“Now! Everyone, line up! No cutting in, and have the contracts you promised and your remaining balances ready!”
In the factory yard, under Ayla’s thunderous orders, the wholesalers were hauling away cotton cloth, clicking their tongues in disbelief.
“Good heavens, they’re releasing the goods three whole days before the deadline!”
“I hear that Lorenzo bastard, who bet money on penalty claims saying the Carnoble Company would go bankrupt, is buried in debt now! We got our goods safe and sound, so we’re saved!”
The southern merchants let out sighs of relief and piled pouches of gold coins containing their balances like a mountain before Ayla.
The trap of derivatives called “penalty claims,” which Valerius had dug with such cunning, was rendered a blank sheet and dissolved into thin air by our single miraculous round voyage to the East.
Now, nowhere on the continent was there anyone who could seize on a pretext like breach of contract against Carnoble and the Golden Fleece alliance.
With light steps, I crossed the factory yard, passing through the cheering merchants.
That was when it happened.
Behind the backs of countless merchants, an old man I recognized came into view, hesitating with an old brimmed hat pulled low over his face, unable to dare step forward.
‘Oh?’
I stopped walking and raised the corners of my mouth.
He was none other than the old landowner who had previously yielded to the threats and money of the Mueller Company, saddled me with the absurd price of seven silver coins per pyeong, and broken the sales contract for the vast plain downstream of the Rene River.
“Sir.”
When I suddenly spoke from behind him, the old man jumped in fright and nearly collapsed on the spot.
“H-hiieek! C-Chief Merchant……!”
The old man’s face had turned ashen.
And no wonder. Mueller, who had threatened him, had long since had his entire fortune seized for fraud and fallen into beggary in the back alleys of Pelua.
Meanwhile, Elpanso, whom he had driven away, now reigned as an emerging sovereign. From the old man’s perspective, he had nothing to say for himself.
I approached the trembling old man and, with a very gentle and courteous manner, extended a hand to help him up.
“What brings you all the way to this humble factory? Have you come to buy a bolt of our cotton cloth?”
“N-no, sir! That’s not it…… I, I mean……”
Unable even to meet my eyes, the old man sweated coldly and fidgeted with his sleeves.
That perfect site Father had purchased to build a large-scale logistics hub, only for my foolish past self to sell it off.
The vast plain downstream of the Rene River.
I did not waste time with roundabout words and went straight to the point.
“Now that Mueller’s interference is gone, sir, will you sell that land to me?”
At my direct question, the old man quivered and prostrated himself on the ground.
“I-I will sell it! Of course I will! Forget two silver coins per pyeong—I’ll hand it over for whatever price you name, even for free! Please, I beg you, forgive my foolish betrayal of the past!”
It was the desperate declaration of surrender from an old man who had grabbed hold of Mueller’s rotten lifeline and nearly ruined his own life.
I looked down at the prostrate old man and smiled with eyes gone cold.
“For free? A merchant pays a fair price when buying goods. As originally promised, I’ll purchase it at exactly two silver coins per pyeong.”
“Ahh…… I thank you, Chief Merchant, for your grace, even if my bones were crushed to dust!”
I called over the clerk standing behind me and had him draw up the contract on the spot.
‘At last, I’ve reclaimed the site of the true industrial complex Father dreamed of.’
This red-brick factory currently in operation is only the beginning.
On that newly purchased, enormous downstream plain, not just a few spinning machines but dozens, hundreds of furnaces and smokestacks will belch fire, and a central railway station stretching out across the entire continent will be built.
The framework of a true heavy industrial empire that spews steel and fire was completed with this single parchment contract just signed.
Scratch, scratch.
The very moment the old man finished signing the contract with trembling hands, and Veritas’s contract seal seeped into it in golden light—
Clatter, clatter!
Kicking up dust in the factory yard, a dazzlingly splendid carriage drawn by four pure white horses crossed the wharf and entered.
“T-that carriage is……!”
The southern merchants and factory workers who saw the emblem engraved on the carriage were horrified and split apart to either side, opening a path.
On the carriage door, the symbol of Pelua’s supreme ruler—a golden lion with wings spread—was delicately engraved.
Clack.
