In the largest meeting room in the lord's castle, the lord raised his voice towards the dwarf delegation.
"The famous lords of Thunder Mountain! Welcome. I'm glad you've come to our territory."
He was not the imperial emperor, so he didn't sit on a throne and haughtily greet the dwarf delegation. And he didn't have the guts to do so.
Now that the imperial emperor had turned a blind eye to Montefeltro's situation.
Now that the Empire had turned its back on Montefeltro, the situation was dire.
They knew that they couldn't survive if they were disliked by the dwarves, so they tried to appease them even more.
The visiting dwarf envoys also wanted a good relationship with the territory, so they showed respect to the lord, and thus they were invited to the celebration that the lord had prepared.
"Please enjoy yourselves. I hope nothing is lacking."
The situation of the territory seemed to be quite good.
The table was so full of food that it looked like it could break at any moment.
Orin, the dwarf representative who had come, looked at the food the lord had prepared and thought,
'The situation doesn't seem too bad for a human territory on the outskirts. Usually, such areas are left out.'
Although they were not in conflict with any opposing forces, the huge fortress being built near the border alone was enough to indicate that their financial situation was not bad.
'I don't know where the money is coming from, but we don't need to know that. Anyway...'
As the celebration began and the dwarves filled their stomachs with the prepared food, their expressions gradually hardened.
Noticing the strange atmosphere, the puzzled lord Chester asked,
"Is there something wrong with the taste? You all look..."
At that question, a dwarf named Imri, who was reluctantly drinking the wine, defiantly splashed the wine from his cup onto the floor.
To the lord and his company, it was a very rude behavior, but the dwarf envoys thought that this gathering itself was rude.
"It seems like you don't know much about us."
Orin, the representative of the envoys, spoke.
"We don't like wine. Or should I say, we're not familiar with it?"
In his eyes, there was a clear demand for something else.
"Then something familiar to us should be brought out. Humans drink it too, don't they? Or maybe you know that and are trying to play a trick on us."
As Orin's expression soured, the other dwarves began to bang their spoons and forks on the table, looking around.
"My throat is burning!"
"I'm going crazy with thirst!"
Seeing this, the lord wiped the sweat from his forehead and spoke up.
"If you're looking for beer..."
"Yes, beer!"
"Bring us beer!"
"We need beer!"
The lord showed a troubled expression at the somewhat rough-speaking dwarves.
"That is..."
Orin, the envoy representative, spoke with a slightly stiff expression.
"Your name is Chester, right? The reason our dwarf envoys came here is to buy your goods with the gold we have. Our tastes are not much different from yours, so we will buy various items, but beer is especially important. If we can't quench our thirst with beer..."
Orin's expression became even colder.
"Our dwarves will soon start a riot. We can survive without food, but we can't live a single day without beer!"
At those words, the accompanying dwarves began to shout in unison and bang on the table indiscriminately.
Some of the food on the table fell to the floor, but the dwarves did not care and continued to raise their voices.
"My throat is burning!"
"I haven't had a drink in a week! I don't know if I can take it anymore!"
"They said humans drink beer too, was that a lie?"
"There must be beer here. That's what we were expecting."
Seeing the noisy dwarves, Orin, who had been speaking as their representative, turned to the troubled lord again.
"If there's no beer, there's no need for us to talk. We'd rather go somewhere else."
Orin placed a handful of gold coins on the table.
"We'll have to negotiate with these sovereigns. There must be beer where we're going."
Recently, the lord had come to understand the importance of money.
Money was power and authority, and it was everything that drove the territory.
'Even His Majesty wouldn't mind. If we had the gold they brought...'
"Ahem!"
First, the lord cleared his throat and began to address the excited dwarves.
"We don't have beer right now, but we know where it is."
"Really? Where is the beer?"
"There's beer?"
"It seems there is."
"Of course, they're humans. Our tastes are almost the same, right?"
The lord suddenly remembered the beer that had been monopolized by the church.
'Could it be...'
Had they anticipated this and monopolized the beer?
The lord didn't think so.
He thought that the nearby monastery, which had a winery business, had monopolized the beer as a self-help measure.
And the fact that the dwarves were looking for beer was purely coincidental.
'It must be just a coincidence.'
Of course, he couldn't deny even the slightest possibility.
Anyway, the beer was not his.
"That is... the beer is monopolized by the church. If you want, I can arrange a separate meeting with the church's leader."
"The church?"
"The church is monopolizing the beer?"
"What's a church?"
"It's a human religion."
"Really? They're monopolizing the beer there?"
The dwarf envoys, excited by the news of beer, surprisingly ignored the food on the table and all stood up from their seats.
That's how desperate they were for beer.
"Take us to the church right away!"
Orin, the envoy representative, defiantly took out more gold coins from his pocket.
"We will buy all the beer there with our gold."
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