Pellua First Harbor.
The broad estuary where the Rene River met the sea.
Because of the windless spell that had dragged on disgustingly for days, the harbor flags hung limp, without the slightest stir.
Across the very center of that silent river mouth, more than ten enormous armed galleys were chained together, blocking it in layer upon layer.
It was the mercenary fleet of the Obsidian Trading Company, acting under Valerius’s orders.
“Hahaha! Three of a kind! Hand over the pot, you bastards!”
“Damn it, my cards are rotten today.”
The mercenaries lounged crookedly on the deck, drinking and gambling in broad daylight.
A sea where the wind had died. Within this perfect blockade, where no ship could move, all they had to do was laze around.
The mercenary captain, Vorka, guzzled rum and sneered.
“By now, that uppity factory on the banks of the Rene must be dead quiet, without so much as a wheel turning, eh? No cotton, and their machines are drying up and dying.”
“Of course, Captain! Acting Grand Merchant Valerius dried up every last cottonseed in the south, didn’t he? That brat from Carnoble is probably crawling on the floor crying right now, hounded by bankruptcy penalties!”
Vorka propped his feet on the table and cackled.
“No matter how fast they weave cotton cloth with machines, what use are those huge lumps of iron without materials? No matter how thick a shield you put up, it’s useless in front of the money line. That brat or whatever from Carnoble doesn’t even know the basics of commerce.”
The mercenaries were praising the overwhelming power and capital of the Obsidian Trading Company and mocking Elpanso when it happened.
Plip.
The surface of the rum glass on the deck began to tremble faintly.
“Hm? What’s that vibration?”
Just as Vorka frowned and reached for the glass.
BWAAAAAAAAAAAH-----!!!!
A ship’s horn, stranger and harsher than the roar of a beast, tore mercilessly at their eardrums and struck the waters off Pellua.
“Gaaah! My ears, my ears are going to burst! What the hell was that?!”
“C-Captain! Over there! Look over there!!”
The mercenary in the watchtower pointed at the horizon, his face ashen.
The moment Vorka and the mercenaries staggered to the railing and looked out to sea, their jaws dropped as if they might fall off.
A windless zone.
Across that still sea, where any ship with sails should never have been able to move, a gigantic steel monster was charging at insane speed, spewing thick black smoke as though it would cover the sky.
Clank! Swaaaash! Clank! Swaaaash!
The deafening roar came from house-sized paddle wheels mounted on either side of the ship, crushing the seawater beneath them.
That hideous lump of iron, without a single mast, was not merely defying the waves; it was tearing the waterway in two as it shot in a straight line toward Pellua Harbor.
“W-What the hell is that……? Is a carriage running on the sea?!”
“Shit! Move, move!! It’s going to hit us!!!”
The Obsidian mercenaries panicked and tried to raise anchor, but the steamship’s speed far exceeded the bounds of their common sense.
Kwaaaaaang-!!
One of Obsidian’s galleys at the front was swept up by the massive swell raised by the steamship, shattering like paper and capsizing.
Carnoble’s iron ship, belching black smoke, crushed straight through the middle of Obsidian’s paltry blockade as if it were not even worth considering, and entered the harbor.
But what truly drove Vorka and the mercenaries into terror was not just the majesty of that iron vessel itself.
“Captain…… Those things tied to the monster ship’s stern and being dragged behind it…… Don’t tell me……!”
Thick iron chains were pulled taut from the stern of the iron ship, and at the ends of those chains, three large galleys, smashed to tatters, were being dragged along like trophies.
Broken masts, burned decks.
And a flag torn to shreds, fluttering in the wind.
[Blue Crescent]
They were the flagships of the notorious pirate crew, known as the scourge of the southern seas and infamous for their cruelty!
“Th-The Blue Crescent pirates! Why are those bastards bound up and being dragged along?!”
Moreover, the state of the pirates sprawled across the decks of the chained galleys was so horrific it was hard to look at with both eyes open.
They were not marks from blades or cannon fire.
Dozens of vicious pirates, their skin boiled red, rolled across the deck with their flesh hideously melted away, unable to even properly let out groans of pain.
“Hiiik……! Th-They were boiled! They boiled people alive!”
Superheated mana steam at 150 atmospheres, easily exceeding several hundred degrees Celsius.
The pirates who had been exposed head-on to that overwhelming violence of industry had become living corpses, proving with their entire bodies just how flimsy the old era’s swords and ropes truly were.
