After entering the fourth tower, Yasenia and company arrived at the usual teleporter and stepped on it. As always, they checked for intentions and jumped inside after feeling nothing out of place.
Once they reopened their eyes, they were inside a room with eight rock golems, each of them holding a strange paper with jade-like material.
However, unlike the ones prepared for battle in the first trial, these had a very humanoid shape, and some had faces resembling people. They were all around 2 meters tall, big but not excessively so.
Yasenia and the rest blinked a few times, unaware of what was happening. After all, having things that previously attacked them, like mad dogs roaming around her so suddenly, was quite a creepy situation.
All of them took out their weapons and prepared, just in case. But after three minutes, nobody attacked them.
The dragoness asked, confused. "Do you feel any bad feelings coming from them, Eira, Valeria?"
Both of them shook their heads, their postures relaxed.
Valeria added. "Not only are there no bad intentions in them, but they are really weak. A half-strength punch from Kali would blow them to smithereens. There is nothing to worry about, Yasenia."
Confused about the situation, the girls tried to expand their spiritual sense beyond the room they'd appeared in and realized that they couldn't.
Yasenia was surprised and tried again, using all her concentration to expand further. However, to her dismay, the walls were like unmovable mountains, blocking her spiritual sense from expanding further outside.
After one more minute of waiting, the doors opened, and they looked over. They saw a golem entering, wearing robes similar to the others' and holding a similar jade paper.
The girls focused on that paper and saw that there were even shelves with a few of those seemingly ordered by year and month. Andrea approached one of the shelves and looked at the documents closely. Of course, she didn't reach out to touch them yet.
Meanwhile, Cecile focused on expanding her spiritual sense through the open door. But even when the door opened to let one of the golems enter, the spiritual sense couldn't pass through, as if it was trapped.
Cecile told the others about her findings, making them think.
Kali asked. "How much time did it pass before the ninth golem entered?"
Yasenia answered. "Five minutes on the dot."
Andrea blinked. "You were counting?"
The dragoness titled her head. "Isn't it normal to count, just in case?"
Andrea smiled wryly. Then, she asked. "So, should we leave through the room?"
Yasenia shook her head. "I feel that this trial is very different from the rest. Let's wait. First of all, investigate the room. I'm counting to see if any more golems enter the room, and when they do."
The girls began moving around the room, and Yasenia decided to approach the main desk slowly. As she approached, she had a pondering expression that changed to one of wariness once she came close to it. After all, in quite a creepy way, six of the golems turned to look at her at once.
The action was entirely synchronous, so it was clear that she had triggered something.
Her mind spun as she tried to figure out what this trial was for. 'We've done strength, endurance, and agility. What's next? It can be many things…' Yasenia looked at the golems, looking at her with a deep expression. 'They turned toward me when I approached the desk, right?'
Yasenia looked at the desk closely. 'But if we are speaking about the main attributes of one person, they should be strength, agility, endurance, and… Intelligence?'
Yasenia felt that the way everything was set up was quite likely aimed toward that. The dragoness pondered. 'How do you want to test my intelligence? Documents, a desk that makes the golems react…'
Five more minutes had passed, and the door opened once more to let the tenth golem enter. '… And periodical golems that arrive with some kind of document in their hands.'
Looking around, this room looked like an office.
Even though it was made out of rocks, its general shape resembled a standard office she had seen in Distancia during all her years here.
'When I approached the main desk, the golems turned to look at me… they want something from me…' Yasenia turned her eyes toward Andrea's direction when one of the golems looked over there. 'Oh? Now they are looking at Andrea…'
Yasenia looked over and saw that Andrea had approached a desk to the side with a few documents laid out roughly around it.
'The desks or the documents…?'
The dragoness took another look and realized there were five desks in the room: a central desk, two secretary desks, one treasurer desk, and one military desk. She could tell the difference because of her understanding of the furniture used in this type of office.
'It's a pretty standard composition for a management office.'
With caution, Yasenia approached the main desk and slowly sat on the chair, taking care of her tail while looking at the rock people, which had accumulated to 10 now.
Once she sat, six of those ten rock people walked forward and left a few documents on the table; then they turned and left.
The dragoness curiously picked it up and read through them in order of arrival.
"Year XXXXX, Month XX. South and East gates are being attacked. What kind of deployment should we do? Our current army has…"
"Year XXXXX, Month XX. We are still lacking orders, but we should be able to resist for a few more months. However, our army has lost…"
"Year XXXXX, Month XX. Our soldiers are keeping up, but rations are getting scarce. We want assistance to come from…"
"Year XXXXX, Month XX. Because of the front's worsening situation, there have been rebels uprising inside, and…"
"Year XXXXX, Month XX. Gold coins are scarce, the war is damaging our coffers, and we need a time of respite before money disappears. There are corrupt officials that…"
…
Each of these reports was similar, and what caught Yasenia's attention was that each of them was one month apart.
