Will It Make Money?

Having arrived in Halim, Vernel paced the corridor with the documents he had organized in hand.

It was the route leading to the accommodations.

He knew where his room was and was not lost.

And yet he lingered there as though waiting for something.

“Vernel.”

A weighty voice.

And gleaming hair between the bushes.

It was hair that had once brought smiles to many people under the name of the Sunlight Mage.

A smile might have formed at the memory of those days, but Vernel could not manage one.

“Ah, h-hello! President, it has been a long time since I saw you at the academy.”

“Yes, it has been a long time.”

“I heard you gave me the main stage. I am grateful for your kindness, and—”

“What is that?”

Bernard cut Vernel off and looked at the documents in his hands.

“This is what I plan to present at the exhibition. I have polished it as best I could, but it is still difficult, so I wanted to ask you to review it.”

“You want me to?”

“Yes.”

“……Let me see it.”

President Bernard began to skim through the presentation quickly.

Under his serious gaze, Vernel’s mouth went dry.

In the end, he smiled.

Was that a sign of good news?

No.

The laugh that escaped his lips was closer to a sneer.

“Vernel Marquis, I cannot express how disappointed I am in you.”

“W-what do you mean?”

Vernel asked while maintaining his politeness.

“What are you planning to do when the efficiency is only twelve percent?”

“I am gradually increasing the efficiency.”

“Are you planning to show that it has enough potential at the presentation and let everyone laugh at you? Are you going to disgrace Regent Valdrova, who was kind enough to believe in you?”

Vernel stared blankly at him.

It was a new creation, not merely an application of something that already existed.

Even twelve percent was an astonishing achievement.

President Bernard continued.

“Does anyone understand the formula you discovered? Even I can see that this is all over the place. You only obtained the formula, but you are improving the efficiency far too slowly. If I understood this, I would have raised the efficiency much faster than you. Do you know why you are so confident?”

“…….”

“Vernel, your perspective is too narrow. When you focus on one thing, you cannot see anything else. You are so focused on that one percent that you do not know how to raise the other ten percent.”

Bernard shoved Vernel’s presentation against his chest and said,

“I’m disappointed, terribly disappointed. You were better off when you were chasing an absurd dream. The Vernel Marquis standing before me now is nothing but a complete mess.”

Bernard walked away with his back turned to him.

Vernel could not say a word and stared down at the floor.

He could not move from that spot for a long time.

* * *

Ferda watched the whole thing.

He watched until Bernard insulted Vernel, left him frustrated, and walked away.

Then he thought,

‘Had I misunderstood President Bernard?’

Bernard had made room for Vernel.

Moreover, Ferda had heard that giving him the main stage carried great significance for a scholar.

Ferda had thought it was an act of kindness.

But it was not.

Bernard was a petty bastard who refused to acknowledge Vernel.

The higher one stood, the more painful the fall.

Did that mean Bernard was determined to destroy Vernel?

‘If so…….’

What am I supposed to do here?

“Oh, Regent! What a pleasant surprise to meet you here.”

The familiar voice brought Ferda back to his senses.

The man who had worn the face of a third-rate villain while Ferda secretly watched was now putting on a polite, amiable expression.

“As it happens, a merchant named Stephan Pascal came to me and asked how I planned to handle the main event—”

“Do you really think he is foolish?”

“Pardon? What do you mean?”

When Ferda cut him off and asked, Bernard wore an expression of complete bewilderment.

Ferda answered bluntly.

“I overheard your conversation by accident.”

Only then did Bernard understand Ferda’s question, and his face reddened.

“Well…… I showed you a side of myself that is difficult to show.”

Yes, it was certainly a difficult face to look at.

Ferda had been about to teach him exactly what happened when human duplicity was exposed.

“I do not know how it appeared, but I was not trying to do anything bad to Vernel.”

Ferda was left speechless.

“What do you mean?”

“You see…… Vernel Marquis was the prodigy our senior scholars had been waiting for. Even at the academy, he consistently ranked first, and everyone agreed that his brilliant mind would overturn the age.”

Everyone knew that, contrary to all those praises, his story had not ended well.

Bernard let out a sigh.

“But the moment he brought us what he planned to present at the conference, everyone was taken aback. It was full of outrageous ideas. We tried to dissuade him and somehow steer him in a better direction, but he would not listen. Do you know what happens to nine out of ten people like that? They become obsessed with their ideals and go mad.”

