This North Needs Reform (1)

The wish to rise in the world.

The reasons people hunger to pin a star on their shoulders are as varied as the people themselves.

Some simply love power.

Some want to bark orders with a jerk of the chin.

Some want to get cozy with defense contractors and skim off military funds.

As for me, the answer was simple.

I want a unit of my own. I want to run it myself.

Maybe it was because I had been born in that backwater called Cheorwon, but from the time I was small I had wanted to develop the place I came from, to make it better.

That was why I enlisted, too.

In twenty-first-century Korea, no matter how high you climbed, the roles open to you were limited. But the military was a closed world. Inside a unit you actually owned, the authority you held was enormous.

Once you make division commander, you have the power to move mountains.

So I worked like a dog. When a three-star octopus of a general told me that if I wanted stars I would have to grind it out in the boondocks, I did not refuse. Ambition played its part, of course, but more than that I believed field experience as a working officer would help me achieve the dream later.

From too high a perch you cannot see the low ground. I wanted to scour every corner while I was still down among them.

In my previous life that dream had turned to foam—

But here it is different.

By sheer luck I had been reborn into a bloodline no ordinary person could touch. Not just any house—the blood of the Northern Grand Duke himself. That pedigree outranked even the purest of purebreds, the ones who graduated from the Imperial Military Academy and were called “true bone.”

And more than that—

I’m not the heir. I’m the second son.

I had never wanted to be a commander. I wanted the working officer’s seat. The post of Second Young Master sat high enough to carry real power, yet low enough that I was not locked into pure command and strategic responsibility. I occupied that sweet spot between the highest commander and the man who actually moves the pieces—exactly the position I had always craved.

And from what I can tell, there is no succession fight here.

According to the memories, the next Grand Duke had long since been named: Darius, the legitimate firstborn of the official wife. The original owner of this body ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had been born of a concubine, and even she had died when he was young.

No amount of thrashing would ever put him on the seat. Someone else might have called it the otherworld version of Hong Gildong. To me it was the perfect fate heaven itself had arranged.

So gods… actually exist?

Whether I owed thanks to Buddha or to God I did not know, but I was grateful all the same.

In that case, I might as well enjoy it to the fullest.

I returned the salutes of the watchtower guards and climbed down. By the time I reached the bottom, sweat was pouring off me. The servants who had been fretting below guided me back to the recovery room.

“Young Master, you must not overexert yourself.”

Their eyes said they intended to force another examination on me no matter what. I submitted to a magical scanner, confirmed my condition, and stood up. They nearly fainted when I made to leave again, but when I told them I was only going to my own rooms they finally yielded.

And so I returned—for the first time?—to my office. No, my room.

The space was large enough to swallow a suburban house, and the moment I stepped inside a bone-deep familiarity welcomed me.

“Logwell, you bastard. You really were like me.”

I kept noticing it: the original Logwell Wintershield and I shared the same grain. Perhaps because his body had always been frail, he differed from the rest of the North—a people famous for being rough as gravel—and had set his heart on unit management. Territory management, really.

And that desire had nothing to do with power.

It was a designer’s mind. How do I make the North a better place to live?

In the memories, Logwell Wintershield had been ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠treated as a freak even among Northerners. Most of them preferred using their bodies to using their heads; he had loved learning from childhood. He never particularly chased magic, yet he loved books. The proof filled the room: bookcases crammed with volumes lined every wall.

These look like unit-management journals.

The shelves held more than purchased tomes. Many were works Logwell himself had poured sweat into writing. For example—

“Asbil Village Development Plan. The name matches the place exactly.”

They were not battle-tested, but they were his own military doctrines, built from every academic text he could find.

Present ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the organization’s future vision, propose future force employment concepts, and raise operational efficiency. That flavor is awfully familiar.

I turned the pages, reading the resolve he had written into the preface.

“Whoa. A mountain of dense content.”

Perhaps because he had written it only to organize his own thoughts and never meant for anyone else to see it, the prose was not entirely rambling, yet readability still suffered in places.

Worse—

“Mm-hmm, yes, yes. That fresh newbie smell is unmistakable.”

The writing reeked of a man who had spent his career drafting doctrine without ever smelling the field.

Classic armchair theorist.

Maybe his weak body had kept him from leaving the castle often. Inside his study Logwell had written doctrine for the villages under Wintershield protection and gathered every scrap of material he could, yet the practical edge was sorely lacking.

Doctrine written by reading the introductory manuals and then stitching together other people’s doctrines. Exactly how I was right after I was commissioned.

