Chapter 129
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 129
Oscar, who had been standing still and staring out the window, pulled out his pocket watch. Taking the cue, Simon pulled out his own.
The time was 4:40 PM.
“The Tekan bastards consider 7:00 PM the hour of the goddess; they even halt wars for it. We should probably expect to wait until at least—”
“Tell him he has ten minutes to finish his meal.”
Cut off mid-sentence, Simon fell silent and signaled to a wolf. Not that it would make any difference to the Tekan Ambassador.
Once the wolf left to deliver the order, Simon habitually pulled a cigarette from his breast pocket. Seeing this, Oscar flicked his finger. Simon immediately offered him one, which Oscar placed between his lips with practiced ease.
Look at him. And he claimed he’d quit.
Simon lit Oscar's cigarette before his own. Just as the small parlor began to fill with smoke, the wolf who had gone to the ambassador returned.
“My apologies, Your Excellency. He says it is difficult for him to finish his meal in ten minutes…”
Through the white haze, Oscar chuckled. He pulled out his watch once more. A glance at the face showed it was now 4:55 PM. Snapping the pocket watch shut, Oscar said, “Tell him we leave in five minutes.”
Only then did Simon panic.
“Your Excellency, I know time is of the essence, but considering the ambassador’s influence within Tekan, waiting a few hours would be better for our future prospects.”
Normally, Simon never had to say such things to Oscar. In fact, Oscar was the type of man who would wait an entire day with a smile on his face, so long as he got what he wanted in the end. Had they not made this long journey precisely to foster a friendly relationship with the Tekan Ambassador?
Yet, Oscar offered no explanation.
“We leave in five minutes. No, four.”
He merely stated the deadline. And exactly four minutes later, the moment the hands of the clock struck 5:00 PM, he moved. It was as if this was an absolute, unmovable deadline. It wasn't as if he had an important appointment after this meeting… Simon, utterly bewildered, hurriedly discarded his cigarette and followed his master.
*
Meanwhile, the Tekan Ambassador was pacing circles in his spacious parlor. The embassy staff who had accompanied him hovered uneasily by the windows. One of them, looking outside, swallowed hard.
A sleek black carriage was parked at the hotel entrance, surrounded by menacing men in pitch-black suits.
“Ambassador, since the Marquis has come all this way, perhaps you should meet him instead of making him wait…”
“Every battle is about momentum!” the ambassador snapped, still pacing. “I am the representative of Tekan! Right now, I am Tekan!”
“…”
“And yet, he dares to summon an ambassador when he isn’t even a king! In the end, I was the one who had to come here!”
The ambassador wagged a chubby finger, spittle flying from his lips.
“I won’t meet him until tomorrow morning at the earliest! The longer I hold out, the more advantageous our position becomes!”
Just as his booming voice echoed through the room—
“Wh-What?!”
“A-Ambassador!”
The door swung open without so much as a knock. A pungent, acrid smell wafted in, but the cigarette smoke didn't even register to the ambassador.
Frozen mid-stride with his finger still raised, he stared blankly at the towering man walking into the parlor.
The man entered with a cigarette between his lips and stopped directly in front of the ambassador. He took a deep drag and exhaled slowly, the sight sending a shiver down the ambassador’s spine.
The Marquis’s voice cut through the smoke.
“I’m afraid I can’t wait until tomorrow morning.”
The dumbfounded ambassador stammered as if in a trance.
“W-What is so urgent…?”
“I cannot share that with you.”
The ambassador, who had just been blustering about representing Tekan, was now frozen like a mouse before a cat. His previous fury had vanished without a trace.
The Tekan Ambassador, who had been guarding a crumbling embassy, had rubbed his eyes in disbelief when the leadership of Reinhardt had appeared like a comet. The handsome, red-eyed man was undoubtedly Simon von Bernheim, Oscar’s right-hand man, and the Marquis’s insignia he presented was genuine.
After the initial shock came suspicion.
Why on earth had the leadership of Reinhardt sought him out?
Naturally, the Tekan Canal came to mind.
The canal was currently a major point of contention within Tekan. Built with an astronomical amount of debt, it had failed to function as intended, becoming an absolute white elephant. With exorbitant maintenance costs, it was no exaggeration to say the national debt was mounting by the second.
Thus, Reinhardt’s visit was a stroke of immense good fortune.
