Rowena sat quietly on the couch after Austin had finished explaining his blacklist idea to her.

After listening attentively to his opinion, the beautiful Countess didn’t speak immediately.

Instead, she stared at the table with a thoughtful look on her face.

Her fingers gently began tapping the side of her cup as she sank deep into her thoughts.

Meanwhile, Austin waited patiently as he watched her face, his smug look still plastered on his face.

Of course, he felt proud of his plan, but since Rowena had been silent for so long, pondering on what he had said, it made Austin feel a little nervous.

After a long moment, Rowena finally spoke. "I truly believe your plan is impressive and I like it. Using our potions as leverage to create a blacklist to punish nobles who try to extort us is truly remarkable. At first glance, it sounds powerful and effective, but if this were put into practice, it would be really dangerous."

"Why?" Austin asked, and Rowena glanced at him with a very serious look on her face.

"First of all, my county is a small territory that has been struggling to survive for centuries. We’ve been dependent on others to survive and still are, so if we openly blacklist an earl and his allies, they will not simply accept it and sit quietly."

"Instead, they would see it as open hostility, and this wouldn’t be good for me, because they have more private guards than my entire garrison combined. They also have connections at the royal court and many friends among the nobility, so they could easily accuse us of rebellion, thereby turning the king and the royal family against us."

Austin listened attentively to what Rowena said and could understand her point of view.

Since her territory was the only land housing thousands of elves in the kingdom, their numbers were generally far smaller than those of the humans who occupied the rest of it.

So if anything were to go against them, humans would easily side with their own kind rather than with elves, and no matter how hard she tried to convince the royal family that she wasn’t planning a rebellion, the harder it would be to make anyone believe her.

"Secondly..." Rowena stated, and Austin listened carefully. "Unlike other territories, I do not have the army to protect my people if other nobles were to decide to work together against me. My garrison guards are small, and my people have long lost their ability to fight against mana-awakened opponents. So one wrong move on my end, and the lives of thousands would be gone because of me."

Rowena explained, and Austin was immediately brought back to the reality of the situation.

This allowed him to realise what was truly at stake, and once again he couldn’t help but be impressed by how deeply Rowena always thought things through.

For years, Austin had been a normal man working at a gaming company.

So he knew little to nothing about politics in this medieval world.

However, unlike him, Rowena had spent centuries as a Countess, ever since she had taken over from her late father at a very young age, so she, more than anyone else, understood what was at stake if she had simply gone along with Austin’s plan.

Though she wasn’t completely against his ideas either, because despite the flaws in Austin’s plan, Rowena could still see the sense within his thinking, and that was why she had decided to build on his original idea.

So, instead of doing exactly as Austin had suggested, Rowena decided they would change their approach.

Rather than publicly making it known that certain nobles were blacklisted, it would be better to take a subtler route. While some nobles received priority access to potions, along with special discounts and faster delivery, others would quietly stop receiving these offers without any formal announcement.

Of course, since most nobles were naturally competitive, they would begin comparing and boasting among themselves. When others started to notice that some were receiving better offers while they were not, it wouldn’t take long for them to suspect that something important had caused the difference, and this would make them far more eager to avoid getting on the bad side of the Countess and the products she was in charge of selling.

And as for the royal family, once they saw how valuable the potions were for their army, they would want to protect their supply, and that protection would make it very risky for any noble to pressure them.

Rowena explained all of this, and Austin couldn’t help but be impressed by how she had improved upon his original plan.

"Alright, with that out of the way, I believe my friend can now have a little peace of mind, right?"

"Yes, thank you." Although it hadn’t completely resolved her worries regarding the troubles her territory was facing, it had definitely given her more confidence to think about other ways to solve the food scarcity plaguing her county.

Despite the poisonous air vanishing from Blacksand Forest, and the dragon corpse that had long been suspected to be there turning out not to exist, Rowena was still a little troubled by what the real cause might be behind the crops not growing in her territory.

For a long time, she had always believed the dragon corpse was behind the soil in her lands losing its vitality, but if there was no corpse, Rowena couldn’t help but wonder if her priorities had been misplaced all along.

The real reason could have been staring her in the face for centuries without her knowing.

So that meant she was back to square one.

*Sighs*

This caused the beautiful Countess to sigh sadly.

Of course, there was no way her perceptive friend wasn’t going to notice, so Austin stood up, walked behind her, and gently placed both hands on her shoulders.

===

A/N:- I’m not sure if I was able to fully convey this part of the story

I know my understanding of the English language might not be the best unlike others whose writing style feels poetic and stylish, but English isn’t my first language, so I’m really trying my best to write something entertaining without revealing too much information.

All these are my own little way of learning in the long run, so if it isn’t really good, then I’ll use this to learn on how to write better scenes in the future.