Chapter 100: Shine or Go Crazy (4)
Chapter 100: Shine or Go Crazy (4)
Fuuuuuck...
Are you kidding me? I cut off his arms and legs, and now those severed limbs are moving on their own and plotting a rebellion? What is he, a kraken? An alien?
The guillotine—where is it?
I need a guillotine!
If I ask Doctor Guillotin, maybe I can get one. As for the cutting... yeah, if I leave that to Deputy Robespierre, he’ll probably handle everything from dicing to spiral-cutting to half-moon slicing.
Orléans, you bastard—this time I’m really cutting your head off.
My heart was pounding. If this had gone wrong, I would’ve gotten a proper blow to the back of the head in my sleep. Talk about a honeyed mouth and a dagger in the belly.
“Sir, we’ve arrived at Versailles.”
“Keep the change.”
“My goodness—! Thank you, sir! Please go safely!”
The coachman took the gold coin I handed him and grinned from ear to ear.
It was easily more than double the fare, but after receiving a letter that was basically a murder notice, I didn’t have time to leisurely collect change. There was no time to hesitate.
“Loyalty! Aren’t you His Excellency the Finance Minister? But what brings you all the way to Versailles—”
“Where is Marquis de Lafayette?”
“If you mean Marquis de Lafayette, he should be up on the third floor in the staff department with General Kellermann. Would you like me to guide you, Your Excellency?”
“No. It’s fine. I’ve been here once before, so I can find it.”
Waving off the sentry, I ran up the stairs and strode toward the staff department.
But why was the corridor outside the staff department—of all places—reeking of something sweet?
No. That didn’t matter right now.
What mattered a hundred, a thousand times more than suspiciously sweet smells and coffee wafting out of the staff department was that Orléans, that chewable bastard, was about to stick a knife in the back of my head.
Knock knock.
“Marquis de Lafayette, it’s me, the Finance Minister. I’m coming in. ...No. What the hell is this?”
The shocking scene in front of me made my brain—spinning just moments ago—freeze, and I couldn’t help doubting my eyes.
Between the pitiful officers furiously writing things down by hand with hollow, tired eyes, coffee cups, pie plates, and stacks of documents had piled up like mountains all over the room, claiming territory everywhere.
“What the hell... is this a nightmare realm?”
The scene looked just like the staff department from my early days as Finance Minister, and the words slipped out before I could stop them.
No. Not a nightmare realm—more like an Avici hell of endless paperwork.
“Haha, a nightmare realm? Your leaps have grown since I last saw you, Minister.”
Marquis de Lafayette had slipped up behind me at some point and was grinning.
“...The atmosphere feels very different from the staff department I visited a few months ago.”
“Well, it’s probably because of this field trai— Excuse me, that was a slip. Anyway, we needed to tear apart the organization and rebuild it from the ground up.”
“I see...”
“Ah, and all those friends helping with the work are Equality Club members you recommended. Would you like to exchange greetings for once?”
“Is that what you meant by asking me to recommend people—so you could pick up usable slaves?”
“Slaves? They’re simply fulfilling their proud duty as French soldiers. Haha. So, should I step aside so you can greet them?”
Hm. What kind of feelings would slaves have toward the slave dealer who sold them to a cruel master? Probably not good feelings.
“...It’s fine. More importantly, I have something to sa—”
But regardless of my feelings, the sight of the sitting commander-in-chief and the finance minister talking together was drawing monstrous attention.
“...Guillaume? That bastard’s Guillaume, right?”
“What? Guillaume de Toulon?”
“The son of a bitch who sold us to Marquis de Lafayette?”
The moment they saw fresh meat—Guillaume de Toulon—the zombies who had been dead-eyed a second ago regained light in their eyes, and those cursed bodies fused to their desks began creaking as they moved.
Yeah, if I got caught, I wouldn’t even have bones left.
“Marquis de Lafayette, the two of us have something urgent to discuss. Should we move somewhere else?”
“Is it that urgent?”
“It’s extremely urgent.”
“...If you say so, Minister, it doesn’t sound like something minor.”
The laughter faded from Lafayette’s face.
Marquis de Lafayette and I left the staff department packed with legal slaves and moved to the commander’s office, where we sat down.
“Have a drink while we talk. Coffee?”
“Anything is fine.”
“Understood. Here—this is the National Guard commander’s special coffee. You can’t get it just anywhere, so savor it properly, haha.”
As I took the coffee, Lafayette continued.
“So, what urgent matter has you making such a commotion, Minister?”
“...Please look at this, Commander.”
I took out the “scroll containing Orléans’s evil plan,” rolled up in my clothes, and handed it to Lafayette.
“Hm, what is this?”
He accepted it and unfurled it with a shrrk.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
“...This fucking bastard.”
The scroll containing Orléans’s evil plan was incredibly effective. It took only three seconds for a refined gentleman like Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, to spit out a thick curse.
“Whew... what in the world...”
