Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!

"Isn't that right, boss?" Oxxy looked over at Banjay with a small smirk on his lips and a look of anticipation in his eyes.

"A gold coin saved in treasury…" Banjay raised his face and spoke out…

"… is a gold coin that doesn't do its job," everyone else in the room chanted, Oxxy included, finishing up Banjay's favorite, money-related quote. Yet, save for Banjay's direct assistant, everyone else remained seated, not even lifting their heads from the piles of papers stacked before them.

Chanting the golden rule for gold coins was one thing and slacking on the job, even if only for a moment, was a whole new can of worms.

'It seems that hiring exclusively from the military has its perks,' Banjay thought, scanning the room for a second before putting on a small smile and turning back to his own work.

And he had a lot of it.

Taking over the Basal fortress was merely the first step of the plan.

Which, given how the victory and breaking the siege was lauded as a combination of military genius and a miracle if not outright a divine intervention, didn't really bode well for a plan that started with an impossibility like that.

For all intents and purposes, the imperial siege of the Basal fortress was the end of the Imperial, several-year-long scheme that started with weakening the kingdom, went through buying out the less important nobles and sponsoring their rise to the top, and was supposed to conclude with the Imperial legions breaking past the choke-point and spilling over into the hilly fields before the capital.

Banjay knew about this plan for nearly as long as it was in the play. He was one of the first nobles to sell out to the empire, after all, so he managed to gain quite a high rank within the conspiracy.

It was by using the money, contacts, and influence of the empire that Banjay managed to form a special troop that, for the last two years, continued to set up the pieces necessary for the miracle at Basal to happen.

From raiding the imperial supply lines, through hiking the prices of the stuff the legions needed to buy from local merchants, even going as far as assassinating various commanders, influential figures… Or the opposite, those who most vehemently shouted for changes, for ridding of the corruption within the legion's cadre, for improving the situation of a regular soldier…

The Imperial legions that were the pride and joy of the emperor herself, turned from an elite, highly-determined, and well-maintained scourge for the imperial enemies into nothing more but a ragtag bunch of criminals.

It simply wasn't worth the effort to try to change the legions to what they used to be, thus pushing all those who had a higher standard of service to either relocate, change legions, or outright conclude their service.

This was the true secret of how the tiny Narr state managed to defeat the great legion that laid siege to the most crucial point of the kingdom's defense.

It was no miracle nor a divine intervention, but two years' worth of Banjay playing both sides of the conflict while feeding the necessary intelligence to the cartographic unit, which was the codename for the group of saboteurs, spies, and all the other kinds of lowest of the low that Banjay so happily made use of.

But now that the Nalan crown secured the victory while its citizens struggled to decide whether to celebrate or to keep fearing the bloody minister…

The minister himself was bogged down with work, desperately trying to keep the miracles coming, for nothing less would suffice if he wanted the rest of his long-term strategy to work.

"They are moving a lot faster than I expected they would," Banjay muttered under his nose as he held a simple, short, and to-the-point report directly from one of the cartographers.

"Where are the sightings from?" Oxxy asked, already moving to the far end of the treasury room, where a massive drawing served as a simplified map.

"The report is from a week ago and it came from…" Banjay looked down at the rustic paper, searching for the hidden code that would relate to the location where the report came from. "Fuck, the port city of Huban."

Oxxy's hand froze as he brought it up to add a marker to the map. Discover exclusive tales on empire

"Wait, in a week?" Banjay's assistant asked while his eyes turned wide.

The news was so unexpected, that even two of Banjay's accountants stopped their work and raised their eyes to the map.

"How likely it is the empress sent the reinforcement in advance?" Banjay asked out into the air, despite knowing the answer already.

The chances the empress would commit yet another legion of hers to this specific part of the southern front was… unlikely. There were way too many barbarians harassing the empire to the far southeast for her to do so.

'In other words, it's not something that was planned in advance but something that they organized and pushed through within the few days they had since receiving the news…'

Banjay squinted his eyes.

'Wait, we blocked the pass and there none escaped from the battle. We slaughtered the bulk of the traitors at the steps and I've finished up the rest of the spies in the next two days,' the middle-aged man thought, staring at the map with all the might of his eyes as if hoping it would somehow, magically produce an answer.

But a map, despite being the symbol behind the military arm of an espionage group Banjay created, had no magical powers to show the minister what wasn't painted on it.

"Well, it doesn't matter how they knew nor how they managed to send a whole fresh legion so quickly," Banjay announced, decisively cutting off anything and everything that wasn't of the utmost importance. "What we need to figure out, is how to hold back a whole new fucking legion…"

The room went silent, even more silent than it already was before. Right now, it felt as if no one inside dared to even take a breath, scared of interrupting the silence and thus implying they had something smart to say.

It took two years of sabotage and espionage to bring an old legion, already weathered by the twenty years of constant skirmishes, to weaken it to the point Nalan's forces could actually deal with it. And even then, it still took a mighty fortress on one side and then a crushing charge executed through a hidden path leading to the back of the enemy lines.

The arrival of a completely new legion, though, was definitely more than Banjay wanted to bite or, well over what he could swallow.

"We are done," someone in the room said, instantly gaining the attention of everyone else but Banjay himself.

Despite Banjay's fame as a bloodthirsty minister, no one feared for the life of their compatriot, not even the man who spoke out.

They were all military veterans that Banjay handpicked from the defenders of the Basal fortress. And they all knew they were way too important for Banjay to kill them over an accurate opinion… Or rather, giving out those opinions, as painful, annoying, or undesired as they might be, was their main task on the job, after all!

"I'm sorry guys, but it really seems like this might be the end of the line," Banjay silently admitted, even though he knew the walls and the massive door of the treasury room were more than enough to keep anything he said in a normal voice locked within the room.

"What if we block the pass?" Oxxy suggested while standing right in front of the map and studying the details painted with great care on it. He then turned his head over his shoulder and looked at his boss, "I mean, it doesn't matter how good of an army they are if they have no way to cross the pass."n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

Banjay only sighed.

"And how do you wanna go about doing that?"

Banjay shook his head.

"The sides of the pass are made from solid stone. It would take a whole unit of men working day and night just to chip away at it. Why else would the empire bother with Basal over just digging a tunnel around it?"

The suggestion of digging a tunnel was ridiculous, even without the factor of how tough the stone of the mountains to the north was. But once one applied the perspective of time, of how long the empire struggled to get past this mighty leftover from the ancient times… Spending four to five years to dig a small tunnel no longer seemed like something only a crazy person could suggest.

In fact, if Banjay joined the imperial service as a high-level spy a mere two months later than he did, that's exactly what the empire might end up doing!

'Back to the topic, man. Don't let the situation distract you. There's always a way,' Banjay thought to himself, trying to squeeze even the tiniest spark of motivation in the face of the disastrous news.

"Anyway," Oxxy muttered as he turned back to the map, "if they were at Huban a week ago, then by now…" tracing his fingers along the small, double-line highlighting the imperial highways and then the dotted line of the beaten paths, Oxxy grew still.

And as he slowly turned to look back at the minister of the interior, his face was all pale.

"If they are as swift as we already know they are…"

"They should be entering the labyrinth around now," Banjay finished Oxxy's sentence before the younger man could even have the chance to do so. "And that leaves us with exactly two weeks before a fresh batch of fifty thousand men descends upon us…" Banjay muttered, gritting his teeth to combat the sense of powerlessness welling up in his soul.

"So," rather than giving in to the depressing feelings, Banjay looked up and then scanned the room again. "Do you have any ideas of how to deal with a whole new legion within a month's time?"