Development (1)
Ever since the Black Terahole V2 had been unveiled, the entire atmosphere of the negotiation table had flipped on its head.
Selena pulled a contract from the table and held it up for everyone to see.
"As of now, the Pacific Merchant Guild no longer owes the Raven Guild a single coin."
Jackie's face twisted at her words, but he smacked his lips and conceded without a fight.
"Fine. When a great merchant guild like ours offers to take responsibility for the people of a little outfit like yours, and you still turn us down—well, I've got nothing left to say."
"Ha! A great merchant guild? Raven? And what was that? Who's taking responsibility for whom?"
Selena's face flushed scarlet.
"Who do you think put our guild in this state in the first place…! And don't you dare pretend I don't know why you're so desperate to get your hands on the Pacific name!"
"What does a name like that even matter?"
"That is quite enough!"
Alfred barked, making no effort to hide his displeasure, and both of them clamped their mouths shut and sank back into their seats.
"A squabble between your two guilds is hardly the point here."
Jackie smiled. Selena ground her teeth.
"Lord Alfred, the Raven Guild is by no means a pleasant partner to deal with."
"So now you've moved on to slander. Even after seeing that contract just now? Does it make any sense that they'd wipe out a debt of that size simply for being shown an automobile? Just who do you think the Pacific Guild is?"
"Both of you, compose yourselves."
"Lord Alfred, once this automobile leaves these walls, it will be an absolute sensation. The power brokers of the Stens Coalition would gladly pay thousands of gold for it."
"No. They'll do everything in their power to steal the technology and claim it as their own. And on top of that, the Raven Guild is close with the power brokers of the infamous Shadow Market—"
"That's enough of your slander, Selena!"
"Slander? Ha! Go to the Shadow Market right now and you'll see for yourself!"
BAM!!
Alfred's cheeks quivered with rage.
Only then did the two of them finally grasp the situation and press their lips tightly shut.
"What the Raven Guild does, what the Pacific Guild does—none of it has the slightest thing to do with us."
As if he weren't already stressed enough. There had been no end of grumbling inside his own family about hitching their fortunes to Bladewin technology. And now these two kept brawling in front of him over who got to distribute the automobiles.
Lately, wherever he went, it was nothing but Bladewin this, Bladewin that, Robon Bladewin! His irritation had already been climbing—and these two had just slammed the detonation switch.
"This automobile is something Lobel merely purchased! So if you're going to sit here and bicker like children, get out! Now!!"
At Alfred's roar, the merchant folk who'd been rolling their eyes scrambled out of the manor in a disorderly rush.
They had all been thrown out together, but the look on each face was different.
"Heh. Charging in without reading the room—serves you right, Jackie."
Selena smirked, the corner of her mouth twitching upward.
"Vice-Leader Jackie, what exactly is this supposed to be?! We trusted the Raven Guild and came all this way with fifteen Zephyrs—knights included! And now two of them are dead, and we've been thrown out of Lobel, the richest house in the entire Mardin Principality. Because of you."
The jab set Jackie's eyes spinning.
"Don't talk nonsense. The ones who went around bragging those horses were the finest on the continent were your people from Rodria. Do you understand me?! I did not drag myself all the way out here through this misery just to suffer this kind of humiliation!"
"A-are you saying that's our fault? The Zephyr is unquestionably the finest on the continent—"
"Be silent! Finest on the continent? They got completely upstaged by those so-called bikes—those people wouldn't even give them a second glance! Finest? How does a word like that even leave your mouth?"
"Have you quite finished talking, Vice-Leader Jackie?"
The Rodria knights escorting them let their presence press forward, voices low and cold.
Jackie flinched and took a step back.
"…My apologies. I misspoke for a moment."
Having cooled his temper again, he bowed his head in apology. The Rodria trade officer and knights, bound as they were by their relationship with the Raven Guild, did not press the quarrel any further.
Whatever else, having come this far, failing to join forces would mean leaving with nothing but catastrophic losses.
"Misspoke? Pfft. Quite the elaborate way of misspeaking."
"Shut it! You're running your mouth because you think you've got Hector backing you, aren't you? Ha—you're deluding yourself something fierce, Selena. Think carefully. What money does Hector have to settle down here? Even now, helping us would be better for the Pacific Guild as w—"
"I think the one doing the deluding is you."
