The youngest of the five sons of the Bex Merchant Company, one of the most prominent merchant companies in the Empire.
In this world, where primogeniture was the norm, the fifth son was someone expected to live as quietly as a dead mouse.
Because of that position, the more Jack displayed his talent as a merchant, the less welcome he became within his own family.
That was why he had left his comfortable home and become an Administrator in the unfamiliar city of Hari.
He had thought he might find a place for himself in the Domain of Hari, which had emerged as a rising power after Carcosa’s downfall.
‘But the longer I worked in Hari, the more disillusioned I became….’
A place that recognized his worth and allowed him to exercise his abilities.
A place with enough potential for him to succeed so spectacularly that he could show the family who had failed to appreciate him exactly what they had missed.
Jack still had not found the place he had been searching for.
“I would like to propose a deal.”
Jack spoke while keeping his expression as unreadable as possible.
But there was one thing Jack had overlooked.
Alex already knew practically everything about him.
“A deal…? Hasn’t that ship already sailed? I said I’d speak with your lord.”
Alex spoke leisurely, and Jack replied smoothly, as though he had prepared the answer beforehand.
“Severin merely spoke too harshly. Those were not our lord’s views. He is simply overzealous in his loyalty.”
“That’s amusing. So since your own loyalty isn’t quite so strong, you thought you’d try making a private deal with me?”
Alex struck so directly at the heart of the matter that Jack failed to control his expression for a moment.
He had prepared several approaches for how best to secure a profit from this negotiation, but all of them had instantly become useless.
Perhaps it was because he had spent so long suffering under a foolish and indifferent lord.
Having Alex already understand his purpose without forcing him to explain everything at length was troublesome, yet Jack found himself liking it rather more than he expected.
“….”
“Let’s not waste time probing each other. Won’t they get suspicious if you stay here too long?”
Naturally, Jack’s absence would draw suspicion if he disappeared alone for too long.
Especially now, after Alex had made something bordering on a threat toward Hari.
“…Thank you for your consideration. Then I will get straight to the point. Is there something you want?”
If Alex was willing to participate in a private transaction, it meant he wanted something from Jack in return.
Having grasped Alex’s intention, Jack asked first.
Alex wanted to bring him over to his side, so he readily went along and stated his objective.
“I want Hari’s fighting arena gone. If we leave it alone, it’s obvious it’ll come back to bite us eventually.”
Of course, Hari’s lord would be the one punished, but there was no telling what consequences might spill over onto Carcosa for supposedly failing to manage its domain properly.
In fact, during one of Alex’s previous playthroughs, he had ignored Hari, only for Orcs from there to spill into yet another domain.
The problem had escalated so badly that people from the Grand Temple had suddenly come all the way to Carcosa and demanded accountability from them as well.
“There are plenty of ways to handle it even without you, but it’d be better if people who want the same thing helped each other.”
The longer Alex spoke, the more Jack found himself at a loss for words.
Just as Alex said, they wanted the same thing.
Jack had come to Alex because he also wanted the fighting arena shut down.
After studying Alex for a brief moment, Jack gave the answer that would change his fate.
“Then I would like to know. How do you intend to eliminate the fighting arena you know about, my lord?”
***
Diego, Lord of Hari, was excited by the prospect of acquiring gold.
He remained excited even when the people he had sent as envoys to Carcosa returned far sooner than expected.
But what came back was Severin, deathly pale and spouting nonsense.
“What?! Not only did that brat dare threaten us… he ordered me to come at his beck and call?”
Diego roared the predictable words in fury and repeatedly slammed the table.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Severin was not particularly eloquent, but the story was short and simple enough to understand anyway.
‘Carcosa’s new lord threatened Hari by bringing up its illegal fighting arena.’
At Diego’s violent behavior and shouting, the maid serving him could be heard trembling as she held a silver tray.
“What’s wrong with you?! You can’t even stand still properly?!”
When Diego suddenly turned his anger toward her, Jack felt an ominous premonition.
“You irritating bitch!”
“Aaah!”
Diego abruptly slapped the maid across the face, and Jack’s carefully maintained expression twisted.
He could not help recalling Alex, who might have lacked refinement but had been moral and intelligent.
After venting his anger, Diego noticed the small box sent from Carcosa.
He flung open the box, neither especially shabby nor ornate, and found a lump of gold about the size of a pebble and a letter inside.
“G-gold…!”
Unable to read the room, Severin craned his neck forward and stared greedily at its gleam.
