Chapter 19
#19화 New Adventurer Bern (17) - Promotion Request
At Geumun Palace, Sergio, the head of the Crown Prince's secretaries, was a veteran official with over forty years of service in the imperial palace.
He had handled countless duties since the days when the previous emperor—the current Crown Prince's grandfather—was still alive, and had helped many different royals with their work.
When the Emperor handed over part of his duties to the Crown Prince under the pretense of training him as an heir, the colleagues dispatched to assist Sergio all cast worried looks his way.
“No, the Crown Prince hasn't even finished his heir training yet, has he? He can't possibly have time to handle work. Realistically, you're the one who's going to do all the work.”
“Just doing the work would be a relief. If something goes wrong and he dumps the blame on you... sigh.”
The imperial education of the Aizern imperial family was so brutal that even Sergio and the other ministers would not have found “harsh” to be an exaggeration.
There are limits to how much one person can learn and absorb at once, so if you try to cram in every kind of knowledge and skill from every field, how could anyone endure it?
As a result, the royals usually focused intensively on only the fields that suited their tastes, while the rest they learned only enough to save face—or, quite often, skipped even that.
However, the current Crown Prince was diligently completing every class that everyone else only went through the motions of.
Thanks to that, the teachers who usually had to coax and cajole disinterested royals through their lessons were thrilled, but the officials dispatched under the Crown Prince, including Sergio, had dark expressions.
The duties the Emperor had handed over to the Crown Prince were only a portion of them, but even so, they required document-processing ability on the level of managing an ordinary earldom.
It was already a huge amount to throw at a Crown Prince with no practical experience, and on top of that, he still had to continue the education he was already receiving.
No matter how capable and diligent the Crown Prince was, this was simply physically impossible.
As his colleagues had said, the real work would be handled by Sergio and the officials dispatched to Geumun Palace.
And if anything went wrong because of that, the blame would land on Sergio rather than the Crown Prince.
Rather than letting a blemish appear in the Crown Prince's career before he took the imperial throne, it would be far more rational to sacrifice Sergio, who was just one official among many even if he was competent.
'Maybe my career as an official will end with this.'
And so, with half resignation and half resolve, Sergio came to serve under the Crown Prince─
「Have them expand the warehouses in this region as quickly as possible. When there's a bumper harvest, you need to store surplus grain in advance so there won't be problems when something comes up.」
「Review this document again. Comparing it to the others, the amount of stone that was delivered doesn't add up. If it's just a simple miscalculation, fine, but if someone embezzled it, they should be punished severely.」
「As for that system where frontier regions don't use much cash and instead pay taxes with regional specialties, it seems the goods assigned to each region are off. This place, as far as I know, had its lake dried up fifty years ago, so how can fish still be listed as the regional specialty? Are the people supposed to go to another region, trade for goods, and then come back to pay their taxes? The burden on the commoners is one thing, but the supply is inconsistent, so the imperial family loses out as well. We need to reassess everything and change it to specialties that fit the current situation. If possible, the best thing would be to standardize everything to money.」
─Before long, he was shown a whole new world.
'What...?'
The Crown Prince was capable.
No, he was beyond capable; he was like someone born solely for the sake of handling administrative work.
Of course, since it was his first time handling practical affairs, there were some rough spots, but they were well within the range Sergio and the other aides could cover, and once he realized a problem, he corrected it quickly.
He used the secretaries, including Sergio, appropriately, and never overloaded them with excessive work or dumped responsibility on them.
Sergio was astonished by the Crown Prince's ability, but at the same time, he worried.
'He'll have a lot of work to do from now on—will this initial enthusiasm really last?'
Mental strength and motivation are easy to overlook because you can't see them, but in fact they are resources that need recovery just like physical strength.
Sergio had seen many times how newcomers who worked with overflowing enthusiasm and passion later burned out completely, leaving nothing but ashes.
No need to look far—take the current emperor, the Crown Prince's father, for instance. When he had just ascended the throne, he governed the country energetically, but at some point he gradually lost all enthusiasm for politics and sank into indulgence and sloth.
Fortunately, the Crown Prince had already stood out early, and the Emperor had quickly acknowledged him and handed over authority; otherwise, the empire itself might have fallen into chaos because of the Emperor's many consorts and their children.
'If things are not to turn out that way, the Crown Prince will need proper rest too.'
Sergio knew that someone who worked hard, but also knew how to pace themselves, take breaks, and make time for hobbies, could work longer and more steadily than someone who only worked hard.
