A Joint Venture (4)
In truth, the suspicions surrounding Saintess Lucia were not coming solely from the Empire’s side. More than anything, the fact that both the Saintess and the Hero had emerged from the Brien Kingdom felt far too artificial, raising inevitable questions.
Although the Orthodox Church and the Imperial Church had split over the recognition of the Hero, that did not mean the Orthodox faction had gladly accepted a Hero from Brien. It was simply that the Empire was so overwhelmingly vast that the remaining kingdoms had no hope of opposing it unless they united. They had acknowledged him only because he had inherited the previous generation’s Hero’s Sword and proven himself worthy of the title. No other kingdom was pleased to see Brien produce the Hero.
So when a Saintess also sprang forth from Brien, the other kingdoms’ discomfort was unavoidable. Moreover, Saintess Lucia was a figure whose history before her declaration remained almost entirely unknown. Where had she been? What had she done? Was she truly sixteen? Some even questioned whether the miraculous feats performed with her divine power had actually happened.
After all, even among the most distinguished nobles, it was rare to witness someone not merely reattaching a severed arm but regrowing limbs that had been cut off long ago. Such power required the rank of Cardinal, and across the entire continental Church there were only nine Cardinals in total. Even among those nine, not every Cardinal could perform such regeneration. While it remained unclear which ones could and could not, it was only natural to doubt a Saintess who had suddenly appeared and begun regrowing limbs.
It also spoke to how hopeless the Church had become that even among the nobility there were countless cynical believers—so-called cold ones—who viewed the single-religion doctrine with skepticism.
“Hey, hey. Did you see that?”
“See what? Tell me what it is before asking if I saw it.”
Since this was an academy filled with mid-to-late teens, they did not always stand on ceremony with one another. The curriculum was strictly pass or fail, and by the second or third year being called a senior simply branded someone a slow learner. There were few upperclassmen left with the luxury of acting superior.
“You know that young lady from the Jupiter Kingdom? The one with the scar running from her shoulder down her back, so she couldn’t wear any backless dresses.”
“Ah, her? Yeah, I remember. Such a waste of a pretty face.”
“Today the Saintess healed it completely and received a donation to the Church in return.”
“Oh? That’s different. The Church used to be so stiff-necked, insisting money alone wasn’t enough.”
The Saintess’s actions carried enough weight to shape public opinion that the Saintess was truly different. She was sharing miracles that money alone had never been able to buy.
One might wonder why people did not simply petition high-ranking clergy, but under the pretense of a premium strategy, Cardinals and other top clerics refused to bestow miracles on just anyone. The same rule applied to nobles: only direct members of ducal houses could receive a miracle by offering a reasonable donation to a Cardinal. Lower-ranking nobles had to pay an absurdly inflated price—in technical terms, they were ripped off mercilessly—before even gaining the opportunity. And even then, the timing remained entirely at the Cardinals’ or Patriarchs’ whim.
It was the Church’s way of preserving its pride and self-esteem while being pushed around by secular powers, but beyond that it offered little positive value.
“So it works if you just pay the right amount?”
“Precisely. It has to be gold. Church coin. You’ve all heard of it, right? Why don’t you know?”
“When has our family ever bothered worrying about entanglements with the Church? We just minded our own business.”
Yet with the Saintess’s appearance and her remarkably active public engagement—strikingly different from the high clergy’s previous behavior—impressions were bound to shift little by little. Even Cardinal Rondel Brios, the man who had brought the Saintess into being, remained as stingy as ever about sharing miracles despite her energetic external activities.
“Still, the wording feels a little strange. Just give money and it’s done?”
“That’s because you left your brain in a red-light district full of flashing lights last night. Wake up. The Imperial Princess is traveling with the Saintess right now. They look incredibly close. If the wrong words reach them, you’re finished. You do understand that, right?”
“I—that was a slip of the tongue. Just forget I said it. If it gets back to them, I’m really dead.”
Having overheard everything up to that point, the Hero, Ziegfried, dispersed the mana he had focused into his ears and curled his lip in clear displeasure.
