to time since the girl would always be around the house idling about.

Cecil let the family deal with the punished branch families as he went back home. He needed to quickly complete the Teleportation Gate to connect his kingdom with Anglaria. He had received a few calls from his mother-in-law stating that their gate was just about to be finished in a few more weeks.

Luckily for Cecil, the parts that he had the kingdom's craftsmen work on were all finished and they had just arrived yesterday at his workshop. All he needed to do now was work together with Ren to begin inscribing the runic arrays onto the parts before quickly a.s.sembling it.