Chapter 204: Internal Cleanup
Chapter 204: Internal Cleanup
Night.
Jiha sat on the sofa in his office, reading.
As a Common, Jiha had originally had no living space of his own beyond his room.
He'd used the library for receiving guests or holding secret discussions.
But now that he'd become the chairman, things were different.
'A bit of clear formality and dignity is sometimes necessary.'
Jiha was a practical man.
Thanks to his victory over Lungtao, he'd earned the match's betting dividends—5.3 billion—all at once.
But Jiha hadn't been living luxuriously, squandering that money. Well, he was squandering it in a way. He was using it to invest capital into merchants' businesses and encroach on Waris's commercial sphere, all while making it clear he could pull his funds at any moment.
The remaining money would be used for future investments and military spending.
'In the end, war is all about money...'
The moment he raised the banner of independence, a wartime footing would kick in.
Then, everything from food on down would cost money.
For one person, several billion was a lifetime's worth of money, but it wouldn't sustain a city with a population of hundreds of thousands for even a month.
'No, it might not last three days. If trade with the other cities gets cut off.'
Once Jiha raised his banner, five Uniques would follow.
'Enril, Yura, and Leticia are certain. Asira would follow because of Yura in the end, but the final taming is still pending. And Narsha...'
Narsha needed a bit more time and persuasion, but he had the rough outline of a plan.
The military force for independence was nearly assembled.
The problem was sustainability.
He had the might to maintain a faction, but he needed to secure the essential elements to support it.
'Diplomatic maneuvering, taxes, food, weapons...'
To figure those things out, he'd been looking through various books.
He didn't have to handle the practical work himself, but he had to grasp how it all functioned.
"Are you just going to keep reading?"
As Jiha was deep in thought, Leticia, seated beside him, spoke sharply.
She'd hurried right over when Jiha called, but he hadn't said a single word, just read his book, which had soured her mood.
"I'm working."
"...Fine."
When Jiha answered flatly, she shut her mouth, though she was clearly still disgruntled.
Jiha leaned his body sideways, rested his head on Leticia's lap, and lay down on his side.
Leticia was flustered, but Jiha calmly kept reading his book.
Leticia was slender overall but had a body with ample feminine curves; her legs, especially, were spectacular.
Resting his head and neck on her bare thighs, those long, cool legs extending beneath her short green miniskirt, was so comfortable he felt like he might doze off any second.
A heavenly pillow—this was exactly that sort of thing.
"What is this...? You said you were working."
Leticia's tone was grumbling, but her voice was pleased.
Happy that Jiha had called for her first and come close like this, she even smiled as she stroked his hair.
Her touch was full of affection, a comfort so deep it seemed ready to send him to sleep—and that prompted Jiha to speak. The comfort was so profound that if he let his guard down, he might truly nod off.
"Know anyone good with numbers?"
"Hm? You mean math?"
"Practical work. Someone sharp with accounting or that kind of thing."
"Hmm..."
Leticia let out a troubled sigh, as if she'd never thought about it.
'Lijin is decent with figures, but she's not a professional. A type who's sharp with finances and numbers, who can also exert influence in other cities—isn't there someone like that somewhere...?'
Jiha had focused on military power to build his foundation, but with independence close at hand, he now needed to consider other fields.
The first person to come to mind was the gray elf who'd ruled the pleasure district for centuries: Iroha Deadheart.
Her intelligence-gathering ability was now beyond doubt, and having done business for so long, she'd surely be sharp with figures as well.
'The problem is, I haven't tamed her yet, and her recruitment has a condition attached.'
That condition was a threesome with the very woman whose thighs he was pillowing now, Leticia, and Enril.
And not a forced one—the condition was to make the two women give themselves completely, body and soul.
"Sorry, I don't really know anything like that. Should I look into it?"
"Do that."
He'd have to arrange a time soon and take both Enril and Leticia at once.
He was a bit at a loss as to how to break the ice.
Furthermore, Leticia's mental state was far more fragile than she appeared; she wouldn't disobey Jiha's orders, but... he didn't want to be too harsh with her if he could help it.
