Chapter 39
Chapter 39
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 39
Chapter Title: The True Enemy
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The root of a loanshark is a hired thug.
Simply multiplying money is something anyone with business acumen can do,
but lending it out and collecting it requires violence without fail.
Who would properly repay their debts without the threat of force?
Handle it through the law?
Think about the fate of Shylock, the merchant from Venice who lent money legitimately and signed a contract.
The law is not equal.
Especially for loansharks, it's even more unequal.
That's why the Vaultkeeper House bought a title to gain the law's protection,
took on the nobles' weaknesses in their stead,
and continuously paid "protection money" to the nobles while supporting their parties.
Even under the law's protection...
No matter how the situation changed,
they never forgot the loanshark's "roots."
There are still plenty of people who brazenly refuse to pay up,
and to squeeze money out of them, authority isn't enough—violence is needed.
And now.
The "hired thugs" were heading toward their target house.
"The goal is the warehouse holding the bonds!"
That said, the Vaultkeepers weren't so lacking in decorum as to lead thugs straight into attacking a noble's mansion.
The target was the warehouse of the newly built financial business.
Since it was established under the name of a fallen noble, the burden of attacking it was light.
They weren't hitting the target house directly,
just a fallen noble.
And then.
The vicious thugs, ready to smash the intruder who dared invade their territory,
stopped upon seeing something.
"...A little girl?"
A young woman holding a quarterstaff—what was called an eight-foot staff—
and letting out a sigh.
"They really came right on time, just as Master said...?"
"...The target house uses a girl for security?"
"A stick works fine for catching mad dogs..."
The moment the thugs tilted their heads,
footsteps approached from the surroundings.
Have soldiers come?
They could just push past ordinary soldiers.
Judging that, the thugs turned their gazes.
"Eek?!"
And they saw.
Two-headed, eight-feet tall, with long arms reaching their feet, joints bending in unnatural directions, covered in bizarre tattoos—
"M-Monster—."
Monsters.
Non-human things stared right at them.
The shadows multiplied.
Armed soldiers, slaves with clubs, bizarre monsters,
countless people surrounded them.
The strange thing was,
all those shadows were far too large.
These thugs, who never backed down from debt collection even against drug addicts—
at this moment,
felt an instinctive fear.
A cold, thrilling survival instinct racing up their spines like lightning.
Their strength drained from their bodies,
their pants grew wet,
and the thugs swallowed hard.
...
...
...
"It's over."
"Yes. It went exactly as Your Excellency predicted."
In the end,
the loansharks' attempted "direct attack" ended quite anticlimactically.
Loansharks are basically small fry to begin with.
In an era when financial capital dominates the world, maybe not,
but for now, they're just moneybags.
They're one step away from an era where money can buy authority,
so if they'd survived, they might have become a great house like the Rothschilds on Earth,
but for now,
they're nothing more than fat piggy banks full of cash.
"How many slaves lost their lives or suffered fatal wounds?"
"Seven."
"..."
"Considering the scale of the battle, it's an overwhelming victory. It seems preparing in advance and having priests ready beforehand was effective."
An overwhelming victory... but that didn't satisfy him.
No matter how necessary it was,
his own people were hurt in the end.
At least, inviting priests ahead of time allowed treatment of most wounds—that was fortunate.
This world having fantasy elements was a blessing.
Without priests, even minor wounds would lead to infections and deaths without antibiotics.
"Sigh..."
He had to get used to it.
The era was different. The world was different.
The value of life was different.
People dying was inevitable.
...The moment he thought that,
he'd fall into a trap.
That moment, his modern self would die.
What remained would be
nothing but a money demon weighing human lives.
He was a wicked spirit possessing Karl's body.
To prove his existence,
he had to ceaselessly hold onto his modern values.
"Prepare funerals for the fallen equivalent to those for imperial soldiers."
"...Yes."
"At the funeral, make sure all slaves can eat their fill. No need to pay talants for the food."
"Understood."
At the very least, those slaves who died today
wouldn't rot in some cold abandoned mine.
As he watched the battlefield with a heavy heart,
a female slave who still hadn't shed her youthful innocence approached him.
"Master."
"Ah, Lemon. Good work. You fight well."
Lemon.
A combat slave who had mastered secret arts,
and a proven talent who becomes the "protagonist's companion" in the original story.
In other words,
a being with the talent to stand beside the world's strongest.
No mere thug could handle her.
"You showed the most standout performance, so you'll get extra talants."
Hiding his troubled feelings, he smiled and praised her achievements,
but Lemon's expression was odd.
She seemed to be thinking something over,
or perhaps afraid.
Maybe because it was her first real battle.
After pondering seriously with a grave look,
Lemon nodded as if resolved and spoke.
"I have one thing to report."
"Go ahead."
He was willing to grant most requests.
A slave like Lemon couldn't be bought with gold.
She deserved that much treatment.
She probably needed some rest for a while.
But what Lemon said was not what he expected.
"The secret art these thugs used... it's a military secret art."
"What."
...
...
...
Military secret art.
In simple terms, a "group-use secret art."
The commander activates it,
and soldiers who learned the subordinate art can expend their own life force or lifespan in emergencies to unleash great power.
Easy to learn, but the cost is high, and useless without group tactics.
"...If the circus slaves hadn't broken the enemy's morale, we might have taken far greater losses than imagined."
"Indeed. I never expected a military secret art to appear here."
"But we won, so that's good—"
"This means the Vaultkeeper House's assets will revert to the Empire."
"What."
"Using military secret arts outside the army is treason."
"Ah."
A traitor's assets revert to the national treasury.
This is an "absolute" principle. It ties directly to imperial authority.
Strange.
No matter how rootless the Vaultkeepers were,
would they openly commit such a grave crime as treason?
And.
He wasn't the only one who thought it odd.
"Your Excellency."
"Yeah, Torsso. Something's off, right?"
"May I share my opinion?"
"Go ahead."
"It seems the imperial family pulled some strings."
"..."
To begin with, it's not a secret art that leaks easily.
It wasn't hard to guess who taught military secret arts to mere loansharks.
There was only one owner, after all.
"The Empire had a plan all along..."
It seemed the Empire hadn't sold off currency issuance rights without thought.
For the first time, he truly felt this was a world ruled by power, not capital.
"The moment they're tied to treason, all contracts guaranteed by the imperial family and council become void."
"War bonds sold under the imperial name itself... no such thing as trust, huh...?"
"Well, that's how central nobles are. Sly as foxes. Especially the imperial family at the center."
Discard after use.
After the war,
swallow the Vaultkeepers' war-swollen assets whole,
and the debts piled up from the war vanish cleanly.
Of course, the Empire's national credit would shatter once more... but
with enough hegemony and prestige, it could be managed.
Treason provided perfect justification.
Even if the credit economy crashed because of it, the pre-modern Empire wouldn't care.
"We can't cover this up, can we?"
"No. The moment we don't report the Vaultkeepers' treason, they'll pin the cover-up on us. Hiding treason is also treason."
"If Lemon hadn't noticed, and we missed the military secret art?"
"..."
"Fucking bastards..."
A chill ran through him.
He felt like he was walking on a knife's edge.
Rationality and reason.
To him, born in 21st-century Korea, they were natural,
but in this world, they held little sway.
"..."
His enemy wasn't the Vaultkeepers.
The barbarism driving this world—
that was the true enemy he had to face.
"Torsso."
"Yes."
"Report the Vaultkeepers' 'treasonous acts' to the Empire immediately and claim every reward we can get."
"Understood."
"So their deaths aren't in vain... we need to strip them bare..."
"I'll keep that in mind."