Chapter 40

Translator: Willia

Grinnen was a city with its advantages, but it had its disadvantages too. Of course, the same could be said of any city, but in Grinnen, the contrast between the two was especially stark.

Its waterways allowed trade all the way to the sea, and it was rich in peat and gemstones. On the other hand, there was little land suitable for farming, and timber was difficult to obtain.

That meant the city had difficulty supplying its own food and constructing buildings.

There were wetlands nearby, so they could fire plenty of clay into bricks, but brick construction required so much labor that it simply wasn't practical.

That was because Grinnen had no single ruling authority and was instead overrun by countless competing factions, leaving nothing but an endless cycle of exploitation. The high crime rate was merely an added bonus.

What governed the city was not rules or discipline, but simply the law of the strong preying on the weak and the survival of the fittest.

And becoming the leader of a gang of thugs did not guarantee a safe life either.

They had their own internal struggles, and it was hardly uncommon for a boss to be replaced every few days.

There was no one who looked toward the future and thought about how they might survive and prosper.

Frankly, it looked like the closest thing to hell a city could be.

And into that hell came Valery. The Salt Prince who had slain the Ball-Ripper in a duel.

He bought an old building on the outskirts of Grinnen and began gathering people there.

At the same time, he bought timber, lime powder, food, and other supplies and brought them in by water. The shipments never stopped.

He paid people to pack and fire clay into bricks, dig peat, or even bring back usable construction stone or bundles of reeds. And that money provided them with their daily bread.

People were put to work on jobs that required little more than a healthy body, such as laying roads, moving construction materials, and building houses. And those houses would eventually belong to the very people who built them.

Of course, the houses were being sold to them through loans, but as long as they continued working, the debt was well within their ability to repay.

An undertaking like this required an enormous amount of money, but Valery covered all of it with the money from selling the gemstones and the gold Regin had left behind.

In other words, capital, labor, and determination were coming together to create something. And that something was a livelihood, a life, and hope.

Valery had not begun all of this because of some noble philosophy or ideology, or out of kindness. As someone who had fled with Knut, this was merely one part of his plan to seize control of the city.

But sometimes, somewhere along the way, a person discovered a purpose they had never intended to find.

A purpose worth giving one's heart to.

Yorik diligently counted on his fingers while moving the abacus beads back and forth one by one.

After a long while, he finally picked up his pen and wrote down a number, only to blot too much ink onto the page and make the figures crooked and uneven.

Then, as though checking whether he had gotten it right, he looked over at Valery sitting beside him.

Valery showed no expression. He simply watched Yorik write the numbers one crooked digit at a time.

Yorik went back to counting on both hands and moving the abacus beads, then wrote down another number.

Little by little, he filled the boxes with figures.

Only after he had filled the entire page did Valery point at the ledger and say,

“This one, this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one are wrong.”

Hardly any of them were right.

“S-Sorry.”

“There's nothing to apologize for. Just take your time and try again. Your finger-counting is right, but you keep making mistakes when you move the abacus beads.”

“That's what I'm saying. Do I really have to use this thing? And why do I have to practice recording the same kind of thing in different ways......? My head feels like it's going to explode.”

“You'll have to deal with bigger and bigger numbers. Once you do, this will be more convenient. And it's better to keep money already spent separate from money that still needs to be spent, and money already received separate from money that's still due to come in. That way, you can tell how much the mercenary company currently has in assets. You're not just looking at how much cash you have. If you only record what you spent and what you earned, you won't be able to keep track of everything once the operation gets bigger.”

“......”

Valery had experience handling accounts, and before regression, he had always kept a close eye on the state of his finances while commanding an army. He was passing that knowledge on to Yorik.

To be honest, it was rather difficult for Yorik to learn. Even so, Yorik worked hard in his own way, steadily pushing forward without giving up.

The problem was that he couldn't help worrying about Valery's reaction.

From Valery's perspective, having to point out the same mistakes over and over while watching Yorik fumble along at a snail's pace had to be irritating.

Yet Valery had never once shown annoyance or anger. Maybe he was simply patient, or maybe he was bottling it all up inside.

After nervously watching him for a while, Yorik finally spoke.

“But Lord Wid.”

“What?”