As if his head were throbbing, Lafayette pressed his fingers hard against his temples and spoke.
“Where did you obtain this, Minister Guillaume?”
“General Dumouriez delivered it.”
“Dumouriez? You mean Dumouriez, commander of the Royal Guard? Damn it, my head hurts even more. Hah...”
Now pressing both temples, Lafayette let out a deep sigh.
“I think he gave this to you as a sign of surrender. What do you think, Minister?”
“That royalist hardline fossil—surrender?”
“Damn it. If it’s not surrender, then what reason would he have to reveal his plan? Dumouriez isn’t an idiot. He’s a capable man—former deputy in the logistics department, and he even earned a star.”
Lafayette stood, took cognac from the cabinet, and poured it into a glass as he spoke.
“Could there be infighting among the royalists, Commander?”
“Infighting. Are you saying Dumouriez fought with Orléans, Minister?”
Now that I thought about it, that was strange too. Orléans’s most loyal man causing infighting—like Guan Yu and Zhang Fei staging a coup against Liu Bei.
“...I’ve decided, Minister.”
Breaking the long silence between us, Lafayette spoke.
“What do you mean?”
“Whether it was false information to lure us, or truly a sign of surrender, one thing is certain: this is an opportunity to legally crush the royalists.”
“You mean... you’ll allow a coup to happen?”
Instead of answering, Lafayette raised the glass of cognac and poured it down his throat.
“Looking at this operation plan, this wasn’t slapped together overnight, Minister. Which means that if we spill blood just once, France’s royalists will be all but erased.”
“Wouldn’t that mean a great deal of sacrifice?”
“Minister. What’s strange is that blood hasn’t been spilled until now.”
Hearing Lafayette speak calmly about people dying, I couldn’t say anything for a moment.
“Minister. You’ve done nothing wrong. The reason nothing brutal has happened despite how unstable France has been is because of you, so don’t blame yourself. If it weren’t for you, France would have already gone bankrupt and been drowned in chaos.”
“You’re flattering me too much, Commander.”
“You’ve praised me plenty, so isn’t it only proper etiquette for me to praise you once as well? Haha.”
I looked away from Lafayette and down at the coffee cup in my hands.
Inside the cup, aside from small ripples now and then, everything was far too calm.
Like it belonged to a different world than the conversation we were having.
“...Does blood really have to be spilled, Commander?”
“Minister. Blood was spilled when America gained independence from Britain’s oppression, even though it was to open a just and free new era. In the end, to open a new era, blood is needed no matter what.”
With the same proud face I had seen only once—when he bared his chest before the Royal Guard’s guns and blades to protect the deputies—Marquis de Lafayette looked at me and said it.
“Now then, gentlemen?”
At that single phrase, the staff officers all flinched together and trembled.
Here and there, faint sounds of saliva sliding down throats could be heard.
When Marquis de Lafayette called like that in such a gentle voice, there was only one reason.
He was about to give them more work.
“Not the operation plan you’re writing now—we need to make one more.”
Lafayette beamed as he spoke, as if determined to meet their expectations.
Damn it. The intuition they’d been trained into under that vicious slave master Lafayette for three months was—unhappily—exact.
Colleagues groaning and squeezing their eyes shut here and there.
Even so, not a single reckless moth dared challenge the order that came down from the gold epaulets bearing a sky-high blue staff.
Ah, what misery.
Still, it was fine. They’d been rolling around the staff department for months, writing operation plans until they were sick of it.
And this was at least the simpler kind of task—just modifying the existing plan and adding flesh onto it.
“Commander, what kind of operation plan do you want—”
“Haha, it’s nothing special. If the enemy stirs in Nancy and Zagreb, bring me a plan for how we should fight them—within exactly three hours, starting now.”
Nancy and Zagreb? Not the border at Alsace–Lorraine, not Provence—why would enemies suddenly appear inside France?
Cursed. The me from a moment ago who called it an easy job was endlessly cursed.
One thing was facing an external enemy. But what kind of operation plan exists for an enemy erupting inside the country?
Everyone in the staff department went hollow-eyed again.
Damn it, I should’ve shot Guillaume—who sold us out—the moment I saw him earlier.
“Maybe if we work together, we can draft it faster...?”
“I’m sick of pumpkin pie... I want meat!”
“Heh... hehehe.”
One by one, they started going crazy from the sudden workload.
Work together? Is this something that can be solved by working together? Meat? What nonsense—in a staff department where breakfast was pumpkin pie and coffee, lunch was coffee and pumpkin pie, and dinner was pumpkin coffee and pie, what nonsense was that?
And at that moment—
“C-Commander! It’s a disaster!”
“Hm? What is it?”
The sentry guarding the entrance ran in, snapped a salute to Lafayette, and rattled off words like a machine gun.
“T-the Count of Artois has distributed proclamations across all of France, saying Prussia and the Holy Roman Empire will attack France!”
One staff officer lost consciousness on the spot.