Whether we liked it or not, Korean military doctrine often borrowed from the Americans. Most of it was translation, and chasing the latest American updates produced translations of translations.

I would not call that wrong—the language barrier is high and steep, and simply translating is already exhausting work. But because so little effort went into optimizing the material for each actual unit, a gap between doctrine and reality was inevitable.

“Everything else is more of the same.”

The other volumes told the same story. The reference books were worn to rags, though, so at least the man had worried hard.

“Good.”

I closed the last book with a soft thump and made a decision I had already been circling.

“The dream you never finished—I’ll finish it for you.”

Logwell Wintershield’s wish for Northern development and my own wish to manage a unit of my own were two sides of the same coin. To make either real, the first step was obvious.

“Asbil Village. I have to go, don’t I?”

First I would put my own two feet on the ground.

“Absolutely not!!!”

The moment I announced I intended to visit Asbil Village, the servant—no, old Max—let out a desperate cry.

“You will have to walk over this body first!!”

He looked ready to fling himself spread-eagle across the floor. According to the memories he had watched over me since childhood alongside Sir Bearwolf; at this rate he really might throw himself down.

I could not allow that. It was not merely the Confucian boy still lingering in my soul that insisted on respecting elders.

“That will not do. You have to come with me.”

Asbil Village. A place where wild beasts were the least of the problems—monsters appeared there. How was I supposed to reach it alone?

“As butler you have the authority to detach private soldiers, do you not? Officially I command no subordinate units… that is, I have no personal right to order troops. I need your help, Max.”

Memory slowly supplied the rules: the North had regulations of its own, and Max—butler and former centurion—could requisition up to thirty soldiers. Command of private troops was a symbol of power; the legitimate heir could not casually wield them, but Max was another matter. Without his cooperation I was not going anywhere.

“Never!! Absolutely never!!”

And the very man I needed was lying down in refusal.

It was infuriating, yet—

Hmm. Familiar flavor.

Whenever you asked another department for cooperation, nine times out of ten you met exactly this. Especially when the request was something they had never done before. Usually the reason was one of two things.

First, it violates security regulations. Second, they simply do not want to.

The first left no room to negotiate. The second was mostly laziness dressed up as impossibility, and if you dug you could usually find a way. This case, I judged, was the second.

“Why not?”

“Do you truly not know, Young Master? You lay unconscious for two full months and only woke yesterday! Absolute rest is barely ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠enough, and you propose to ride three days to a buried village—does that make any sense?”

“Oh.”

So there was at least one person with common sense here. When the Grand Duke’s heir had declared that a man who had starved must eat meat and shoved roast at a patient, I had begun to wonder whether common sense itself was different in another world.

“What do you mean, ‘oh’! I am the one who should be asking! Why must you go now? Can you not wait until the village is stable? The roads are completely buried under heavy snow, and after a monster attack the place is effectively under wartime conditions….”

“I know. That is exactly why I am going now.”

“…Pardon?”

“Please read this.”

I held out the book I had brought—the Asbil Village Development Plan written by the original owner of this body.

Max had been braced for a long fight. He snatched the volume with fire in his eyes, then began to skim. The venom in his gaze slowly drained away.

“‘I’ have spent years devising a plan to develop Asbil Village. Yet the place is so backward and isolated, so ringed with intractable problems, that no easy path to growth exists. No matter which references I consulted, I could not find a workable solution. I wondered why—until yesterday. I realized I had never faced their problems myself.”

To solve a problem you must first confront it. In Asbil’s case that problem was the endless monster raids.

“I must go in person. The timing is perfect. By the time I arrive, my elder brother—who left yesterday and moves far faster than I—will already have dealt with the monsters and begun mopping up the aftermath. A few stragglers may remain, but that only makes it better for feeling the ground truth and diagnosing the real causes.”

“But why now? You were collapsed until only days ago…!”

“That is precisely why. When I opened my eyes yesterday the thought struck me: this frail body could drop dead tomorrow and no one would be surprised. So before it is too late I must do something—anything—for this North.”

“Ah…”

When you need cooperation you cannot afford to be picky about means. If you lack the right tool yourself, you borrow someone else’s.

In this case the universal tool was obvious.

“Please help me. This is for the North.”

Not my plea—the years of quiet labor the original Logwell had poured into these pages.

“…I will have a carriage prepared.”

The old butler could not turn his back on the sincerity of the child whose blood he had watched over for decades.