Normalizing the North (3)
One day, without warning, a wild rumor rolled down from the North.
A lockdown order had been issued out of nowhere. Large groups were barred from entering northern territory.
The merchant houses went into an uproar—until a follow-up decree arrived. A handful of representatives from each major company would be permitted an audience at the ducal seat.
The moment that notice dropped, every merchant group turned into a free-for-all.
When the first decree had landed, the guildmasters had still been trying to hold their cartel together, certain the North was just running a scheme. The second notice shattered that unity. They kept up a show of solidarity while quietly sending their most trusted and fastest agents racing for the ducal seat to grab a number ticket.
Of course, not a single guildmaster was stupid enough to miss the game being played.
They knew it was a ploy meant to pry them apart. They knew.
But knowing a trap is a trap doesn't mean you can refuse to step in it.
That's just how humans work.
How the hell am I supposed to not bite on this?
Picture a button. Press it and you get a chest of gold—while someone else loses everything they own.
If that were the whole problem, even money-mad merchants might hesitate. Merchants or not, they still like to pretend they have some scrap of human decency.
Add one more clause, though, and the math changes completely.
—The button isn't only yours.
The terror that someone else could press it first. The terror that the moment they do, you go under without ever getting a turn.
People can endure injustice. What they cannot endure is losing out.
A right that could have been yours—snatched away by someone else?
Unthinkable.
Fortunately, Zeros—a man whose bones had been seasoned in the merchant world—was faster on the button than the rest. He seized one of the five available audience slots and earned his visit to the ducal seat.
All right. That part worked.
Walking into the administrative hall reserved for the appointed representatives, Zeros kept turning the problem over in his mind.
Now what?
As noted, the visits were limited, and they were sequential—not simultaneous. That meant each meeting carried serious weight, which in turn meant the merchant houses would send high-ranking people. For mid-tier outfits like his, that meant guildmasters themselves.
Arriving at the seat, he had spotted the banner of the Moria Merchant Group—his direct rivals—proof enough that his guess was right.
And so the cycle fed itself: the more important the talks became, the higher the stakes climbed with every successive meeting.
Which raised one question.
The Second Young Master, was it? What does he actually want?
What was the real purpose of these audiences?
Rumor had it that the person who issued the decree and would be conducting the interviews was none other than the Second Young Master of the Grand Duke's House. A lockdown naturally involved someone high up in the family—but the problem was that nobody knew who the Second Young Master even was.
Why?
I heard the Second Young Master was too sickly to ever leave the Grand Duke's domain in his life…
Because this was, quite literally, his first public appearance.
The guildmasters who had spent years prowling the North knew a few things. The Grand Duke's House had three children. The eldest was a giant of a man who had inherited the Grand Duke's talent wholesale. The second, by contrast, was so frail he had never once shown his face at an official function—and had never set foot outside the ducal seat at all.
At first the guildmasters assumed the Grand Duke's House was simply posturing. But real businessmen don't marry a single theory.
Once Zeros secured his number, he started entertaining other possibilities.
Why is the Second Young Master coming out himself? Wait—don't tell me…
Why would a young master who had never exerted the slightest influence, who had spent his life languishing at home, suddenly step into the open?
Is he trying to build himself a back pocket this late in the game?
The suspicion that he wanted a private power base of his own now was hard to shake.
Too far-fetched?
It's a noble house. In families where brothers stick knives in each other's backs, is there anything that isn't possible?
An open mind is how you live long in this business. Throwing money at pure nonsense is unforgivable—but you have to stay open to the idea that anything can happen if you want to survive this trade for decades.
At least, that was how Zeros operated.
Odds are high he'll demand a little something for his back pocket.
Otherwise, a person of his station would have no reason to meet a merchant like Zeros face-to-face. On that point, at least, he was certain.
With that conviction, Zeros stepped into the conference hall—and at last came face to face with the mysterious Second Young Master.
"I present myself before the heir of the noble House Wintershield, the Unmelting Shield of Winter."
Zeros bowed at once with all the proper forms.
In meetings like this, the usual play was to circle the real point while scratching whatever itch the other party might have. He was just about to float an opening feeler when—
"Right. I'm not particularly noble, so skip it. Straight to business."
The Second Young Master—who had, oddly enough, received him alone without a single guard—cut in.
"How much did you come prepared to offer?"
A fastball with no windup.
Two weeks since I'd possessed this body.
Barely settled in, and I'd already slapped a lockdown on the entire North.
Maybe that was going a little far—but then again:
Hell if I know. It's not like I declared martial law or staged a military coup.
For me, this counted as soft.
