Jealousy
...320 million, 330 million.
Even at this very second, the price of Kodana was skyrocketing.
The Hero took down one of the Four Heavenly Kings, so of course it goes up. It would have been easy enough to leave it at that, but a few individuals with entirely too much time on their hands felt compelled to dissect the numbers.
"Looks to me like a whale has entered the market."
The speaker had an amiable enough face, but he was cursed with a squat frame and an alarmingly sparse hairline. It was Bingo, a low-ranking administrative clerk in the Imperial Guard.
As his hastily thrown-together name suggested, he was a commoner. And I happened to be one of the very few commoners serving in the knights' ranks as well. We hadn't bonded over mutual commiseration as underdogs, though. Our friendship had formed around a shared secret: we were both early investors in Kodana.
Bingo currently held nine Kodana coins.
Back when the coins were first issued, he had liquidated his entire net worth—scraped together down to his very soul—to buy in. Compared to my stash of 108 coins, his holdings were almost cute, but he still possessed more than most nobles.
It's nice having at least one person I can actually talk to about Kodana, but...
The problem was that the guy had developed an obsession with market trend analysis.
"A whale? Who are you talking about?"
"From where I sit, it's almost certainly imperial royalty. Word is the Second Prince started quietly accumulating about two months back."
"Isn't it a bit late to be buying more at this point?"
Kodana was already sitting at 330 million. By tomorrow morning, it could easily surge to 340 or even 350 million. Wealthy as the imperial family might be, jumping into these waters this late struck me as utter madness.
"Late? You really think so?"
"Yeah. Obviously."
I had spoken purely out of concern for the Second Prince's royal purse, but Bingo looked at me as if I were a complete simpleton.
"You idiot. You got yours for free, so of course you can afford to say that. Kodana hasn't even begun to peak. We've barely reached the solar plexus, if that."
"The solar plexus?"
"We're nowhere near the crown of the head."
Bingo boldly insisted that Kodana still had tremendous room to run.
He even seemed to have logic to back it up. Depending on the Hero Kwon Hee-jin's next moves, he claimed it could effortlessly climb to 500 or even 600 million. One of the Four Heavenly Kings was still drawing breath, and above all, there remained the supreme ruler of the demon army: the Demon King himself.
"Right now, every single bagholder is dreaming of the day the Demon King falls and the Hero divvies up the spoils of war. Can you even fathom the wealth stockpiled inside the Demon King's Castle? Untold mountains of rare artifacts, gold, silver, and priceless treasures beyond imagination!"
"Spoils distribution? There's zero proof of that."
"The Hero never denied it with his own lips, did he? That means he tacitly confirmed it! He's probably just keeping quiet in case the castle turns out to be surprisingly barren. If he goes around bragging and the payoff is a bust, the backlash would tear him apart."
"Then when exactly are you supposed to sell?"
"Right before the Hero marches into the decisive battle against the Demon King. When market hype and investor anticipation hit their absolute, feverish peak—that's when you dump every coin as fast as humanly possible."
"Not immediately after the subjugation?"
When I challenged his theory, Bingo's face twisted into an open scowl.
"Are you dense? Once the Demon King is dead, every single bullish catalyst gets exhausted. The Hero will get granted a fancy peerage by His Majesty the Emperor and retire to live in luxury."
"Meaning there won't be any upside left. ...I suppose once it hits the top, there's no reason for people to scramble to buy Kodana anymore."
"Exactly. Now you're getting it."
After swaggering and lecturing for a while, Bingo's expression suddenly turned dead serious. Casting a furtive glance around to make sure no one was within earshot, he lowered his voice.
"Eric. Listen to me carefully."
"What is it?"
"The jackpot is right around the corner. It's almost here. But if you want to keep that fortune safe, you need to watch how you carry yourself starting right now."
"......?"
"Everyone knows you're sitting on a mountain of Kodana. At the very least, every soul inside the Guard knows."
Well, of course they knew.
Lately, quite a few knights had been asking me questions about Kodana with carefully guarded tones.
The moment Kodana had broken past fifty million, rumors began circulating among the squires that I had foreseen the explosive surge and deliberately surrendered my spot in the Hero's party to demand coins instead. These days, even fully ordained knights brought up Kodana in front of me.
"Yeah, they know. But so what?"
"I'm telling you, never underestimate human greed. If you liquidated your coins right now, you'd walk away with enough cash to buy an entire barony. Even if you aren't actively trading them, what do you think the knights living on their pitiful monthly stipends think when they look at you?"
"They're just envious, that's all. Sure, they probably wish they had some Kodana of their own, but what are they going to do about it now?"
"Tsk. You just don't get it, do you? It's only going to get uglier from here on out."
Bingo confessed that he was already being ostracized in his department.
After turning down requests to treat everyone to expensive drinks a couple of times, the administrative director began shooting him dirty looks. And ever since he flatly rejected a proposal to sell just one of his Kodana coins to fund their department's social committee, his colleagues had been giving him the cold shoulder entirely.
