Too Lazy to be a Villainess novel Chapter 296

Chapter 296: The Captain and the Crown

[Lavinia’s Pov—Continuation—Lavinia’s Chamber]

I slumped onto my couch with a sigh and waved my hand lazily. "Alright, Sir Haldor... you may start."

He blinked once, then twice, before asking, very politely, "Should I begin without a map, Your Highness?"

I blinked back at him. "Right. We need a map."

He straightened immediately. "I shall bring it at once!"

"Wait—no, no! Don’t go running off again," I said quickly, sitting up. "I have one here."

He paused, a little startled. "You... have a map in your chamber, Your Highness?"

I nodded as I walked toward my wardrobe. "Of course I do. Papa used to gift me territories on my birthdays. Each time, he’d hand me a map and say, ’This will be part of our empire one day.’ So yes, I have quite the collection."

I pulled open the heavy wardrobe, shuffled a few folded fabrics aside, and then—"TA-DA!" I declared, holding up a rather large rolled map triumphantly.

Sir Haldor blinked as though I’d just pulled a dragon out of a drawer. "You... found it."

"Yes!" I grinned and spread it out on the table. "Now, start explaining."

He nodded, about to kneel beside the map when I pointed at him sharply. "No kneeling."

He froze mid-bend. "Your Highness?"

"I hate my people kneeling in front of me," I said, crossing my arms.

He blinked again—maybe recalling why I said that—and then nodded slowly. I could see the moment he remembered why.

"Take a seat on the couch," I added.

He hesitated. "But, Your Highness... how can a mere knight sit in front of you?"

"By obeying his Crown Princess’s order. Now sit."

He hesitated for precisely three more seconds before giving up with a defeated sigh. "As you command, Your Highness."

He began, steady as a drumbeat. "Your Highness, we have three priorities. Secure the civilians, hold the critical crossings, and deny them any surprise advantage. If Meren refuses to withdraw or acts aggressively, we strike—decisively—before they can consolidate their gains."

Haldor’s finger found the river on the map and tapped it like a metronome. "Point one: the Lower Kareth Bridge. Meren’s engineers have been diverting flow upstream; if they sabotage the bridge, they cut our grain route and strand the villages to the east. Captain Arden will take a garrison of two hundred men at dawn, fortified with pikes and ballistae. The bridge must hold."

At the word bridge I saw the market in my mind—the carts, the old woman who sold pies. My chest tightened. "And the people?" I asked. "Evacuation routes?"

"Two lanes." Haldor swept his hand along the riverbank on the map. "Sir Rey will coordinate magical beacons to guide night evacuations. Sir Ravick takes the western pass to intercept raiding parties. I will command the mobile reserve—mounted knights ready to move where the enemy probes most. Fast enough to plug holes, blunt enough to break a spear line."

He spoke like a man naming tools in a kit, yet when his gaze found mine, the words carried the thing strategy couldn’t measure: the cost. Lives, faces, villages.

"Second: the irrigation channels," he continued. "We’ll station engineers to inspect and reinforce dikes nightly. If Meren tampered with the flow intentionally, we cannot let it happen again. The magician will monitor for foreign enchantments. Any anomaly—seal the channel, boil the lines, bring emergency purification."

I nodded. Practical. Cold. Necessary. "And the third?" I prompted.

Haldor’s jaw tightened. He leaned in, lowering his voice as if the map itself might overhear. "Deny their eyes and their hands. Intelligence is their advantage. We cut it. We root out scouts, destroy forward observation posts, and make every road a risk for enemy spies. False caravans will run the routes—bait to flush their watchers. Every whoops and shout will be a test."

He tapped another point on the map—small farmsteads, hedgerows, and a thin black dot he labeled engineers’ camp. "We take out the engineering camps first. Blow the supply bridges, burn the stockpiles, and collapse the scaffolds. Make their progress worthless. Then," his voice hardened, "we strike the logisticians. No supplies, no siege. Without their hands, their walls are paper."

I let the breath out slowly. "Surgical," I said. "Targeted. Minimize blood where we can—make the strike mean something and not become a slaughter."

"Exactly." Haldor’s eyes softened a fraction—approval, not praise. "Precision is our armor. We hurt their ability to hurt us."

A corner of my mouth twitched. "And what if they respond with force greater than what we expect? A calculated escalation?"

He is right.

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