Erdin pulled off his straw hat, trudged over to them, and fixed a stare on Matt standing beside Selena.
"Come to think of it, I feel like I've seen you somewhere before."
"I met you briefly when you visited Bladewin Castle, sir. I was standing next to Master Hector at the time."
"Ah! That was it. I was wondering why this little brat looked so familiar."
"I am not a little brat! I'll have you know I'm eighteen!"
Erdin blinked at him in surprise.
"You look like you just barely cracked ten."
"That's just because I'm short. I'm not as green as I look, okay?!"
Erdin gave a short snort of laughter and ruffled the boy's hair.
Something about the easy familiarity between the two of them made Jackie step in.
"It would seem you've done business with the Pacific Guild a few times, Lord Erdin?"
"No. I've never done business with them."
Erdin scoffed through his nose and declared it with pride.
"I'm on very special terms with Robon Bladewin. You could say we shared life and death on the battlefield. Even in Lobel, the only way to deal with Bladewin is through me."
Whether that was bluster or not was unclear—but it was plain enough that Erdin held the key to breaking the current deadlock.
Jackie's eyes lit up as he lowered his head.
"I knew it from the moment I first saw you. That dignity and aura of yours, Lord Erdin, is not something just anyone can possess."
At that thoroughly transparent flattery, Erdin's shoulders lifted just a fraction.
He's grinning over something that cheap?
Selena clicked her tongue inwardly and cut in between them.
"I'd like to hear more about what you said earlier. Is the Pacific Guild at Bladewin right now?"
"That's right. Construction should have finished by now and then some. They put up a fairly large guild building in Iron Hall. Made a killing with the Robon 001, apparently? They're still moving Robon's goods and raking it in nicely."
Joy and dismay crossed on opposite sides of the group.
Jackie, tireless, sidled up to him again.
"Would you be able to arrange a meeting with Lord Robon Bladewin? It would be more than worthwhile for you as well, Lord Erdin."
"No! This man will stop at nothing to climb—"
"We agreed to wipe the debt—so shut your mouth and stay down!!"
"Kyaa!"
Jackie seized her by the hair, yanked her backward, and floored her. Erdin flinched at the sudden violence.
When the trade officer flicked a hand and the knights behind him started toward Selena, Erdin stepped into their path.
"What exactly do you think you're doing?"
"Hahaha. Pay it no mind, my lord. She keeps lying, so I was merely administering a little discipline."
"Lying?"
"If you arrange a meeting with Lord Robon Bladewin, I will give you one of those Zephyrs over there—free of charge."
"Just for setting up a meeting?"
"Yes. A private meeting between myself and Lord Robon Bladewin alone."
It was a tempting enough offer.
The bikes had simply stolen the spotlight; those Zephyrs were still an exceptional breed the likes of which you simply didn't see around here.
If he could walk away with one of them just for introducing a merchant guild to Robon, the profit would be enormous.
"There's a condition, though."
"Name it."
"If he doesn't want to meet, there's nothing I can do about it."
"Understood. Even if it turns out that way, the Zephyr is still yours."
At that generous proposal, Erdin's hostility eased a notch.
"You can't!"
"Quiet!"
"Mmph! Mmph!"
The knights seized her and even covered her mouth. Erdin was about to intervene when—
KUUUUWOOOOONG! KUUWOONG!!
An exhaust note that was somehow familiar and yet entirely different yanked Erdin's gaze around.
Six bikes rolling into the manor grounds.
And behind them, massive beasts trailing like a tail.
"You were wondering what a bike was earlier, weren't you?"
Every head among the merchant folk turned. There was no not looking.
Even from a distance, those machines were flaunting their presence for all they were worth.
"That's what we meant by a bike."
Their eyes went as wide as they had when they'd first seen the automobile.
"Hooo."
"In…sane. That's a bike? It wasn't a horse?"
"Now I understand why they had no interest in the Zephyrs…"
In a Mardin Principality they'd dismissed as a rural backwater, the shock hitting them was as violent as a hammer blow to the skull.
"Everyone's managing fine on their own, right?"
For the first time in a long while, he had the laboratory entirely to himself.