In fact, to Ziegfried the Saintess was nothing but a walking question mark. No matter what anyone said, the reality that she was a girl who had dropped out of nowhere was the same for him. At least he himself came from a family that carried knightly blood. He had received systematic sword training, and although the mana he used was the Hero’s mana—distinct from what ordinary knights circulated—he had thoroughly mastered the fundamentals of mana circulation. But the Saintess?
Was she the daughter of a house famous for producing outstanding clergy? Or had some powerful cleric taken her in and raised her? The Hero remembered the day he himself had been recognized. At the time they had told him the Saintess had not appeared for decades and would not appear again for at least another ten years. Therefore the burden on the Hero’s shoulders was that much heavier, and they begged forgiveness for the Church’s inability to resolve it properly.
Yet only four years later, a Saintess had suddenly appeared. And not in Romano where the Pope would have recognized her first, but in the Grand Cathedral of her home kingdom of Brien.
……Certainly, the Imperial Princess has become quite beautiful.
She was always dignified, but now she seems even more confident. It’s as if she has realized how an Imperial Princess of the Empire ought to carry herself.
The whispers of the Imperial noble children passing by lingered in his ears far longer than their physical forms. Yes—Princess Yulia. Originally, the relationship between Princess Yulia and Saintess Lucia could not possibly have been good. Everyone knew about the conflict between the Orthodox Church and the Imperial Church, and at the very center of that conflict stood the Hero himself. Yet now the two of them stuck together as though they had been childhood friends all along. Wherever the Princess went, the Saintess was there. Wherever the Saintess was, the Princess followed. It was no exaggeration.
Of course, the Hero had heard the inside story directly from Saintess Lucia, so he understood the general situation. What had she called it? “Real”? Anyway, she had said that if he could draw out the extremely introverted Princess and help her function at least as a minimal human being, they could secure basic influence inside the Empire that would side with them. To him it made no sense whatsoever.
The Princess who had openly picked a fight with them was supposedly extremely introverted? So she borrowed the power of the Orthodox Church’s Saintess of all people? And she accepted it so readily, becoming an internal influence for their side inside the Empire?
Ziegfried knew his own education was lacking. Although the Church had provided him with instruction after he became the Hero, the education offered by a financially strained Church under constant pressure from secular powers had clear limitations. Still, even with that limited learning he could tell Lucia’s words were riddled with holes—he simply did not know where to begin poking at them. And yet somehow it was all actually happening.
“Ah, Hero. I’ve been looking for you.”
“What is it?”
“It concerns the Iron Alliance shares. The ambassador is waiting.”
Crazy bastard.
The reason that phrase flashed through his mind was that the perfectly ordinary-looking man before him—who seemed to be the very embodiment of mediocrity—had referred to himself as an “ambassador.” Arrogant fools. They were nothing but merchants no matter how much they pretended to operate on a global scale. Worse, they were trash who dabbled in both narcotics and slave trading, yet they called their representatives “ambassadors” as if they were sovereign states.
“Let’s go.”
Normally Ziegfried would have exploded in anger and hammered every reason for his fury into the man’s ears one by one. Today, however, he simply gave a short reply and closed his mouth. Cooperating with such filth did not sit well with him at all, but this was Lucia’s request. The request she had given him was simple: if possible, appear cooperative toward the Iron Alliance’s persuasion efforts. If that proved too difficult, at least keep his mouth shut whenever anger rose so that he would seem like someone with whom conversation remained possible. If he did only that, she promised to ensure the controlling shares of the Iron Alliance naturally passed to the Hero.
He had no idea how she intended to accomplish it, but the fact that this lunatic had come looking for him suggested something was indeed in motion.
“The leadership of our Iron Alliance has successfully reached appropriate agreements with His Majesty William IV, the Church, and several kingdoms. In the hope that such incidents never occur again, we have decided to transfer a significant portion of the alliance’s shares to the Brien Kingdom—the primary victim this time—and to the mediating Church.”