“But he was not mad.”

“No. He actually did it.”

“And yet you think you can persuade me?”

If Vernel had merely been chasing ideals, Ferda would have understood.

No, he might even have approached Vernel with that same cynical attitude.

But Vernel had done it.

An achievement that should have taken several more years had appeared in only a few months, and he was even continuing to improve its efficiency.

“That is why I am doing this.”

“Is refusing to acknowledge that he was right really what the head of the world’s foremost repository of knowledge is supposed to do?”

“People like Vernel need to be treated that way.”

“What kind of people are they?”

“People who present innovations that we denied and could not imagine. We must not force people like that to remain within the limits of ordinary men like me. They should not conduct research to persuade someone else, but follow what they themselves believe.”

Ferda understood what he meant.

Bernard was a genius.

But Vernel was a genius among geniuses.

So Bernard’s standards were no different from those of an ordinary man when applied to Vernel.

“Vernel will prove it with his ability, if only to shove it in my face. If he managed to succeed at something so absurd, then he has to advance it further now. And he will prepare to land a blow on me.”

This was a whip meant for Vernel.

It was meant to draw out the competitive spirit hidden in his heart.

“What will you do if he ends up taking the wrong path?”

Just as Bernard himself had once done.

Ferda swallowed the words.

“Vernel does not choose cowardly paths. He always insists on facing things head-on. He is a scholar pursuing absolute truth, after all.”

Bernard gave him a slight bow.

“Still, if you think he is heading down the wrong path, tell him that I am actually a petty, narrow-minded man too small-minded to acknowledge anything to his face. With that, I should go prepare.”

Bernard walked past Ferda, and Ferda let him go.

What would he gain by beating or scolding him mercilessly?

‘I am curious.’

At the same time, Ferda was curious about the person Bernard believed Vernel to be.

Would he become frustrated at being denied recognition, or would he be reborn anew, just as Bernard had said?

Ferda went to Vernel’s room as though he knew nothing.

Perhaps the shock had not yet faded, because the door was not properly closed and Ferda could enter.

Vernel was sitting at the table in the accommodations.

His shoulders were shaking, and his breathing was ragged.

“Yeah, f-fuck…… That efficiency…… I can raise it myself, can’t I?”

Tears fell one after another, but his hands and head never stopped moving.

He was revising every part Bernard had pointed out.

“Realistic? Fine, I’ll raise it to twenty percent by next month. Just watch me. I’ll make every single one of those bastards who laughed at me…… every single one of them acknowledge me. Damn it…….”

The vengeance in his words and actions was unmistakable.

He was using it as fuel to work his mind.

That was what revenge did.

It made him forget his exhaustion,

and gave him the concentration to immerse himself in one thing.

‘If there is one thing that makes him different from me…….’

It was that, just as Bernard had expected, he had chosen the right path.

So Ferda quietly closed the door and went outside.

* * *

“Just take that thing over there down. It looks worse than it did when it was displayed. Handle that item gently!”

Stephan directed the workers while looking over the interior-design plans.

“Boss, I brought the items. Where should I display them?”

“Good. Hang that on the wall over there! There’s a latch, right?”

“Yes.”

“Check one more time that the latch is secure. It is an important item! I could lose my head over this!”

The items in question were the mana stone he had brought as a sample and a weapon that utilized it.

To be safe, he had also prepared blueprints for the future plan, presenting a vision by showing that they were ready.

The object, centered around a long pipe with complicated wires and glass bottles hanging from it, was called a ‘magitech rifle.’

‘That is a weapon?’

The researchers had told him it was a high-performance device, but he had never once seen it demonstrated.

Would that thing actually work?

“Oh my, big brother? What a coincidence meeting you here.”

A familiar voice rang in Stephan’s ears.

An unexpected person…… though it was hardly unexpected.

Since this was an exhibition attended by every merchant, there was no way the Pascal family would stay away.

Even knowing that, Tilda’s presence was always as troublesome to Stephan as it was unexpected.

Stephan found her difficult to deal with.

“Did you come alone?”

“No. Of course I came with my fiancé. There he is, Henri.”

A man walked toward them with a sunny smile.

He was a fat, middle-aged man in his mid-thirties.

Henri Dandolo.

He was the heir to Dandolo, one of the largest trading companies in the Empire.

