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It was both the overconfidence of the gangsters as well as the fierce reputation that they had established in the minds of the common folk that made Emilia come up with the idea of using them as a stepping stone.
After all, it was only by solving problems that the local government had 'failed' to handle properly that she would be able to win everyone's hearts. And it was only once she succeeded in doing so that she could safely move on to the next step of her plan.
No matter how strong the rulers were, once they'd lost the favor of their own people, there was no way they could sit on the 'throne' for long. Whether it was their own fault or not simply didn't matter.
This was a fact that Emilia was intimately familiar with, and also the one mistake that she never wanted to repeat again.
