Will You Accept The Deal (2)

“Your Majesty, labyrinths have monsters, but they also have many strange, new things. If you grant us the business rights, we will share what the Empire needs at an appropriate ratio.”

“Grand Duchess, if you take the position of Palace Count, I’ll think positively about the business rights.”

The Emperor acted indifferent, as if he hadn’t heard the Chief Steward at all.

“Your Majesty. Right now, the monsters inside the labyrinths aren’t coming outside. On the other hand, people can enter the labyrinths. What if, like at the Great Temple, Kaip Mountain, and Tessen, the monsters came out and rampaged? Are you waiting for that?”

Alicia said with a radiant smile.

The Emperor smiled just as broadly.

“Are you threatening me now, Grand Duchess?”

“You misunderstood. A threat? I was only speaking about a situation that could happen.”

Alicia replied without wavering.

“Labyrinths belong to the Empire. Nine-tenths of items that came out will be the Empire’s. I’ll grant Tessen the authority to guard the areas around them. If a labyrinth is in the mountains, I’ll allow you to regulate entry into the mountains; if it is in the plains, I’ll let Tessen set the boundary lines for comings and goings.”

The Emperor rattled off terms with a benevolent face.

“Your Majesty, Tessen is the one hunting the monsters. If Tessen didn’t hunt them, the Empire couldn’t have anything. Tessen has full rights to everything that grew there, but out of consideration for the Empire, our brother nation, we will share one-tenth of the goods.”

The Emperor’s claim was: I get nine-tenths, you get one-tenth.

Alicia’s claim was the exact opposite: I get nine-tenths, you get one-tenth.

The two pushed their positions hard.

Chief Steward Eugene glanced at Reichardt discreetly.

Reichardt tossed Eugene a look.

“Ahem.”

Eugene cleared his throat again, loudly enough for everyone to hear.

The Emperor turned his head.

As if teleporting, the chief steward moved to the Emperor’s side in an instant and whispered.

“Your Majesty, wouldn’t it be enough if we secured only what we needed? What use is it to accept things we don’t need?”

It was a reasonable point.

“Lusa. Musto trees. Leaves said to be gold. The Empire will have priority rights to those three.”

“Couldn’t we pay money and buy exclusive business rights?”

At the Emperor’s generous words, Alicia challenged him.

The eyes of the listeners wobbled in dizzy surprise.

“Grand Duchess, did you have that much gold?”

The Emperor spoke as if picking a fight.

“There are seven new labyrinths that fell on the Eastern Continent. We’d have to enter to know for sure, but they’d be smaller than the ones we knew before. I’ll give you ten chests—the largest chests—filled with Pearl Island pearls.”

Alicia delivered the shocking offer as if it were nothing.

“Ten chests….”

The Emperor, without thinking, murmured “ten chests” in surprise.

He tried to pretend he wasn’t startled, but it was already too late.

If he had been even a little less restrained, he might have snapped, Were you the Pearl King or something?

“Is it not enough?”

Alicia the Pearl King spoke with an innocent face, as if she didn’t know pearl prices.

“It is not insufficient.”

Reichardt, standing beside Alicia, cut in before the Emperor could answer.

The Emperor stared at his brother with eyes that looked betrayed.

“……It isn’t insufficient. Ten chests are enough. It’ll be a good deal, Grand Duchess. You said there are seven new labyrinths on the Eastern Continent—did you know the situation on the other continents?”

The Emperor spoke like a kindly older brother.

Alicia smiled brightly.

“If you write the approval letter recognizing the business rights, I will tell you.”

Her smiling face looked pure—only at a glance.

“Do you not trust me?”

The Emperor asked with a smile, and Alicia only smiled back.

“…….”

The Emperor sent Reichardt a look.

It carried the nuance: You say something too.

Reichardt pressed his lips to Alicia’s ear and whispered.

The Emperor’s eyes narrowed.

He wanted to hear what was being said, but he couldn’t.

Worse, that wasn’t what he meant by “say something,” and yet his younger brother was shamelessly indifferent.

Alicia, who had dismissed the Emperor’s words with laughter, turned to Reichardt and whispered back.

They looked close.

They were an impertinent, ill-mannered couple—but they were also grateful people who would hand over ten crates of top-grade Pearl Island pearls.

With an unpleasant face, the Emperor gestured for the chief steward to bring a pen.

The quill rolled across paper with a scratch-scratch sound.

He handed the approval letter over through the chief steward.

Reichardt received it, read it carefully, then passed it to Alicia.

“Thank you for Your Majesty’s grace. I understand eleven labyrinths were found on the Western Continent, and at least seven on the Southern Continent. I expect more will be discovered in time on the Opeun Continent and the Badeu Continent as well. When I learn more, I will relay the news through His Grace the Grand Duke. I shall take my leave.”

Alicia offered a graceful bow and turned.

“…….”

The Emperor was confused by the Grand Duchess’s excessively kind manner.

The business-rights contract was clearly advantageous to the Empire and to him.

It was practically profit for nothing.

He was grateful that a valued “customer” offered good information, but she was too kind—so it made him suspicious instead.

Has he been tricked?

There was nothing unfavorable anywhere, yet he felt uneasy, as if something had gone wrong.

Meanwhile, Alicia and Reichardt left the audience chamber, boarded a carriage, and headed for the imperial palace’s main gate.

“Will His Majesty help when we trade with other places?”