“Then why call me?”
“The shares that should originally have gone to the Church and Brien Kingdom were instead transferred to a trustworthy individual due to opposition and checks from the other kingdoms. Even so, because the victim nation that must persuade the elves is Brien, the shares ultimately went to someone from Brien……”
“Speak plainly. Are you saying it’s me and the Saintess?”
“……That is correct. The Saintess will receive ten percent, the Hero ten percent, the Brien Kingdom twenty percent, and the Church another ten percent.”
Ziegfried did not fully understand what those numbers truly meant. And that was exactly what the Iron Alliance and the other six kingdoms were aiming for—handing nominal control to someone who did not understand its significance. At the same time, even when the Brien Kingdom, the Church, the Hero, and the Saintess combined their strength, they could only just manage to hold exactly fifty percent. It was the result of a desperate struggle to escape the economic magic created by fifty-one percent. Of the remaining fifty percent, twenty percent still had to be distributed among the other six kingdoms, leaving the Iron Alliance with no more than thirty percent at best.
That was certainly better than watching the entire Iron Alliance get dismantled, but no merchant would be satisfied with merely that.
“So? What do you people want?”
“How could we dare want anything? This is entirely the fault of our Iron Alliance. We are already grateful that the alliance has not been dissolved. We simply wish to express our thanks that the Hero has forgiven us and accepted our reflection.”
Forgive? Me? Reflection? You?
His brow furrowed again for a moment, but even though he did not fully grasp the situation’s implications, instinct told him exactly how he should respond here.
“Ten percent?”
He did not know whether that was little or a lot. It probably seemed small, yet given the scale of the Iron Alliance that he vaguely understood, he could not help wondering if it might actually be quite substantial.
“Yes, I know. It is rather small. Even if we combine our shares with the Hero’s, we only reach forty percent. Even if we recruit one of the remaining six kingdoms whenever necessary, we cannot exceed fifty percent—cannot even approach it. And to persuade them to surrender more than ten percent, we would have to give away far too much.”
Having said that, the man glanced around as though someone might be listening despite the fact they were in a secret room. Then he leaned forward and whispered as if revealing a tremendous secret.
“The Saintess is cooperating with us as well. In other words, with the Hero, the Saintess, and ourselves, we can exercise fifty percent of the shares together. If we persuade even one of the six kingdoms, we can do whatever we wish.”
The atmosphere suggested that “Ta-da! What do you think? Amazing, right?” should have followed. The speaker was rejoicing that, despite their disadvantageous position, they had avoided a complete leadership purge and effectively secured permanent control of over fifty percent of the shares.
What should he do? The Saintess had told him to appear cooperative with the alliance’s intentions. If he could not manage that, he should at least keep his mouth shut. That was all. But no matter how he considered it, he felt he was being manipulated far too much by the Saintess—Lucia—whose true identity he still did not know.
In that case, he could exercise a little creativity and pass the responsibility along.
“I follow the Saintess’s will. That is all.”
“Ah, yes, yes. Of course. Haha, it is such a relief that both the Saintess and the Hero are people one can actually converse with. You will absolutely, without question, never regret this decision.”
For a mere merchant alliance—though calling it “mere” was laughable given its actual size—the lunatic who styled himself ambassador even extended his hand for a handshake at the end.
What could he do? While pretending to cooperate with them still caused genuine revulsion, a handshake was something he could manage. When the Hero accepted it, the self-styled “ambassador” broke into a broad, beaming smile.
With this, the initiative had effectively fallen into the hands of the Hero and the Saintess. With twenty percent they would now decide the future direction of an alliance that wielded enormous influence across the entire human world. This truly deserved to be called economic magic—a miracle.
The manifestation of that magic, or miracle, occurred five days later.
“Ah, no… why is this……”
The representative of the Iron Alliance leadership, who had barely escaped the blade of the purge, could only sit down with a stunned expression and mutter blankly at the news that the alliance had decided to use the Church’s gold as its official settlement currency.