Nothing's Going to Happen
The door creaked open, and Rachel stepped out.
Merlin, the staff member who had been waiting outside, hurried over in alarm.
"D-Director...! A-are you feeling any better now...?"
The corners of Rachel's eyes were still red, still swollen. And yet Merlin couldn't help but feel a rush of relief. A will far more resolute than before was written across her face.
"I'm sorry for making everyone worry, Merlin. We don't have time to waste. Let's move quickly."
"Y-yes? Ah—yes!"
"Have every engineer in the Technology Department assemble in the workshop."
Merlin bolted down the corridor to summon the staff. Rachel walked toward the workshop alone.
When she had first received word of Professor Sarah Benzos and her husband's deaths, it had felt as though the world itself were crumbling.
She had been a child then, her mother gone, left alone in the North. The people of House Vesmont had appeared without warning and all but dragged her to the ducal estate. They had recognized the talent of a girl who had never once surrendered first place at her school.
A commoner orphan who distinguished herself that much — of course they wanted her.
Overnight she had been saddled with the grandiose title of second daughter of House Vesmont. Others might have envied her, thinking she had struck gold. They were wrong. Peel away the gilding, and that place was a living hell.
How the brand of bastard operated within those walls was something you could never understand unless you had lived it. Half-siblings she was meeting for the first time in her life tormented her as naturally as breathing, and every soul in the family despised and loathed her.
But to outsiders who knew nothing of the truth, she was merely the shining young lady of House Vesmont. Nothing changed when she entered the Academy. She had no friends. She had no mentor. Students and professors alike were too busy groveling, watching her every expression.
Those who approached with smiles were opportunists, every one of them, hoping to forge a single connection to the ducal house. Even when she achieved something, a calculation always crouched behind the praise: how might this catch a Vesmont's eye? Her effort and her talent were dismissed beneath a single assumption — that a daughter of Vesmont would of course have received the finest education money could buy.
Rachel did not exist. There was only Vesmont.
I was happier when I was scraping by, day to day.
It was in the midst of wondering whether she should simply run that it happened.
"Miss Rachel. I read the paper you wrote with great interest. A mana amplification circuit designed around phase inversion... that's an approach I would never have thought of."
Professor Sarah Benzos had come to her.
At first Rachel kept her distance, certain this woman was the same as all the rest. But the longer she spent in the laboratory with Professor Sarah, the more clearly she understood. This was a scholar who truly loved her discipline, who lost herself in it.
The name Vesmont, which Rachel had grown so sick of hearing, never once left Professor Sarah's lips. There was only a passion for scholarship, and the kind of life advice a young student needed to hear. Because of her, Rachel had been able to reclaim the confidence she had lost. In becoming the person she was now, Professor Sarah had been nothing less than a second mother.
And that woman had died, meaninglessly, in an accident. The grief was so vast she could scarcely breathe.
She had been sitting there, paralyzed in despair, when the phone rang.
Allen Goldman. That peculiar man she had encountered in Hamilton had contacted her, saying he wished to pass on a request from Professor Sarah. At first she had wondered how on earth he could have any connection to the professor.
But then... the single sentence that came through the receiver burned every suspicion away.
"If no suitable material exists, you must create it yourself. Just as the alchemists of old did."
The moment she heard it, a shiver swept through her entire body.
Research into new materials. The last subject Rachel had discussed with Professor Sarah. An academic communion between the two of them that no outsider could possibly have known.
"...If no suitable material exists, you must create it yourself."
Allen had been right. It was as good as a last will Professor Sarah had left for her. Even if she had sought the professor's counsel in a moment of helplessness like this one, she would surely have given the same answer.
...Professor Sarah. Even at the very end, you're opening a path for me.
Moisture still clung to the corners of her eyes, but her golden irises gleamed with a keen light. What substance to synthesize, and how. In the genius's mind, the calculations were already complete.
Clunk!
She opened the workshop door.
"Hah..."
He set down the receiver. His back was soaked through with cold sweat.
I almost really blew that...!
Still, it seemed to have gone well enough. Judging by her reaction, she had found the answer in his hint.
All that's left now... is to wait for Rachel to invent that cryo storage thing, just like in the original.
There's no way she can't make it just because I got involved, right? You're the heroine, for crying out loud.
Praying fervently to himself, he headed back to the mansion.
Several weeks passed.
He swallowed, picked up the morning paper with his nerves drawn tight, and slipped a finger into the edge of the technology section.
Flip!
He spread the paper with both eyes squeezed shut. His heart hammered against his ribs.
Cautiously cracking his eyes open, he snuck a glance at the massive headline splashed across the top of the page.
"Yes! She did it!"
Looks like she had properly created the new material. Cheering, he flipped to the business section.
Selwyn Trading's stock, which had been in free fall, had mooned on the back of the tech announcement. His average cost was sitting a shade above the lows, but that hardly mattered. He was already deep in the green.
