The Newly Established Department (2)
At Isolde's insistent request, I had drafted the letter to be sent to King Shandrik. One hundred million, no discounts. And if he couldn't pay, he could give her up for lost.
The king's eagle returned five days later. His reply consisted half of curses directed at me and half of curses directed at Isolde.
The gist of it was that he would bury the two of us alive in the desert together — he had clearly, and thoroughly, convinced himself that Isolde and I had fallen in love.
The rumors were true. Isolde seemed to have been the most favored among all the concubines King Shandrik kept.
I did not write back to King Shandrik. I agreed with Isolde's assessment wholeheartedly. He should have treated her well while he had her. Fleeing without so much as a backward glance when his own life was on the line, only to play the devoted lover now — the audacity was almost impressive.
That said, none of this meant I trusted Isolde. There was every possibility that this entire affair was a play staged jointly by the king and her. Releasing her would only come after confirming the extent of Shandrik's weakness.
"Lord Duke Iden."
It was late at night when a servant announced a visitor.
"Finance Minister Opils has arrived."
"Send him in."
Moments later, a stern-faced middle-aged man stepped into the office.
"Lord Duke."
Opils bowed respectfully. I set down the documents I'd been reviewing on the desk.
They were reports on the war. Mabel was preparing a military campaign under the Emperor's authority, and the documents laid out, department by department, everything we had prepared to meet him.
If it came down to raw military strength alone, we would not be badly outmatched. We had plenty of Grand Masters, and our knight orders were of high caliber.
But war was not a tournament. War was a contest fought with every product of the land itself. Men alone did not win wars.
What worried me most was the food situation. Outside the duchy's direct territories, the North had almost no farmland worth the name. The famine had been resolved, yes, but the climate itself was hostile to agriculture — the winters stretched long and the summers were brief.
So before the imperial delegation arrived, I had bought up grain wherever I could get my hands on it. I had spent a fortune securing warehouse sites and raising buildings as well.
"Our grain reserves are three years' worth, correct?"
"That is correct."
Three years was the absolute maximum the crops' freshness would allow.
"Three years is a comfortable reserve. In the entire history of the Empire, no territorial war has ever lasted more than a year."
Well, that made sense. Against superhumans who could snap sword-qi like twigs, castle walls meant nothing.
The Siege of Andras had been decided in barely a month. In my old world, the encirclement alone would have taken years.
"Still, our low food self-sufficiency troubles me. Couldn't the Emperor strangle us without ever fighting a war — simply by driving up grain prices?"
"Grain purchase prices are in fact climbing steeply. Recently, the famine has begun spreading toward the capital itself."
"That doesn't surprise me in the least."
A basket that leaks on the inside will leak on the outside too. As long as Mabel lived, the famine would never end.
"We need to secure farmland. How long are we supposed to starve while watching the capital's face?"
"The previous dukes wracked their brains over this same problem, but securing farmland along the northern frontier is a truly difficult matter, so..."
Opils's voice trailed off.
The economic structure of the duchy was profoundly lopsided. Its chief exports were monster materials and minerals — resources the capital prized dearly.
Those precious resources drew people from across the Empire flocking north, and the result was that the already barren land grew only more starved for food.
Stockpiling grain was a stopgap measure for the coming war. What was needed was a fundamental solution — for the sake of every soul living on this land.
"Come with me."
I rose and pulled on my coat.
"We're going to the underground base."
I had been keeping an eye on the Subterranean World's potential for years. What had caught my eye during my explorations was the riot of glowing flora and fauna in every color imaginable.
The logic was simple. If we could live underground, our territory would double, arithmetically. And if the territory doubled, so would the farmland.
So I had organized an expedition team to survey the underground vegetation. They seemed to be covering a considerable distance, since their last report had come in three months earlier.
The expedition headquarters stood at the very center of the base — the exact spot where Ivan Esterzy's expedition team had pitched their tents three hundred years ago.
The tents were long gone now, replaced by a three-story brick building. That rectangular structure was the headquarters of the expedition corps.
"An honor to meet you, Lord Duke."
Scholars came streaming out of the headquarters to greet us — the research team stationed there permanently.
"Introduce yourselves, everyone. This is Opils of the Finance Ministry."
"Opils, Finance Minister, at your service."
Opils gave a slight bow.
"And this is Jonathan of the Exploration Bureau."
"Jonathan, head of the research team. A pleasure."
Jonathan was a man in his forties with a deeply tanned complexion. I'd heard the dark skin came from southern blood in his lineage.
He was the research team leader of the newly established Exploration Bureau. I had not installed him there myself. The Bureau was being run autonomously by Simon the scholar and Srudal of the Third Squad.
I could not shoulder every last thing myself. A duke's seat is not a place for that — it wasn't even physically possible.