Terrified that the madman calling himself the Corrupted One might storm Iron Hall with a horde of mana beasts, he had thrown himself into bike production like a man possessed for the past ten days.
In nearly ten days, had he slept even an hour a day?
As a result, his body was one stiff breeze away from collapse.
"Haaah… Maybe I'll just sleep a little."
He finished tidying up the lab and headed down toward the manor—only to find Baron Fenri in the garden, deep in conversation with Administrator Richard.
Richard looked grim. Fenri, by contrast, was holding forth with animated passion.
Slip past quietly.
This did not feel good. If their eyes met even once, Fenri would come charging over before—
"Young Master Robon, is that you?!"
He'd been walking below the garden shrubbery. How on earth had the man spotted him?
"…"
"That curly blue hair belongs to no one but you, my lord! Hahahaha! Bored, are we? Planning a game of hide-and-seek with m—"
"No! No! It's nothing like that. Something fell over here and I just ducked down to look. Go finish whatever you were doing. Don't mind me."
"Perfect timing, actually. If it's Robon, he may well have a solution."
Uncle, what are you saying?
…was what he wanted to shout, but before the words could leave his mouth, his uncle was already walking away, and Fenri came bouncing straight toward him.
"Haaah…"
"Why the sigh, my lord? Has something unfortunate happ—"
"Just tell me what you want. What is it?"
He was dead on his feet. Best to pretend to listen, then go collapse into bed.
"The truth is, people in Iron Hall have been out and about later into the evenings lately, and the streets have gotten full of trash and filth. On top of that, the city's population is rising, so I fear the problem is only going to get worse."
This was not something he could just half-hear and brush aside.
"The central districts around Ironforge Street and the main plaza are still reasonably well managed, but with the growing population pushing people out toward the southern residential quarter, we're sitting on a problem about to blow."
"…So it hasn't blown yet?"
"Of course not. You don't wait for it to explode and then try to fix it, do you? There's talk going around—plague on the wind, children collapsing with coughs, the southern quarter stinking so badly you can't go near it—so I looked into it a bit."
He had to admit it.
There was a reason Uncle Richard trusted Baron Fenri.
The best way to handle a problem was to prevent it before it erupted.
Far too many people failed to grasp that obvious truth.
The man can actually do the job—I'll give him that.
That was exactly why, as draining as this person was, Robon could never simply shove him away.
He was far too good at his work.
Even the electricity pilot zone—Fenri had handled everything so cleanly, reporting up the chain without Robon needing to lift another finger, that there still hadn't been a single problem. Construction to expand power across the whole of Iron Hall was already underway.
Well. We do need proper sewage infrastructure eventually.
Iron Hall was still on the better side. The outer districts of Adras—nearly twice this size—were, ugh.
Just thinking about them was enough to turn his stomach. Filthy and revolting beyond description.
Especially the back alleys crawling with vagrants: every kind of filth imaginable, compounded by the absurd notion that rain would simply wash it all away, had produced an environment of pure hell.
The drains were open channels, so every imaginable kind of refuse washed in and clogged them as a matter of course. Eventually half of them became impossible to clear and were simply abandoned.
The reason he hadn't concerned himself with it until now wasn't only that he'd been busy.
It means a full-scale overhaul.
If they were going to build it, they were going to build it right.
But would Samuel ever sign off on something like that?
The situation's a little different now, though.
Electricity was rolling out, utility fees were starting to come in, and bikes and all manner of developed equipment were selling as fast as they could be made.
These days the blacksmiths were too busy cranking out industrial components all day to bother with swords or armor.
Old man Amos barely picked up a hammer anymore unless it was for something Robon had personally commissioned. Most of the time he just wandered around absorbing the engineering knowledge Robon had passed on and teaching the other smiths how to run the milling machines.
And with people's days stretched longer by electric light, reports kept drifting in that Iron Hall as a whole was humming with new vitality, productivity climbing.
A good sign. In the end, a nation only grew wealthy when the people paying the taxes grew wealthy first.
So much for sleep.
He forced the exhaustion back down, shook off the sweet temptation of a bed, and started walking.
He could sleep when he was dead.
That was the motto of RMEL, after all.
"Let's go take a look at the problem spots. Where did you say they were?"