"Heh heh. That's more like it. That's the Empress of Business for you."
And then the next main episode: the North.
The short version went something like this. Rachel takes a long-overdue vacation to her hometown in the North. The infrastructure is as backward as ever, the cold as brutal, and they even find poison in the wells the territory's people drink from. She joins forces with the Northern Grand Duke, puts her technology and her resourcefulness to work, and gets the territory's infrastructure back on its feet. A roaring success. A Northern fief that had been hemorrhaging money swings into the black and comes alive again.
Then, as a bonus, an internal audit of the territory. Traces of corruption turn up. The retainers who were supposed to support the Grand Duke had been deliberately sabotaging operations and embezzling every fund they could get their hands on. Dig into the records, and the truth behind it surfaces. An anonymous organization. They had been feeding the retainers money and information, instigating acts of treason. The goal: a plan to attract large-scale factories to the North.
The retainers catch on that Rachel is onto them and send assassins after her life, but the Northern Grand Duke, who had been staying at her side, saves her. He rounds up everyone involved and puts them to interrogation. But the only confession they get is that they don't know who it was. In the end, even Rachel and the Grand Duke can't identify the mastermind.
Rachel, however, knew it in her bones. There was only one entity in the Empire that used methods that vicious and moved capital on that scale.
House Vesmont.
So it really was Heath Vesmont's doing.
They had no physical evidence, so they had to drop it and bury the matter. But it became the moment she resolved to build a power base of her own — plans to found a major corporation, that is.
"...Yeah. That was more or less the gist."
The important thing was that the Northern episode had almost no overlap with the previous incidents, so there was little chance of the plot going off the rails.
"Which is to say, I just park my money in Selwyn Trading and sit back and enjoy the returns."
No bad news on the horizon for a while, and the Cryo Storage Device Rachel had created packed such an enormous punch. From here on out, it was nothing but an upward climb.
He flipped through the desk calendar, counting the days.
"Hmm... I wonder when the servants will arrive."
I need to get my own territory back in order. Well, I've got more than enough money, so it's just a matter of time.
He would take it easy and wait in peace.
Nothing's going to happen.
BANG—!!
"Fucking hell...!"
Heath slammed the desk, trembling.
Selwyn Trading's stock, which he had been certain would crash, had rebounded like a bastard the instant the exclusive hit. He had been so sure of Edward's downfall that he had thrown five million gold into a short — and taken a loss.
"Rachel... so that damned bitch actually made it. Rachel... Rachel, Rachel...!"
Creak.
The office door opened.
"Why so worked up, brother?"
Isabel stepped in carrying a file of documents. Heath straightened his rumpled clothes.
"...It's nothing. Is the investigation finished?"
"Yeah, here. But... you'll see. It's a little strange."
"Strange?"
Heath took the papers Isabel held out. As he scanned down the pages, his eyes narrowed.
"...This."
SUBJECT:Allen Goldman
RANK:Baron
EDUCATION:None. No record of university attendance.
FINANCIAL STATUS:Until approximately one month ago, crushed by debt and on the verge of bankruptcy.
The late Baron and Baroness incurred substantial debts in the course of providing relief to those around them, subsequently dying of illness. Their only son inherited the title and, through mismanagement, drove the territory into ruin while remaining insolvent. A backwater noble of no distinction whatsoever.
"Completely incompetent."
The specs in the file were pathetic. A man who had never even been near a university, and until a month ago this backwater noble nobody had been crushed under a mountain of debt, one step from ruin.
"The previous baron and baroness took on debt trying to help the people around them, then died of illness. The only son who inherited the title was so useless he ran the territory into the ground while drowning in debt... What a worthless bloodline."
Debt, huh... The timing is rather convenient.
"That was ten years ago, wasn't it?"
Heath lifted his gaze to his sister.
"Heh. Seems that way."
"Anyway, he's just some country noble you could find anywhere in the Empire, isn't he? I don't see how a bumpkin like this would be mixed up with Rachel."
"...Agreed. I can't find a point of contact."
"But here's the really weird part."
Isabel handed Heath another sheet.
"This man suddenly took out a loan using his territory's real estate as collateral, then dumped every last coin of it into Rachel Mining stock. It felt so off I even dug through his recent trading records."
Her crimson lips curved into an arc.
"He opened a massive short on Selwyn Trading, then bought it back. We're talking tens of millions of gold. That's practically his entire fortune."
"...!"
"Doesn't that strike you as odd? No matter how much nerve you've got, putting your entire fortune into a single stock doesn't make any sense. And yet this man does that insane thing as if it's nothing — and he's actually turning a profit. He doesn't have an information network; he can't even afford the social club dues, so he has no connections. So how?"
"...It would seem."
The papers crumpled in Heath's grip.