Quite a Few Problems Here
Morning. The reception room of the mansion. I stared directly into Silvia’s hazel eyes as she stood perfectly straight and opened my mouth.
“Status window.”
Silence.
“Appraise.”
Stillness.
“Status.”
A string of pointless commands. The eyes of Silvia, always flawless in their composure, narrowed by the tiniest fraction.
I turned my head and looked at Elina instead.
“Status window. Appraise. Status.”
Elina’s blue eyes tilted in open confusion.
Just to be sure, I had personally visited the large auction house where I had purchased her. I had stared through the rusted iron bars at the slaves inside, trying to invoke the ability in my mind and even shouting the words aloud. The only response was the merchants looking at me like I was insane. No miracle came.
The original owner of this body—Victor—had possessed a unique power. When he looked at slaves with special talents, a red glow would appear on the relevant body parts. An intuitive appraisal system where the brightness of that glow changed according to the level of talent.
But it carried one fatal restriction. Once a slave became his perfect property with the Brand of Subjugation engraved upon them, the light would never appear again.
I had combed through every corner of the auction house, yet the result was devastating. Not only was Victor’s red glow gone, even the holographic window that had floated in the air when I first saw Elina refused to return.
A perfect empty vessel. No hidden opportunities, no transcendent assistance.
Doesn’t matter. I can run everything with the data already in my head.
In my previous life, I had excelled at piercing through a company’s hidden asset value using nothing but scraps of paper and raw data. But the truly massive games never turned on a few printed numbers. Malicious debt hidden behind the books, tangled market rivalries, risks concealed by management—my real weapon had been the sharp insight that captured every variable through vision and instinct.
I had paid Gomez the interest due this month. But when you added next month’s interest, the maintenance costs for this enormous mansion, and the operating expenses of the businesses, eight hundred gold coins vanished into thin air every month even if I did nothing but breathe.
After raiding the Golden Toad gambling den and subtracting a month’s operating costs, my available liquid assets sat at roughly seven hundred gold coins. I had no time to waste on some uncertain ability that might never reactivate. If I failed to create an explosive revenue pipeline that dwarfed these expenditures and debts, I would be crushed under the weight of that mountain of obligations long before anyone put a sword through my chest.
Today’s goal was to normalize two businesses: the brothel and the drug den.
The capital’s red-light district lay thick with darkness. A back alley reeked of cheap perfume and the sour stench of spilled liquor. Footsteps sank into the sticky mud.
Behind me, the armed combat slaves and Elina followed closely, their varied footsteps filling the evening gloom of the alley. Elina wore the same battered breastplate and iron sword she had before. Her hair was tied back tightly, and the hard leather armor did nothing to hide the curves beneath—more than enough to stir any onlooker’s desire to conquer.
The atmosphere around her as she guarded me had changed completely from yesterday. The pride of a former noblewoman and the humiliation of becoming a slave had been wiped clean. She radiated only cold detachment, projecting a suffocating killing intent toward any presence that dared approach within my radius. A loyal hunting dog ready to tear apart anyone who threatened her master’s life.
I could not afford to trust this appearance. She might simply be hiding her claws until she regained her full strength.
In the back-alley world, anyone who caused trouble in another’s business was executed on the spot. That was the absolute rule. But the previous Victor had been too busy with business expansion and murderous interest payments. He had neglected the expensive establishments he bought, allowing several of them to become Gomez’s personal feeding grounds. No wonder the returns had been garbage despite the heavy investment.
The red three-story building that was my first destination creaked as I shoved its door open.
The first-floor hall, which should have been bustling with hospitality and seduction, was a disaster. A shattered chandelier lay on the floor amid broken liquor bottles and the screams of women. The air was thick with the stench of semen and the metallic tang of blood.
“Three days’ worth of revenue from this place. Scrape it all up and let’s have some fun.”
In the middle of the hall, a massive man zipped up his pants and puffed out his chest.
“Kahaha! Today was fucking incredible. I already went three times in the back rooms.”
Another man came down the stairs from the second floor, buckling his belt.
“They’re still going at it inside. Jump in when they’re done. You won’t get tired of it.”
At his colleague’s crude joke, the man in the hall chuckled and stuffed the fallen prostitutes’ fees into his own pocket. They were laughing as if they owned the world, completely unaware that Gomez’s gambling den had been destroyed. Then their eyes landed on me as I stepped through the door.
“The hell? Some bastard barging into another man’s—urk!”
The giant’s face, which had been twisted in irritation, drained of all color in an instant.
