The docks of Cyprus had been running nonstop all day.
Originally, for a Western merchant ship to anchor at a port of the heathen Ossan Empire, one had to endure agony enough to scrape the bone.
The notorious harbor entry tax, punitive tariffs imposed for being heathens, and the endless demands for bribes from corrupt port officials.
But in this unloading operation by the Carnoble and Golden Fleece alliance, not a single difficulty could be found.
“Hurry up and load it! They’re guests of an honored person, so we’ll set the cotton price at the lowest the island can offer!”
“We’ll skip the customs inspection! Bring more wagons and pack the ship’s hold full!”
Imperial officials who would normally have lorded it over Western merchants were bending at the waist ninety degrees, sweating buckets.
There was only one reason. A single absolute message from First Imperial Princess Aisha, delivered from the governor’s residence.
“They are my honored guests, so do not touch so much as a hair on their heads and treat them with the utmost courtesy.”
Standing on the deck and overseeing the loading, Ayla clicked her tongue as she watched the mountain of cotton rolls piling up with ease.
“Honestly, he handled the work unbelievably well. With that imperial princess backing him, the cost dropped to one-fifth of what it was on the Rom Peninsula. At this rate, even after subtracting round-trip expenses, this is a trade that’ll make us a fortune.”
As a merchant, Ayla could not help but admire Elpanso’s negotiating ability.
But her patience ended exactly there.
The sun sank red beyond the eastern sea, and deep darkness began to settle over the harbor.
Even then, Elpanso showed not so much as the tip of his nose from the governor’s residence.
Crash—!!
Inside the temporary tent on the deck, the sound of a glass shattering rang out.
“That damned bastard, seriously!!”
At Ayla’s shrill shout, the Golden Fleece head merchants and sailors waiting outside hunched their shoulders and slowly backed away.
“Why the hell isn’t he back from the middle of enemy territory when the sun’s already gone down?! Is he insane?! Don’t tell me he’s gone stupid and lost his mind just because that fox of an imperial princess is pretty!”
Ayla huffed and clawed at her red hair.
“Are we here on vacation?! The deadline we promised the southern merchants at Masina Port is right in front of us! If the cotton’s all loaded, we should be firing up the furnace and shooting off to Pelua right now! Unless we want to pay a penalty!!”
The caravan members, watching the hysterical rage of their tyrant chief merchant, scattered as silently as mice.
Ayla was stamping her feet and just about to kick an innocent wooden barrel.
That was the very moment.
“If someone saw you, they’d think you came to catch your cheating husband.”
“……!”
The tent flap was pulled aside, and I walked in from the darkness with a relaxed smile.
“Elpanso!!”
Ayla charged at me as if she would strangle me on the spot.
“Are you insane?! The sun’s gone down! We should have set sail already, and what were you doing all day with that imperial princess or whatever before crawling back now!”
“Oh, partner. Calm down. You’ll get wrinkles if you get angry.”
“Do I look like I can calm down?! We have to go back now! Sound the horn and tell them to fire up the boiler! We have to run through the night if we’re going to arrive before the Pelua factory stops!”
She grabbed me by the collar and shook me, but I lightly peeled her hands away and pulled three thick parchment scrolls from my coat, waving them in front of Ayla’s eyes.
“I did indeed admire Her Highness the Princess’s genius knowledge and hold a deep engineering discussion with her. But your partner is a merchant to the bone. You think I just flapped my mouth and came back?”
“……What are those documents?”
“The immense spoils I wrung out of the Ossan Empire in exchange for quenching the princess’s thirst.”
I spread the parchments out across the table.
They were untouchable, absolute trade contracts, each clearly stamped with the red wax seal of the Ossan imperial family.
I pointed to the first parchment.
“First, copper. This island has been the greatest producer of copper since ancient times. Originally, mineral resources like copper, which are directly connected to weapons manufacturing, are absolutely forbidden by imperial law from being exported in bulk to Western merchants.”
“And?”
“I broke through. I secured the right for our Carnoble alliance to exclusively import the highest-purity copper mined from the empire’s copper mines for the next ten years.”
Ayla’s pupils widened slightly.
In her head, she was probably calculating the margin from simply selling copper in the West, but my purpose was different.
Copper had excellent thermal conductivity and malleability, making it essential for manufacturing steam engine parts and piping. It was a core strategic resource that absolutely had to be secured in bulk when advancing the future tech tree.
Without delay, I unfurled the second parchment.
