On the eastern side of Spiramentaon, the docks large and small were packed.

From dinghies that could barely take one or two people to massive sailing ships that could go out to sea, countless vessels filled the berths.

“Good—haul!”

“Haul! Haul! Haul!”

A month ago, after Kyrie of Astrion Astreos cut down Governor Gracus, the ships there were finally able to return to the work proper to ships.

“Done!”

“Good work!”

“Much obliged!”

Yet none of the docks had recovered their prewar bustle.

“I heard the ones who went toward Rykenta didn’t come back.”

“Looks like there are even villages that still think the war’s on. They say they almost got everything stolen and nearly ended up with a rope around their necks.”

“I hear Lord Kyrie is about to head up to the capital.”

“Gonna have it out with Traysan?”

“Have it out how? They’re both foster heirs. Ever seen foster heirs really fight it out? They’ll scuffle a bit and call it.”

“I don’t care who wins—just wish the work would pick up.”

Evening, after unloading.

Sailors and porters clinked beer mugs in the waterside taverns and washed the day’s sweat away.

“Didn’t the folks who went to Astrion talk about ‘the Three’? They say some big shots are coming again.”

“Yeah. Unutus, Diaes, Trinios. The light-cavalry foster heirs. Word is they’re coming to ‘help’ us.”

“Where were they when the real fighting was happening, and why show up now?”

“They’ll be coming to fight Lord Kyrie. Traysan and the foster heirs don’t get along.”

“Kyrie this, Kyrie that! Do you have anything to talk about besides Kyrie?”

“Hey, hey! Why are you yelling all of a sudden?”

At that moment, one man raised his voice.

“So we’re supposed to just sit on our hands now? I thought once the war ended everything would go back to normal—what is this mess? No extra jobs, ships not sailing.”

“Can’t be helped. The Beast Purge got botched during the war, so the Mutated Beasts increased; it’s not easy to start laughing and chatting with Rykenta when we were at war till a few months ago; and the senior foster heir Traysan’s men keep throwing up roadblocks so it’s gotten hard to send ships upriver.”

Another man calmly tried to rein him in.

“See? How’s that Kyrie’s fault? Give it a little time and things will sort themselves out.”

The sailor who’d praised Kyrie at first clicked his tongue.

“Fuck! We won’t last till ‘a little time.’ Right now nobody knows a damn thing about customs, so Rykenta merchants come in and gouge the hell out of us; with the markets left unregulated all kinds of riffraff ignore the guilds and run wild; there’s no large-scale support for trade runs so shipowners are all idle… If it was gonna be like this, Gracus’s time was better!”

The shouting man slammed the table hard.

“……”

“He’s not entirely wrong, you know.”

“What, you treasonous bastard!”

“Hey, hey, hey!”

“To begin with, that talk about His Excellency Governor Gracus uniting with the Royal line to assassinate Erica never made sense!”

“So you’re saying Her Ladyship Andromeda lied?!”

In an instant the place turned rowdy.

“Captain! Captaaaain!”

Just then a cabin errand boy came sprinting from the central avenue.

“There’s an official notice from the Governor’s Citadel!”

“What?”

“Forty large sailing ships! Over two hundred auxiliary transports and cutters! They’re forming a fleet of around two hundred fifty vessels! Any shipowners who need work are to report to the Citadel!”

“……”

At the boy’s words, everyone fell silent.

“Destination is the capital! Safe passage guaranteed against Mutated Beasts on the way! They say any shipowners who want to can tag along with the fleet and peel off whenever we put in at cities for water and provisions! Negotiable terms, contracts guaranteed!”

The man who’d just been cursing Kyrie lowered his eyes, meek as a lamb.

“Woooooaaah!”

“Kyrie! Kyrie! Kyrie!”

“Round up the boys—everyone!”

A thunderous roar burst forth.

It was the grand procession everyone had been longing for.

It’s not the same as when we came. Back then, with Nereus included, maybe two hundred came—but now it’s over forty times that.

Kyrie admitted it.

