SPECIAL CHAPTER 8
Part 130
She turned around and cleared the back of Franz, who was blocking her. Franz hesitated and retreated.
“A mere viscount’s commoner lover talks to a count’s daughter who is a duchess.”
Philia’s face became angry. Not to be outdone, she put on her haughty face and craned her neck to look down at her Philia. Of course, because she was short, she only posed looking down.
“Now that she’s a duchess, she’s got a lot to be proud of, ma’am. What can I do if she slaps me for my rudeness?”
Philia followed her, straightening her back and taking a posture looking down at her. She lowers her eyes and laughs, should she really hit her… Franz also looked at her with a frustrated face, as if she wasn’t the only one who was itching to see her hand.She thought she would be in big trouble if she got hit by that hand, so she motioned for him to step back. Anyway, she was the one in charge of this relationship.
Let us not go to the extent of persecution through violence. I’m a great intellectual, right?`’
At her gesture, Franz also retreated to his face.
“Yes, I can slap you. I can give you even more stars. Even if you are not a duchess, I can punish you with my power. You will be unable to do anything after losing your status as the duke’s daughter.”
When she pointed out Philia’s situation to her, she made a face and said in a twisted voice that she wanted to hit her.
“I guess so. He’s also a great administrator. I wonder how he stole someone else’s job and didn’t even notice how shameful he was.”
“Huh? Are you really saying I stole your seat?”
“If it weren’t for you, the Duchess of Bigor would be me.”
“Wow… You really live alone in this world, have you never even thought about the efforts other people make?”
As she burst out laughing, Philia clenched her fists and shouted.
“Would you have been able to rise to that prestigious position if you had not received the protection of Duke Bigor?”
“Living with such petty thoughts, is that why you are like that now? Did you want to be a duchess? Are you feeling unfair that I married Adrian when you didn’t even love him?”
“Love? Ha”
Philia laughed exaggeratedly. She stroked her red hair with her fingertips and looked down at her mockingly.
“I never thought you would say such a dreamy thing. Do you think it’s unfair? Yes, it’s unfair. It’s even more unfair that I have to deal with you like this!”
This guy was writing some kind of heart-rending comedy all by herself. Did she think love was easy? Well, she didn’t think she had ever done it before, so there’s no way she would know.
“You continue to feel unfair in that position. I will love hard, live hard, and continue to be happy. This is the end of my support for Burye. I hope I won’t have to see you anymore.”
She ended the conversation and was about to turn around. Now that she had finished the conversation, Philia couldn’t talk to her anymore. That’s the kind of power she liked so much. Did she feel that it was unreasonable for her to be in such a position? Suddenly she ran towards Damian and tried to push her into the pond. It seemed like he had a habit of pushing people into the water, right? Did she think she would be punished twice? She was watching what she was doing and then twirling her hand to avoid Philia’s hand. When she couldn’t reach her, Philia flailed her arms, lost her balance, and stumbled. She didn’t know, but she made a promise to herself someday.
She suddenly pushed Philia, who was still staggering, on her back. Philia let out her scream and she fell into the pond. She splashed, but Franz blocked her path so that not a drop of water got on her. It’s not as deep as the pond that Eilene and she fell into! She quickly stood up. She then stuck her wet hair in her face and glared at her. When she wiped her nose, Philia trembled for a while and stared at her, then suddenly burst into laughter. In the end, she laughed for a while, even making a sound, and then slowly walked out of the pond, stroking her wet hair.
“This is how it comes back.”
Her face glowed gloomily in the moonlight as she muttered in a low voice. As Philia looked at her, wiping away the moisture from her hair, something different from the openness she had seen a moment ago flashed in her eyes.
“Are you satisfied now? You must be happier now that you have it all and avenge the drowning?”
“It’s refreshing, but seeing you doesn’t make me particularly happy. I’m not so low that I can use other people’s misfortune as raw material for my own happiness.”
She answered and she giggled, still wringing out the moisture from her hair.
“I never thought I would become so entangled with a count’s daughter that I had no interest in. Now I just need to do a little more, so why are you showing up now??”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was in a situation where I could no longer live comfortably, so I was struggling in my own way.”
She couldn’t tell what she was saying, so she just stared at her. Philia, who had let down her hair, was wet, so she lifted the hem of her wet dress and bowed her head.
“Duchess, if you have no intention of punishing me for my actions, I will leave now.”
She still had no idea what she was talking about, but she nodded at her. Philia, drenched, walked steadily and disappeared into the darkness. She thought she would feel refreshed, but her appetite is urgently needed. She came to solve the author’s embezzlement case, but she felt like she kept getting caught up in something else.
* * *
The next morning, three administrative officers from the Inspection Department left the castle of the lord of Viscounty. We had to check whether it was really a bad harvest and go to the iron ore mine. With two carriages and thirty-five horsemen moving at once, it was quite large. When they came out of the castle, the people of the territory looked at them. She sent five engineers to different regions and instructed them to find out about last year’s crop situation. And headed to the hers. When they arrived in front of the mine not far from the lord’s castle, the managers and workers who had been notified in advance came out and stood there. Under the guidance of the manager, she entered the office next to the entrance and personally robbed the manager’s office. She opened the stacked boxes, turned over the drawers, literally cleaned out the office, and piled up all the documents she wanted to view on the desk. She did this because she didn’t want to waste time looking at the prepared documents, but it was obvious that the manager was embarrassed. She bet they all have already stolen all the important documents.
She carefully looked through the piled up documents, starting with the oldest ones. According to the document review, the mine was developed in earnest a year ago, in the spring of last year. It was said that about 30 miners were mining, but the labor costs were strange.
“How are miners paid?”
“We give each season.”
“How much per season?”
