A Realm Crude Financiers Cannot Comprehend
I'm completely fucked.
That was the conclusion I reached after careful deliberation.
I was fucked.
"This is the list of magic towers and merchant groups requesting spent magic stones."
"Is this a phone book?"
"You may as well consider nearly every merchant group in the Empire to be after spent magic stones."
"Ah. I see."
No.
Why the hell did this brand-new technology have to pop out of nowhere like that?
Was the world just out to screw me over?
Thanks to it, my workload had exploded.
People were begging me from every direction—please, just sell us some spent magic stones.
"Acquiring most of the spent magic stone landfills made all the difference. Practically every magic stone the Empire has ever used is buried there. In effect, we've come to own a magic stone mine where all we have to do is dig."
"Oh dear. Developing a mine without a permit is a violation of the Mining Act, isn't it? I'll be reporting this to the Resource Ministry."
"Haha. You do enjoy a joke, my lord."
I wasn't joking.
What the hell was the Ministry of Trade and Resources even doing? They needed to pass a special law classifying magic stone landfills as mines, and they needed to do it yesterday.
Dig the ground and magic stones come out!
Weren't they supposed to be managing this kind of thing?!
"Apparently the Resource Ministry is throwing its full weight behind this magic stone recycling technology. Truth be told, they've been the ones losing the most sleep over Magic Stone Depletion Theory. Word is they may even start issuing subsidies for related businesses."
"……."
Ah. We were done for.
I needed to dump these spent magic stones on someone else as fast as humanly possible. Once the Empire got behind something, a skyrocketing price was only a matter of time.
When government money starts flowing, the market always reacts big.
Haa……
In the end, I had no choice but to work hard. Sell it all off while the price was still low.
I ran through the documents at speed, sorting out the contract terms as I went.
"Here, here, and here—proceed with the contracts exactly as marked."
"Pardon? Ah. Yes, understood."
"Manager. Are we really going through with the contracts like this?"
"Yeah. The young master decided it himself, so just do as he says."
"These are forward contracts."
"Right?"
"If the price of spent magic stones goes up, we take a loss."
Forward contracts.
Simply put, you fix a price in advance and agree to trade at that price in the future. Every contract Otto had selected was of that type.
In that case, if the price of spent magic stones rose, the merchant group stood to lose by exactly that much. Stones they could have sold for more would still have to go at the contracted price.
Naturally, at a moment when spent magic stone prices were climbing like this, it was a losing deal.
Director Lovelace's doubts were only reasonable.
"I suppose the young master expects the price of spent magic stones to fall."
"How is that possible? Even excluding the recharging cost, the price should climb until it's roughly in line with regular magic stones. Spent stones can be used like magic stones now."
"Not used like magic stones. They are magic stones."
"Yes. Same difference."
"After you use a magic stone, a magic stone remains. Doesn't that strike you as odd?"
"Pardon?"
"Magic stones used to be consumables."
"That's true. Ah. A consumable has… become a semi-permanent resource?"
"Exactly. As long as you recharge them on schedule, you're fine."
Demand for magic stones had been growing without end.
And that was precisely because they were consumables. Use one once, and you had to buy another.
So long as factories kept multiplying, demand for magic stones could never shrink. That had been the structure.
But now the paradigm had shifted.
"The absolute quantity of magic stones required… decreases?"
"Right. If you can recharge and reuse the stones you've already spent, all you need is the minimum stock matching your recharge cycle—and you can run a factory indefinitely."
"So the price of magic stones… is going to crash?"
"That's right."
"W-wait. That… that makes sense. It's obvious. Why hasn't anyone else thought of this?"
"Because of Magic Stone Depletion Theory."
"Ah!"
Magic Stone Depletion Theory.
The number of magic stones buried in the ground was finite, while the number of factories using them was growing exponentially. Sooner or later, the stones would run out. Academic consensus had placed that day twenty years from now.
In other words, in twenty years the exhaustion of magic stones was supposed to bring every industry to its knees.
"Everyone's been so busy fretting that industry would collapse from a magic stone shortage. Even if you suddenly tell them they can use magic stones forever, it's not going to register."
"Ah……."
"Magic Stone Depletion Theory has been around for decades. It's common sense people have heard since they were snot-nosed kids. When that kind of assumption flips overnight, who notices right away? They just cheer that there are more usable stones now."
Human prejudice was more powerful than people liked to admit.
Someone who spent a lifetime believing the sun orbited the planet would still, even after being shown every proof in the world, picture a cosmos where the sun circled the planet. Even if, intellectually, they accepted the evidence.
That was how prejudice worked.
You couldn't overturn it overnight.
"And yet the young master saw it immediately?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"Because he is a Lothringen."
Lothringen.
