Hell's Binary Choice
Hell's Binary Choice
For the first time in thousands of years, the Saint herself was taking the field.
The news had been a welcome one to their allies, but to the enemy, it was indistinguishable from the worst of ill omens. However heretical they might be, they had witnessed the Saint's power with their own two eyes plainly enough.
Realizing they were no match for her, most had sunk into a state of utter despair.
Moreover, had this been a war fought out of conviction, they might have steeled themselves even for death. But a war that drags on for so long inevitably sees its meaning fade and shift.
This religious war, which had begun for the sake of each side's faith, had by now turned into one vast pursuit of profit. And the Sultan who led them was himself a man who regarded this war as a business venture.
The situation had been ambiguous enough that calling it a war was questionable to begin with.
"...What will you do, General?"
The soldiers' morale was already at its lowest point.
The Sultan himself had stated definitively that the Saint possessed golden hair and dark gray eyes, yet the soldiers had already witnessed the being before them granting life to this land of death through her divine authority.
Seeing was believing. No matter how stern the Sultan's command, it was no simple matter to erase a conviction that had been seen with their own eyes and had taken firm root in their judgment.
The general who led these men and had sworn his loyalty to the Sultan was, in truth, thinking the same thing.
'...That being before my eyes is unmistakably the Saint.'
Stationed on the outermost defensive line, he had witnessed that miracle firsthand. He had seen it clearly, wide awake and of sound mind—no hallucination, no illusion, just the plain truth before his eyes.
He would not deny that much.
'But if I retreat, the Sultan will kill me.'
In an army where standing your ground without retreat was the fundamental rule, military law dictated that the Sultan personally struck off the head of any man who abandoned the field and fled.
'Yet... if I attack the Saint, I'll die as well.'
The Sultan was a mighty man. He was, after all, a great warrior who had reached the realm of sword master, one of the few in the world.
But even such a being was, in the end, human. His blade would never reach a Saint akin to the reincarnation of a god.
Furthermore, while most of these men had come to earn coin, they were also people who had joined this holy war because they possessed faith. It was impossible for such men to fight with zeal while believing it would send them to hell.
'Only the day before yesterday, this wasn't the case.'
In a single day, the tide of the war had turned. The Saint had not even begun to move yet, and the news of her coming alone was enough to let victory visibly slip into the Holy Kingdom's grasp.
"...Nor do I know what to do."
He would do his utmost. That was his sense of mission, the way of life he had sworn beneath God's name.
But doing so would change nothing.
Either he would swear his loyalty, die, and go to hell, or he would die at the hands of the man to whom he had sworn loyalty. Every man on the field was walking a tightrope, caught in Hell's own dilemma.
*
'...What should I eat first?'
It was a hellish dilemma. The strawberry cake with its rich creaminess, or the chocolate cookie with its exceptional soft-yet-crisp texture. But then, as the saying went, deliberation at length leads to the worst move.
I went with the cake that the Good Doctor had chosen for me.
Just as I was starting on the strawberry cake, thinking that, it happened.
"In that case, what do you think of this proposal?"
Kal's voice, to which I'd grown thoroughly accustomed, rang in my ears once more.
I had already been in this meeting with Kal for over an hour. That, I supposed, was why my brain had started shrieking that it was low on glucose, and I'd begun a balancing game to shovel in the fuel it demanded.
"...A proposal where the multiplier on my end increases from ten units and above."
If there was one thing I'd realized, it was that business wasn't something just anyone could do. If you started a business thinking, well, if that guy can run one, why can't I?—you'd end up like that guy, running a business into the ground and ruining your family.
'There's so damn much to keep track of.'
I'd thought the Middle Ages would be a bit different, but it was no different from the modern era. Perhaps the fundamentals never really changed, no matter how much time passed.
Projected revenue and margins, material costs, labor costs, equipment costs, taxes, profit sharing with suppliers—those were just the basics. Then came the what-ifs: what if this didn't sell? What if one thing sold well but another flopped? And on and on.
