Outbidding Everyone with Money
The next morning.
Before heading into the slums in earnest, I met up with Viola alongside Chloe.
"We’re fixing the collapsed wall first, right? I already sent the workers out with all the mortar and construction materials they’d need, so just start with that. If anything runs short while you’re working, let me know."
Viola, who had spent the whole night scrambling to meet my requirements, let out a long, drawn-out yawn.
"Haaam.... Then I’m off to pass out for real. Do your best supervising the work today. Fighting, Your Highness."
She waved and turned to leave, then stopped as if something had just occurred to her.
"Ah, right."
She pulled a neatly wrapped piece of candy from her arms and popped it into Chloe’s mouth.
"Munch, munch...."
Chloe blinked in surprise and ended up taking the candy without thinking, puffing out her cheeks as Viola smirked and gently ruffled her red hair.
Viola must have found this little thing who stayed glued to my side pretty adorable, too.
"Our Chloe really is cute."
I patted her head as well.
This red-haired noggin. Every time I saw it, I wanted to reach out and ruffle it.
Honestly, I think I’m addicted.
"So~ I’m super jealous, Your Highness. Can’t you lend her to me sometime?"
"I’ll think about it."
"What the hell! I’m not an object, you know!?"
Chloe smacked my waist.
Why am I the only one getting hit?
Viola snickered and disappeared down the dark alley.
Anyway.
Shall we get to work for real?
—
I arrived in Slums Districts 3 and 4 with the foremen dispatched by Chloe and Viola, along with a dozen or so monitoring knights Giselle had assigned to me.
"Hah, look at this air. It’s filthy."
As I pinched my nose and furrowed my brow, the mood behind me among the knights immediately turned heavy.
Their eyes were sharp with tension.
That piece of trash, that thug, is definitely going to whip the helpless poor and throw them out into the streets in the dead of winter! We must, in the name of Her Grace the Grand Duchess, stop such brutality at once!
I could practically hear every one of their thoughts.
Snickering to myself, I kicked my villain act into high gear.
"Hey! Tear down all these stinking shacks right now!"
Waving my baton, I shouted at the top of my lungs.
"I’m going to level this whole wasteland and build my own private luxury bathhouse, with scorching Ondol heating running full blast! Smash everything!"
The moment I barked the order, the slum residents, who had no idea what was happening and looked ready to be thrown out into the cold, dropped to the snow and burst into tears.
"Y-Your Highness! Please, spare us!"
"Where are people like us supposed to go? If you throw us out in the middle of winter, we’ll freeze to death in the streets!"
Men, women, and children alike all threw themselves to the ground and wailed.
Watching this, the captain of the monitoring knight order finally couldn’t take it anymore and stepped forward with his eyes wide.
"Your Highness! What is this cruel behavior? Driving the people into the streets in this bitter cold is a blatant act of tyranny that goes against the Grand Duchess’s will! Please, stop this immediately!"
The knights placed their hands on their sword hilts and readied themselves to block me.
As they bared their hostility, Chloe lightly grabbed my sleeve and went on alert.
But I just snorted and pulled something out of my coat pocket.
"Shut up! Who said anything about freezing to death?"
Clink! Clink!
I tossed the leather pouches I’d brought by carriage down in front of the crying slum residents.
"I’m giving you this money, so book an inn room, a whole one if you have to, or rent a house and disappear from my sight! You’re kicking up filthy dust, so pack up and get lost already!"
"...Huh?"
Stunned, the slum residents carefully untied the leather pouches that had landed on the ground.
And in that instant—
"H-hiiiiii!?!"
The eyes of the people who opened them nearly popped out of their heads.
Inside the pouches, gold coins glittered—not just enough for an inn room in the center of the territory, but enough to buy a perfectly decent little house outright.
Even taking into account that house prices weren’t especially high thanks to Giselle’s efforts, it was still an enormous sum for them.
