King
Chapter 623 - 623 151 Shipping Time_2

623: Chapter 151, Shipping Time_2 623: Chapter 151, Shipping Time_2 At this moment, you, Duke Pias, must be hating your clan cousin who serves as a councilor.

The timing is so accurate, it’s clearly a plot against the Rocknard Family.

“About this incident, I am deeply sorry.

The Rocknard Family is willing to take responsibility for everyone’s loss.

However, to make up for the deficit in a short period of time, it indeed exceeds our capacity.

If it was just a few of us who were affected, I would, at any cost and by mobilizing all the resources of the family, buy enough strategic supplies from various chambers of commerce to cover the deficit.

But the problem is that the news of this accident is spreading very fast, as if someone deliberately leaked it.

Now that everyone knows about the investigation team coming, I’m afraid everyone is mobilizing their connections to snap up as many supplies as possible to patch the holes!”

Duke Pias spoke with a look of innocence on his face.

A deficit isn’t frightening.

What is frightening is the awkwardness that arises when one family has the biggest deficit!

A shortage of three to five hundred tons of strategic supplies and a shortage of thirty to fifty thousand tons are two completely different concepts.

Everyone can understand the former, no one would make a fuss over it.

But the latter is a shocking shortfall, impossible to fill in.

Unfortunately, over the recent period of time, the Nobles of the North have indeed handled a lot of transportation accounts with massive deficits.

Many transportation routes, which were only a few hundred miles long, saw astronomical figures in resource consumption.

A significant part of the consumption of these supplies resulted from the construction of the roads in the early stage.

Part of the losses were indeed used for road constructions, while others were attributed to the attacks by Orcs, or were “attacked” by Orcs.

There isn’t a clear standard for handling these consumptions, making it the easiest place for corruption to occur, and it’s hard to withstand investigation.

Usually, it’s slowly amortized on the subsequent transportations, to avoid revealing hideous figures on the documents.

“Duke Pias, we came here today, not to deliberately make things difficult for you.

Anyway, it was your Rocknard family who reported to the Human Alliance that the Logistic Department was corrupt.

This account will inevitably be attributed to your family.

The most crucial issue now is whether or not you actually have concrete evidence of Earl Hudson’s corruption of military supplies.

What we need is a massive corruption that involves tens of thousands of tons, and worth millions of gold coins, not a daily loss of supplies as per the usual practice.

You should know that all of the Alliance’s current logistic transportation tasks are broken down and handled separately.

To my knowledge, Earl Hudson has never directly reached out to any Major Noble.

This means that if his corruption does exist, it is only limited to the supplies transported by his department, and at most, it would include the supplies escorted by the mercenaries.

As the Commander of the Army, he now represents the dignity of My Alpha Kingdom.

As long as he doesn’t make it too noticeable, the Kingdom will certainly find a way to protect him.

This report…your family is purely causing unnecessary trouble!”

The words of Duke Yagailong seemed calm but were filled with a strong sense of distrust and reprimand.

He clearly exhibits a no patience sentiment towards the Rocknard Family, which had accumulated to a breaking point.

At this moment, Duke Pias was also speechless.

This incident, for him, was purely an accident.

He had never thought of reporting corruption to the Human Alliance before and wouldn’t have deliberately gathered evidence.

“You can rest assured, based on the volume of goods on the trading market, at least 30% of the current strategic materials have been leaked from Earl Hudson.

This is only what is visible on the surface; the real transaction figures behind the scenes would be even higher.

Although before the issuance of the bounty order, Earl Hudson had indeed purchased a large amount of strategic materials from the Allied Forces, but certainly not that much!”

No sooner had Duke Pias finished speaking than Duke Cavadia changed his complexion, and immediately exclaimed in alarm, “This is bad!

Something doesn’t feel right.

The large-scale recruiting of mercenaries for the war is also a scheme pushed forward by Hudson.

Considering his previous actions of buying strategic materials from the spoils of the Alliance, it is clear that there was a premeditated plot.

Perhaps the biggest buyer behind the strategic material trades in the black market, or the current dealer of strategic material trades, is Earl Hudson.

After all, at that time, there were not many mercenaries coming in, just a handful of merchants coming and going, and they couldn’t consume that much material!

If our speculation is correct, Hudson still holds a large amount of strategic materials.

Coupled with his close relationship with the major chambers of commerce, it is possible for him to replenish the deficit in time.

Duke Pias, quickly check your externally appointed councilors to see if they have had contact with those forces.

This sudden incident, which seems to be targeting Earl Hudson, might be aimed at us instead!”

These conjectures are not unfounded.

The trading platform was built by Hudson.

Initially, it was only for trading spoils of war but it expanded to full-category trading as time went on.

There was no efficient sales channel before.

Even if someone dared to embezzle military supplies, it was hard to cash them out, thus the loss of strategic materials along the way was not high.

This situation continued until the trading platform was established.

At first glance, it seems that the increase in material consumption was caused by the harsh terrain and the increase of Orc attacks, but in fact, the appearance of a channel to cash out ignited everyone’s greed.

As the founder of the trading platform and the person in charge of logistics transportation, instead of cracking down on the under-the-table trading of strategic materials, Hudson provided cover for it, which is clearly abnormal.