The Royal Capital of Kingston was peaceful and harmonious; battlefield intelligence from several hundred kilometers away had yet to reach here.

Of course, even if the intelligence did arrive, it wouldn’t have much to do with the broad masses of lower and middle-class citizens.

Naturally, they would still eat when it was time to eat, drink when it was time to drink, play music when it was time to play music, and dance when it was time to dance.

In the core district near Ganquan Palace, Melrose Street—where a "Death Stranding" incident had occurred last year—was as bustling as ever.

On the surface, churches, theaters, galleries, and art centers lined both sides of the street, packed like fish scales, picturesque as an oil painting.

In the shadows, the Hidden establishments that provided all kinds of thrills for high society never lacked for clientele either.

In another building not far from the site of that last "monster party," a "masquerade ball" was currently underway in full swing.

It wasn’t quite like the legends said, with everyone naked save for a mask.

But the games were still very wild; every customer who came here to spend money, regardless of gender, would dress up as a famous stage-play God or Goddess.

Meanwhile, the male and female attendants—handsome or beautiful—were dressed especially scantily, offering the greatest possible indulgence to the mighty Pantheon, thoroughly pandering to their lofty vanity.

Tonight’s "masquerade ball" had been bought out at a high price, reserved for one particular crowd to revel in.

In the exquisitely decorated, dazzling "Temple," a dozen or so "Gods" were each draped around one or two beautiful female attendants or handsome male attendants, abandoning all restraint.

A group of them held up their wine glasses, toasting the "Divine King" in the center, who was being served by eight beauties, like stars encircling the moon.

"Let us all raise a glass to Mr. Hal Black.

It is thanks to you and the Netherland United Bank that our enclosures have proceeded so smoothly.

And we also welcome you to move your whole family into Kingston and open up the Hightins Market."

"Baron James is absolutely right.

Ever since the Great Nobles forced the [King of the Displaced] to sign the ’Magna Carta’ in Silver Era 1215, and the ’Merton Ordinance’ promulgated by Parliament twenty years later in 1235, enclosures have enjoyed de facto legality.

After several hundred years of accumulation, we New Land Nobles who made our fortunes through enclosures and the wool trade have become a powerful interest bloc of great weight within Hightins.

Very soon, with the support of Mr. Hal and the Netherland United Bank, we shall seize Hightins’ Parliament and use our economic advantage to secure the political rights that are ours!"

"Cheers!!!"

With a glass of mellow fine wine down their throats, the atmosphere in the hall grew even more heated.

From time to time, peals of laughter from the beauties rang out, driving these Land Nobles to even greater abandon.

Not a single one of them gave a thought to the battle raging several hundred kilometers away on the Strait of Dover.

They were clearly utterly convinced that no matter whether the Royalist Party or the Earl’s Party emerged victorious, neither side would dare harm their interests!

Which showed just how confident they were in their own power.

And the source of that confidence was precisely what they called the "enclosure movement."

In the Kingdom of Hightins, aside from the public lands, every piece of land had had an owner as far back as eight hundred years ago; one could say "there is not a single unowned plot."

So what was this enclosure movement all about?

Before the Great Nautical Age began, Hightins’ industries were still dominated by a very backward Agriculture; to dream of getting rich through Agriculture was sheer wishful thinking.

At that time, the textile industry in Hightins was just a very unremarkable, ordinary trade; although enclosures were legal, the lack of economic incentive meant they never reached any scale.

But with the opening of the new sea route along the "First Circulation Zone," the volume of international trade suddenly surged.

In particular, in the Flanderal region of southern Nideland, separated from Hightins by only the North Sea Bay, the wool-textile industry suddenly flourished, and neighboring Kingdom of Hightins naturally got pulled along to become its raw-material supplier.

The rapid expansion of the wool-textile industry caused demand for wool to spike sharply, and wool prices on the market began to soar.

Almost without anyone noticing, this industry abruptly replaced Agriculture and became Hightins’ national economic pillar.

Hightins had always been a traditional sheep-raising country and faced no difficulties in "Transform"ing.

The Famine Hunter’s maxim—"Eat your fill! Keep warm!"—had, from the very beginning, encompassed both farming and herding.

As sheep-raising became more and more profitable compared to Agriculture, some Nobility with a keen commercial sense began decisively investing in sheep-raising.

But sheep-raising required vast pastures, so the Nobility began driving off the peasants who had been renting and farming their land, even pulling down their houses, then enclosing any land suitable for grazing.

The phenomenon of "switching from farming to herding," turning cropland into pasture, became ubiquitous.

Furthermore, although all land had long had owners, forests, grasslands, marshes, and wasteland—these common lands—had no fixed master.

Some Nobility leveraged their power to expand their flocks there first, forcibly occupying these public lands that originally belonged to the state—that is, in theory, to the King and the Kingdom’s state-owned resources—and then slowly nibbling away at the peasants’ land.

Their ranch estates grew larger and larger in the hands of these Nobility-turned-Ranchers.

For a time, throughout Hightins one could see grasslands carved up into plots by wooden fences, hedges, ditches, and walls.

As for the peasants driven from their homes, they became homeless vagrants, left with no choice but to enter the cities as dirt-cheap labor, their situation utterly miserable.

Someone remarked:

"Sheep used to be very tame, humble in their desires; now they have become greedy and ferocious, to the point of devouring Humans. They mean to trample flat our fields, our homes, and our cities."