Exiled
I was exiled.
As expected, there was no execution.
Karia had thrown herself into defending me with such fury that she seemed ready to start a rebellion if I were sentenced to death.
The Emperor had also taken my side.
Even so, once I had openly confessed my crimes before everyone, neither the Emperor nor Karia could simply erase them.
A thorough investigation was launched.
I handed over every document without resistance and returned every coin listed in the evidence Duke Pelling had presented.
That was where it ended.
"If the embezzled funds have all been returned to the treasury, and considering that he confessed willingly, that should suffice," the Emperor declared.
He still trusted me and believed a single mistake could be forgiven, so he ended the investigation early.
Prince Adran, the Prince of Gold, who had led the inquiry, insisted on harsher punishment, but the aging Emperor had grown sentimental and no longer valued logic above emotion.
He dismissed the prince's reasonable objections and closed the case.
That was not all.
Once the investigation concluded, the Emperor summoned me in secret for a private audience and even offered comfort.
"Why did you do it? Why? You didn't have to give Pelling any opening to attack you. Why would you do such a thing? What am I supposed to do without a loyal subject like you?"
The Emperor even shed a few tears.
Watching him, I could see exactly how his foolishness and the original Landor's silver tongue had brought the empire to ruin.
Yet even this senile, foolish Emperor upheld the minimum principle.
"The nobles are in an uproar. They say the punishment is too light if someone openly admits to embezzlement and only has to return the money."
He looked at me with an expression of deep regret.
"Exile has been decided. We haven't chosen the destination yet."
Then he asked me, almost casually.
It was his way of giving me the choice.
Since things had come to this, he was telling me to go somewhere quiet and rest until the uproar died down.
Those words were exactly what I had been waiting for.
"Please send me to the Barony of Elond."
"E-Elond?"
The Emperor stared at me in shock.
The Barony of Elond lay in the empire's far west, near the massive Raco Mountains that divided the eastern and western continents.
Because it sat right beside the mountains, the region was as cold and rugged as the northern Rimnakal Plains.
It possessed no natural resources whatsoever—only snow, bitter cold, and monsters.
The local lord, Baron Elond, had long since abandoned the territory, leaving it completely unmanaged.
"What if you fall ill in a place like that?!"
The Emperor shouted, but I remained serious.
While my tongue might not twist as smoothly as the original Landor's, I was still an avid reader of this novel.
I had already planned exactly what to say.
"I took the blame in their stead, Your Majesty. The vast fortune I accumulated has all returned to the treasury. What I took from my coffers was money those ruthless merchants in the capital had unjustly extracted from the people. Let what belongs to the people return to the people."
The Emperor's eyes welled up again.
Seeing those glistening tears, I continued.
"Please wait just one year, Your Majesty. I will turn the Elond territory into the wealthiest land in the empire. With that wealth I will refill the treasury, and with it a wise emperor may strengthen the nation."
"Ah! My loyal subject! I never realized you held such intentions……"
The Emperor clutched me and burst into loud sobs.
Though he had grown foolish with age and illness, he was still useful to me right now.
"It shall be as you say. I will send you to the Barony of Elond. No—more than that! The barony has had no lord for decades. The original Elond family long ago abandoned their claim. Therefore, deciding who receives the land is my prerogative. I appoint you its lord."
"Your Majesty’s grace is boundless!"
I pressed my forehead to the floor.
First, I needed to escape the capital, a place thick with schemes, betrayals, and conspiracies.
Fortunately, my plan had worked.
"What on earth are you thinking?!"
The moment I entered the merchant guild’s conference hall, a man began shouting at me.
With oily skin and an M-shaped bald spot that seemed to advance in real time, he looked like the very embodiment of a greedy merchant who would not bleed even if stabbed.
"Calm down, Karl Hansen."
"How am I supposed to calm down?! Do you know how much secret funds just vanished?! Why in the world did you admit to it?!"
Karl Hansen kept yelling, but I remained relaxed.
Once Landor had gained power beside the Emperor, he had unified every merchant guild in the capital into one.
His reason had been purely treacherous: it made skimming easier.
The man before me, Karl Hansen, now led that unified guild.
The treacherous Landor had placed a mental spell on him that would force suicide if he ever betrayed his master.
In short, Karl was a perfectly loyal subordinate with no possibility of betrayal.
"Duke Pelling sharpened his blade quite well. He uncovered nearly forty percent of the secret funds. It hurt."
"Do you even realize how much money that is?!"
"About five million gold, I suppose?"
Karl Hansen looked ready to foam at the mouth.
He knew that without me, he would lose both the Emperor’s protection and Karia’s military backing, so he barely swallowed his curses.
"Why would you do this?!"
