Chapter 57
Long-distance voyages eat up a lot of money.
The labor costs of people who have to live aboard ship for months on end, the food to feed them, the upkeep for the sailing ships, the cost of weapons... Ordinary people simply can't afford expenses like that.
So merchant ships receive investment from nobles.
"I'll back your ship with 20,000 credits, so hand over 10 percent of whatever you earn on this voyage to me."
Naturally, investments like that come with considerable risk.
The goods bought in trade are so profitable that as long as they arrive, it's guaranteed profit, but the sea is not such a forgiving opponent.
If a ship backed with 20,000 credits arrives and sells goods worth 300,000 credits, they get 30,000 credits back.
But if it runs into a storm and sinks, or meets a sea monster, or a mutiny breaks out aboard, it becomes zero credits.
There were some sort of insurance systems, but only the bare minimum.
Meaning they would keep you from starving to death, but they wouldn't recover the lost 20,000 credits.
For that reason, the eastern nobles took the biggest hit from the southern naval blockade that began in early June.
"What? Our ship sank?"
"It was bringing silk from the East when it ran into a sea monster..."
"I see. That's fine. Things happen."
When one or two ships sank, even the nobles brushed it off as something that could happen.
Like the saying about not putting all your eggs in one basket, the eastern great nobles who held the region's power didn't pour all their money into a single ship.
Losing one ship? It stung, but the profits from the other ships were enough to make up for it.
That was just how nobles did business.
A loss of one or two ships was within the expected range.
That way of thinking was shattered completely once June 8 passed.
"Wha... what? The ships we backed all sank!?"
It was a bolt from the blue.
Because every ship belonging to the merchant guild that had been scheduled to arrive in early June had sunk without a single exception.
The great nobles endured because they had accumulated reserves over time.
But the newly risen nobles, the power base of Eastern Grand Duke Edward, had no way to survive losses like that.
"Hey there, noble sir! We heard your merchant ship sank, so we can still get our money back, right?"
"Y-Yes, of course."
And that situation began to shake Eastern Grand Duke Edward's support base.
In a situation where power was already split in all directions, it was the newly risen nobles who had helped him withstand the pressure from the eastern great nobles.
If the newly risen noble faction he had built up by ruining the lives of commoners collapsed, the political situation in the East was sure to change rapidly.
To protect the newly risen nobles from the great nobles' offensive, which had begun the moment they saw an opening, Edward gave the investment rights for the convoy first to the newly risen nobles.
The merchant ships in the convoy agreed to that as well.
As long as they could travel safely, they didn't care whose money they took, and honestly, the money itself didn't have names written on it, so it didn't matter whose they accepted.
The newly risen nobles, who only knew how to squeeze commoners dry, had no choice but to grab this lifeline.
After all, this was an escort personally overseen by the Eastern Navy.
If they didn't want war with the Empire, no one would dare touch this convoy.
In other words, it was a gamble with the odds pushed all the way down to zero, a sure win.
The newly risen nobles, thinking so complacently, poured all the money they had into the convoy.
It was no different for the nobles who were already buried under debt.
"Hah, just what kind of baseless confidence does a gentleman with debts this massive have, asking to borrow money?"
"I told you, this time it's different! I got the right to invest in the convoy's slave-trade ships!"
"Hmm... The one overseen by the Eastern Navy?"
"That's right. It's an escort personally ordered by Grand Duke Edward himself, so there's no way it could fail."
Using that 'investment right' as a basis, they scraped together every last coin and backed the convoy's merchant ships.
Even then, they thought everything would go well.
5:00 p.m., June 19.
Not until the Eastern 2nd-class ship of the line Sovereign, with its sails shredded and its hull damaged all over, returned to the harbor.
At first, people thought the ship of the line had simply come back to port for repairs.
Under common sense, there was no way they could imagine such a massive fleet had vanished.
Their misconception was shattered when the Sovereign's captain staggered off the ship with a vacant look in his eyes.
"Captain, what happened? And where did you leave the fleet when you came back here!?"
To the people's questions, the captain answered in a hollow voice.
"The fleet is... here."
"What do you mean, here..."
"This is all of the fleet that sailed out three days ago."
It was an utterly unbelievable statement.
This was a force no navy could annihilate. And yet it had fallen apart so uselessly? How could that make any sense?
So the newly risen nobles who had staked their entire fortunes on Edward refused to accept the situation.