Diego glared fiercely at Severin before picking up the letter inside.
The letter had been sealed repeatedly with an excessive number of wax seals, as though the sender had been deeply concerned that someone might open it.
Diego tore through the seals and immediately began reading from the end.
[And with that, I hope you will safely root out the heinous cultists who have infiltrated Hari.]
“….”
No.
He should probably start a little earlier.
What did it mean that there were suddenly cultists in Hari?
With a somewhat more serious expression, Diego went back and began reading the letter carefully from the beginning.
[The first thing I did after arriving in Carcosa was root out a traitor within the domain. There was a man named Gilbert who was the only merchant traveling between Carcosa and the outside world. There are likely people in Hari who know of him as well.]
In summary, the letter said this.
Gilbert had been a traitor.
After killing the bastard, things had begun improving in the domain.
But according to Gilbert, cultists had already infiltrated Hari as well.
Had Magical Beasts appeared there too?
How strange.
No Magical Beasts had ever escaped from Carcosa.
If Magical Beasts existed in Hari as well, they should be careful.
Whoever controlled those Magical Beasts and profited from them was the traitor.
“….”
[And with that, I hope you will safely root out the heinous cultists who have infiltrated Hari. May divine protection be with you.]
Diego felt an inexplicably chilling sensation, as though the blood were draining from his body.
What were cultists?
Were they not the people who had reduced Carcosa, once one of the greatest domains on the continent, to its current ruin?
Using a few Orcs was one thing.
Cultists were an entirely different matter.
The letter could have been a lie, but as far as Diego could see, Carcosa had no particular reason to tell him such a lie.
Even if they intended to exploit the information as leverage and extort wealth from him, it would benefit them more if the highly profitable fighting arena remained in operation.
Unable even to conceive that Alex might be acting for moral reasons, Diego’s mouth went dry, and he gulped down his wine.
“Does anyone know this man called Gilbert?”
Several retainers answered Diego’s question.
“Not sure….”
“Ah… do you mean that merchant bastard who used to come from Carcosa?”
“I think I’ve seen him at the fighting arena before.”
“Ah…! That scrawny nouveau riche bastard who used to fool around with five women at once? I’ve seen him too.”
As the retainers murmured among themselves, Diego gulped down more wine.
“…Come to think of it, his merchant company has not entered Hari recently.”
Even Jack, who was responsible for the domain’s trade, said the same thing.
Severin, however, merely blinked as though he knew nothing at all.
Suddenly, Severin looked strangely sinister and suspicious in Diego’s eyes.
Jack knew Severin was merely incompetent, but he allowed the lord to misunderstand.
[If there is someone capable of controlling Magical Beasts, or someone who profits from them more than anyone else… I advise you to beware of that person.]
Looking at Alex’s letter once more, Diego crumpled it in his fist.
Suddenly, everything felt suspicious.
The fact that Magical Beasts had never escaped from Carcosa, yet several had inexplicably been discovered over the past decade.
The fact that Severin had seemingly been waiting for the opportunity and immediately proposed using them in an illegal fighting arena.
The fact that the arena had suddenly grown large enough for its profits to exceed even the domain’s wine revenue.
Once Diego started thinking about it, even the fact that he had never found any of this suspicious until now began to feel suspicious.
“…Ah, Gilbert of Carcosa is listed in the ledgers as well.”
Jack spoke at precisely the right moment as he searched through the documents.
“He invested a large sum in the fighting arena three months ago. Sir Severin, are you truly saying you do not recognize the name Gilbert?”
Jack’s words openly poured fuel onto Diego’s suspicions.
BANG!
Diego slammed the table once again and shot to his feet.
“Seize that bastard immediately! Arrest him and search his residence and the fighting arena!”
Watching the scene, Jack quietly and helpfully placed the ledger he had altered beforehand in front of Diego.
Severin was a man who had treated the lives of innocent slaves as worth less than those of animals.
Whatever fate awaited him was little more than the consequence of his own actions.
“Y-yes…?! Wh-what… Why are you doing this?! My lord! My lord!”
After the Knights dragged Severin away, the entire Domain of Hari was thrown into chaos.
Every part of the domain touched by Severin’s influence suddenly came under investigation.
Every Magical Beast that could pose even the slightest threat was killed, and everyone involved in related work was interrogated one after another.
There was not much else Jack had to do during the process.
All he had done was alter a few ledgers to make them fit Alex’s brazen lie.