There was far too much to sort through just to keep things running properly.
'Noble young ladies really are the best.'
Rosaria had been the greatest.
The easiest way to live really was as a second-generation chaebol, wasn't it? So what if her body was a bit frail—at least she'd provided for my livelihood, and that frailty was something even she would overcome in time.
Don't get cocky. Noble young ladies are invincible and divine.
KING, you can't beat me.
"...I'm hesitating because I'm not certain."
Creating more than ten inventions might be easy enough in theory. But I couldn't help wondering: was it truly possible to create ten or more inventions that met every single condition Kal had laid out?
Take the safety razor, for instance.
To begin with, razors did exist in the Middle Ages. There was the old-fashioned kind, like the jackknife that appeared in old movies. However, those razors were difficult to use, people cut themselves often, and the wounds got infected and hurt.
And so, Rosaria-san set out to introduce them to the modern safety razor.
But a razor, however you looked at it, was in the end just a razor. Consumers wouldn't pay a high price for one, and reproducing a modern razor using medieval handcraft demanded tremendous effort.
On top of that, medieval adults who'd already cut themselves two hundred times on the old razors and grown accustomed to those demon blades had little reason to go out of their way to switch to a modern one.
In the end, Rosaria-san's modern razor was rejected: it didn't make money, and it cost too much labor.
In short, even with knowledge of a future product and Kal willing to make it, finding something that satisfied all those conditions and actually worked as a viable business was no easy task.
And this was a world where magic existed.
The variables were plentiful in every conceivable way.
"...For now, it's best to put the contract details aside for later."
I'd need to do a little studying first. It was honestly a relief that Kal was so decent—if I'd run into someone looking to swindle me, things would've gotten troublesome fast.
Given that a partnership where I merely tossed out ideas with no financial investment on my part could, in some cases, still leave me liable for losses, the wheelchair project—which had passed all scrutiny when I looked back at all the factors—had really just been a stroke of luck.
"It's not just the contract—there are some other things I'd like to ask about as well."
Still, I was, after all, a person of the modern era. I had lived through and personally experienced the myriad dopamine sources unavailable in the Middle Ages, so I did know of a few items that could open up a new world they had yet to see.
"If I wanted to make a card game... what sort of artisan would I need to commission?"
It might have come across as a bit rude. It was the equivalent of being in the middle of negotiating a contract with a clothing shop owner and asking how to run a bakery. But this was the Middle Ages, and the people who possessed such skills were mostly members of artisan guilds.
In the end, it was all a network of friends. They all knew one another and made a living by referring clients to each other.
Moreover, Kal was a man I could trust.
The Holy Kingdom wouldn't employ a swindler, would it? And that meant the odds of Kal's acquaintances being swindlers were low. If you couldn't trust a man stamped with a fair-trade authenticity mark—a rarity in this age—there'd be no one left to trust but the clergy and your own family.
"Do you have a game in mind?"
Kal regarded Rosaria with interest—she was someone who flitted freely between genres.
"If so, I can introduce you to a friend of mine. He runs a print shop... and since he also handles playing cards, he already owns the equipment for making cards, so the cost burden on that front should be light."
So saying, Kal wrote down the address of his friend's shop. He also handed over a sheet of stationery bearing both the seal of Kal's shop and the seal of the guild to which he belonged.
"This is proof that you've come on my introduction. There's no need to write a lengthy preamble—simply use this stationery, get straight to the point, and that friend of mine will understand at once. You'll be able to meet comfortably."
So connections still mattered in this era, as ever.
"As for investment funds... you'll have no trouble there, will you, Lady Rosaria? You are an aristocrat, after all, and from now on you'll be receiving a fairly substantial sum from the wheelchair sales."
And now that I thought about it, I didn't actually know how much the sales revenue was.
"...By any chance, how much is the amount?"
"A fair sum. For individual orders, especially, it's even more."
So how much was that, exactly?
Truthfully, even being told the exact figure wouldn't have done me much good.