“Tilda, my love. I brought the cocktail you asked for.”

The fat man in his thirties grinned and handed her a glass.

The relatively petite, slender beauty with black hair stared intently at the glass.

She pouted her lips and moistened her eyes.

“This is a Cherry Bomb, isn’t it?”

“Huh, it is?”

“I wanted a Blue Sapphire…….”

Tilda blinked while swaying her shoulders gently.

Henri Dandolo gave an awkward smile when he saw her and nodded.

“Oh, sorry. I’ll get you a new one!”

“Thank you. There’s no one but you.”

“Brother-in-law! Let’s exchange greetings later!”

“Oh, yes. Let’s do that…….”

Tilda smiled.

Delighted by that smile, he went to get another cocktail.

Stephan frowned as he watched him.

“Why leave the servants idle and make your fiancé wait on you?”

“Why do you think? Because I can’t stand the sight of him.”

Tilda smiled unpleasantly.

She put on an act in front of others, but she did not do so with Stephan.

That meant she considered him easy to handle.

“Does he know about your vile inner nature?”

“Of course not. What insight could a man who couldn’t even get my clothes off possibly have?”

“He would love to hear about this conversation.”

“If you have the guts, go ahead.”

That was how she was.

She acted as though she stood above everyone and tried to manipulate them all.

She had been that way since childhood.

If someone displeased her, she would set a trap to purge them or leave them with deep scars.

At first, it had remained at the level of childish mischief, but as she grew older, she became increasingly calculating.

Stephan was afraid of Tilda like that.

Even though he had seen the monster within that smiling face, he could not tell what kind of monster it was.

“Is this the merchandise from the Far East that you are backing?”

Covering her mouth with a fan, she looked up at the magitech rifle.

“Yes.”

“How cute. You actually brought something like that.”

Hmm.

She hummed and pretended to examine it closely before abruptly turning her head.

“It looks more like a work of art to me.”

She was asking whether it could actually be useful.

“Of course it can be used.”

“How does it work?”

“Well, you pull this like this, and then you do this and that…… and it works by itself.”

The more his words trailed off, the more Tilda’s smile deepened.

“You have never seen it work, have you?”

“…….”

“Well, it is an exhibition. If you just hang up an unfinished item, no one will know. No, wait.”

She rested her index finger against her chin with an innocent expression.

“Come to think of it, there is also going to be a presentation, isn’t there?”

Her eyes showed that she knew everything.

She knew about the mana stone, so of course she also knew that there would be a presentation on the main stage.

“Why bring something you have never even gotten to work? If it explodes halfway through, you will only disgrace yourself, won’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

“It is perfect as a display piece, but hmm…… I wonder if it will make money? As Father said, the East seems useless…….”

A crescent-moon smile appeared on her lips.

That expression.

That was the face she had worn whenever she had trampled him down in the Pascal household.

“Do not worry, little sister.”

But today was different.

Stephan felt more confident than usual.

“While you are busy clinging to a man’s crotch, I am holding on to my patron’s shoulder.”

It was a provocation containing some fairly vulgar language.

But it worked extremely well.

Tilda glared at him viciously.

Her expression seemed to say, How dare someone like Stephan talk back to me? Her hands trembled.

Stephan would normally have been cowed, but not today.

He had the most reliable patron anyone could ask for backing him.

‘Damn, but she is still scary.’

When he remembered how she had beaten people without restraint during their childhood, a cold sweat broke out on its own.

“Would you move aside?”

A voice came from behind her.

Her viciously twisted face instantly smoothed out, and she turned around.

A tall man with gray hair and blue eyes.

He wore a black dress uniform accented with red.

He was young, but he gave off an aura far beyond his years.

‘This is Ferda Valdrova.’

His cold expression suited the nickname of cold-blooded murderer he had earned by killing Thesallos Waltzer, and his face looked complicated and inscrutable.

That was enough to capture Tilda’s attention.

She smiled sweetly and offered him an elegant greeting.

“Hello, Regent Valdrova. I am Tilda Pascal, and I—”

“I have no interest in who you are, so move aside.”

“Pardon?”

He cut off Tilda’s greeting.

His rude words were deeply irritating, but Tilda could not even bring herself to get angry inwardly.

The blue eyes staring at her were icy enough to freeze her veins.

“You do not understand what I am saying. I said get out of my way.”.

notes