The King and the Crown Prince (2)
"I will ask you again. How, at the mere age of twelve, did you come by such a vast sum of gold?"
"As I said a moment ago, Your Highness, I have been with Master Geren since I was very young. I have assisted him in every aspect of his business, and he has paid me handsomely for it."
"Four hundred gold coins as wages for a twelve-year-old? Ha. I don't understand it, but very well—let us say that is so. So if I put your words together, the more powerful the magic you try to imbue into a weapon, the higher the chance of failure? And to forge something identical to my sword, you would need several times the materials and blades to account for those failures?"
"That is correct."
"In other words, it is not impossible?"
"It borders on impossible. The materials themselves are hard to obtain, and to lay hands on not one but several such legendary blades is simply not feasible. Especially after crafting the sword Your Highness now holds, I have almost no wealth left."
"You need not worry on that score. I shall compensate you generously."
Roy kept his expression carefully blank and smiled quietly to himself.
Of course you will.
"And I am a prince of this kingdom. Forgive me for saying so, but the son of a provincial lord and I are not the same. What is impossible for you may well be possible for me."
"Naturally, Your Highness."
Roy pressed his lips shut. He had no desire to spoil a meal that was already half-cooked.
Still, a faint unease lingered. Things were going almost too smoothly, and that made him strangely anxious.
The man across from him was a prince of the realm—and the future power whose succession was already all but certain. In short, the next king.
Roy was, to put it kindly, driving a hard bargain with the future king. To put it unkindly, he was running a con.
But there was no chance of being found out. He could not speak for the entire continent, yet within the Steel Kingdom at least, he alone was capable of imbuing weapons with magic.
"There is one more problem."
"Another?"
"It concerns the limits of my own mana. To imbue powerful magic requires a corresponding amount of mana. Unfortunately, my aptitude is... insufficient."
"Then what of your master?"
"Master is in much the same situation as I. He has lamented it greatly."
Roy already knew what the prince would say next.
Obvious.
"Then simply bring someone of outstanding magical talent and teach them the technique."
He had prepared for that too.
"It is not so simple a matter."
"Why not? With a technique like that, even among the great houses there would be no end of people eager to learn."
"Certain conditions are required to learn it."
"Conditions?"
"Yes. One must be born with an extremely diverse array of mana aptitudes."
"Diverse mana aptitudes?"
"I mean attributes."
"Attributes? The ones checked at the temple during the baptismal rite?"
"Exactly. Only someone who possesses at least seven attributes can acquire the technique—and of course, a keen mind capable of handling and understanding magic is also essential."
A keen mind was true enough, but the claim that seven attributes were necessary was pure fabrication. People with four or five could be found if one looked, yet almost no one possessed seven.
He had considered naming a higher number, but that would have implied he and Geren themselves possessed so many; seven seemed a safe place to stop.
It also neatly explained why Geren had refused every request to take another disciple all these years.
"So you yourself possess all of that?"
"It shames me to say so. But I am of a baronial house. I was born with only a meager amount of mana—nothing compared to the bloodlines of the royal family or even the great houses."
"Hmm..."
Prince Aaron let out a regretful sigh. His face took on a thoughtful cast.
"Very well. I shall make inquiries among the houses of count rank and higher for anyone born with seven or more mana attributes. Where is your master now?"
"He has gone on a distant journey. He said he would return around the time of my graduation."
"I see..."
"If such a person exists, I myself could teach them. After all, I have received every technique Master Geren possesses... But aptitude alone does not guarantee success. It is an extraordinarily difficult art that requires a natural gift for magic."
Aaron studied Roy with the expression of a man examining something rare and strange.
"So you were born with everything except the mana itself?"
"That is not quite what I meant..."
"No need for false modesty. What if your mana capacity were increased?"
"My mana has already reached the limit of its growth."
"No—I mean hypothetically. What if your mana increased three or four times over?"
Could it be... here it comes!?
"The more abundant one's mana, the higher the success rate when imbuing magic. Ultimately, it would also become possible to bestow even more powerful enchantments. But that is a dream. If such a method existed, I would have used it long ago."
"Hmm... It is not as though no method exists at all..."
Roy's heart began to race.
Exactly as he had predicted.
So the royal family has it too.
Even baronial houses and count's houses possessed it—how could the royal house not?
Roy was already certain that somewhere in the palace lay a supply of Dragon's Breath, or at the very least someone who knew how to produce it.
And this prince had almost certainly already drunk some. Nothing else could explain the vast mana he had displayed earlier.
He is the one the current king has already chosen as the next power.