The first of the five stages of accepting death.
Denial.
"No, there's no way."
"Enough with the joke already, Captain."
"Does that even make sense? There were two Tusoteuthis following them! How could something like that happen!?"
The nobles refused to believe what was happening before their eyes. It was a defense mechanism to avoid reality.
If this convoy had really been wiped out, then they were finished as well.
It didn't take very long for the second stage to arrive.
It was because they could no longer deny reality once the trailing Tusoteuthis and the remaining abyssal monsters approached.
"Why us of all people? This is so unfair!"
"How could you lose with the East's strongest force! And you call yourself the East's captain!?"
"Die! Commit seppuku at once and restore your honor!"
Realizing that no matter what they said to the captain, the sunken ships would not return, the nobles tried to compromise with reality.
"Please, let even the merchant ship I invested in return safely..."
"Just save it this one time, and I'll live a good life forever after..."
By the time they had passed through the fourth stage, depression, and reached the fifth stage, acceptance, around then.
Dark rain clouds hung over the harbor, and the monsoon rain poured down.
In principle, they should have accepted everything and given up there.
But humans are the kind of creatures who move to find some way to survive even in the worst possible situation.
The newly risen nobles still had one card left to try.
It was Eastern Grand Duke Edward.
"Right, there's no way the Grand Duke would just leave us like this!"
That wasn't just some baseless wishful thinking on the nobles' part.
Because of this convoy disaster, the existing great nobles would attack Edward fiercely.
To survive that attack, he needed the shield of the newly risen nobles born through the commerce and industry guilds.
"Lord Edward, please, you have to save us!"
"You know we can't collapse here!"
So Edward, too, couldn't abandon the newly risen noble faction.
In the end, Edward chose the side of saving the newly risen nobles.
Naturally, even the Eastern Grand Duke couldn't make the newly risen nobles' debts vanish as if they had never existed.
That would shatter trust in the East and, whatever the outcome of the war, would be a disastrous move that would wreck the eastern economy.
Instead, Edward chose the old-fashioned method.
"What? You're... going to collect more taxes?"
"How much time has it been since we last paid taxes, and you're saying this now!?"
"You want us to pay five years' worth of taxes all at once? No, what money are we supposed to have for that..."
He would collect five years' worth of taxes at once.
In ordinary circumstances it was absurd. But the pretext of a war footing with the South made the impossible possible.
"Hey, don't you know we're at war right now? You want the East to lose?"
"N-No..."
The common people couldn't bring themselves to answer that question honestly.
So, in the end, they had to pay the outrageous taxes.
The support of the newly risen noble class was firmly secured, but the public sentiment of the commoners turned completely against him.
They hadn't even lost the war yet, and already they had to suffer taxes that were basically no different from plunder.
And even Eastern Grand Duke Edward, as reckless as he was, couldn't just sit still and watch this situation.
Even the most brutal dictatorship needs a minimum level of public support.
The East had failed to centralize power and had already drawn nationwide resentment.
The commerce and industry guilds were crying out for help, and the newly risen nobles were little more than half-dead bodies kept alive by a bare infusion of money.
Meanwhile, the great nobles were trying to pin the blame on the failed trade ventures.
The navy's control was no longer what it used to be either. The wary looks toward the repeatedly failing leader were growing sharper.
Starting a naval blockade war against the South in this situation was almost impossible.
"I can work as many hours as it takes for Lord Kyle Leopold!"
and the workers shouting,
"Lord Kyle Leopold will bring us victory!"
and the military who firmly believed,
"Kyle Leopold—that man would be worth trusting even if we took a loss."
and then try to play chicken with the South?
It was impossible from the start.
On top of that, there was one more factor that clouded Edward's judgment.
Namely, the fact that the Tusoteuthis had survived.
Under common sense, if the enemy could kill a Tusoteuthis, there was no way they would have let it live and return. In other words, two Tusoteuthis together were impossible to kill.
"Maybe, if we put the Tusoteuthis at the front, this might be a fight worth trying once."
The East still had a fleet of sailing ships led by ironclads and battleships powered by early mana engines.
The ones that had suffered enormous losses were the merchant ships, not the warships.
The Tusoteuthis had also returned perfectly fine, and they still had their abyssal monster legion.
Because of that, Edward made the worst possible miscalculation.
"Prepare for war."