Chapter 17

Chapter 17 - Hidden Truth and Revealed Facts (2)

 

Behind me as I stepped out of the great hall, I heard the urgent sound of someone running.

“Y-Your Highness!”

When I stopped walking and turned around, Baron Vidor was there, wearing the most aggrieved expression in the world.

I welcomed the baron with a hollow laugh.

“Judging by your appearance, it seems you had quite a difficult time.”

“Your Highness! How could you abandon me and disappear on your own?”

“Disappear? Did I not leave a letter saying I was stepping out for a moment?”

“That is what people commonly call disappearing!”

“I see.”

“…….”

At the sight of me calmly nodding, the baron looked as though he had many things he wanted to say.

But what could he do?

In the end, rank was power.

“You did well.”

I praised his contribution as though nothing had happened and began walking again.

At that, the baron, somewhat mollified, followed behind me and asked a question.

“But where in the world did you go? It would have been better if you had at least taken George with you…….”

“There was something I needed.”

“Hm? Could you not have ordered the servants to handle such a thing?”

At the baron’s question, I answered indifferently.

“There is no harm in preparing for the unlikely.”

There was something I had felt ever since I killed Viscount Honore.

Recently, the number of eyes watching me inside the royal palace had increased noticeably.

Needless to say, most of them were agents of the Federal Empire.

In such a situation, even if I had to move secretly, there was no need to rouse their wariness by using a servant.

After all, there was a clear difference between them knowing that the 1st Prince was making suspicious movements and not knowing it.

“Even if they find it suspicious now, nothing will change.”

“…….”

Meanwhile, we had already arrived in front of the 1st Prince’s office.

“You may go rest for today.”

“Pardon? The sun is still high in the sky, is it not?”

“Father will summon me soon. Waiting here would only be a waste of time.”

Baron Vidor seemed puzzled by the way I spoke as though it were only natural.

But soon, when he saw Father’s attendant approaching from afar, he let out exclamations of admiration.

“Your Highness the 1st Prince. His Majesty the King has summoned you.”

“As expected……!”

If there had been no summons after I caused such a matter, that would have been stranger.

I glanced at the time and nodded.

“Lead the way.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

Then the baron, who had been watching the situation, carefully joined the conversation.

“I will wait in the office while Your Highness is away.”

“As you wish.”

“Please go safely.”

Creeak-

The door to the office opened with a slight noise.

However, just as the baron was about to enter the office, he tilted his head as though something had occurred to him.

“Ah, Your Highness! Come to think of it, I heard something strange from George earlier.”

“Something strange?”

“Yes. He said he felt something out of place when he looked at the delegation from the Federal Empire…….”

“Oh?”

So he had said such a thing?

I had felt it before, but it seemed his unique intuition exerted a great deal of power even without experience.

I stroked my chin and let out a sound of admiration.

“Should I give him a reward?”

Thanks to that, a smile spread across my lips as I left the front of the office.

***

I soon reached my destination.

At most, I had thought the destination would be Father’s office, which could be seen just beyond the bend in the corridor. But today, I was led to an unexpected place.

It was what they called the King’s library.

“His Highness the 1st Prince has arrived.”

“……You are here.”

The library contained countless books collected since the previous generations.

From history books to forbidden magic tomes, the number reached as many as ten thousand volumes.

For that reason, this place, along with the King’s bedchamber, was protected by security as tight as an iron fortress.

Of course, such a fact was nothing significant to me, who had already borne the weight of the crown.

“Were you reading?”

“…….”

I roughly took off my coat and approached the bookshelf where Father stood.

The books I could glimpse were all treasures of the kingdom, recording Esteban’s history from the past.

After maintaining his silence for a while, Father sighed and spoke.

“The Galderd Plains were once Esteban’s territory. But we have never claimed ownership, and there was not even any value in doing so.”

“Yes. I know.”

“Allen Esteban. As you also know, that land is useless in every possible way.”

Although the Galderd Plains bordered the frontier, it was not fitting to call them a strategic point.

There was a simple reason. Behind the plains rose a natural mountain range, Sil Taph Grande, which completely separated Esteban from the Federal Empire.

Nevertheless, the reason they held ownership of the Galderd Plains, which was burdensome even to manage, was not simply because they needed the land. Rather, it was symbolic, a way to show how much land they possessed.

Naturally, that was precisely the full extent of that land’s usefulness.

“Whether something is useful or not is determined by information. There is no need to judge it by their standards.”

“……Did you truly have politics in mind, as you said?”

“If it looked that way, then I would call it a success.”

“You foolish boy. Recovering what was lost is only meaningful when it has practical value.”

Father’s answer was sharp.

The justification I had presented to them was that we would recover our old territory and restore the nation’s prestige.

However, even if it was Esteban’s former territory, several hundred years had already passed, and no one believed that recovering the land now would hold any meaning.

“Moreover, that land belongs to the Federal Empire. Do you not know that the nobles may target this matter like prey?”

Even if the cause was sufficient, receiving territory was on an entirely different level from receiving money, treasure, or any other form of wealth.

