The World Dragon's Heir

Chapter 686: Through The City

As they passed by the staging area where the adventurers prepared to head out for their daily missions, Dominic noticed that a few of the soldiers from each of the trucks had moved to the back step, doing their best to look dignified, while showing off for their friends and the onlookers in the Capital.

Many of them were members of the Adventurer’s Guild before they were hired as personal guards for the Nobles, and there were definitely people that they knew in this crowd who would be interested to know how they were doing.

It would be even better if they were jealous of the success.

"It feels like we’re celebrities. Not you, or the Princess. The people on the streets are actually cheering for the drivers and guards." Ella whispered, low enough that nobody in the back of the truck would hear her.

Dominic winked at her. "You’ve earned some recognition. Besides, they’re not wrong. After the monster siege, the lower city gained a new admiration for the armed forces and adventurers."

The Royal Guard smiled softly.

They normally served in silence, their visors down. Few knew who they were, and even fewer cared. They were dedicated for life, or at least as much of it as they could fight for, to the service of their Royal.

They didn’t do it for outside admiration or glory, and that wasn’t something that they expected to get.

However, things were changing.

The Nobles were still a source of admiration, the fabulously wealthy or immensely powerful. But the Royal Guards were a much more relatable hero to the crowds here by the gates.

Every street that they were led down by the column of guards was packed with spectators who had come to watch the Noble convoys roll into the Palace for the King’s Birthday.

It was quite the scene, but as they reached the west side of town, the closest thing that the Capital had to a poor area, given that the truly poor had all been forced outside the walls, before they fled during the monster attacks, Dominic remembered that there was a tradition.

He opened the door and hopped up on the roof of the truck, then took out handfuls of copper coins from his storage device and scattered them in a wide arc through the crowd.

The workers, beggars and invalids of the roughest neighbourhood cheered for the generosity, and for the fact that Dominic had a strong enough arm that the coins were actually making it back into the crowd, not just to the presentable front row that the guards had picked.

A few copper coins weren’t much, a cheap meal or a beer for whoever caught them, but that was a few copper coins more than they had before the Duke had rolled by, and he was tossing them all through the crowd.

The taverns and bakeries would be busy tonight.

Of course, Dominic wasn’t targeting anyone, he was scattering coins like buckshot into the crowd, a few everywhere. So, it was all up to luck whether the ones who needed it most were actually the ones to get it.

Either way, in a couple of hours it would be the shopkeepers who had the coins.

It would be impossible for anyone in the crowd to miss who was throwing the coins to them. Not some random guard assigned the task, but the Duke himself.

The horns were a dead giveaway.

Plus, he was throwing them in a fairly steady stream, a handful every few seconds. Just enough time that they were past the last group who might have gotten any.

He would go through a lot of coins that way, but they were only passing through the edge of the district before they entered the polished stone of the Noble district, and then there would be no more hungry crowds in need of coin from the Nobility.

Meaning he didn’t have to hold back for fear of running out of copper.

The truck made the turn into the Noble district, and Dominic returned to his seat, only to find Ella laughing at him.

"I didn’t think that you’d actually do it. You know, most of the Nobles just take out a single bag of copper and have them distributed. Usually, they don’t simply hurl money at the crowd these days, they give the coin to the guards, who pass it out along the road." She explained quietly.

"Where’s the fun in that? Then only the front row gets the money. This way, Everyone gets a little. I’m sure that Jack will approve of us funding a few of the drunkards who linger in the back."

He wasn’t wrong. Jack would always approve of funding a drunkard’s evening.

Especially an old one with little to live for but the next drink.

The crowds in the Noble district were no less packed along the route than they were anywhere else, but Dominic did notice that some of the trucks behind them opened the curtains to let those along the road see who was passing by, now that they were in a safer neighbourhood, with crowds of people they might know.

He sighed softly at the bias, but understood. To those who weren’t from that side of town, the reputation was usually enough to keep you from ever willingly going there.

If the guards hadn’t been lining the road to lead them through, none of the Noble Convoys would have taken that route. They had only done it because the city guard was treating their arrival like a parade.

And the parade was getting attention now that they were among people who knew what they were looking at.

The modified transports were the single most practical vehicles that anyone had brought to the Palace this year, and they were clearly a fully magitech design, not a modified carriage.

A sales pitch for the factories in Wistover that didn’t need any ads or eloquent speeches. Just quietly rolling vehicles passing through the district on soft rubber tires.