Numbers I can’t just brute-force my way through.

Transport by ship was far faster, but far harder.

Even Joi, who had managed an army of ten thousand till now, was little more than a child in the face of river-and-sea transport.

“Call Gluttony.”

Accordingly, Kyrie called in the one person who might be able to make transporting ten thousand men by water happen.

“You sent for me, Kyrie?”

Gluttony, the merchant with black hair, a dashing suit, and a yellow gold tooth flashing whenever he smiled.

“That shipowner who transferred us to our ship back then—and the trading company he belongs to—you’ve got ties there, right?”

“Types like that cozy up to anyone who makes them money.”

“Good. Draw up a plan to move ten thousand troops to the capital.”

The merchant who’d met Kyrie as a hundred-man captain years ago was now meeting Kyrie the acting governor.

Ten thousand soldiers?

Gluttony shuddered at the absurd number.

“Why the silence?”

“K-Kyrie. I’m, at best, the head of a somewhat sizable trading company. Realistically impossible.”

If not for the history he’d built with Kyrie, he would have walked straight out without a backward glance.

“Who told you to summon them this instant? It took me months just to gather three thousand troops. I’m allowing a month—prepare steadily.”

But Kyrie was a power who could stamp and dissolve every trading company in this city in one stroke.

“A—A month, you say?”

“Not enough?”

He swallowed the answer—Yes—with effort.

“No. But moving ten thousand will cost an astronomical sum. Each warship has to split supplies aboard, so there’ll be lots of redundancy, and with the weight being what it is we’ll need at least fifty medium sailing ships. As for the small and midsize transports and all the little boats needed to operate those mediums—you couldn’t count them.”

Gluttony, at least, began from the side of making the thing happen somehow.

“Right.”

“Pardon?”

“Procure them. Fifty mediums and the supplies—and all the countless little boats.”

Kyrie handed him a single sheet of paper.

City Customs Exemption!

Gluttony knew exactly what it was.

A document that would exempt customs duties at the countless river cities along the canals and even at the Free City on the border with Rykenta.

In that instant Gluttony’s mind spun as fast as a Blue Knight’s under High-Speed Cognition.

Whoever holds this paper—his trading company is exempt from customs.

One.

I can reorganize all these half-idle companies under me. Even in a slump, with customs exempt, there’ll be plenty of margin.

Two.

With duties waived, everyone will see massive profits, and I can personally take in over half as kickbacks. With that much, fifty medium sailing ships are easily within reach. And even after this trade run ends, I’ll retain a degree of influence over the companies that came under me once.

Three.

Golden greed overflowed in his eyes.

I almost missed the opportunity of a lifetime!

Gluttony savagely denounced himself for having doubted Kyrie even for a moment.

Instead of a one-off cash payment, Kyrie had lifted him in a single move to the center of Spiramentaon’s commercial world—by granting him connections that would last for generations.

There was never any need to doubt, not even a little.

He is a Blue Knight unlike the other sword-hands—a god of wealth with reason and rationality that pierce an age.

Follow his words and wealth follows.

“You said a month?”

“Not enough?”

“I’ll have it ready within two weeks.”

Gluttony bowed his head with punctilious respect.

I took up the Star-Sword and headed out to the Governor’s Citadel practice yard, thinking,

Maybe I used my head pretty well this time.

Renewing the mercenary-knight contracts had burned fifty thousand gold coins, but I’d found a way to send ten thousand troops up to the capital without spending so much as a copper.

You have to use hope to make people work for free.

Gluttony is not Joi.

Unlike Joi, who takes charge of soldiers, Gluttony is only a merchant.

He can’t physically take my life.

He can’t stand as a witness at a Manseong Church tribunal.

Witnesses in trials involving the blood of a Great House have to be at least Retainer-rank or clergy.

No matter how brutal I get, all he can do is tremble.

If he’s aggrieved, he should have endured the electric shocks at the Blue Knight training-school selection and gotten in.

Even so, with that single document there’s no shortage of places he can skim from here and there.