"I-is this all real gold...?!"
"You want us to take this much money?!"
"What, you think it’s fake? Don’t clutter up the place where I’m building my bathhouse. Just grab the money and scram! You’re getting dirt all over my clothes!"
As I clicked my tongue and jabbed an accusing finger at them in annoyance, the slum residents made a lightning-fast pivot.
"Y-Your Highness!! Benevolent Your Highness!!"
"Thank you for saving us! We’ll spend the rest of our lives bowing toward where you stand!!"
People who had been sobbing just moments before were now practically smashing their foreheads into the ground and singing my praises.
The forced eviction site had transformed in an instant into a tearful religious revival meeting.
"A-alright, I get it, so get lost already! You’re getting my pants dirty!"
I made disgusted faces and peeled off the people who were trying to cling to me like parasites.
"And if any of you still have all your limbs and some strength to spare, stay behind! I’m hiring laborers for the bathhouse construction! Daily wages are triple the usual, so if you’re in, line up over there with the foremen!"
"T-triple?! I’ll do it right now!! I’ll build it even if I have to grind my bones into the foundation!!"
It was nothing short of a festival.
"...."
Chloe, who stood beside me, gaped with her mouth hanging open and looked back and forth between me and the cheering crowd.
"I-is this really okay...?"
She muttered in bewilderment.
"No matter how you look at it, Your Highness is yelling at people and driving them away... so why are they cheering? They’re being kicked out, aren’t they?"
"Roeroe. In this world, money is religion."
"Even so..."
And it wasn’t just Chloe. There was another group far more mentally frozen than she was.
"...."
It was the monitoring knight order, who had been about to stop me.
They had come to protect the common people from the villain who was supposedly driving them out in this savage winter, only for that villain to suddenly start slapping everyone in the face with gold coins and turn into a living saint rescuing the poor from poverty.
With their hands still frozen on their sword hilts, the knights stood there like broken robots, utterly unable to make sense of the situation.
"All right, compensation for the demolition is done. Time to start construction, yeah?"
I clapped my hands to get the attention of the foremen Viola had sent and the laborers I’d just hired.
"Listen up, everyone! Demolishing the bathhouse site comes later. See that shattered outer wall over there? We fill that in first!"
"Yes, Your Highness! We’ll keep it in mind!"
"Foremen, hand out the tools to the workers, and set up the stone and mortar we brought earlier! We’ve got to seal every gap before the winter wind gets any nastier, so move fast!"
The moment my orders rang out, the laborers—eyes wide at the promise of triple wages—sprang into motion with military precision.
But no matter how motivated they were, moving huge stones for a fortress wall was no easy task for ordinary civilians.
Watching three or four laborers struggle and grunt as they hauled at a massive boulder with ropes, I clicked my tongue and turned over my shoulder.
I jerked my chin at the bewildered captain of the monitoring knights.
"Hey. Don’t just stand there watching. Get to work."
"Eh...? Us, you mean?"
"Yeah. Didn’t the Grand Duchess send you to help me work outside? See that broken wall over there?"
I pointed at the half-collapsed outer wall behind the slums that Giselle had so casually dumped on me.
The laborers were already grunting as they moved heavy stone blocks.
"You guys can use aura and you’re strong as hell, right? So stop standing around looting your paychecks and go haul rocks and slap on some mortar."
"Y-Your Highness!? We are the Grand Ducal Castle’s elite knight order! Are you telling us to do construction right now!?"
"What, being elite knights means you can ignore a prince’s orders?"
The captain’s face twitched at my words.
No matter how much of a trash prince I was supposed to be, ignoring my orders crossed a line.
"...Tch! First squad, support the wall repairs!!"
In the end, the knights tore off their armor and ran into the worksite with tears in their eyes.
"Hah, look at that. As expected of knights, they’ve got excellent strength. They can easily do the work of ten ordinary laborers. Talk about one man against a hundred."