As Jiha sank into thought, Leticia spoke cautiously.
"What's the deal with that Yogwi? She's suddenly staying in the barracks."
"Pairan Amaut. I heard she became a Purple Unique. You didn't know?"
"No, I didn't."
Leticia confirmed it without a care.
That meant her intelligence-gathering ability was at zero. After all, she hadn't known beforehand that Barjet and Pairan were coming to Waris either.
But Leticia had her own reasons.
"I barely even know who the other Purple Uniques are. The only ones I've seen the faces of are the celestial Unique, Gashiel, and Barjet. I don't know the names of the other two."
"You must have at least heard rumors."
"Rumors don't get out either. Being in Blue Seal, you might not know, but... Purple is an extremely rigid, controlled society."
In Blue Seal, the two Legends were on equal footing, and the Uniques beneath them were divided, forming factional cliques.
Thus, their actions were comparatively freer, and there were cracks to slip through.
"In Purple, the command structure is unified: beneath the Epic, there's one Legend, and then the other five Uniques. So unless the top tells me, I don't know either. I was warned it'd mean big trouble if I tried to find out on my own."
"And because of that, you don't even know who the Uniques are?"
"Well, I was stationed in Waris for quite a long time. They said if they told me, the information could leak into Blue Seal. Not that I was ever really curious."
"..."
To Jiha, who came from Earth, it was a bit baffling, but thinking about it calmly, it wasn't entirely beyond comprehension.
In some respects, Warsland's clothing was quite modern, and its sanitation facilities were highly developed, making it no different from Earth.
Right here in the barracks, he could use hot water whenever he wanted.
But its information and communication technology was straight out of medieval civilization. The fastest means of information was, at best, a messenger dove.
This wasn't South Korea, where the entire nation can know about an incident in ten minutes. Here, it might be ten days—or perhaps they'd never know at all.
Pleased that Jiha was showing interest, Leticia spoke in an excited voice.
"Ah, I did hear one Unique rumor long ago. They said one came from the vampires..."
"Vampires?"
He'd acquired vampiric Mana, but he'd thought they weren't a species that currently existed.
Startled, Jiha raised his head, and Leticia tilted hers.
"Yeah, bloodsuckers. You didn't know? Their numbers are very small, and they barely interact with other species, so I've only ever heard stories. They say the last time a vampire officially appeared in public was three hundred years ago, so in Blue Seal they're probably near-mythical."
"..."
Up until now, Jiha had thought his ability was vampirism.
He sinks his fangs in, drinks blood, and increases his Mana. That was textbook vampire.
'No. Now that I think about it, something's off.'
It wasn't a matter of garlic doing nothing to him or the sun not burning him.
When Jiha bit down and converted blood into Mana to absorb it, there was a limit to the amount he could take in at once.
If it exceeded that limit, the conversion wouldn't happen, and he couldn't drink any more.
'I named it vampiric Mana, but I'm not actually drinking blood. I'm converting blood into Mana and absorbing that. To my sense of taste, blood is still repulsive.'
The more he thought about it, the less it added up.
A true vampire would just drink raw blood to increase its strength, but Jiha's ability only had a similar mechanism; the principle was different.
Most of all, there was a clear limit to how much he could absorb, even when drinking blood directly.
It was almost as if it told him that drinking any more would kill the victim.
'They called it the Demon God.'
A name that yielded nothing, no matter how much Jiha searched.
If vampires existed in Warsland, Jiha's vampiric Mana was probably not a vampire power but the power of a different species.
A species that had vanished, like the incubus or the Shade.
"Didn't you ever think I was a vampire?"
"Hm? That's..."
Blushing, as if embarrassed, Leticia spoke carefully.
"...It's just something that makes me feel good. If you were a vampire, I'd be dead already."
"..."
The women Jiha drank blood from interpreted the act in a purely sexual light.
They'd misunderstood, thinking it was a routine custom from the otherworld where Jiha, a Common, was summoned from.
It was a situation born from the fact that Jiha usually kept a lot of information to himself.
"Right, that's how it is."
Leticia, who had been lovingly stroking Jiha's hair, spoke sharply.
