"Your Highness. These are the returns related to the futures investment. The total amount is......."
He was receiving Winter's report over breakfast.
CLATTER!
A suit with a few dried droplets of blood on it, the shoulder seams and sleeves torn clean off.
Hair that had been slicked with pomade and then wrecked, as if someone had torn at it by the fistful.
A wild-haired stranger came running in.
"What kind of hotel security is this!"
Anticipating harm, Winter immediately rose to his feet, but.
The stranger, no, Reijo, prostrated himself a little faster.
"Your Highness!"
Thud. He struck his head on the floor, and the floorboards rang.
"I beg you! Please, show mercy just once!"
Fork still in hand, Zion looked back on the past for a moment.
The most respectful he has been since our first meeting.
"Reijo. My precious patron."
He walked over at his leisure and crouched down in front of Reijo.
"What is this talk of mercy? Are you not a thriving businessman, one prosperous enough to extend favor to a member of the Divine Race?"
When their eyes met, Reijo flinched and shuddered. The blood-red eyes of the Imperial family had something in them that made a person shrink.
"I do not believe I have received the promised favor even once. This prince made the trip to the exchange three whole times. You went bankrupt before I received my due, yet I bore no grudge over it. If you had considered this prince's heart, you would not dare come begging for mercy. Is that not so?"
Zion put strength into the corners of his mouth.
Looking at Reijo's face, ready to burst with grief and rage, he felt a laugh coming on.
'Well, I would have blown a Hellfire out of sheer heartburn myself.'
The entire investment sum in the futures position that had caused his ruin.
More than half of the Teraguard farm and the rice-producing farms.
And the shares in Blen Industries on top.
It was no exaggeration to say that everything Reijo had lost had passed into Zion's grasp, and both of them knew it.
In other words, Reijo was at this moment kneeling before his enemy and begging for mercy.
'Not enough. Is it, Reijo?'
At their first meeting, the Imperial pig before him had said this.
That if he wished, he could offer up Deberian women.
"My daughter, my daughter is about to be sold off. Your Highness. Your Highness, please!"
Watching him crawl over and clutch at his ankle, it was wretched beyond words.
But, Reijo. Should you not meet the same fate as the Deberians you exploited?
Instead of pity, a thrill surged up.
"Winter."
"Yes, Your Highness."
"What was it that happened to Dechion?"
"He went missing. The Police Agency is investigating but has found nothing, and from the automobile abandoned in a secluded spot they presume he fled by night."
That was how it had been settled. Even though he had applied no pressure to the investigation, he had not merely escaped the list of suspects, he had not drawn the slightest suspicion.
Because the body he now wore belonged to a member of the Empire's Divine Race and a son of the Emperor.
In the end the case would be closed with Dechion having gone into hiding to escape retaliation from his creditors.
"And you, Reijo, are on the verge of being hauled off by the Police Agency as well, I hear?"
In an age where capital was power, default was a crime.
He had heard that five or six charges had been attached, fraud, embezzlement, and so on?
"A question suddenly occurs to me. In all the time you worked Deberian penal laborers, did you ever once grant their pleas?"
He apparently had the leisure even now to feel puzzled, for a question filled his plump face.
"That... why......?"
"Likely never. That is the reason this prince grants no mercy."
The puzzlement, deepened by another degree, sublimated into a sense of absurdity.
"If you are going to make excuses, make proper ones! Do you think you are the deposed crown prince Zion Bliese because you share a name! When you have seen a patriot who used Deberians to create more wealth for the Empire, should a prince of the Empire not rightly praise him!"
Hm, it seemed he had been misunderstood.
"Tsk, it sounded as though I meant you should receive retribution for treating Deberians harshly? Wrong. What I meant was that to me, you are the sort of being that Deberians are to you."
A lie packaged as a true meaning. But to Reijo this one would seem the more truthful.
"You are precisely the sort of being so lowly and trivial that it does not matter if he is treated like an insect, and yet what is this presumptuous disgrace? Winter."
"Yes. I will clear him away."
The curses and death throes Reijo poured out as he was dragged away. He listened for a while and then picked up his wine glass.
It was sweet.
"Your Highness. I will handle Reijo cleanly through to the finish. In addition, I have issued a stern warning to the hotel so that this never happens again."
"Well done. More importantly, there is one thing I want to ask."