Sitting on a camping chair beneath a temporary tent warmed by a mana stone heater, I cackled as I watched the knights sweating buckets while carrying stones for the wall.
"Come on, open wide, kid."
I tucked one of the strawberry macarons Viola had prepared into Chloe’s mouth.
"Munch, munch... mm, yummy."
Chloe, chewing on the macaron while sipping warm tea, still looked thoroughly confused.
"Your Highness. No matter how I look at it, the Grand Duchess’s knights really were just brought here to be free labor, weren’t they? That’s seriously mean."
"What can I do? They followed me out here themselves."
"I kind of feel bad now. Is there anything I can help with?"
"Nope. You’re my guard knight. Where do you think you’re going?"
"But..."
"Here, eat this and stay put."
This time I popped a chocolate macaron into her mouth.
"...Yummy."
—
That evening. The Grand Ducal Castle’s study.
Creak.
The study door opened, and the captain of the knight order who had been assigned to watch Kael that day stepped inside.
"I’m back, Your Grace...."
Giselle, who had been looking over documents, raised her head—and doubted her own eyes.
The captain looked terrible.
His armor, which was always polished to a spotless shine, was coated in pale lime dust and dirt, and his face, with dark circles sagging all the way to his chin, looked so exhausted he seemed ready to collapse at any second.
"...What in the world happened to you? Did a violent riot break out during the slum demolition?"
Giselle rose from her seat with a grave expression.
"That man didn’t actually start oppressing the people and forcibly drive them out, did he! So a physical clash broke out?"
"Th-that is...."
The captain opened his mouth with a dazed expression.
"There was no riot. His Highness the prince... drove the slum residents out by hitting them with gold coins."
"...What?"
Giselle’s brow furrowed. Hitting them with gold coins? What the hell did that mean?
"He threw pouches of gold at the territory residents who were crying that they’d end up stranded on the streets and told them to go book an inn room right away. The amount was so enormous... the residents praised His Highness the prince as a living saint and bowed before him as he walked."
"...."
"And for the laborers who said they’d stay for construction, he offered triple the usual daily wage, so the whole slum area was basically in a festival mood."
Giselle’s mouth parted slightly.
"...T-Then what are all those dirt stains on your armor from? If no riot broke out."
At Giselle’s question, the captain’s eyes reddened.
With a trembling voice, he reported the scene of today’s calamity.
"His Highness the prince said not to just stand around and watch, but to help with the work... and made us haul stones for the collapsed outer wall."
"What?"
"We spent the entire day hauling rocks... and slathering on mortar, Your Grace."
"...."
Having finished his report, the captain sniffled as though overwhelmed by sorrow.
Only silence drifted through the empty study.
...What on earth is going on?
Rubbing her forehead, Giselle swayed slightly.
The outer wall repair project she had casually dumped on Kael while feeling the faintest twinge of conscience.
Kael had not only handled it using his own private funds, but had also retaliated by using the knights she’d sent for surveillance as free labor.
The people were praising him as a saint, and her own knights had come back covered in mortar.
"Haa...."
Giselle clutched her throbbing head.
There was always someone faster than the one who ran.
Was she supposed to be pleased? Or annoyed?
Objectively speaking, he was taking the territory’s lifeblood—an entire hundred thousand gold—and spending it however he pleased.
Or was he? He’d invested that money, and the four nobles who benefited had donated to the Grand Ducal Castle in return. Did that mean the money was his to do with as he liked?
No, that wasn’t right. Those four nobles had donated voluntarily; it wasn’t money he’d personally handed over.
And yet, that hundred thousand gold had gone back to the territory’s people and into the wall repairs as well, so perhaps it was a blessing in disguise?
Even so, the fact remained that he was still throwing money around to build his own private bathhouse....
I’m really going insane.
Unable to bring herself to look the dirt-covered captain in the eye, Giselle could only let out a long sigh.