Reichardt looked skeptical.

“Of course.”

Alicia sounded utterly confident.

“And right now he’s probably agonizing. Why did she tell me all that? Why were the terms so good? He won’t be able to sleep tonight. Because he’ll be afraid he got tricked.”

Alicia smiled wickedly, and Reichardt listened closely for a moment.

Soon, a smile spread across his face too.

Alicia postponed going to Tessen.

She changed the plan again to move according to the originally scheduled itinerary.

To others’ eyes, it was as if nothing had changed.

Tracking and purifying the labyrinths—now secured by exclusive business rights—was proceeding smoothly.

Requests from other countries to purify their labyrinths also continued.

When people saw Tessen raking in gold through labyrinths, opinions within the Empire split.

The ministers lamented that if Tessen hadn’t become a duchy, all of that would have belonged to the Empire.

Even the Emperor, who profited from trading with Tessen, seemed resentful.

Alicia’s other businesses were also progressing frighteningly well.

But Alicia didn’t stop there.

Before heading to Tessen, she was preparing the next step.

These days, Alicia’s focus was Blueville.

“Huh?”

Alicia, returning to her office after stepping out briefly, stopped at the desk.

Beside the sprawled reports, there was a memo she had never seen before.

“This…”

Ingrid had said there was a salt mountain near Blueville.

She had said Blueville was in Restin, one of Tessen’s endmost villages.

Getting to Restin was simple.

Because Restin was so barren, the journey itself was hard, but at least everyone knew where it was.

But from Restin, she couldn’t find Blueville.

Restin was a small village surrounded by rugged mountains.

The villagers divided the mountains based on their own homes, and they didn’t really know the mountains’ names.

There were few villagers, and they didn’t live clustered together, so even asking around wasn’t easy.

The salt mountain business was stuck at the step of finding Blueville.

And yet, some angel had left behind notes with Blueville’s exact location.

There were four sheets in total.

A map showing Blueville’s approximate location.

An explanation of Blueville’s terrain.

Two routes that could reach Blueville, plus cautions for each route and the pros and cons of the paths.

After scanning the notes, Alicia belatedly realized whose handwriting it was.

It was Reichardt’s.

Alicia grabbed the notes and ran to the bedroom.

“Rei!”

The bedroom was empty.

“I’m here.”

A voice came from the dressing room.

Normally she would have lingered at the door and waited, but excited Alicia flung it open and rushed in.

“Rei!”

Reichardt was changing clothes.

He had been taking off his top, and he turned toward Alicia.

Alicia thrust out what she was holding and wrapped her arms around the half-bared man.

“……!”

Reichardt froze for a moment in surprise, then smiled.

He swept his outer shirt aside and held the back of Alicia, who was clinging to him.

“Thank you.”

Alicia said with a moved expression.

“For what?”

Reichardt, stroking Alicia’s shoulder in his arms, looked perplexed.

Alicia pulled back slightly and spoke in a lowered voice.

“We’re incredibly rich.”

Her cautious attitude—like someone might hear—was cute.

“We’re already incredibly rich.”

Hearing Reichardt’s flat reply, Alicia burrowed back in against his bare chest.

Reichardt received her intense movement with ease.

Alicia laughed and whispered to his face, which looked like it was asking what on earth was going on.

“The salt mountain.”

It was like a coded phrase.

Reichardt’s face was still filled with questions.

“There is a salt mountain in Tessen.”

Alicia whispered in a tiny voice, leaning against his chest.

Only then did Reichardt understand why Alicia was excited.

Among imperial nobles, rumors of a “salt mountain” had circulated for a long time.

Just scooping up salt—something that normally required enormous labor and time from salt pans—was a word that intoxicated the listener.

Countless nobles had been lured by that miraculous claim, invested gold coins, and met a cold reality.

Reichardt considered the salt mountain a fantasy.

He was flustered that Alicia was excited over something so empty.

“Alicia.”

“I’ll check and tell you tomorrow evening.”

Alicia kissed Reichardt’s cheek—just as he was about to offer a careful opinion—and ran off like the wind.

“Tomorrow…?”

Watching her excited retreating back, Reichardt sank into thought.

Even for news to travel between Tessen and Baden, it took days.

So how was she going to finish “checking” by tomorrow evening? It made no sense.

Back in the office, Alicia moved busily inside.

She either stayed in one spot radiating presence, or darted quickly over short distances.

From the traces of motion alone, Reichardt could feel her joy.

“Was she… dancing…?”

Reichardt watched Alicia’s movement for a while, then muttered with a laugh.

The fluttering vibration as she tried to stay in place looked like a dance.

‘There’s no such thing as a salt mountain, Alicia.’

It seemed better to say that a little later.

Tessen, west of the main castle.

A man on a brown horse entered the Musto Forest.

The horse ran the forest path, then stopped before a pure-white castle wrapped by an emerald lake.

East Noah, beautiful like a fairy-tale royal palace, was remembered by the people of Tessen as a castle of hell.

It wasn’t easy for a Tessen native to come near East Noah.

The Grand Duke of Tessen’s aide.

Jamie Rens had lately fallen into worry.

He thought about good and evil, mystery and efficiency, and ghosts.

Dismounting, Jamie walked with familiar steps to the lakeside.

He took a small boat across the lake and opened the gift box set before East Noah’s gate.

Inside the ornate paper gift box was a letter Alicia had sent.