Glass in hand, he crossed his legs and gazed at him.
When he had spoken of exploiting Deberians a moment ago, what exactly had Winter thought?
"I need to get in the Third Prince's good graces."
Winter was aghast.
Because he had dared to refer to the third most powerful man in the Empire by a mere three syllables.
Half-brother though he was, if anyone had overheard, there would have been a disaster.
But Zion continued without concern.
"Something has come up that I need to get out of the Third Prince. Devise a plan."
The scene of the future the Guide of the Fork had shown him.
It was the worst all the same, but several things had changed.
The greatest change among them.
'The place where the execution ceremony is held must be changed from the Empire's imperial capital to the royal capital Seiel.'
To do that, the first step was to render a merit the Third Prince would find pleasing.
Because unlike ordinary brothers, the relationship between the Third Prince and Zion Riobelt was worse than that of strangers.
'If I made the request now, it would go beyond being ignored and get me harmed.'
The Third Prince was more than capable of it.
He might send an assassin, demanding to know how the likes of him dared to petition.
'The Third Prince wants a greater uproar to occur in Deber.'
The proof was that he had ordered Zion Riobelt to create a conflict with a figure of the First Prince's faction.
Since Dechion had been brought down, the mission itself was accomplished, but it seemed best to go one step further.
Only then could he make the request without being retaliated against.
That is, he had to obtain wealth and power more quickly.
"Blen Industries."
It was well that I helped Lumio.
Unlike Teraguard's gold vein, which was so vast that discovering it now would certainly see it seized by the Third Prince.
Blen Industries' cold-production magitech device could produce results slowly, surely, and visibly.
"Winter, Director Lumio is...... oh."
Speak of the ogre and he appears, as they say. Director Lumio's frightened face was visible through the open door.
But why was he frightened?
"I have committed a crime worthy of death, Ninth Prince!"
The air went cold.
Looking at the back of Lumio's head as he flung himself flat, unease began to creep up.
It seemed he had not simply taken fright from seeing Reijo dragged out.
"What is the matter? Do not tremble, speak."
"Completing the technology... appears to be impossible."
"Hm?"
That could not be. It had been personally corrected by Zion Bliese, the genius of the age, and it was impossible?
"To be precise, the technology as patented was completed some time ago. However...... I have attempted it countless times, but mass-producing the air conditioner I described appears to be impossible."
"The cold-production magitech device?"
"Yes. I explained it as a magitech device that scatters cold throughout an entire room and helps one live comfortably even in a hot summer."
The moment he had heard it he had thought it would make money, but a problem seemed to have burst somewhere.
Winter summarized Lumio's ensuing explanation in a single line.
"So the cold-production efficiency itself has indeed been improved to an extreme degree, but the moment the projection space widens, the efficiency plunges again?"
"That is correct, Aide Winter."
It meant it was only effective in a narrow space a person could not enter.
"It is a structural weakness of the object that became the foundation of the technology, so even the magitech engineer under Your Highness would likely find improvement impossible."
He took the report Lumio had prepared for review and flipped through it quickly.
'The Ice Essence's mana pattern itself certainly contained a limit.'
It had not been visible when he reinforced the theory, but entering the next stage for the magitech device's commercialization had newly exposed the problem.
It was a fatal problem, moreover, grave enough that Lumio staked his life on declaring failure.
'Hmm. A month should do it.'
If the mana pattern of the Ice Essence that formed the technology's foundation contained a limit in itself, he need only tear the whole thing apart and rebuild it.
The problem was that he could not fix it and deliver it right away.
'It would obviously arouse suspicion, would it not?'
There was no way a talent capable of solving this problem served under a trash prince.
Because not even the magitech engineering laboratories that dominated the Empire would be able to solve this problem.
Therefore, until he manufactured a plausible pretext, developing the air conditioner was impossible.
'A good excuse...... ugh. I am hopeless at using my head in this direction. And since I cannot explain the circumstances, I have to keep it secret from Winter too.'
The conclusion came out.
Blen Industries: a confirmed bust.
"Tsk."
"M-my apologies....... I will return the investment funds in full, and the portion already spent I will somehow......."
BANG!
"......?"
"......!"
Even having committed the grave crime of striking the desk before a prince's face, Winter could not hide his excitement.