That name carried weight. The wealthiest merchant family in the Empire, commanding hundreds of merchant groups—that was Lothringen.
Their bloodline simply wasn't the same as ordinary men's.
If blue blood ran in a mage's veins, then golden blood must surely run in a Lothringen's.
"Heh heh. So just believe. His way of seeing the world is nothing like us ordinary folk."
"But, Manager."
"Hm? Something else on your mind?"
"On the first day, when the young master took the entire company treasury and went off to gamble—didn't you collapse on the floor and bawl that we were ruined?"
"……."
"So hearing you talk like a fanatic now is a bit……."
"—Katsu!"
"Eek?! W-why are you shouting?!"
"From time immemorial, the loss of faith has meant death—"
And so Otto's first true zealot was born.
After the spent magic stone recharge technology was developed, talk of the new breakthrough never stopped.
"Whew. Spent magic stone recharge tech, huh. Just a few days ago I was tearing my hair out trying to get magic stones. Now I only need spent ones—so much easier."
"Tell me about it. When I was a kid they used to say the Empire would fall once the magic stones ran out…… Guess you really do live long enough to see everything."
Looking thoroughly worn out, a man pulled out a mana cigarette, filled it with liquid, and switched it on.
Even that little mana cigarette ran on a magic stone.
That was how essential the resource had become.
"Spent magic stone prices have shot up lately, right? They've even started rolling out securities products based on them. Financiers, I swear……."
"So. Did you invest?"
"Of course I did. Spent stones still aren't even a quarter of the price of regular ones."
"Regular magic stone prices have dropped a lot lately too."
"Well, sure—they can be replaced with spent ones now. The price'll probably settle somewhere in the middle, don't you think?"
Magic stone prices had crashed nearly fifty percent in a matter of days. No one took it especially seriously.
Magic stones were essential, after all. After a reasonable drop, the price would hold at some level—that was the thinking.
Maybe another fifty percent down, give or take.
That was about as optimistic as the forecasts got.
"……Huh? Wait."
"What is it?"
"Spent magic stone prices…… just fell."
"What? That can't be right. Magic stone prices are still……."
"Magic stone prices are crashing right now too!"
"Huh? They're not converging on each other—they're both just crashing together?"
"Yes! Why—why is this happening?"
And that optimism did not last long.
Capitalism was cold. A commodity's price always found its proper place.
Even if that place happened to be—
"I—I can't sell!"
"The money in my account…… it's gone……?"
"Aaaaaaagh!"
—someone's grave.
"Spent magic stones were supposed to be invincible! They could only go up!"
"Fuck, give me my money back!"
"IwillneverlongagainIwillneveruseleverageagain."
An unprecedented shockwave—one that shattered every existing assumption—slammed into the market.
The entire Empire plunged into chaos.
"Father."
"Heh heh."
And at that very same hour, a certain young man who aspired to nothing more than a life of rest was having a talk with his father.
The young man's name… was Otto Lothringen.
"You multiplied the merchant group's assets several hundredfold through speculation?"
"I was lucky."
"You invested every last coin and bought up spent magic stones that, at the time, were treated as industrial waste?"
"I was lucky."
"And before the price of spent magic stones crashed, you offloaded the entire stockpile onto other merchant groups through forward contracts?"
"I was lucky."
"Heh heh."
"Haha……."
"My son."
"Yes."
"It seems running a merchant group truly is your calling."
"You flatter me."
"From now on, you will continue to manage the Kissinger Merchant Group."
"I couldn't possibly. How could I dare take over Father's—"
"I've already transferred the entire shareholding into your name."
"……."
Ah. My life was over.
"Ahahaha! So you grabbed the money and ran straight to a casino? Are you insane?"
"No, that's not the problem, okay? The money duplicated itself!"
"Honestly. You really never change, do you?"
"Haa…… I don't want to work……."
"There, there. My poor little brother. You've been through so much. Want your big sister to give you a hug for old times' sake?"
"Waaah."
The woman, who had been laughing hard enough to bring tears to her eyes, snorted and spread her arms wide. I made a show of it and sank into her embrace, resting my head against her chest.
"Haa. I just want to do nothing and live off allowance from my big sister……."
"Aww, aww. Should big sister buy her baby brother some candy? Pffft."
"Not candy. Buy me a house……."
"What kind of house?"
"A hotel penthouse……."
"That's a bit steep……."
"You can't even do that much for your adorable youngest brother?"
"It makes me so sad that my beloved little brother only sees his sister as a wallet…… sniff sniff."
The woman putting on a fake cry was none other than my older sister, Rosé Lothringen.
I immediately corrected her nonsense.
"C'mon. Not a wallet."
"Then what?"
"A piggy bank?"
"……Get off me."
"Yesh."