"Relax, Karl. Sixty percent still hasn’t been discovered."
That was true.
Even after losing that much, this treacherous minister still had roughly seven and a half million gold hidden away.
The sum remained overwhelming, yet as a merchant Karl could not forgive the loss of five million gold that need never have been taken.
"Give me a reason. Why did you do it?"
Karl glared at me as though he might strike if my answer was unsatisfactory.
I smiled at him.
"The reason isn’t important. What matters is what I intend to do next. I’ve been exiled to the Barony of Elond."
Karl finally foamed at the mouth.
"You call that an explanation?! Elond is the middle of nowhere! You threw away five million gold and got exiled?! What kind of nonsense is this?!"
"I’m going there to do business, Karl."
Karl clutched the back of his head and collapsed into a chair, breathing heavily as though his blood pressure had spiked.
"Isn’t the business you already have in the capital enough?"
"No. I want something greater."
"What do you mean by greater…… Hey! Lord Landor!! What’s wrong with you all of a sudden? Did you eat something bad?"
Normally such aggressive language would never have come from him, yet I did not rebuke him.
What I was doing was clearly irrational, but only by acting irrationally could I survive.
"I’m going to make the empire prosperous."
"What?"
Karl stared at me as though I were a tiger that had just announced it would become vegetarian.
A treacherous scoundrel claiming he would enrich the empire was the sort of lie told to outsiders, not something spoken among fellow conspirators.
"I will make the empire strong. Look at its current state. The northern monsters rampaged and two years of war followed. Though the invincible Karia crushed the enemy brilliantly, many still died. Power is wielded by a tiny elite while the common people groan under their exploitation and grow poorer. Is this a normal country?!"
"What does any of that have to do with us?! We just need to eat well and live well ourselves!"
The outburst was exactly the sort of line one would expect from a vile merchant in a cabal of traitors, yet I shook my head seriously.
"I have decided to make the empire prosperous. That decision cannot be changed."
"Oh gods. Why are you doing this?"
Karl Hansen, who had once believed only in the power of gold, now invoked the divine for the first time.
Still, his reaction did not matter.
To prevent my own gruesome death, I first had to reform this rotting empire.
Why?
Even now, resistance groups were growing across the empire because of the foolish Emperor, Duke Pelling who plotted rebellion despite the northern campaign’s wounds still fresh, and the original Landor who intended to place Karia on the throne using the Iron Blood Coalition and the wealth he had scraped from the capital so he could rule from behind the scenes.
In the novel’s final act, those rebels rise nationwide.
The Emperor orders Karia to suppress them.
While she mercilessly crushes the starving, resentful commoners, Adran, disgusted with the empire, joins the rebels.
Selene assassinates the Emperor.
Landor tries to kill her but fails and is burned at the stake in the square.
From that point the already bleak novel descends into utter despair.
To prevent that future, I first had to feed the starving people.
Visiting every noble in the capital and begging them to lower taxes for the people’s sake was pointless.
Those who already held power would never release their grip.
Therefore I had to create an entirely new source of wealth and a new market.
"I’m going to dig a tunnel through the Raco Mountains. I’ll open a trade route connecting the western and eastern continents and bring enormous wealth to the empire—wealth for the people!"
When anger reaches its peak, it sometimes turns into resignation.
Karl Hansen gave a hollow laugh and looked at me with an expression that said, "Do whatever you want."
"A tunnel through the Raco Mountains? Are you serious? Do you know how treacherous those mountains are? If a trade route between the two continents were established, the profits would be astronomical. You’d earn in a single day what the merchant guild makes in the capital in a year. Yet everyone knows this. Why has no one ever tried?"
The Raco Mountains were said to have been created by a god filled with malice.
The peaks were absurdly high, wrapped in eternal ice that made them lethally slippery.
Blizzards struck constantly.
And because humans never ventured there, countless monsters that had never been hunted roamed freely.
Proposing to dig a tunnel through such a place was treated as the same level of absurdity as teaching ballet to orcs.
"You’re right, Karl. It will be difficult. But what if we use the remaining seven and a half million gold in secret funds together with the Iron Blood Coalition, which has just returned from the northern campaign at the peak of its discipline and strength?"
"You were planning to use the Iron Blood Coalition to seize the capital! Why abandon the plan with the highest chance of success and suddenly decide to dig a tunnel in the westernmost corner of the empire instead?! Why?!"
Because carrying out that high-probability plan would end with me being torn limb from limb in the square.
Karl begged me to reconsider, but I never wavered.
No one could stop me.
A few days later, accompanied by Karia, her Iron Blood Coalition, and the seven and a half million gold in secret funds that even Duke Pelling had never discovered, I departed for the Barony of Elond.