Yasenia pondered and said aloud. "I think we need to guide this nation to victory, but we are not personally participating in the war; it's a purely management trial. We need to do so with monthly reports. Each of you picks a desk, begins to work, and reads through the documents. The time has been ticking since we entered, and a few months seem to have passed. I can guess that each golem will carry a monthly summary, and we need to work with that to win this."
Yasenia looked at them and ordered. "I'll take the main seat; Eira and Cecile will sit at the secretary's desks. Kali will be the treasurer, and Andrea will sit at the military-related desk."
With her words, everyone took a place.
The reason for this arrangement was Cecile's advantage at being coordinated with Yasenia to a soul level, making their teamwork basically perfect, and Eira being a trained maid by Tatyana.
Secretary duties were not only necessary as a maid but also essential. If they couldn't help their master with the most critical decisions, that would make them a failure.
With these two taking the secretary positions, it was clear that the last two would go to Kali and Andrea. Andrea was much more knowledgeable military-wise, even if Kali was used to guiding her plant creatures in battle.
It was very different managing a group of plant creatures that would obey all words you said to the last breath than a group of living, thinking people.
With Yasenia in the leadership, work began flowing as if they were a well-oiled machine. She quickly started in the beginning, using the first half an hour to catch up while asking the others to order everything. Of course, so as not to worsen the situation, she gave a few fundamental orders to the golems, trying to stabilize the crumbling situation.
First, she increased taxes to gain enough resources. This would make the population unhappy, but according to Kali, they were extremely tight on budget.
Then, she would use the military to gain one large victory in front of the battle; it didn't matter if it was an important one or not.
Once that victory came through, Yasenia was sure that they would've gained a small advantage money-wise. Hence, she would use the war's results and announce them together with a lowering in taxes. Even if taxes result in just a little bit less than before, people would become very happy.
With people becoming motivated, the country would start running again. And if, in the middle, she managed to purge a few corrupt officials and give them to the people, her eligibility would soar through the roof, making people obey her much more honestly.
This way, slowly, she would control the entire country and make it fall into the palm of her hand to puppet it as she pleased.
Her face became cold and emotionless as she processed everything with zero emotional sympathy attached, seeing people as nothing but resources and numbers.
Her orders were swift, ruthless, and sometimes brutal. However, to the girls' surprise, it worked.
Not only did it work, but each of Yasenia's orders showed superb foresight and clarity, quickly dissecting the situation and moving everything in a more favorable direction.
Every 5 minutes, a new stone person would enter with a few documents telling them the overall situation.
Yasenia spoke in a flat tone. "Eira, I need a summary of the seventh town's people. Something is wrong there."
Eira answered. "Twenty seconds."
Yasenia continued without looking over. "Andrea, I want you to find me a document from year XXXXX, month XX about military provisions. If it can focus on the southern part of the country, it would be best."
Andrea nodded. "Understood, give me three minutes."
Yasenia continued without a second. "Kali, are the documents I asked for ready? We need a summary of the west town's finances quickly."
Kali stood up with a stack of jade papers and placed them on Yasenia's desk.
Yasenia took them and scanned them exceptionally quickly. "Cecile."
When hearing her name, Cecile processed a few documents and gave them to Yasenia.
It took eight hours to deal with everything. With a report equivalent to a month and arriving every five minutes, this amounted to around 12 years of conflict before Yasenia completely managed the situation with the girls' help and swallowed the enemy country under her control.
Managing an entire month's worth of problems every five minutes was an extreme challenge. Still, the dragoness proved to be highly talented in this regard.
The girls couldn't help but gulp. It was their first time seeing two countries battle from this point of view, and the way Yasenia handled things was highly ruthless.
Cecile stood up and snorted. "I never thought I would be filing papers in a trial."
Andrea burst into laughter. "Well, it's quite the thing, isn't it? However, it was too easy, no?"
Eira commented. "We have Young Miss."
Yasenia rolled her beautiful golden eyes. "You were the one helping the most. If I had to quantify your contribution, I would give you forty percent."
Eira looked at her Young Miss silently, but she didn't retort.
As they spoke with each other, a teleportation circle appeared in the middle of the room.
Yasenia gave the surroundings a last long look and then stepped into it with the rest.
Their bodies disappeared and arrived at the final floor.