The carriage door opened, and an attendant officer dressed in a luxurious blue uniform stepped down with disciplined movements and walked straight toward me.
“I greet Lord Elpanso, head of the Carnoble Company.”
The attendant officer bowed politely and took from his breast a silver-edged parchment envelope that gave off a faint scent of lilies, then held it out.
“I am an attendant directly under His Excellency, the Doge of Pelua.”
The surrounding merchants sucked in their breaths.
Rumors had already spread that, a few days ago, the Doge had sent Valerius a personal letter ordering him to withdraw his troops and protect Carnoble, but for an official messenger to come by carriage to the factory in broad daylight meant something else entirely.
With a calm expression, I accepted the envelope.
“Has His Excellency the Doge issued me another command?”
“It was not sent directly by His Excellency.”
The attendant officer answered with a faint smile.
“It is an official invitation to the highest-ranking social gathering hosted by Lady Lucrezia, His Excellency the Doge’s daughter. The lady earnestly requests that the owner of the great ship that tore through Pelua’s seas and opened the gates of the East deign to attend this banquet.”
“……!”
Ayla came up beside me and looked at the invitation with a stunned expression.
The Doge of Pelua possessed immense power, but the mistress of that power and the one who ruled the pinnacle of high society was his daughter, Lady Lucrezia.
To be invited to her banquet meant that I had been perfectly acknowledged not merely as a wealthy nouveau riche merchant, but as part of the “true ruling class” that moved Pelua’s laws and power.
‘So the very heart of power that old Valerius spent his whole life licking has opened its doors and invited me to walk in of my own accord.’
I lightly flicked the faintly fragrant invitation between my fingers and curled up the corners of my mouth like a beast of prey.
“Partner Ayla. Hearing nothing but the sound of looms has left my ears a little numb. Shall we go listen to some elegant noble music for the first time in a while?”
“……What insane thing are you planning to do there this time?”
“Insane?”
I stared at the splendid carriage beneath the dazzling sunlight and whispered.
“I’m going to meet the finest suckers who’ll pay the highest price for my excellent new product—the new goods made with ‘Turkish Red’ dye.”
Now that I had seized control of production with the power of engineering, it was time to empty every last noble purse with a merchant’s tongue.
The debut stage of the blood-red dress that would overturn Pelua’s social world was raising its curtain.
*
Pelua, the city of trade.
This city, where all the gold coins of the continent gathered, was not the domain of deeply rooted traditional nobles.
It was the cradle of thorough capitalism, where status shot straight upward as long as one had money, whether commoner or foreigner.
That was why the social gatherings hosted by Pelua’s merchants were far more blatant and violently splendid than the noble banquets of other countries.
They were feasts of nouveau riche who draped heavy gold necklaces over their bodies and wore rings on every finger, all to flaunt whatever wealth they possessed.
However, the social gatherings held by the house of the Doge, Pelua’s supreme ruler, were on an entirely different track.
The banquet hosted by Lady Lucrezia, the Doge’s only daughter and the pinnacle of Pelua’s social world, was instead terribly refined.
Excessive adornment with jewels was regarded as vulgar, and only dignified silk dresses, subtle pearls, and sophisticated topics of conversation were permitted in this elegant fortress of the true ruling class.
“Mother, the banquet hall seems especially noisy today.”
At the seat of honor in the hall, where crystal chandeliers cast a gentle light, Reinas, a young lady with an innocent face who had only just come of age this year, tilted her head and asked.
Beside her, Lucrezia, a middle-aged widow gracefully waving a fan, looked down over the hall with a leisurely smile.
Though she had lost her husband early, her dignity was not disheveled in the slightest, and she was the perfect noblewoman, transforming even the faint wrinkles at the corners of her eyes into an untouchably lofty charm.
“It can’t be helped, Reinas. The most dangerous and hottest flame in all of Pelua is scheduled to set foot here today.”
Wherever Lucrezia’s gaze rested, Pelua’s great merchants and powerful figures were gathered in groups of three and five, holding champagne glasses as they spilled heated rumors.
The topic of their conversation converged on a single name.
“Have you heard? That scoundrel of Carnoble, I mean. They say he really went to the heathen empire of the East!”