No matter how much the land was like a chicken rib, considering the current situation, in which they had still not relinquished ownership, the matter could become even more complicated than expected.

But from my perspective, it was simply none of my concern.

“Was it not Father who trusted me and gave implicit consent to the agreement? The Galderd Plains have already become ours, Esteban’s.”

“…….”

“By the way, the nobles’ expressions were more amusing than I expected.”

I feigned levity as I recalled what had happened in the great hall.

“So much so that I wondered whether they were people of the Federal Empire. Even though it was not a place where we were discussing national interests together with the Federal Empire.”

That was exactly right.

This meeting had been arranged to condemn their mistake and seek a solution.

Even if they tried to brazenly gloss over it, the initiative in that place ultimately belonged to us.

“We must not offend the Federal Empire? That cannot be. Regardless of what those people think, we only need to secure our own small gain.”

To me, the meeting with the delegation was nothing more than a benefit that had arisen in the course of revenge.

Whether we engaged in a war of nerves with them, or whether relations soured…… such things were nothing more than foreseeable results anyway.

“Would you please examine this letter?”

“What is this?”

“It is something I received personally this morning.”

“……You said there was something you needed to confirm, did you not?”

Father’s gaze turned to the letter in my hand.

It was a single document sealed with red sealing wax.

And written above it in elegant handwriting were the words Esteban Geological Society.

“Geology?”

“You may find it easier to understand if you think of it as a place that deals with the properties of the earth’s crust.”

Had such a society existed?

Father snatched the letter from my hand, tore open the envelope, and began examining its contents.

Rustle-

Judging by the fact that it bore the name Esteban, it was surely a society supported by the state.

However, it had never appeared in any major report, and it was a field in which the King had never taken even the slightest interest, so he thought the name unfamiliar.

And that thought lasted only for a moment. After skimming the contents of the letter, Father’s eyes widened.

“……It seems I need an explanation.”

“It is the result of comparing the components of two substances.”

“That is not what I mean…… What I am curious about is the fact that you attempted this analysis in the first place.”

“I can only describe that part as good fortune.”

By chance. And in a completely unexpected manner.

Yet to dismiss it as mere good fortune was difficult, because the degree of information I possessed was far too certain…….

Finding information from a blank slate might lack feasibility, but adding a process to information one already knew was easier than turning over one’s palm.

“……Ha, a small gain, you said?”

The King’s hand, which held the letter, was trembling faintly.

***

At the same time.

An employee of the Geological Society, who had been checking the ledger, let out an exclamation at the unexpected situation.

“Well now. What brought us a proper customer today?”

Although the place had established itself in the Capital under the name of a society, in reality, this was a place whose name was hardly known, whether within the country or beyond it.

The only customers who came at all were farm owners seeking commissions related to farmland.

At this rate, it was enough to make one wonder whether this was an agricultural society or a geological society.

The employee in charge of the morning shift seemed to have thought the same.

“It means our research was not entirely useless, at least.”

“Even so, it will probably only feed farmers…… Huh? It was even a component comparison test?”

The employee holding the ledger whistled and stroked the testing device.

“What a windfall. Our funding happened to be running out, too…….”

“Judging by the fact that they used a sword as the material, it seemed they found an iron mine.”

“A mine?! Oh!”

The two substances were gathered in one place and melted together, then a magically treated solution was dropped onto them.

Afterward, through the change in the solution’s color, they judged how similar the essence of the components making up the substances was.

This comparison technique, created to investigate geological structures, had long since become an obsolete technology.

The permanent consumption of the materials was one thing, but the testing cost itself was simply exorbitant.

“So what was the test result?”

“Red.”

“That means they contained many identical components. I am envious.”

Now the employee sat down completely beside the testing device and began leafing through the ledger.

A voice full of interest flowed from his mouth.

“A place bordering the Federal Empire? Was it around Sil Taph Grande?”

“Yes. Fortunately, there was a soil sample left from that area to use as a control group.”

“Hmm…….”

A place like that would be difficult to develop, so it probably would not be profitable…….

The employee forced himself to swallow the words that had risen to the tip of his tongue.

“Well, with a natural mountain range there, the deposits should be abundant.”

The employee set the ledger down as though it were nothing of great importance.

However, soon after, he discovered something strange and hurriedly picked the ledger back up.

His eyes trembled in disbelief.

“……Hey. Th-This.”

“What is it now?”

“……Did you check the sword’s element before putting it in?”

“No? I just put it in.”

Even so, the expression of the employee holding the ledger showed no sign of relaxing.

If anything, his gaze seemed to tremble even more than before.

The employee organizing the counter only found it frustrating.

“What is wrong? Is there a problem with the test result?”

“N-No, that is not it…….”

The elemental symbol marked on the neatly printed test sheet.

Should he call it familiar? It was something he knew all too well.

Rather, because he had never even imagined he would see it in a place like this, he had been late in recognizing what it was.

“This…… is mithril…….”

The employee weakly set down the ledger, not even realizing that he had forgotten to breathe.