“Second. The import rights to ‘Turkey Red,’ the root of crimson dye, and ‘alum,’ the essential mordant that fixes that dye firmly to cloth so it doesn’t wash out.”
The moment she heard those words, Ayla, who had been throwing a fit, stopped breathing with a gasp.
As a merchant to the bone, there was no way she would fail to understand the true meaning of this dye and mordant.
Turkey Red, a specialty of the Ossan Empire, was a mysterious dye capable of producing a vivid, dazzling red on a level entirely different from the dull colors of the West.
A mordant was a substance that fixed dye to fiber and helped the color develop.
Dyed fabric tended to fade quickly, but adding the right mordant prevented that from happening.
“Elpanso, don’t tell me……”
“That’s right.”
I smiled like a beast and nodded.
“We used white plain cloth woven by our spinning machines and power looms to empty the wallets of Pelua’s commoners and seize that market, didn’t we? Then now it’s time to devour the upper stream.”
“The nobles’ market……!”
High-end luxury.
In the end, the nobility of brand value came from precisely that market.
“Yes. The moment we dye our dense machine-woven cotton fabric with this vivid, brilliant red dye, the old nobles of Pelua won’t even glance at handmade silk anymore. Valerius, who lost the commoners’ market and was barely clinging to the nobles’ market with a luxury strategy, will have even that last breath cut off completely by this one dye!”
Ayla’s lips trembled.
In her mind, the sound of Valerius’s luxury market collapsing and gold pouring out was pounding in her ears.
But my spoils did not end there.
I handed her the final, third parchment.
“Last. This is the trade right to the black water that will dominate the information networks of merchants—‘coffee.’”
“Coffee? That bitter black bean water? In the West, nobles don’t really like it because they call it the devil’s juice that only heathens drink.”
“For now, maybe. But Ayla, coffee is no ordinary beverage.”
As a Korean, I knew the power of coffee.
From all kinds of premium coffee to cheap coffee, countless cafés had quietly risen and fallen in the streets, struggling to survive.
And yet the reason so many people stubbornly continued to challenge the coffee business was this.
“Because once humans taste coffee, they keep tasting it.”
Addiction.
The powerful desire of consumers that modern corporations coveted most.
Companies desperately hoped and wished for consumers to become addicted to the products they produced.
I tapped the table with my finger and spoke passionately.
“The property of caffeine that drives away sleep and makes people alert. Once huge factories and commercial districts that operate day and night begin increasing in Pelua, people will inevitably seek out this black stimulant. And if we exclusively open a luxurious ‘café’ where people can drink this coffee in the center of Pelua’s commercial district?”
Not a gloomy Western tavern, but a gathering place for merchants to stay clear-headed all night and exchange information on the continent’s political situation and trade.
“That café will soon become the ‘heart where information gathers,’ not just for Pelua, but for the entire continent. Whose merchant ship sank, which territory has fallen into famine—we’ll sell coffee while sitting in place and monopolize all the continent’s high-grade information before anyone else!”
Minerals.
A bombardment of the high-end luxury market.
Dominion over the information network.
I had pried open the closed door of the heathen empire and, in a single day, stolen all three of these insane monopolies—things Western merchant ships could not obtain even if they devoted their entire lifetimes to it.
“……”
Ayla, who had been huffing hysterically, stood with her mouth hanging open, unable to close it.
In her emerald eyes, there was no longer any resentment or anger.
Only a fierce greed burned there, bewitched by the overwhelmingly golden future her partner had brought back, one she could not even have imagined.
“Hey, Elpanso.”
Ayla clutched the three parchments tightly in her trembling hands.
“You really are…… a crazy bastard. How did you sweet-talk an imperial princess in a single day and strip the empire bare?”
“It’s thanks to the princess’s great intellectual curiosity. I told you, it was the price of an engineering discussion.”
I brushed off my collar and smiled.
Of course, once I returned to Pelua, I would have to properly play the role of “technical adviser” by sending letters filled with modern mechanical engineering knowledge to Cyprus whenever I had the time. But for a price like this, it would remain a profitable deal even if I wrote letters for the rest of my life.
“Now then, the cargo is loaded and the spoils are perfectly secured.”
I turned toward the wheelhouse and shouted like a thunderbolt at the sailors.
“Raise anchor! Stoke the fire!”
Bwoooooooom—!!!
Carnoble’s hideous steel monster once again let out a whistle that tore through the sky.
The steamship, its belly packed full of the empire’s treasures, snorted at the headwinds of the night sea and, trailing black smoke, split the waters in an explosive return toward Pelua.