Steel Empire
Recuperation

Adela struggles to fall asleep, much of which has happened in recent days, and she recently realized that her fiance had returned from the Lordship of the Wildschonau after a failed assassination attempt. But aside from spending hours explaining the true situation to his father, Berengar made no attempt to visit him. Instead, he went straight to the bathroom to rid himself of the dirt he had accumulated all this time in the cave. Afterwards, before she could approach him and check to see how he felt, she went to his bedroom, where she was reportedly resting. The young girl had heard that Berengar was injured and needed rest, but she did not know to what extent; therefore, she was very worried about his health.

The reality of the situation is that Berengar's undivided attention during and after the bath has been captured by Linde, who is secretly interviewing Adela's future husband behind the scenes. No one is aware of the forbidden relationship between Berengar, and Linde, especially Adela. She is not the type of girl who accepts her future husband to play with other women, even if she is too young to replace them.

Finally, Adela could no longer endure the heartache of not being able to see her lover, who was hospitalized in her room at the moment. Because of this, she got out of bed and wore a white lace nightgown that was appropriate for that period of time. Only after she tidied up her appearance did the young lady leave her bedroom and quietly walk into Berengar's room. His actions, if caught, would definitely cause misunderstandings, and rumors would definitely flare up. Luckily for everyone involved, no one witnessed his departure from his residence. He quickly found himself at Berengar's doorstep, where his heart began to beat rapidly. He had never visited his room after so many hours before; he wondered if he was asleep or not. After taking a few moments to calm down,

...

Berengar was playing with his favorite toy when he heard a knock on the door; he was not in a position to answer it at this time, for there was a divine beauty of "sitting down" on top of his p*ngkuan. He could not imagine who might be at his doorstep at this hour other than Linde. However, she made sure to move her hand to Linde to stop her activity and remain silent. After making sure the girl's b*beer was tightly shut, she was just about to call whoever was at the door when she heard the soft feminine voice she was very familiar with from behind the door.

"Listen, are you awake? Are you all right? I didn't get to see you when you came back ... Can I come in?"

Berengar quickly broke away from Linde and whispered in her ear in a voice so low that Adela could not hear it from the other side of the door.

"Hide under the bed, and bring your nightgown!"

Linde did not break her orders, though she was a little frustrated that she could not finish; she quickly jumped out of bed and grabbed her nightgown, which was strewn across the stone tile floor. He then crawled under the bed where he could barely get into the room crawling with a m*ntok in the back and his d*danya that m*ntok. After that, Berengar quickly put on a long c*lana and opened the door. Adela was just about to leave when the door opened. In her hand was an oil lamp that lit up Berengar's bruised body, which made Adela very worried about her health.

The young woman gasped when she saw her condition and instinctively touched her stomach to check if Berengar was okay. Berengar, who desperately tried to hide his b*wah section behind the door, inevitably felt awkward as the little girl touched her bruised stomach. Finally, he could no longer hold it back and broke the silence between the couple.

"Ahems... You know you shouldn't be here at this hour."

After hearing Berengar's voice, Adela quickly realized what she was doing and pulled her hand, where she tried to hide her timid expression.

"I couldn't sleep knowing that kai was hurt ... I want to check your condition."

Berengar looked at Adela like a little angel. Unlike the vixe* that was currently lying under her bed which made her tattered despite her injuries, this young lady was too stressed to fall asleep knowing that her fiance might be seriously injured. Lucky for him, he was fine, aside from a fractured rib and some bruises. Personally, she had been worse and was barely aware of the pain except when she laughed or breathed heavily, but she would never admit it to a beautiful girl who cared about her.

Berengar smiled, and he explained the situation to the young girl who was kind enough to check on her condition even if it damaged her reputation.

"I survived there well; at least, nothing life-threatening. So you don't have to worry too much."

Adela was immediately relieved that her future husband was not in danger and smiled sweetly at her.

"Well, that's good, how can I help you?"

Berengar did not want to waste the opportunity; it was a way to earn points with the little girl and tease Linde. Therefore, he invited the girl into his room to speak.

"Do you mind if you go inside? Since you're here, I have a few things that I want to talk about with regards to our engagement ceremony."

On the other hand, Linde heard the words "engagement ceremony" and immediately started to frown as she thought to herself.

'The ceremony? What ceremony? Did she throw a party to celebrate her engagement? Why wasn't I invited? Why don't I get it? Why did the master make me listen to this? How cruel!'

His frown instantly turned into a frown as he felt left out, he knew he was only his concubine, but his heart still ached whenever he saw Berengar acting flirtatious with his future wife. Luckily for her, Adela turned down the offer.

"I'm sorry, Berengar, I don't think that's appropriate... See you tomorrow!"

with that said, the little girl in the twintail ran back to her residence. It was an extremely adorable sight; seeing her run away in embarrassment. Despite that Berengar spoke his thoughts out loud as he turned his attention to Linde, who was crawling out from under the bed.