And as promised, I’ll guarantee him a cut of the semi-smuggling proceeds along the Astrion–Rykenta border down the line—but to guarantee that, I have to remain intact.

So roll—for your own sake.

You chose me.

“Kiri-kiri. What’s with your face?”

“My face?”

“You looked all thump-thump excited. Ah, you were thinking about fighting Traysan once we get to the capital! Right? That’s so Kyrie of you!”

Frey stood before me with the Thunder Greatsword, beaming.

“Guess I’ve been found out.”

I let out a shameless line and leveled the Star-Sword.

“Thanks.”

“Thanks? I wanted to cross blades with the Star-Sword anyway!”

“You wanted to?”

“Isn’t it obvious? How good is a sword with a star-shard set into it! I was a little sad because everyone else keeps theirs tucked away like a treasure jar, but with Kiri-kiri you use it right from sparring so I loooove it!”

Frey leveled the Thunder Greatsword.

“Please take care of me.”

I unfolded the Authorities in sequence—Neural Acceleration, High-Speed Cognition, Physical Reinforcement.

“Yup! Please take care of me!”

White sparks snapped before my eyes and over my crown and ran down along my spine.

Rrrrummmble!

The next instant, we stamped Thunder-Step with all we had and leapt toward each other.

I immediately spun my body and unfolded Radiant Wheel.

Skaaaaark!

The shards set in the Star-Sword amplified the current and swelled the size of the blade-lightning vortex.

Crack!

“Kyahahahaha!”

Frey answered with the single-shot knockback, Backflow.

A greatsword as big as her body drove in, heavy.

Normally I would have dodged, but this time I didn’t; I kept spinning and hammered at the Thunder Greatsword.

Judging by the amount of current imbued into her blade, I wasn’t going to go flying pathetically; I could make the clash stick, then carry straight on into close-quarters offense.

Tadatang!

My Star-Sword and Frey’s Thunder Greatsword met.

“Ah—!”

“Huh?”

And the thin white current riding my Star-Sword split straight through the blue current riding Frey’s Thunder Greatsword and shocked her.

“Ow-ow-ow!”

Frey dropped the Thunder Greatsword.

I hastily drew back the Star-Sword.

“You all right? Sorry.”

“Wow! That stings.”

“Because it’s a spar, you held back on the Imbuement, right? You could’ve said so—I’d have moderated too.”

“What are you talking about? I did it like always.”

“What?”

“The voltage was no joke. I thought Kiri-kiri compressed the current tight to notch a win to christen the new blade.”

Frey shook out her hands and looked up at me.

I looked down at the Star-Sword and felt a shiver.

Between the crystalline segments of the translucent blade, white electric fire was passing back and forth.

If anything, I’d eased my force—certainly hadn’t added to it.

Frey’s mana may be lacking, but in raw control and resistance to current she’s exceptionally good.

It’s not like I kept pouring my mana in to drain hers; we’d merely clashed once, and even so it pierced that resistance and shocked her.

The Constellation’s shard is remarkable.

If Gracus had brought this out, neither I nor Nereus might have stood a chance.

“……”

That day’s spar turned, in a blink, from technique practice into power-control practice.

“About there.”

“Right.”

After we finished, we looked out past the railing toward the Eastern Docks.

“We depart at dawn, right?”

“Right. We board after supper too.”

Far off, countless soldiers were going aboard ships large and small.

Blue Knights, Knights, Navigator-rank, Retainer-rank, Navigators, cannon crews, ballista crews, sword-and-buckler infantry, net-throwers, pikemen.

My hundred-man companies, Nereus’s hundred-man companies, the Blue Knights’ own hundreds under them, a massive mercenary host under Knights, Free Knights and lances, a unit of converts who’d been Rykenta prisoners, and beyond them the supply units and camp merchants, merchants following Gluttony after seeing the customs-exemption papers…

Countless torches rippled, wavering over the darkened river.

Feeling the shadow of those torches cast over my own, I ground my teeth.

Wait for me, Traysan.

Now I’m truly coming.

Chapter 102

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