“M-Master Victor! W-what brings you here…”
“Please spare us! We only did it because Brother Gomez ordered—”
The beasts who had been violating the merchandise only moments ago threw themselves flat on the floor the instant they recognized the scar on my face. Their pathetic excuses spilled out as their survival instincts finally kicked in.
I looked down at them and gave a single command.
“Clean it up.”
Black lightning shot forward before the words had even faded. Shrrk—!
“Aaaaargh!”
The arms of the man groveling on the floor flew into the air, severed at the wrists. Another scream was cut short as a blade sliced through a throat. Blood sprayed everywhere. The chunks of meat rolled across the floor in convulsions, unable even to scream.
I stepped over the puddles of blood and headed for the noisiest room in the back. Beyond the thin plywood door came the sound of a man’s rough panting and a woman’s pained cries.
Bang—!
A combat slave kicked the door open. The old wooden panel tore off its hinges with a crash.
“Ah, ugh! Who the fuck—!”
On the creaking bed inside, a completely naked man was mounted on a woman, panting like an animal. Startled by the sudden intrusion, he jerked upright and turned his head.
“Who the hell are you? Do you even know whose territory this—huk!”
The moment he saw me and reflexively reached for the knife beside the bed, Elina’s iron sword leaped forward with a metallic ring. The silver arc buried itself precisely between his eyes. Elina lightly flicked the blade clean; not a single drop of blood had stained it. A flawless, error-free execution. The daily Mana Stabilizer was clearly paying off.
“Hic… sob.”
On the bed, a woman covered in bruises had frozen solid at the sight of the horrific violence. She couldn’t even scream. With a deathly pale face, she frantically gathered the torn clothes scattered beside the bed and tried to cover herself. Even through the thin fabric, her smooth collarbones and full hips were visible. Had it not been for the bruises, she would have been a premium product worthy of noble clientele.
“Sister Anna!”
The other prostitutes from the hall rushed in and helped the woman up. Their sobs filled the room as they embraced her battered form. I crouched down to meet Anna’s eye level.
“Where are the account books?”
She stared at me with swollen, blackened eyes. Anna’s trembling hands adjusted the clothes covering her body. Her gaze flicked back and forth between the scar on my face and the corpses on the floor. Once she had perfectly grasped the situation, she knelt on the bed despite her nakedness and pressed her forehead to the sheets.
“…This servant greets Master Victor.”
The firm, refined tone coming from a bottom-tier prostitute was hard to believe. I looked down at her bowed head and spoke.
“My apologies for the lax management until now.”
At the unexpected apology from the predator who had abandoned them, Anna’s shoulders shook violently.
She quickly opened a hidden compartment beneath the bed and pulled out a thick leather ledger. Her injured hands offered it to me with care. I asked my next question without even opening it.
“Number of nobles listed in the books.”
“…Forty-seven.”
“How exactly has this brothel been operating?”
Even while breathing hard, Anna’s voice remained steady.
“They took more than eighty percent of the girls’ fees and falsified the reception records to pocket kickbacks. Any girl who resisted was dragged to the basement and beaten… or forcibly drugged to increase her debt.”
Flawless memory. A cool head that refused to break even in extreme terror. Insight that saw straight through the organization’s inner workings. A person her colleagues trusted. To use such talent as nothing more than a tool for relieving sexual desire on a bed was a blatant waste of human resources.
I stood up and declared, “As of today, you are the manager of this establishment.”
“…Pardon?”
For the first time, deep bewilderment crossed Anna’s bruised face.
“I will give you exactly three days. All business is suspended. Use that time to clean this garbage pit from top to bottom—perfectly.”
I turned and continued issuing orders.
“Also, select the girls who have some education, good conversational skills, and decent appearances. In three days I will inform you of the new direction this place will take.”
Anna’s shoulders stiffened. She bit her split lip, then asked in a voice that remained as polite as possible while still carrying steel.
“…I know this question is presumptuous. But what treatment will those selected girls receive in the future?”
The instinctive fear of prey wondering if she would be sold into another hell. Especially since the buyer was the infamous Victor. I narrowed my eyes and looked down at her emotionlessly.
“Do you need to know that?”
Anna’s head dropped. As I turned away, I tossed one more line over my shoulder.
“Well. At the very least, I won’t make them spread their legs for pocket change. I’ll have them earn money in a far more expensive and refined way, so choose carefully.”
Anna’s shoulders twitched. Leaving behind the sound of her hot, relieved breath, I walked out of the brothel.
The second destination was a drug den on the capital’s outskirts, not far from the brothel. The moment the door opened, acrid smoke and the stench of rot assaulted me. Customers lay sprawled across the floor, drooling. Even the employees who were supposed to manage them were slumped in the corners, grinning stupidly under the influence.