And from that perspective, the Crown Prince was in very dangerous shape.
Day after day, he kept working without a single break, so when in the world was he supposed to rest and recover his strength?
Even so, with rumors going around that the Emperor, having taken note of the Crown Prince's ability, was thinking of piling more work on him, it was practically impossible for an ordinary official like Sergio to find a way to let the Crown Prince rest.
All he could do was do his best within the duties entrusted to him, even a little more if possible.
“Hmm, the weather's lovely. It's a pleasant day.”
However, contrary to Sergio's worries, the Crown Prince showed no sign of tiring at all.
No, it even looked as if his energy was welling up more and more with each passing day.
Sergio could not help but be truly astonished.
If a Crown Prince with no private life and nothing but work piled on him felt motivated, wasn't the source obvious enough?
'Ah! Your Highness finds joy in the very act of leading the nation and caring for the people!'
It was truly astonishing, and it even made his chest swell with emotion.
It even made him resentful of his own white hair, which he no longer had any way to hide.
If possible, he wanted to keep serving loyally at the Crown Prince's side for even one more day.
At the very least, while serving him, Sergio renewed his resolve to do his utmost.
“Heh-heh, I never knew helping talented colleagues grow could be this fun. Maybe someday it'd be nice to make a duplicate of myself just to handle the teaching side.”
[The ones grinding away below don't look like they're enjoying it at all, though?]
“Heh, what does a demon know about humans anyway? The thrill of leveling up is a universal feeling.”
[Even a demon like me knows humans better than you do, you human-adjacent Crown Prince.]
Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.
***
“I'm going to assign you a promotion request for 4th rank.”
East Branch of the Adventurer's Guild.
At the bureau chief's words, the atmosphere around them grew even heavier.
If 1st rank were small fry, 2nd rank regulars, and 3rd rank elites, then 4th-rank adventurers were the aces—at most one team per branch.
There was only one 5th-rank adventurer, the guild master, and that guild master stayed at guild headquarters to guard it and did not take requests unless there was some unusual incident, so in effect they were the pinnacle of active adventurers.
At the realization that the opportunity that had once been right before her, only to fail to seize it and let it slip away, had come again, Blanca stiffened without meaning to.
Even Renya, who would normally have been making a fuss, kept a quiet, strangely tense expression this time.
“Does a promotion request mean that if we complete it, all three of us will be registered as 4th-rank adventurers?”
But Bern, as always, remained composed.
He showed no particular emotion even with a position before him that others might spend their whole lives striving for and still never reach.
It was an attitude that could, at a glance, look like contempt for the guild's ranks, but the bureau chief did not get angry or offended.
Bern had relatively little experience and had simply needed more time because he had to build up results as a party, but in pure ability alone, he would have earned 4th rank long ago.
If he'd wanted to, he could have pressured the guild to hurry up his promotion, but the fact that he'd carried out requests without complaint was enough to earn him high marks for character and diligence.
“That's right. Succeed at this one and you'll be 4th rank. Well, failing it doesn't mean there won't be another chance to rank up, but it will set you back quite a bit.”
“Understood. What exactly is the request?”
“You'll need to go to a fief called Prensia, far to the north from here. A series of disappearances has been happening there—young women keep vanishing—and we've received a request to somehow resolve it.”
“Wait a minute.”
Then Blanca, who had been listening quietly, stepped forward and asked.
“If it's Prensia... isn't that where the Alses Party has been dispatched?”
Bern had already heard the name Alses Party before.
It was certainly the name of the only 4th-rank party in the East Branch as things stood.
The bureau chief nodded.
“Actually, this was originally a request handled by the Alses Party. But they gave it up, saying they couldn't find the cause no matter what they tried.”
“So you're saying we have to solve a request even a 4th-rank party gave up on?”
“If you do, then no one will be able to object to your promotion. Your results are already more than enough, but there are always people who complain that your experience is too short.”
Blanca let out a low sigh.
A request without clear instructions—like being told to go somewhere and defeat someone, or to fetch some material.
They had to find the cause and come up with a solution entirely on their own.
A task that required not just combat prowess but also investigative skill, judgment, and adaptability was indeed the kind of high-rank request it was.
Difficult.
But if she wanted to obtain information about the lich, she had to somehow climb to 4th rank.
Bern met Blanca's eyes, and she nodded. Bern then spoke again.
“Very well. Let's set out at once.”