Rosaria-san had lived without any sense of money.
She'd lived without knowing the cost of the dresses piled up in her wardrobe, the desserts entering her mouth now, or the meat she'd eaten all her life.
'Noble young ladies really are ridiculously broken.'
Was this why they became spoiled, dissolute villainesses who indulged in luxury and pleasure? With wealth enough to live recklessly without caring about prices, and looks that others envied on top of it, of course they'd live wantonly.
Even I, a former Confucian boy, was wavering. I could easily imagine why the noble daughters born into this world with no such foundation grew up to have such wretched personalities.
"...I see."
For now, let's just pretend I know. Hadn't Kal told me earlier not to reveal my hand too easily? It was time for a bluff.
"I hope you won't take this as rudeness... but are you truly certain you know the exact figure? I myself have seen, in my dealings with aristocrats—especially when it comes to young ladies, their sense of money is often lacking, and they frequently fall victim to fraud, so I ask only out of a worried heart..."
So I hadn't been the one in the wrong after all.
That was simply the average for young ladies, apparently.
In that case, this was the moment to swallow my pride.
"...Truthfully, I don't know."
I was ashamed of my own ignorance. And the pride I'd mistakenly clung to was a thoroughly humiliating memory to recall.
And so, for the time being, I decided to continue receiving economic education from Kal.
A round of applause for Kal, who had become both my business partner and my consultant.
*
In the end, having gone out in the morning, I returned home around the time the sun was setting.
Naturally, the household had been turned upside down, and at the very moment the head maid was about to put a bounty on Isabella's head, Rosaria came home with Isabella, both of them tearing into cream buns together.
"Ah... g-good evening."
Isabella, who just moments ago while eating the cream bun had been as blissful as if she lived in paradise, now froze up at once, her face and body rigid as if she'd laid eyes on the Demon King himself. The sight was striking.
"...I'll explain everything, head maid."
And sure enough, the head maid had been on the verge of exploding.
Before it became utter pandemonium, Rosaria, the cause of it all, had to step forward personally and defuse this nuclear bomb before it detonated.
I felt as though I understood the heart of the father of the atomic bomb, who had said: Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. A sensation as though the lives of many people hung upon my own hand.
It wasn't a pleasant feeling, but I'd have to get used to it.
I'm a noble young lady, after all.
...However, Rosaria was never given the chance to persuade the head maid.
Having spent every ounce of energy on the meeting with Kal, Rosaria suffered a disastrous, almost farcical defeat in the third-degree interrogation that followed.
I did manage to protect Isabella, of course. But the price I paid for it was two weeks of being forbidden to go outside. But not to worry—Rosaria-san hadn't enjoyed going for walks in the first place. I could just think of it as self-quarantine and get through it.
It was the victory of the indolent modern person.
Just as I was privately basking in my own perfect triumph, I heard the sound of Isabella knocking on the door.
The moment the door opened, what met my eyes was Isabella, exactly as I'd asked earlier, approaching with both arms full of pencils, a pen, brushes, paint, and paper.
"I'm truly fortunate to have Isabella."
If I'd handed her a drawing of an earthworm, they'd have shown me the door at once. It was genuinely fortunate to have talent capable of drawing right at my side.
"Then, what should I draw, Lady Rosaria?"
Isabella had finished her commission preparations in an instant.
Regrettably, however, today's task involved more than just a drawing or two.
"You may end up drawing quite a lot, Isabella."
"Ah, that's no trouble at all. If anything, I'm only grateful that you've given me a chance to draw again."
Isabella bowed her head in thanks.
"Then, shall we start with a dragon?"
The board game I wanted to make was the one everyone had enjoyed as kids: Yu-□i-□h. And gracing the historic first entry in that act of plagiarism would, naturally, be the B□ue-□yes W□ite D□agon.
Still, I had at least enough conscience for this.
"Make the eyes white and the scales blue."
A blue dragon with white eyes—thus would begin the Rosaria brand original card game.