The overwhelming visual terror of men once called the outlaws of the sea being slaughtered one-sidedly and dragged in like corpses.
“A m-monster…… That’s a devil’s ship!”
The Obsidian mercenaries sank to the ground where they stood, threw away their weapons, and began trembling.
Their outdated military force had utterly lost the will to fight before the massacre that black steamship exuded.
Chiiiiiiiiik-!!!
At last, the enormous steamship struck the main pier of Pellua First Harbor with a dull thud and came to berth.
The remaining high-pressure steam spewed out in every direction from the ship’s smokestack, creating a white mist.
And through that dense steam.
Elpanso Carnoble, a black coat draped over his shoulders, leisurely set one spotless shoe onto the stone floor of the pier.
“I’ll repay the galley I smashed with the galleys behind me.”
“Now, if everyone’s done sightseeing, it’s time to work!”
Following behind me, Ayla appeared on the deck, swept back her red hair, and shouted like a thunderbolt at the workers of the Carnoble Trading Company.
“Begin unloading! Show these country bumpkins, these frogs in a well, exactly what true wealth from beyond the sea looks like!”
“Yes, ma’am!!”
Bang! Crash!
The massive hatch of the hold opened, land cranes were brought in, and the overwhelming volume of eastern specialties sleeping in the belly of the steamship began pouring onto the floor of Pellua Harbor like a carpet bombing.
The first things to come spilling out were brass-colored masses that rang with a heavy metallic sound.
“C-Copper! Those are all copper ingots?!”
Thousands of tons of top-grade, high-purity copper ingots piled up, weighing down the ground.
This vast quantity of metal brought from the heretic empire would become the most perfect framework, the capillaries of the steam empire Carnoble would build in the future.
Next, enormous oak barrels filled with red powder were unloaded in a row.
“That vivid red…… It’s Turkey Red (Madder root)! And top-grade alum too!”
The old merchants of Pellua foamed at the mouth in shock.
The luxury high-end market aimed at nobles, the one market that existing cotton textile merchants, including Valerius, had held in their grasp.
The magical dye that would completely choke the life out of that market was pouring down as if ready to smash prices to pieces.
Finally, specially processed dry burlap sacks were stacked endlessly on the pier.
When the sacks were opened, a deep, bitter aroma that stung the nose filled the harbor.
“This is…… the black pearl of the East, top-grade coffee beans!”
The ingredient for “black water,” which would one day rule the nights of Pellua’s merchants and completely control the continent’s information network.
“Coffee? What’s that?”
“It’s heretic food!”
“What are you talking about? God has never designated it as heretic food!”
They all argued about coffee, each with their own scraps of information.
None of them had definite knowledge about coffee, but at least one fact seemed clear.
That was,
Coffee made them curious!
Copper, dye, coffee.
And after that, hundreds of wagonloads of high-quality cotton from the island of Cypro poured out like mountains.
The Carnoble Trading Company, which had been mocked as something that would be trapped in Pellua and wither to death, had instead returned from the eastern trade route as if laughing at Valerius’s shallow encirclement, pouring out overwhelming wealth that crushed Pellua’s very common sense.
“Impossible…… They made a round trip to the East? Swept up that massive quantity of goods, and even wiped out pirates?”
The mercenaries of the Obsidian Trading Company and the merchants of Pellua collapsed where they stood, overwhelmed.
The laws of commerce they had firmly believed in, the providence of nature, the limits of military force.
All those old barriers had been smashed to pieces before the enormous hammer called mechanical engineering that Elpanso had brought with him.
I slowly walked toward Vorka, the mercenary captain of the Obsidian Trading Company, as he trembled and backed away.
“Hiiik……! D-Don’t come closer! You devil bastard!”
As the owner of the steamship approached, Vorka could not even properly grip the hilt of his sword and crawled backward across the ground.
I crouched down and lightly seized a fistful of Vorka’s hair, which was frozen with terror.
Then, into his ear, I whispered in the coldest and most arrogant voice.
“Tell your master, the true mastermind, this clearly.”
Vorka’s breath stopped.
“If he blocks my path…… I’ll boil the sea itself to force a way through.”
I roughly flung his hair aside and slowly rose to my feet.
The old, flimsy rules Valerius had laid down in the narrow courtroom and river mouth called Pellua were completely shattered as of today.
The era of obeying nature, paying tolls at tollgates, and watching the eyes of mercenaries with swords had ended.
“From now on, I decide the rules of Pellua.”
The prince of Pellua had returned.
It was time for the king to set down his crown.