A total disaster that would naturally destroy cash flow. I crossed the filthy drug den and violently opened the concealed iron door in the back.
A crude manufacturing room with no proper ventilation.
“You sluggish bastard! I told you to lower the cost! Mix in more of that cheap hallucinatory herb!”
“Ugh…!”
The subordinates were mercilessly kicking a skinny young alchemist in the stomach. They were forcing him to mass-produce toxic inventory focused solely on addiction and brain stimulation using cheap ingredients. The man clung to his distiller even as he vomited blood.
“If you keep pumping in stimulants like that… the users’ brains will rot away in a year…! I won’t make that kind of filth!”
The sound of the iron door being smashed made them turn. Their faces went deathly pale.
“V-Victor! Shit, we’re finished!”
“We’re all going to die anyway—let’s take him with us!”
Desperate resistance from men who sensed their fate. They grabbed explosive chemical reagents from the shelves, drew knives from their waists, and charged.
The ring of drawn blades. Clang!
Before I could even give the order, Elina and the combat slaves’ swords leaped through the darkness. The reagent bottles flying through the air were sliced by heavy sword energy and scattered across the floor. Silver arcs severed necks and tendons with perfect precision.
It took less than ten seconds. Everything unnecessary to the situation cleanup fell to the floor screaming.
I stepped across the floor where chemicals and blood boiled together and approached the alchemist.
“Name.”
“Cough… cough… Theo.”
Theo’s trembling fingertips wiped his swollen lips.
“Rather than making trash that eats people’s brains… I’d rather bite my tongue and die. I can create high-efficiency stimulants with no side effects… but those bastards destroyed all my research because the ingredients were too expensive.”
The stubborn pride of a craftsman. To my ears, it simply sounded like the babbling of someone who didn’t understand market principles.
“You’re making drugs that addict people and devour their lives, yet you act self-righteous.”
My cold words made Theo’s pupils shake violently.
“Pretending to have a conscience. A hypocrite drunk on his own petty sense of satisfaction. And you talk too much.”
But soon, a bizarre intensity rose in his sunken eyes.
“Even if my inventions ruin someone…”
Theo continued speaking through blood-flecked coughs, as if his philosophy could never be broken.
“The perfect compounding ratios I established for alchemy. There is no reason to abandon that conviction just because of those idiots.”
Madness. A genius alchemist who had surpassed his peers and seniors at a young age. Because of that overwhelming talent, he had been ostracized by the old guard of the Alchemist Guild. He wandered in search of someone who would use him and ended up imprisoned here. Even while being forced to create filth he despised, he had never abandoned his obsession with alchemy.
“Do those old fossils in the guild even understand my formulas? My ratios are perfect!”
Theo spat out words mixed with resentment and mania.
“Prove it.”
I kicked a reagent bottle at his feet.
“That perfect ratio you keep bragging about. Show me the theory and the practice right here.”
Theo’s eyes widened in disbelief.
“Who do you think you are to see my research? An ignorant fool who doesn’t even know the basics of alchemy—”
“You don’t need to know who I am.”
I pulled out a pouch heavy with gold coins and threw it on the floor. Several coins spilled out and rolled across the ground.
“Depending on your ability, I will give you the opportunity to conduct any research you desire.”
The pure thirst for inquiry and academic hunger. Theo’s pupils dilated madly at the sight of that desperate longing being answered. As if possessed, he crawled across the floor, frantically gathering containers, shelves, and desks.
“W-watch this. To neutralize the toxicity of the hallucinatory herb, I add exactly one pinch of water spirit stone powder…!”
In a frenzy of measuring and compounding, two flasks were completed in moments within Theo’s blood-stained hands. One was a high-grade recovery potion capable of instantly healing open wounds. The other—
“…Mana Stabilizer.”
At my murmur, Theo nodded with bloodshot eyes. So the stabilizer back at the mansion had been his creation as well. At that moment, Elina’s eyes, standing behind me, shook violently. It was the very liquid she had swallowed in the office.
“If I’m given only the highest-grade catalysts… in theory it should be possible to create an elixir that reconnects a destroyed Mana Heart.”
Theo’s muttered monologue made Elina’s shoulders flinch noticeably. Even to the eyes of a complete amateur who knew nothing of alchemy, the clean, efficient process from moments ago had been close to art.
I picked up one of the two completed potions—the high-grade recovery potion—and tossed it toward Theo.
“Pack your things. I’ll put you in a proper laboratory instead of this sewer that smells like shit.”