“I heard he broke through the windless zone in just a few days. They say a bizarre scrap-iron ship without even a mast flew across the sea belching black smoke. And didn’t he boil the Blue Crescent Pirates alive, too?”
Exaggerated praises mixed with awe circled the hall, but behind them, the forced disparagement of those whose vested interests had been threatened stood just as fiercely opposed.
“Hmph, it was a fluke. In the end, he’s still that empty-headed gambler brat who drove the Carnoble Company into the gutter in a single year.”
“Exactly. He may have been lucky enough to visit the East, but where would the vulgarity of a rootless upstart go? Today, in this dignified setting, he’ll surely appear in some ridiculous, unsuitable state and disgrace himself.”
Fear of the monster who had overturned the market and petty jealousy unwilling to acknowledge the prodigal son of the past intertwined, heating the air of the hall.
That was when it happened.
“They have arrived!”
The clear voice of the attendant guarding the banquet hall entrance rang out.
“Lord Elpanso Carnoble, head of the Carnoble Company! And Lady Ayla Winchester, head of the Golden Fleece Company, are entering!”
In that instant, the string quartet performance filling the hall stopped as if it had been a lie.
The eyes of dozens of great merchants, who had been murmuring among themselves, turned all at once toward the heavy doors that had been firmly shut.
Creeeeak—
The doors slowly opened, and a man and woman stepped onto the marble floor.
“……!!”
And the moment they confirmed the sight, everyone in the banquet hall swallowed their breath as if struck by lightning.
The jaws of merchants who had prepared mocking laughter trembled, and the eyes of noblewomen hiding their faces behind fans began to shake as if an earthquake had struck.
The first to steal their gazes was Ayla Winchester.
The dress wrapped around her body was a “perfect blood-red” so intense and alluring it stung the eyes, a color never once seen in Pelua’s social circles.
The reason was simple.
Turkish Red was absurdly expensive.
That vivid red cotton dress, deeply dyed with Turkish Red and alum brought from the East, exerted an overwhelming visual violence that instantly reduced the dull, faded, handmade silk dresses worn by the noblewomen around her to scraps of rag.
However.
Even Ayla’s splendid dress had no choice but to retreat into a mere ornament before the aura of the man escorting her at her side.
“T-that man…… is Elpanso, Carnoble’s scoundrel……?”
Standing beside Lady Lucrezia, Reinas murmured in a daze without realizing it.
The Elpanso left in people’s memories had been the very model of a vulgar nouveau riche, drunk every day, with hollow eyes and his entire body plastered in expensive gold.
But the man now walking across the carpet was an entirely different creature.
The dark navy frock coat falling over his broad, solid shoulders had been completed in a modern, straight-lined cut that thoroughly excluded cumbersome decorations or frills and maximized only the man’s sharp silhouette.
The sight was unfamiliar, yet everyone present felt it in their bones: this was an extraordinarily stylish design.
Modern refinement. It was a new design that had defined and dominated an era.
Unlike the way wealthy merchants and nobles of the past adorned themselves, he wore no jewels at all.
Yet the sharp jawline revealed beneath his blond hair, neatly slicked back, and the dignity exuded by the bridge of his prominent nose were loftier than that of any royal.
More than anything, what froze people in place was his gaze.
“My goodness……”
Even Lady Lucrezia stopped the fan in her hand and lightly parted her lips.
They were not the hazy eyes that had once groveled at gambling tables or lusted after women.
They were the eyes of one who had controlled boiling mana steam at 150 atmospheres, smashed the firmly closed gates of a heathen empire, and boiled the predators of the sea alive.
Those dark, cold, abyss-like eyes swept indifferently and calculatingly over the great figures of Pelua gathered in the banquet hall, as if looking down on insignificant insects crawling over a set of gears.
Step, step.
Each time the sound of Elpanso’s shoe heels rang through the silent hall, the gathered merchants, crushed by instinctive fear and overwhelming pressure, opened a path to either side like the parting of the Red Sea.
Without bowing his head before any of Pelua’s old authority, he crossed the exact center of the hall with upright steps.
As if proving with his entire body who the true master of this place was.
It was the perfect debut stage of the man who had returned like a comet to high society, throwing down a silent declaration of war against Pelua’s proud ruling class.