"Your Highness! Would this not work? I think we could actually hit it even bigger!"
Zion's chest slowly began to pound as well.
Every time this bastard Winter used his head, good things happened.
"What is it? Speak, quickly."
"Director Lumio. Is it correct that generating strong cold continuously at low cost is possible in itself?"
"It is. However, once you go about a meter away, the cold drops off sharply. To put it in magitech engineering terms, exponentially......."
"I do not know about that! You are saying you can freeze ice, are you not."
"Well, that is so, but."
Director Lumio blinked, as though he had no idea what this was about.
There was no way he had gotten so excited over merely making ice.
In an age when magic had been sublimated into magitech engineering, ice could be bought in any quantity at an ice factory.
"Are you saying we should sell ice? But that is not profitab......."
"Why would we sell ice, we sell the magitech device."
Certainly people could obtain ice easily.
But.
That did not mean the price of ice was cheap.
"Now, look at this!"
The sheet of paper was covered with notes Winter had scrawled at random.
"Do you know what is most frightening at the gambling table? Holding a garbage hand and not knowing it. Food is exactly the same. Do you happen to know a disease called food poisoning? It is a disease you contract from eating spoiled food."
"I know it well."
When Zion nodded, Winter faltered for a moment.
A prince knows about food poisoning? How?
"Aide Winter. A magitech device that produces ice cheaply is a decent idea. But can it beat the ice factories that cut costs through mass production? In my view it would be difficult......."
Lumio's cautious rebuttal. Winter cast the question aside and answered.
"That is a fair point, Director Lumio. But! If, on top of the convenience of making ice at home, you add the advantage found nowhere else in the world of being able to store perishable food for a long time?"
Zion answered in his stead.
"Then it would be a necessity for any place that makes and sells food? Because they could save on the cost of ingredients thrown out from spoiling."
On top of that, there was the advantage that incidents of customers eating the food, falling ill, and taking out their anger on the shop would drop dramatically.
Even if the magitech device were expensive, it seems most would buy it.
"Your Highness, and if we go further and make this magitech device the exclusive preserve of those who have? We advertise that people with a bit of money can pull ice straight out at home, without going to buy it, and drop it into their beer."
The quill pen danced over the already blotched paper.
Immediately afterward, Winter thrust out a long, long line of figures.
"At the very least, I expect steady sales of about this much!"
It was a figure that made his eyes go round.
It was actually higher than with the air conditioner.
"...Hah. Winter, you."
He was sincerely impressed.
Perhaps he could even see why the Ring of the Guide had responded to Winter.
Money. That fellow Winter turned into money.
'If the Liberation Army had had a talent like Winter. Much would have been different.'
This was also the reason Zion had not devoted himself to developing magitech devices during his Liberation Army days.
Because he had no way of knowing what he ought to make in order for it to become money.
Because he would make something he thought was decent, only to find a similar magitech device already sitting in plain sight.
Business was done not with technology but with ideas.
That is, it had to be done by someone like Winter.
"Director Lumio. Can you implement Winter's idea?"
"Yes. Under those conditions, mass-producing the air conditioner is possible. Ah, and the name will have to be something other than air conditioner."
Zion and Lumio looked at Winter at the same time.
"It is your idea, so it is right that you name it as well. What would be a good name?"
He took up paper and quill pen once more and scribbled something, and then.
Winter answered.
"Refrigerator. Refrigerator would be good."
***
"Your Highness the Third Prince. The Ninth Prince has committed an outrageous act at last."
Third Prince Garon Riobelt halted his quill pen and gazed indifferently at the Chamberlain.
"Go on."
"Yes. Using a business called Blen Industries as bait...... in addition to an Imperial businessman named Reijo, one of the five called the Five Enemies Outside the Palace......."
After receiving the full report on the series of events that had occurred in Seiel and the profits the Ninth Prince had gained from them.
The Third Prince laced his fingers together and twisted one corner of his mouth.
"That inadequate thing has given me a smile for the first time."
The Chamberlain, who had called the Ninth Prince's conduct an outrageous act, expressed agreement as well.
"He did benefit from the act of terror perpetrated by Deber's reactionary elements, but it is judged that the Ninth Prince did his utmost to carry out Your Highness' command. It seems exile was an effective lash."
The Third Prince nodded.