“We pay 100 gold each.”
“If 30 miners received 100 gold per season, there would have been 12,000 gold in four seasons starting last spring, right?”
“Yes? Yes.”
The manager answered with a puzzled expression. It seemed that the inspection department’s subdivision had not yet arrived in this neighborhood. At Midoc, it was now difficult to see such flimsy and fake documents. The work was becoming more difficult as the inspection department was persistent in stealing documents, and the embezzlers were increasingly creating double ledgers. It was dumbfounding to see such blatantly absurd documents. She was not even angry.
She handed the document she was holding to the manager.
“Read what it says in total labor costs last year.”
“Four, thirty-five thousand gold…”
“How many miners are there in total?”
“About thirty people…”
“Nelia.”
“Yes, manager.”
“Go out and meet the miners, and get a general idea of the scale. I think I will have to take this time to let this manager know what happens if he lies to the kingdom’s administrators.”
“Oh, take care, Manager. You will be taken to the capital and sentenced to prison anyway, so if you want to go that far, you need to have good legs, right?”
Nelia, who was quick-witted, willingly agreed to her threats. The mine manager’s pupils began to tremble violently.
“The amount mined every season is uniformly 3,000 kilograms. So that means 30 kilograms per day. If there were 30 miners, each person mined 1 kilogram. So, 1 kilogram per day?”
The manager couldn’t answer and was just rolling his eyes, so I asked Bourbon who was glaring at him.
“Bourbon, what is the price of iron ore?”
“One kilogram of iron ore before processing costs about 1 gold.”
“Thirty miners received a labor cost of 35,000 gold, so their total production is 12,000 kilograms a year? If 1 gold per kilogram, the total mining profit last year should be 12,000 gold, and the labor cost was 12,000 gold. If you just calculate it, it’s an absurd deficit. Where did you get the insufficient funds?”
The manager was now shaking and sweating like tears. He barely opened his mouth to answer her question and blurted out nonsense in a trembling voice.
“Well, the lord gave me the money to develop the mine…”
“I came back yesterday after looking at the financial documents of the fiefdom. There was no money spent on the mines there. Are you going to go through with me until the end? If what you said is true, why aren’t any external funds indicated in these documents? You embezzled the viscount’s money? You did it?”
“No!!”
The manager sat down on the floor and started yelling violently. She looked down at him and twirled the rabbit pen with her fingertips.
“No, I did not embezzle. Please save me, Administrator.”
He smiled at the manager who was crying and clinging to him. And he said.
“Get a real ledger.”
The manager left the office in tears and brought back three old ledgers that he had hidden. He said he was just doing as he was told and that he had done nothing wrong, so she ordered him to be tied up and taken away. Did a bad thing become a good thing if someone tells you to do it? Among those who manipulate accounts in this way, I have never seen anyone who did not fill their back pockets with bribes. It will soon be revealed how much has been done. She opened the three ledgers in front of her desk. Beautiful numbers telling the truth welcomed her. She did this for this taste. Hehe, after reviewing the ledger, it was revealed that not only the wages but also the amount of mining had been ridiculously lied to. After deducting all expenses, last year’s net profit alone was over 2 million gold. It was said that all of the mined iron ore was exported overseas through foreign merchants because there was a risk of being caught if it was processed and sold within Laurentyne. Iron ore, which could be processed through bookkeeping, was one of the items that was strictly managed in the kingdom. This was especially true because it was one of the minerals that costs a lot of money in processing and smelting, so the price of the finished product overwhelms the price of the raw materials. Last year, the amount of iron ore shipped overseas exceeded 2,000 tons. If it were made into a weapon, a simple estimate would say that it would be enough to bury 10,000 soldiers. Moreover, at this scale, it is difficult to transport just one or two pieces of iron ore, so it was highly likely that there was a smelter somewhere that extracts only iron from iron ore.
‘Ah, sir… Why does this keep getting bigger?’
While she was secretly frustrated, Nellia, who had gone to see her workers, returned. And then she poured out her sad story.
“Manager, they say there are about 150 to 200 miners working in the mine, and there are many workers working at the smelter. The wages are less than half of what they said. Most of them are immigrants who moved to the east.”
“Did you find out where the smelter is?”
“I heard it’s not far away. Would you like to go there?”
“I should go and see.”
“Right? One of the workers who worked at the smelter said a familiar name. I was going to tell you that I should check it out.”
“Familiar name, anyone?”
“Galleon Aachen.”
She went to the smelter with the manager at her side. There was no Galleon Aachen. No, there were no people at all. The blast furnace had been shut down the day they arrived, and after looking around the now almost empty smelter, her head started to hurt even more. The scale was larger than expected. It seemed clear that only the iron was sold after all the mined iron ore was smelted. They needed to find out where it was sold, which merchant it went through, and how much it was sold for.
“Bourbon.”
“Yes, manager.”
“Find the merchant with the exclusive contract, find out the price of the iron distributed, and Nelia.”
“Yes!”
“Report to the capital and request the dispatch of additional inspectors and soldiers. We will also have to move our lodgings. I will tell the drivers to scrape off the documents they were looking at and we will find an inn like this.”
They returned to the main street of Viscounty Blanca. They rented an entire inn that looked nice and set up a base, and Bourbon and some of the knights took on the work and dispersed. The knights who had gone to tour the fields also returned one after another and confirmed that there had been a good harvest last year. As a result, all the documents presented by the Viscount turned out to be false, and documents scraped from mines and smelters were piled up on the table.
‘Haha, I came here casually for a short business trip, but I ended up completely screwed up.’
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Translator Note:
Hello there! This is RJR. I hope you liked it <3
If you like my work please support me with Ko-fi or Patreon. Next post will be released on March, 1.
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