"I've been eating lunch by myself for months, and they dump an unreasonable mountain of paperwork on my desk every day. Whenever I try to protest, they sneer and ask why I don't just resign, sell a coin, and spend the rest of my life rubbing my fat belly."
"Seriously? They went that far?"
"Except for you, practically the entire Guard is made up of highborn nobles, so they won't haze you out in the open. But deep down, they're probably seething with jealousy."
With a final admonition to watch my back, Bingo took his leave.
No way.
Not to look down on him, but his situation as a mere desk clerk was fundamentally different from mine as an active-duty knight.
Every single member of the Imperial Guard Knights was an exceptional martial artist who had reached at least mid-tier Expert rank. They took immense, unyielding pride in being the elite defenders of the Empire. Having grown up showered with praise as prodigies since childhood, their sense of honor and self-esteem ran bone-deep.
Would men like that truly harbor petty jealousy over a bit of filthy lucre?
...Well, of course, they were human. A twinge of envy was only natural.
But going out of their way to harm me or pick a fight over it? That was hard to imagine. If they were the type to pull underhanded tricks, they would have made a move long ago.
Shaking my head, I made my way back to the training grounds.
Unlike usual, the grounds were desolate. Even the handful of knights swinging their swords were going through the motions with half-hearted swings.
"Eric, I hear the Hero's party is stopping by the capital soon. Aren't you going to pay your respects?"
The Hero's party was visiting the Imperial Palace? I hadn't heard a word about that.
"By the way, Eric... just how many Kodana did you say you have again? My older brother mentioned you're holding over two hundred."
I was about to answer reflexively, but caught myself and kept my lips sealed. Something told me that smirking and replying, "Not quite two hundred," would be a catastrophic mistake.
The colleague who asked the question stared intently into my face before his features contorted into an awkward, strained smile.
"Ah, sorry. Shouldn't be prying into that sort of thing."
"......"
"Didn't mean to make it awkward. Lighten up, Eric."
He waved his hand and backed away, but the expression plastered across his face felt deeply unnatural.
I had no intention of soothing myself like a fool with thoughts like, It's just my imagination. The demeanors of the knights who had subtly drifted over, each tossing out barbed remarks, were undeniably off.
Why all of a sudden?
Surely it wasn't just because Kodana had crossed the 300 million mark.
Whether it was 250 million or 300 million, both were astronomical fortunes; it seemed unlikely that this milestone number alone had suddenly touched a raw nerve. It wasn't as if I went around flaunting my wealth. In truth, I had never even brought it up first.
What the hell was wrong with these people?
This has truly reached its limit.
Such was the grim murmur of Rufus Wainwright, Commander of the Imperial Guard Knights.
The discord among the knights had begun germinating the very moment Kodana started being actively traded.
It was already common knowledge that Eric had voluntarily relinquished the glorious privilege of joining the Hero's party in exchange for a bundle of Kodana, and that as a result, he had struck it unfathomably rich overnight.
Eric had not been resented right from the start.
However, quite a few knights found his behavior baffling. It was because Eric had never once spoken of sharing any of the proceeds with the order. He hadn't even dropped the faintest hint of it.
In the first place, the only reason Eric had been in a position to receive Kodana was purely because of his status as an ordained knight of the Imperial Guard. Had he not possessed that rank, he would never have been shortlisted as a candidate for the Hero's party, nor would he have had the standing to voluntarily withdraw and negotiate compensation.
Naturally, a portion of that windfall should have been shared with his comrades.
Yet what had he done? Eric kept his mouth firmly shut, behaving in an increasingly suspicious manner.
First, he had purchased a reinforced safe. Then, rumors surfaced that he had begun carrying the Kodana on his person at all times. Lately, whispers were even spreading that he had sewn the coins directly into the inner lining of his uniform.
"Commander. Shouldn't we do something about this bastard Eric?"
"His guarded attitude is what makes it so suspicious. What if he dumps the coins all at once and deserts the order?"
Wainwright had forcibly suppressed the knights' mounting grievances toward Eric. In truth, Wainwright himself cared little for Kodana, but he could not allow factional discord to tear his men apart.
If Eric has any sense, he'll bring it up soon enough. He isn't some wet-behind-the-ears novice; he's seasoned enough to know how the order functions. Surely he won't pretend not to understand.
Wainwright had taken Eric's side because he couldn't bear to see one of his finest knights alienated from the collective.
Yet that effort, too, had now reached its breaking point. The tension had grown so toxic that even he—a man standing at the absolute apex of the order in both martial prowess and authority—could no longer contain it.
"Phew. It's driving me mad."
Wainwright clutched his throbbing temples and let out a deep, weary sigh.
Come to think of it, voluntarily walking away from the glorious position of Hero's party member was baffling in itself.
The chance to achieve military renown alongside the Hero was an honor that no amount of gold could ever purchase. Yet Eric had abandoned it with startling ease.
"...What in the world are you thinking, Eric?"
The gloom clouding Wainwright's face deepened with every passing second. If Eric would just generously hand over a few dozen coins to the order, he could win the undying respect and loyalty of his peers. Wainwright simply could not fathom why Eric would invite such bitter resentment over mere worldly coin.