"For a member of the Divine Race, banishment to the outer territory is a punishment shameful enough to make one choose to take his own life. That trash Zion could not help but feel something as well."
The Ninth Prince's assault on Marquis Gebel.
In the end, the Third Prince had gained three benefits.
He had pulled House Gebel, which had been slated to join the First Prince's faction, away from them; he had turned the headache called Zion Riobelt into an obedient dog; and he had flung the worst trash in the Empire into the First Prince's territory.
"However, it is not enough."
For the picture the Third Prince wished to paint, the paint had to be spattered more chaotically still.
"How is House Gebel?"
"The marquess seems to be in high spirits. She says she intends to go to Deber herself."
She apparently wished to see with her own eyes just how wretched a state the trash who had made her husband a vegetable had fallen into.
"She will be enraged."
"Assuredly."
What reaction would the marquess show upon seeing Zion devouring two businessmen and fattening himself?
It was obvious.
"Excellent timing. I shall tighten the reins and then send another letter to make him commit even greater thuggery."
This affair had proved it. To handle trash, one must first starve it.
Even if it means taking away what it has.
The marquess would make a fine lash.
"As you will. However, it seems you must take the Elpia Federation's delegation into account."
When humanity crossed the vast ocean and arrived at the New Continent.
The New Continent did not become an object of conquest by which humanity would prosper.
Because an intelligent race more flourishing than humanity lived there.
The nation of the elves, the Elpia Federation.
"I am told the First Prince issued a strict order. The Deber Colonial Governor-General's Office is preparing a grand banquet for the Elpia Federation's envoy, and appears to be preparing treatment equivalent in every respect to that of another nation's royalty."
A souring of relations with the Elpia Federation was a loss the Empire, too, could not easily shrug off.
Moreover, since the Master of the Divine Throne himself held an interest in it, anyone who so much as harmed the Elpia Federation's envoy would immediately be torn limb from limb.
"That is precisely why the Ninth Prince must run wild once more. To draw eyes, and at the same time to make the opportunity the First Prince has secured into this prince's own."
To be precise, at the present time the Ninth Prince was the only card capable of obstructing the First Prince.
The Chamberlain belatedly caught on to the Third Prince's scheme and let out a sound of admiration.
'So he does not mind if the Elpia Federation's honored guests return disappointed in the Empire. Rather, it seems he wishes the guests' visit to end in the worst possible way.'
Because their disappointment would become a political blemish on the First Prince.
Furthermore, what if in that same period the Third Prince achieved his aim with Zion Bliese's false execution ceremony?
'All the bureaucrats would come to compare the capabilities of the two, whether they meant to or not.'
The Third Prince melted wax mixed with gold dust, then turned a ring inward and pressed it down firmly.
The emblem symbolizing the Imperial family's Divine Race, and among them the second in the line of succession, was engraved into the wax.
"Deliver it to the Ninth Prince."
"I receive Your Highness' command."
After the Chamberlain bowed his head deeply and withdrew, the Third Prince took up the quill pen again and paused for a moment.
His hand reached of its own accord for a photograph instead of the pen.
A photograph of the Elpia Federation's delegation that the Chamberlain had offered along with the report.
"......Beautiful."
A silver-white-haired elf standing together with an elf who appeared to be her father.
Her emotionless, desolate expression was somehow unnerving, but it was not enough to make her beauty fade.
Enough that even the Third Prince, a man of a far colder nature than others, felt his heart grow hot.
'It is no wonder His Majesty desires their bloodline.'
Elves. A blessed race whose every member is born with outstanding beauty and spends most of their lives with the appearance of someone in their twenties.
That the Empire's Emperor wished to mix elven blood into the Imperial bloodline was a fact known to any member of the Divine Race.
It was also the reason the envoy the First Prince had invited through the most devoted efforts had been summoned not to the imperial capital but to a mere outer territory.
Since he could not set foot in the lowly outer territory, he would not be able to meet the envoy in person, but he could conduct the protocol in full without the Third Prince's interference.
'Ninth Prince. Run wild without knowing your place. This once, I, Garon Riobelt, shall be your backing.'
It was also the reason he had deliberately left the mark of a successor's seal on the letter.
Trash though he was, there was no way he would not know the seal's meaning.
"I hope your visit to Deber becomes the worst journey abroad of your life. For the sake of our first meeting, which will come to pass someday."