“Aren't you angry?”

“All of a sudden?”

“You have to tell me the same thing over and over, and I still keep getting it wrong.”

“I never expected much in the first place.”

“Whaaat!?”

“What?”

“N-No, but still, i-isn't that a little harsh?”

Valery gave a faint smile as he answered.

“Don't worry. That doesn't mean I hate you or dislike you. You're quick on the uptake, Yorik, and you've got determination. If you keep at it, you'll learn it eventually. You're only feeling anxious because you're impatient.”

“......”

At Valery's words, Yorik stared silently at him.

“What now?”

“It's just strange, that's all.”

“What is?”

“You seem coldhearted, but you're awfully good at saying things that give people courage and strength too. Like you said, I'm pretty quick on the uptake, but I still can't figure out what kind of person you are, Lord Wid.”

“Really? Never thought about it.”

“You told me to become a beast of prey, didn't you? Ever since I heard that, my life has changed this much. The clothes I wear, the place I sleep, the way I think, and even realizing how happy it makes me to help other people instead of only caring about myself. Life's been fun lately. I guess you could say I'm looking forward to the future. I never used to feel that way. It's all thanks to you, Lord Wid.”

“Thanks for saying that.”

Thanks for saying that? Why was he thankful? How did someone even say something like that?

As far as Yorik was concerned, Knut was what a typical noble was like. Sensitive and self-centered. Of course, he was affectionate in his own way, but still.

Valery, on the other hand, was... different somehow. He might be a bastard, but if anything, he felt more like a noble than actual nobility. Yorik would never dare say it aloud, but that was what he thought.

“You're scary when you're scary, but when you're refined like this, you're really refined. If I ever met a real prince, I think he'd be like you, Lord Wid.”

Yorik kept to himself the potentially offensive part about a bastard seeming like true nobility and instead offered the highest compliment he could think of. That Valery seemed like a prince.

Valery, however, flinched inwardly. Uneducated people sometimes showed startling flashes of insight, and this felt like one of those times.

“Just do your calculations. I'm checking them later, so don't half-ass it.”

“I don't half-ass anything.”

Valery rose from his seat and stepped outside. The midday sun hung high in the sky, but the weather was cool.

A fence that had not been there originally now surrounded the house, and a separate roofed structure had been built right beside it as a stable. There wasn't much to look at, but compared to when they had first arrived, the place certainly looked much tidier.

It had already been a month since they came here.

Valery brought Snow out of the stable and mounted him. Once beyond the fence, he looked around and saw houses nearby that had now risen to a decent height. Some were nearly finished.

Brick walls were being raised with mortar, timber supports had been erected inside and out, and makeshift awnings had been stretched overhead to keep the construction from getting soaked when it rained.

The hired plasterers and bricklayers would occasionally demonstrate their craft while directing the others. Off to one side, bread, dried fish, and other food were being handed out.

As Valery rode past, the people working on the construction and those sitting along the roadside eating their meals stopped what they were doing and greeted him.

They hurriedly removed whatever they were wearing on their heads and held it against their chests. Some bowed at the waist, while others even dropped to their knees and lowered their heads. It looked like the procession of some great noble.

Valery had never ordered them to do it. It was a voluntary display of respect. Considering that they were now able to make a living because of him, it was only natural that they felt grateful.

Valery did not particularly welcome such displays of reverence, but neither could he exactly tell them to stop.

Still, he had to come out and show his face every so often to keep things running properly. He did not need to inspect or supervise anything in particular, but the people at least needed to know that the man paying for all of this was paying attention.

The problem was that people had begun calling him “Prince”.

They did not know he was actually a prince. They had simply shortened Salt Prince to Prince, but he had told them not to do that.

Valery pretended not to notice their greetings as he passed and continued down the road leading toward the river. Before long, he saw people coming downstream on something resembling a raft.

They landed at a spot that wasn't even a proper pier, and the people waiting there immediately swarmed over and dismantled the raft. In truth, it was not really a raft at all. It was simply a way of transporting timber.

Several people worked together to drag the logs away and set them aside to dry. Logs that had already dried were cut, shaved, and finished at the open-air sawmill nearby.

Arne was among them.