"Maybe I teased him too much... Whaddya think?

When he saw the tears begin to form in the girl's eyes, he couldn't help but laugh at himself.

"Am I using you too much?"

After she said that, she hugged the girl and took her back to her bed, where she spent her extra time watching the young woman's bus.

...

Before he knew it, a whole month had passed, and Berenger could no longer feel any pain in his ribs. Although he would still try to calm down for the next two weeks, he was basically cured of his injuries. All this time, everything went according to plan. The mine was completely overhauled and confiscated by von Kufstein's family in exchange for Berengar's assassination attempt. The von Wildschonau family suffered greatly from the loss of mines, their professional soldiers, and 1500 peasants, who despite rumors that they were all killed in battle in the mining town, no one has ever found any traces of mass graves. Berengar was really good at hiding corpses.

Berengar's exploits were growing rapidly; now, the fields around Kufstein city had been completely irrigated, his chemical laboratory was up and running, and he began to produce various things in it. Although he still lacked a dedicated team of chemists to work full-time in chemistry, he managed to work on several small projects when he found time. Hemp farms and their textile mills are either fully operational or near completion. Kufstein's labor had grown quite rapidly after the application of irrigation, which allowed Berengar to open separate production lines for agricultural equipment such as steel plows, combine harvesters, seeders etc. On the other hand, After a small battle in the mining town, volunteer militias were conducting recruitment; they barely had enough time to properly equip their soldiers. Now, Berengar's artillery battery was full, and he had a total of 800 infantry. He's getting closer to his goal.

His spy network has produced remarkable results, as Linde was able to uncover a long list of names of people who roomed with Lambert, and Berengar is currently in the process of figuring out who should conspire first. Linde even managed to spread the web that became her informant to other regions in the Barony of Kufstein. Rumors began to spread about the heroism Berengar showed in the face of death, how he was no longer a sickly master, and how he was a benevolent master to his people. This was all because of the network that Linde had prepared; she wanted to get rid of the dirty rumors about her lover as quickly as possible. Although they still held true among nobles, many of them had met Berengar in the past and had a bad first impression. Ordinary people were more likely to believe the rumors Linde was spreading, how he survived an assassination attempt only to lead an army of peasant volunteers armed with hand cannons to defeat Lord Ulrich von Wildschonau's professional army. Of course, the rumors he spread at first were greatly exaggerated; over time, they had evolved to the point where they practically reflected the truth of the battle.

Right now, Berengar was observing himself in the bathroom mirror; it had been more than three months since he reincarnated in this world. He started out as a skinny, sickly young man. Now he had grown firmly into his body, which had toned muscles, and despite being lean, he looked extremely fit. He had thought that the way this body was designed, he would never be as muscular as his past life, but that was fine, considering the face of his prince would not look good combined with the hyper-masculine body of a warrior. It would be a shame to ruin his grand appearance with the obsession of being a warrior again. He was not a soldier in this life, but a Noble, and one day perhaps even an Emperor.

His ambitions had grown wild since the battle with Ulrich's forces. He had no desire to become a Holy Roman Emperor. Instead, he had a desire to carve his own Empire out of German-speaking regions. It was still four centuries too early for the German Empire to emerge, but he would speed up the process in this timeline. As a descendant of Germany in his previous life, and an Austrian nobleman in this life, he felt it was his destiny to unite the German people into one cohesive Empire. He strongly believed in the concept of a nation-state and felt that a complex multi-ethnic and multilingual Empire was much more difficult to manage and would eventually become unstable. He didn't know why, but seeing his farming army crush his enemy's feudal army woke something up in him, he said,

For now, that lofty ambition would have to wait, her engagement ceremony was only a few days away, and it would be an incredible opportunity. Not only his father's followers and their families will arrive in Kufstein, but also Prince Steiermark and his family, as well as Prince Tyrol. Linde forced Berengar's hand and thus he invited his father to come, not because he cared so much about honoring the alliance that his family had built with his father, but because he wanted an official invitation, he said, rather than just being present. He no longer cared about his father's ambitions; he was no longer a suitable person to be a Duke, much less a King; but in Berengar's eyes.

By this time, several families had arrived and were staying at Sieghard's estate. He was very concerned about the lack of rooms for guests, and as such, over the past month, he had a special lodging area built for an excessive number of families to come. The areas were basically Chateus designed by Berengar; they looked similar to Castles but lacked defensive structures and were quite luxurious. They were perfectly able to pay the fees after the massive steel sales.

After Berenger finished admiring her appearance in the mirror and put on her luxurious clothes properly, she tidied her hair with a pomade and left the bathroom. Today was a new day, and he had many guests to greet with Adela. There were also many enemies on the list that appeared, and he would do his best to find out their weaknesses in the following days. Not a single soul plotting against him would escape his anger.

Sorry this is the author's first novel so there are some rigid words to understand I'm not a novelist:), thank you