But confirming that things were running smoothly was my job. And that was exactly what I intended to do here.
"The Exploration Bureau had two assignments, as I recall."
"That is correct."
"Can you show me?"
"Of— of course, my lord. Right this way."
Jonathan was tense, stiff as a board. The Duke of Esterzy appearing with the Finance Minister in tow — he must have assumed he was about to be shaken down to his last coin.
Under Jonathan's guidance, we headed toward the outskirts of the underground base, where meticulously tended fields of cultivated land spread out before us.
Countless subterranean plants were planted there in neat, divided plots. Wooden signs had been driven into each one, marked with the names and characteristics of the crops.
"You intend to farm here."
Opils turned to me, marveling.
"Yes. This is a trial cultivation field. We're studying the seventeen edible plant species the expedition team discovered."
I had ordered the survey of the Subterranean World three years ago, and the trial cultivation had begun a year ago based on the findings. This was my answer to the question of food self-sufficiency.
"How are the results?"
"Well, first — we've ruled the red-capped mushroom unfit for consumption."
"...That's a surprise. I thought it was our most promising crop."
The red-capped mushroom had been the one I'd pinned my hopes on. It was the first plant I'd discovered upon descending into the Subterranean World, after all — and I had eaten it myself.
"Don't tell me it's because of the gulroks?"
The gulroks had been the monsters that tripped us up down there. They built primitive dwellings inside the red-capped mushroom colonies and lived among them. For creatures that would go mad over mushrooms, they might well have taken deep offense at our cultivating their favorite food.
"Precisely so. We've concluded that the red-capped mushroom and the gulrok share something beyond mere symbiosis — they are, in effect, a single organism."
"A single organism?"
"The gulrok is part of the red-capped mushroom's life cycle. When the spores mature, they become gulroks; and when a gulrok grows old, it spreads mycelium and becomes a red-capped mushroom."
"......"
My stomach turned all at once. I wanted to retch up the mushrooms I'd eaten three years ago.
"So we are studying the remaining plants instead, but the results have been disappointing. There are minor issues — poor texture, unpleasant aromas — but the greatest problem is growth rate. The plant life of the Subterranean World, as a whole, grows far too slowly."
The plants of the underground had adapted to an environment with no sunlight. They must have slowed their growth to survive on the barest minimum of energy.
That harmless little clump of grass I'd plucked and munched on without a second thought might well have been a venerable elder thirty years in the making.
"There is potential to improve the growth rate through selective breeding. However, time is a problem there as well. To see any real gains from breeding, we'd need at least a few generations to pass..."
Jonathan's voice trailed off again.
The Subterranean World was not the North's exclusive possession. Its caverns stretched beneath every corner of the continent.
But with monsters swarming its depths and its crops growing too slowly to be worth the effort, people treated the underground not as untapped land but as a dungeon.
Even so, I had seen possibility here. I had founded the Exploration Bureau and poured resources into it. There was a reason for that.
"Opils."
"Yes, my lord."
"Suppose we made stakes out of Oradium, each one my height, and about as thick as a spread hand. What would the budget look like for, say, a thousand of them?"
"Stakes... out of Oradium?"
Opils repeated, plainly flustered.
"Forgive me, but might I ask what purpose the stakes would serve?"
"Stakes. That's all. Something to drive into the ground."
"Ah... it would cost very little, my lord. You own the Oradium mine outright, so the expense would amount to little more than the craftsman's labor fees. However, if you process the Oradium into stakes instead of selling it, you would be forfeiting an enormous profit."
"I see."
What I was about to explain was something neither Opils nor Jonathan nor anyone else could imagine. It was possible for me alone — a Daoist, and no one else.
When the camp had first been established down here, the scholars had tested whether mana seeped from blades pressed against the ground. The daggers had glowed white, as if sheathed in sword-qi — and thus the Oradium vein was discovered.
Oradium had the property of absorbing and storing mana. Used skillfully, that property could be harnessed to guide mana's flow in whatever direction one desired.
"Jonathan — how far is the earth dragon's nest from here?"
"Roughly five kilometers in a straight line."
"...I may need more stakes than a thousand, then."
I finished the rough calculation in my head.
Mabel had made the Scarlet Blaze — an orchid that should take a full thousand years to mature — bear fruit in mere years.
It had accomplished this by drinking in the land's vitality, but the energy he had drawn upon was nothing more than what lay steeped in the earth's thin outer skin.
The true vitality of the land slumbered deep beneath the surface — the boundless earthly energy this very planet carried within it. The Daoists had called it the dragon vein.
I had already confirmed its location. The place where Ruby was born — the earth dragon's nest — sat directly atop a dragon vein.
My plan was to drive in a thousand Oradium stakes and draw that infinite power up to us.