Since Valery was on horseback and easy to spot even from a distance, Arne soon noticed him and walked over. As he approached, he pulled off his work-stained gloves and slapped them against his legs, sending clouds of dust into the air.

“How's the work? Any problems?”

Valery spoke first.

“Nothing major. But do we really need to use timber and plaster too? It feels like we're spending more money than we need to, and we're short on manpower as it is.”

Quite a lot of people had gathered, yet there was so much work that they were still short-handed. Moving and processing the logs was especially dangerous.

“No. If we're going to build them, we should build them to last.”

“These people used to live under things barely better than tents. Do we really have to go this far......?”

Arne's point was that gathering people and giving them a way to earn a living was good, but wasn't this a little excessive?

Materials commonly used for construction elsewhere were fairly luxurious in Grinnen, since every bit of them had to be purchased and brought in.

“If you think about their sons using the houses, then their grandsons, then their grandsons' sons, and even the generation after that, it's better if they're sturdy.”

“You're thinking that far ahead......?”

“If I only tried to minimize losses and do the bare minimum, it'd feel like I was just using them. I don't want to do that.”

The plan was to gain Popular Support, use that Popular Support to establish Legitimacy, and then seize control of the city. But when it came to winning that Popular Support, Valery did not want to be calculating about it.

During one of his earlier patrols, he had seen a Marcher Knight. The man whose father had sold his horse so that others could live on the money. Valery hoped the people of Grinnen could have the same.

Money could corrupt people, but it could also breathe life and hope into them. He wanted to use the gold he had obtained from the Dwarf for that life and hope.

Arne thought in silence for a moment, then a playful smile curled onto his lips. Looking up at Valery seated on horseback, he said,

“I do think it'd be nice if someone like you became King.”

He was borrowing the irreverent joke Valery had once made about being King. Half of it was a joke, and half of it was sincere.

Between Yorik and now Arne, Valery found himself wondering what had gotten into everyone today. It was one thing when he joked about princes or kings himself, but hearing other people mention them left him feeling strangely uncomfortable.

And even if he sincerely cared about these people, the root of it had never been goodwill. I'm not a good person.

“Prince! Priiince!”

While Valery was speaking with Arne, someone came running up from behind, shouting for him. He had told them not to call him that.

Valery frowned slightly and looked back. The man running toward them looked extremely agitated.

He finally reached Valery and spent a while catching his breath.

“What happened? And don't call me that. I have no intention of committing Lèse-majesté.”

Arne privately wondered how Valery could say that after making far more irreverent jokes himself.

In any case, the man who had come running forced the words out even as he struggled for breath.

“Thugs, those damn thugs stole the food and ran off. They even beat one of the bricklayers to death!”

The moment Valery heard that, he pulled on the reins and wheeled Snow around. Then he galloped back the way he had come, the rapid clatter of hooves ringing with urgency.

When he quickly reached the scene, he found people gathered around, murmuring among themselves. The place where food had been distributed was a complete wreck, and one man lay collapsed with blood running from his head.

Valery dismounted and approached him. His skull had been smashed, and bloody froth bubbled from his nose. He was already dead.

It was contradictory to call the damage minor when someone had died, but to Valery, this did not look like a serious attack. It was a warning.

“Who did this?”

Valery asked.

His distinctive, piercing gaze sharpened like the edge of a blade. The people looked frightened, but they clamped their mouths shut and refused to speak.

They trusted and followed Valery, but the people of Grinnen were infamous for refusing to talk about crimes. They feared retaliation.

Valery knew why they weren't speaking. In one sense, they couldn't speak, but as far as Valery was concerned, they simply wouldn't.

He rose and looked over the crowd before speaking. No, this was his first and final warning.

“Listen to me carefully. I'll let it go once, but if I ask you something again and you refuse to answer, don't expect to ever see me again. Whether you starve to death, get murdered, or kill yourselves will have nothing to do with me. I won't so much as blink. Because you'll be people who mean nothing to me. Understood?”

Whenever Valery was truly angry, he became cold. His words were like cutting frost, and the people trembled as though their hearts had frozen solid.

“Go get Skard.”

With that, he walked past the crowd and headed home, leading Snow beside him. It seemed the time had finally come for a proper brawl.