"It's just the two of us here. Are you going to keep talking about this kind of stuff?"
"You'd rather we talk about something dirty?"
"...Th-That's not what I meant."
"Then, how about we do something dirty?"
Smiling, Jiha lightly traced Leticia's lips with his thumb.
At the man's touch, the blonde elf averted her eyes bashfully but still forced out a reply.
"I-I don't want to do it here."
Just as Jiha was about to speak, a knock sounded.
"A guest has arrived."
Leticia, startled, made to get up.
She was surely too embarrassed to let anyone else see this scene of her offering her lap to Jiha.
But Jiha placed a hand on Leticia's thigh, pressing her down.
He had his reasons for this, and besides, this pillow was extremely comfortable.
Leticia couldn't hide her uneasy expression, but she didn't disobey Jiha's hand.
"Send him in."
The door opened, and Uben bowed his head. The elf they'd seen before stepped inside.
It was Guason Lochek, who had scheduled this meeting.
As he entered, he saw Jiha sprawled out with his legs stretched and Leticia providing her thighs as a pillow—and his face showed great shock.
Even an outsider could immediately tell the two of them were in a sexual relationship.
'How will he react...?'
At a glance, Warsland might seem like a world of female superiority and male inferiority, but the reality was peculiar.
Among Normal Grade people without Mana, it was mostly irrelevant, and closed societies like that of the elves ignored the trend entirely.
To elves, who could live a thousand years, this several-century-long state of female domination was nothing more than a passing fad.
That was why they slighted Leticia, an elf Unique, simply because she was a woman, and tried to marry her off to some suitable man, completely ignoring her feelings.
Leticia hadn't liked it, but as an elf, she couldn't defy the demands of the Elf Council, of elven society.
It was within that context that Jiha had taken Leticia away by force.
'And now, having witnessed my fight with Lungtao... they'll have to accept they can't take Leticia back. At the very least, Guason has the judgment to realize that much.'
For now, Guason kept his mouth shut, gave a light bow of his head toward Jiha, and sat down opposite him.
"It has been a while."
"State your business."
After saying that, Jiha directed a comment at Leticia.
"You keep doing what you were doing."
"...Hm?"
With that, Jiha closed his eyes.
Realizing what he meant a beat later, Leticia carefully began stroking his hair again.
Contrary to her combat ability and seemingly aggressive speech, Leticia was weak-hearted.
It must have been the lifelong endurance of abuse from her own kin—people she could knock out in one hit without rank insignias—that had formed this unbalanced personality.
Going forward, Leticia would be one of Jiha's crucial cards.
To that end, this part of her needed some correction.
Guason must have run his own calculations in requesting this meeting, too.
But Jiha intended to use this opportunity to extract even more.
A female elf who bonded with another species would be expelled from elven society on whatever pretext they could find.
Would they really have the nerve to do that to Leticia, who was a Unique? ...If the elves had possessed any such reason in the first place, things never would have come this far.
Leticia also looked inwardly reluctant to show her connection to Jiha before a fellow elf, but she trusted him and obediently followed his word.
'I'm getting sleepy...'
His face buried in a pleasant pillow, eyes closed, feeling a palm carefully caress him—it was dragging him under.
He couldn't recall the last time he'd felt so at ease.
Leticia's thighs really were sweet.
"I have a request."
When Guason spoke while gauging his reaction, Jiha answered in a fading voice.
"I know. I'll grant it."
"...Pardon?"
"You came to ask me to look favorably on the elves, didn't you."
Jiha sighed as he spoke.
"Or is it just a request to look favorably on you alone?"
"Ah, no. You're quite right."
Guason nodded, flustered.
Jiha, eyes still shut, continuing to enjoy Leticia's thigh and touch, spoke.
"Then give me everything in return."
Jiha had decided what he'd say before the meeting even began.
"You elves. All of you. Fall under me."
Raising a new banner meant, in the end, founding a nation.
A nation needs its people.
To go beyond Waris and become the king who rules this godforsaken world was to reign supreme over all.
"I'll rule over you idiots."
Jiha took his first step.