Survival in a Dead End: Starting by Seizing a Bandit Stronghold

[Desperate Counterattack] [Building a Power Base] On the way to her place of exile by imperial decree, the escort guards collude with bandits along the road, planning to sell the women in her family into a brothel. When she wakes, a blade is already pressed to her throat.

Unlike the original owner, she doesn't beg and plead. Instead, she uses a hidden sleeve crossbow to kill them in one decisive strike, then follows the trail to loot the bandits' storehouse.

In this lawless chaos, where lives are as worthless as grass, her former status as a noble young lady is nothing but a death sentence. She tears up her old betrothal contract and takes the remnants of a defeated army and the refugees she has saved to seize an abandoned city.

Short on food? Then she will raid corrupt officials' granaries. Short on people? Then she will recruit scattered, routed troops. The powerful believe she died long ago on the road to exile. Only when her well-equipped, powerful merchant caravan breaks through the capital's gates do her former enemies, once so high and mighty, realize that she is the one who will set the rules of the realm.