An evil man had been punished in the end, so Jack did not particularly care about the minor crimes he himself had committed in the process.
What bothered him more was that his already excessive workload had become even worse.
“…Come to think of it, one thing Severin said was true. Lord Alex really did say that he wished to meet you, Lord Diego.”
After the domain had been turned upside down, Jack casually let that remark slip.
From Jack’s perspective, the fighting arena was gone, so his primary objective had been achieved.
But the problem with Carcosa’s reservoir remained unresolved, leaving him with a pounding headache.
“Furthermore, now that the fighting arena’s income is gone, securing the groundwater is essential if we are to focus more heavily on wine production.”
“Really? Hmm….”
Even after Jack’s explanation, Diego responded sluggishly, as though the problem still did not feel real to him.
He seemed reluctant to personally travel to dangerous Carcosa over something as trivial as water.
But after thinking for a moment, Diego ultimately nodded.
“Well, I suppose it might be worth visiting. Those bastards… really do still have gold, don’t they?”
Going there for water did not appeal to him.
Going there for gold apparently did.
For a moment, Jack worried that Diego’s excessive greed for gold might endanger Carcosa.
But then his gaze fell on the lump of gold that had been deliberately sent along with the letter.
“Yes. That is correct. Carcosa still has gold.”
Perhaps even Diego’s greed driving him to Carcosa was part of Alex’s intention.
Jack was clearly heading to Carcosa with an objective of his own once again, yet he felt strangely unsettled.
He could not stop himself from feeling an odd sense of anticipation over what Alex would do when he met Diego in person.
***
Exactly fifteen days later, another delegation from Hari arrived in Carcosa.
This time, the central figures of the delegation were none other than Diego, Lord of Hari himself, and Jack.
Watching them pass through the castle gate accompanied by a long line of Knights and soldiers, Alex smiled slyly.
“See? Exactly fifteen days.”
“No… that’s cheating! You made some kind of deal with that Jack guy, didn’t you?!”
“As if. Hand it over. Come on.”
“Kghhh….”
Elizabeth groaned in anguish as she surrendered a piece of gold.
As though they had never once worried about how the situation might unfold, the two had placed a bet on how many days it would take Hari’s delegation to return.
Alex had bet on exactly fifteen days.
Elizabeth had bet on every other possible date.
And Alex had still won.
Hamilton smiled warmly as he watched their complete lack of tension.
By now, Hamilton simply trusted that whatever Alex did, there was a reason behind it.
“This dump is supposed to be an office…? How pathetic….”
Those were Diego’s first words the moment he entered Alex’s office.
It was remarkably rude for someone who had hurried all the way to Carcosa in person, but Alex replied without even changing his expression.
“It is rather shabby. Still, you came because there’s something worth taking away even from this dump, didn’t you?”
Alex spoke shamelessly, pretending not to know anything.
But when it came to shamelessness, Diego was a step above him.
“What could there possibly be for me to gain here? I merely came out of generosity to offer your domain an opportunity you will never receive twice.”
Strictly speaking, Alex was a Count, while Diego was a Viscount and therefore considerably lower in status.
Yet Diego still spoke down to Alex.
“Out of generosity, I shall have my domain’s soldiers clear out some of the Magical Beasts in your territory.”
Stroking his rather undignified beard, Diego continued spouting nonsense.
“In exchange, Carcosa can pay us a fixed amount of gold every month and close the reservoir’s sluice gates… Would that not benefit both of us?”
Alex grinned at Diego’s proposal, which benefited Hari and Hari alone.
Hamilton had learned by now that whenever Alex unnaturally raised the corners of his mouth like that, he was about to pull something ingenious.
“Lord of Hari.”
Alex called out brightly.
“Do you still not understand the situation?”
Still smiling, Alex continued without hesitation.
“In exchange for closing the sluice gates, I’ll take ten percent of your wine production.”
“What…?!”
“And! What’s this nonsense about dealing with our Magical Beasts… Do your people even know anything about Magical Beasts? We’ll handle that ourselves, so stay out of it.”
Relying on another domain’s military power would undermine Carcosa’s autonomy.
That was absolutely unacceptable.
And Alex was not finished.
“And as the price of your lives, in exchange for keeping Hari’s blasphemous use of Magical Beasts secret, I’ll take only 5,000 gold in Imperial Coin.”
Alex delivered the words quickly, his expression still perfectly pleasant.
“Well? Do you feel like having a proper negotiation now?”