But what returned was not overwhelming joy. Theo, sitting on the floor, clutched his head with both arms and began to tremble. The terrible defensive mechanism forged by long years of accumulated beatings and violence was strangling him.
“H-how can I trust you?”
Thick fear coated his hoarse voice.
“Those bastards also promised the best support at first. But all that came back was merciless violence and oppression.”
Theo looked back and forth between me and the bloody corpses with bloodshot eyes. The instinctive wariness toward the cruel murderer who had slaughtered armed men in seconds.
“You’ll just use me like trash and abuse me too, won’t you?”
The desperate distrust of a wounded, abandoned genius filled his gaze.
I crouched down and looked at Theo’s thin, filthy hands covered in dirt and blood. These were not burns from reagents or cuts from sharp glass. They were grotesque scars created solely by blunt beatings and merciless trampling. The ignorant marks of back-alley rats who had crushed the hands of a craftsman who created miracles as if grinding meat.
I gripped Theo’s jaw hard with one hand and flicked the cork off the potion bottle with my thumb.
“Ugh, cough…!”
The brilliant liquid was forced down his throat before he could resist. Theo clutched his neck, coughing violently. His pupils soon expanded to a bizarre degree. In mere seconds, even though it was a hastily made potion in a crude environment, the torn lips and crushed flesh on his fingers visibly knit together, pushing out new skin. A miraculous trajectory of recovery that proved the overwhelming value of a genius.
I tossed the empty glass bottle to the floor.
“Don’t misunderstand. Whether you want it or not, the outcome that you will come under me will not change.”
Theo’s breath caught.
“However.”
I gripped his now-healed shoulder with heavy force.
“I will fully guarantee the autonomy of your research. I will never demand defective products that damage your petty convictions or those so-called perfect formulas.”
Theo’s eyes wavered within the rough grip. I met that gaze directly and added,
“Since you are now my property, any bastard who puts even a single scratch on your body—I will personally rip his throat out.”
A dry declaration with not a drop of warm comfort or sympathy. The manifestation of a vicious need for control that had never once tolerated damage to what belonged to me. Yet that violent, bloodless restraint was, for Theo—who had only ever been trampled by oppression—the most solid lifeline in the world.
“Ah……”
A faint, beast-like sigh escaped between Theo’s bloodless lips. As if possessed, he reached out with both hands and clutched the hem of my blood-spattered pants like a lifeline.
“…That… that is enough.”
A wet voice, eyes red with emotion.
“Even if that promise of yours is a blatant lie… right now, my heart feels as if all the hellish time I endured has been fully compensated.”
Theo slammed his forehead against the floor and looked up with eyes blazing with intense madness.
“I will prove with my own two hands what the world’s highest quality truly is.”
It was the moment when the blind loyalty of a genius alchemist entwined itself around the absolute ruler who had finally recognized him completely.
On the way back to the mansion after completing the on-site inspection, heavy footsteps echoed through the dark back alley where even moonlight could not reach.
My expectations for these businesses had been rock-bottom from the start. If no potential was visible, I had planned to maintain the status quo at minimal loss or manipulate them moderately until they no longer threatened my safety, then cut them loose.
Yet what I had pulled from the rotten mud were premium raw gems that far exceeded my meager predictions.
The cheap, blood-soaked brothel would be transformed into a high-class salon where the empire’s nobles gathered to exchange secret information. The garbage den that produced brain-rotting low-grade drugs would be scrapped entirely. In its place, I would create a premium monopoly that distributed only minute quantities of side-effect-free top-grade stimulants, along with a personal workshop inside the mansion that thoroughly guaranteed Theo’s autonomy. A complete change of course.
Elina, who had been following closely in my shadow, hesitated and parted her lips.
“Master. I…”
“Quiet.”
I cut her off sharply without slowing my steps.
“You may speak in the office.”
Elina’s mouth closed tightly. Her blue eyes trembled precariously between expectation and uncontrollable fear.
The mansion’s massive iron gate opened with a heavy groan. Silvia, dressed in neat maid attire, bowed her head from within the deep darkness to greet us.
As I stepped inside, I once again chewed heavily on the texture of this grotesque world.
The female-oriented romance fantasy novel my little sister had hammered into my ears. Within those flimsy pages, names like Anna or Theo had not appeared even once. A stage that was extremely narrow and flat, with the spotlight focused solely on the protagonists’ heroic narrative.
But the ground I now walked and breathed upon was different. A real world where even nameless extras bled with their own talents and desires. The massive untapped resources that had never once been illuminated in the novel, and the three-dimensional face of this enormous world, made the corners of my mouth lift into a wide, ear-to-ear grin.