But every battle was about momentum, and every deal had a middleman’s cut!
The desperate party was always the one to spend money. How much should he demand from the Marquis in exchange for packaging this news favorably and sending it to his home government?
Yet, facing Oscar, the ambassador couldn’t utter a single word. An alarm blared in his head, warning him that this was a man he must not cross.
His terrifyingly beautiful face seemed almost inhuman.
“You seem to think holding out works in your favor,” Oscar said, his voice calm as he walked over to the glass ashtray on the table and tapped his cigarette. It was as if he had read the ambassador’s mind. “But it is quite the opposite.”
He continued, “You know what I want. And what you want is a broker’s fee, is it not?”
“Wh-Who do you take me for?!”
“Ten billion Kerte.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nine billion Kerte.”
“W-Wait a moment, Marquis!”
“Eight billion.”
“…”
As the sum dropped with every word, the ambassador snapped his mouth shut, his shoulders trembling. He quickly dismissed the embassy staff from the room. Watching him with indifferent eyes, Oscar stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and murmured, “The price will drop every minute. I have plenty of ways to contact Tekan without you. The Tekan government, whose debt is piling up in real-time, might just demand you compensate them for the money lost during the time you wasted. What will you do then?”
The ambassador’s neck puffed out like a threatened frog’s. Oscar let out a smirk and cut the price again.
“Seven billion.”
“Ah, fine! Fine, I understand!”
In the end, the desperate party was always the first to wave the white flag. Oscar leaned his hip against the table and pulled a pen from his jacket.
“Bring the documents.”
“…What is the great hurry?” the Tekan Ambassador asked in disbelief, but Oscar didn’t even deign to reply. He merely checked the time once more.
Like a man with an incredibly important appointment.
*
A twenty-minute carriage ride from Vies, the capital of Luxen, revealed a manor surrounded by vast vineyards. The term “manor” was an anachronism in an era where the class system was crumbling, but the owner of this land insisted on it.
The owner of the manor was Margaret Rose von Franz.
A collateral relative of the royal family, she had lived in the Luxen Royal Palace since childhood. Even after her marriage, she split her time between the palace and her manor, always maintaining close ties with the royals. As the years passed and everyone older than her died, she eventually began calling herself the “Dowager Lady.”
“I love my manor most when viewed from here. I am not particularly fond of landscape paintings, but I wanted to preserve this view at every moment, so I commissioned the greatest artists of our time to paint it. They hang all over the castle.”
“Indeed. It is more beautiful than any scenery I have ever beheld.”
“Those faint sculptures over there are all decorations from the Temple of Phaetusta, from five centuries ago.”
The Dowager Lady spoke of her refined taste and the greatness of her lineage as naturally as she breathed.
“I…”
Mid-sentence, she suddenly knitted her brows. She flung the window open and shrieked down toward the terrace.
“How many times have I told you not to touch that!”
Her shrill, booming voice startled the maids working at the edge of the vineyard.
“That tree is expensive! I told you never to touch it! How many times must I say it!”
As the maids near the tree bowed repeatedly in apology, the Dowager Lady slammed the window shut and muttered fiercely, “Honestly. Idiots. That kind of stupidity is inherited, passed down from their ancestors. And they want to abolish the class system?”
Charlotte let the Dowager Lady's hysterical complaints go in one ear and out the other. While the older woman had always been prone to irritation, her current state was excessive. There was a clear reason for her foul temper.
“Margaret Rose von Franz is so deeply in debt she couldn’t repay it even if she sold off all her manors. His Majesty hasn’t granted her an audience in quite some time.”
Charlotte recalled Dietrich’s words. After a moment, the Dowager Lady, gradually regaining her composure, spoke.
“So, what brings you all the way out here?”
Charlotte offered a lukewarm smile.
“I simply have a lot on my mind.”
“What kind of worries?”
“Raising children doesn’t always go as one hopes, Dowager Lady.”
“Who? Sabine? Or the Marquis?”
“Our Sabine would never cause me such grief.”
The Dowager Lady, whose head had been throbbing with financial worries, perked up at the mention of someone else’s troubles—especially when they concerned Oscar, the man at the center of everyone’s attention.
“Is the Marquis not your proud son? If there is any worry, it must be that he has reached thirty and has yet to start a family…”
“…”
“Could it be…?”