Aaron was no ordinary prince; he was the crown prince. He had already won the succession struggle and had received—or been given the means to produce—the Dragon's Breath passed down through the royal line for generations. He had drunk it, one way or another.
Judging by his reaction now, either he still had some hidden away, or he could produce more. One of the two was certain.
I'll make you some fine swords, so how about sharing a little? Feeding some to a mere baron's son isn't going to make me stronger than you, is it?
With a heart pounding as hard as his expectations, Roy watched the prince's mouth.
"Still, this is not the place for such talk."
Indeed. Too many eyes were watching—the knights of the royal guard, Anna, even his grandfather. Precious conversations like this had to be held in private, just the two of them.
Hah... this is tense.
Roy had already cast the bait. Now he only had to wait for the prince to bite.
If the man wanted more powerful magic weapons, all he needed to do was grow Roy's mana.
Would the fishing succeed?
His racing heart refused to settle.
Not yet. There's more I need to extract besides this.
Dragon's Breath was the top priority, but there were other prizes to claim.
He had already received a firm promise of compensation for the gifted sword. What remained was the right to supply.
He had to secure the authority to deliver low-grade enchanted weapons for the front lines of the war. Roy intended to deal directly, without any middleman merchant.
Of course the royal side would bring along their licensed purveyors rather than the king or prince themselves—but that was their concern, not his.
Cutting out the middleman would eliminate the intermediary costs and yield far greater profit.
Still, I can't shut them out completely...
If those merchants felt their privileges had been stolen, all manner of trouble could follow. So Roy had already planned to use them instead.
I take every last bit of the margin, and dump the material procurement and transport onto the licensed merchants. Two birds with one stone.
All he would have to do was enchant the weapons and materials they brought him. The profits would be enormous.
After a long moment of thought, the prince spoke again.
"Then what of the magic weapons currently circulating in the market?"
"In what sense, Your Highness?"
"The cost of production. Failure rates and so forth."
"The magic weapons sold to the public carry only the simplest enchantments. Their duration averages about a year. Given enough time and materials, more than thirty blades a day can be produced, and failure is almost unheard of."
"And the cost?"
"Excluding the price of the weapon itself, four gold coins per enchantment."
"That cheap!?"
Of course it would seem so. The cost of producing the single weapon the prince had just received as a gift would cover enchanting a full hundred and ten cheap blades—not counting the weapons themselves.
The prince still had not seen through Roy's shrewd commercial sleight of hand.
"Look at the time. You have come all this way; you must eat. Let us take a meal first and continue our discussion this afternoon. His Majesty will also be present then."
"......!"
Roy hurriedly felt inside his coat, checking that he had brought his protective goggles.
It was not that an opportunity to dine with the king had suddenly appeared.
Roy, Anna, and Terry ate separately, just the three of them.
The reason was simple: the prince had declared he would dine alone with his father the king. Roy guessed the prince meant to relay everything he had heard and align their positions first, father and son.
How am I supposed to invent an excuse to wear the goggles?
Roy was intensely curious about the king's mana capacity. But putting on the protective goggles required a plausible pretext. He had already bragged to the prince that they were specially made for eye protection while riding; wearing them around the palace would make him look like a complete madman.
"Do I really have to sit through that boring stuff again this afternoon?"
Anna found the day's schedule thoroughly tedious. Hardly surprising—she had barely exchanged a word with the prince beyond formal greetings.
"I told you there was no need to dress up so much."
"I don't care!"
"Anna. Watch your mouth. There are eyes everywhere here."
"Yes..."
Seeing her grandfather behave so differently from usual, Anna decided to be careful herself. The old man who normally roamed about drunk seemed like an entirely different person today.
"Just bear with it a little longer. I'll try to get the afternoon audience with His Majesty for myself alone. Anna, want to tour the castle? They'll assign you a lady-in-waiting."
"Forget it. It's not like I'm going to live here. I'd rather just go outside."
"Then go look at the flowers in the palace gardens. I'll arrange it."
"Pfft... Now I really do feel like the little sister."
"Hahaha! Why not become Roy's little sister for real while you're at it? It suits you better."
"Grandfather!"
In truth it was a relief that only the three of them were present; they could eat without tension. Otherwise Roy would have been so preoccupied with thoughts of Dragon's Breath that he could not have swallowed a single bite.
In the end Anna, accompanied by her grandfather and guided by a lady-in-waiting, set off for the palace gardens. Her expression suggested she felt considerably freer. The king's face held no interest for her whatsoever.
I'm not curious about his face either. It's the mana volume I want to know.
Alone now, Roy followed a servant's guidance toward the king's study.
At last it was time to have an audience with the absolute ruler of the Steel Kingdom—King Iron Steelheart.