The die was already cast. The so-called family head I still hadn't met wouldn't be back for over a month. I had jabbed the merchants' greed and their mutual distrust until their cartel started to crack.
If I cleaned this up properly, I'd have a leash around their necks. If I failed, the whole North would eat the backlash.
So I had to do this well.
I had no choice but to do this well.
"Young Master. The guildmaster of the Zeros Merchant Group has arrived."
"Send him in."
The door opened, and candidate number one walked through.
Zeros, guildmaster of the Zeros Merchant Group.
The name sounded vaguely Western and respectable, but in a medieval world it was about as common as dirt. Translated into twenty-first-century Korea, this was Kim Cheolsu of Cheolsu Distribution walking into the room.
"I present myself before the heir of the noble House Wintershield, the Unmelting Shield of Winter."
He launched into the noble greeting the second he crossed the threshold.
I could have circled around the point with him.
"Right. I'm not particularly noble, so skip it. Straight to business. How much did you come prepared to offer?"
I had no intention of circling anything.
I threw the fastball dead center, and Zeros—still bowed—froze solid on the spot.
I can practically hear the gears grinding from here.
Negotiations like this are usually pure WWE. Even when top-level heads of state sit down to talk armies, the real work is done by staffers scrambling underneath, scripting every line in advance. That's just how it works. No commander, however brilliant, knows a hundred percent of the operational details—so how is he supposed to decide everything on the spot? You stick to a script. And scripts take time to write.
I had just opened a UFC cage fight instead.
"I—I beg your pardon, but what do you mean by that…?"
The man who had been ready to take a few soft shots and work the clinch couldn't wipe the shock off his face.
What the hell?
Why are we starting with real techniques from the first second?
Doesn't Royal Rumble give you thirty seconds of invincibility at the start?
"Exactly what I said. How much did you come prepared to offer?"
The eyes of a man who had clearly lived a solid merchant's life spun like tops. The emotion What is wrong with this bastard? was written all over him.
Okay. First turn secured.
"You expected this, didn't you? The North issued a lockdown, and I—the Second Young Master who never left his room—came down in person. You traveled all this way. Don't tell me you weren't planning to cover my travel expenses?"
"T-travel expenses…? Ah—no. Hahaha! Of course, of course we must cover them!"
Zeros's pupils went into live seismic activity as he swallowed the words You little shit, this is your house! But he was a mid-tier merchant with years of scar tissue. He bought himself a turn with laughter, steadied his breathing, and spoke again.
"As for travel expenses, we will provide them most generously. First, however, I would like to discuss the reason you summoned us."
"Hmm. The reason I summoned you."
I stroked a chin so smooth it hadn't grown a single whisker.
I was playing a thug noble. Formal speech, but underneath it pure street muscle—young, short-tempered, and born into the top one percent of this era's aristocracy. That character had to hold.
"It's about what you expected. Our family head has entrusted me with my first real assignment."
"An assignment…?"
"Apparently, trading with all of you has been bleeding the North dry. That shortfall cascades into tax revenue, and I've been told to do something about it."
"A-and why are you directing that at us…?"
"Why else? Because you've been skimming far too much. So the North has decided to drop the shutters. If every deal is a loss, the answer is simple—stop dealing."
I kept firing direct attacks with no backup plan. This kind of rush with no Berserker Soul in hand? Insect Haga would cry looking at this draw.
"T-tyranny!"
Zeros finally shrieked. His life points were apparently still above zero. But I knew that trembling voice was theater too.
"What is?"
"To suppress legitimate commerce like this!! If that isn't tyranny, what is?"
"Strange. I was only exercising the rights granted to me. Closing the North—that authority was bestowed on our house by His Majesty the Emperor."
"…!"
Exactly. The authority to seal the North was a privilege the Grand Duke's House held from the Emperor. Why such a thing existed was anyone's guess, but if you have a tool, you use it.
"Y-you'll regret this!"
Zeros shouted like Team Rocket promising they'd be back. I just dug a finger in my ear and asked again.
"Regret what?"
"Without us, the North's goods stop moving! The Grand Duke's House may manage some self-sufficiency, but…! Without us, the other villages will all starve!!"
Maybe because I had already dragged the fight into the mud first, he spat out something a merchant would never normally dare say in front of a noble. Which also meant he had already burned his ultimate technique. The finishing move he should have husbanded and saved—spent this early, this cheaply?
Then the objective team fight was going to cost him.
"Ah. Well. That could happen, I suppose."
"E-excuse me?"
Again: I was playing a thug noble. The top one percent of this era's aristocracy. And nobles like that, in a moment like this, would say exactly this:
"But what does that have to do with me?"
The ones starving would be commoners. Not me.