novelraw Chapter 2 : Chapter 2
Chapter 2 : Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Baron Horn was slightly unsettled as he watched me openly let out a sigh.
But he quickly pulled himself together and started spewing nonsense again.
“Your Highness. I am a diplomat. What is recorded in the national treasury, and in what manner, is not under my authority.”
Oh~ really?
So that was why your story kept changing?
What a ridiculous thing to say.
“I see. So you have been negotiating with foreign countries without even understanding the state of the national treasury~”
Domestic brick production had not changed at all since ten years ago, when they began building the walls.
Moreover, according to the usage plans, all the bricks they needed had effectively been supplied domestically two years ago.
At this point, this much physical evidence was more than enough.
“Then you should not be a diplomat.”
“Pardon?”
“As of today, you are dismissed from your post as a diplomat.”
At my declaration, everyone in the office gasped and began murmuring in shock.
It could not be helped.
No matter how I looked at it, a limited resource like diamonds seemed to have been used to stuff the belly of some shady bastard.
“Your Highness!”
“And you can sit in prison for a while. Get audited.”
“What?! What kind of joke is this?!”
“How is this a joke?”
At that point, I no longer bothered with even the faintest smile.
Everyone in the office was in an uproar, and I alone remained calm as I looked toward the door.
“Guards. Throw him in prison.”
“Your Highness!”
“If he is not in a cell by the time I check, your heads will roll first.”
The guards hesitated for a moment, but the instant they heard their own heads might be on the line, they rushed in.
“Your Highness! If you do this, if you do this, our relationship with Mernia will be ruined completely!”
“The treasury is about to die first.”
“Your Highness!”
“If you think this is unfair, I will let you out later. So go quietly.”
As people watched Horn being dragged away, they were thrown into shock.
They should not be this shocked.
This was only the beginning.
“From this moment on, no one is to respond to a single word Baron Horn says. Do not even react. No speaking, no writing, no actions. None.”
“…….”
“I will throw every bastard who gets caught into prison.”
“Yes!”
At my firm voice, everyone answered loudly, though their faces still looked bewildered.
A doomed nation.
A country with abundant resources, yet one that was decaying because all those resources had only been used to line a few men’s back pockets.
If I was going to fix this place enough to make it function at all, then the first step had to be taken hard and taken right.
***
“Hey! Guard over there! Guard! Can you not hear me?!”
Baron Horn, locked in prison, shouted desperately for the guards.
But not a single person, including the guards, even looked his way.
No one dared disobey the orders of the now-insane Prince Noel.
“Fine, I do not need an answer. Do not answer. Just deliver this note to one of my servants. His name is Daniel. If you say he is Baron Horn’s servant, everyone will know who he is.”
“…….”
“Look here, I may only be a baron, but I have quite a bit of money! Do you not need money? I can make sure you live comfortably for years! I will reward you generously! Just take this!”
Baron Horn was desperate.
He had never imagined he would be imprisoned this suddenly.
If this happened, he would have no way to prepare for Prince Noel’s whims!
“Oh?”
But in the worst possible stroke of luck for Baron Horn, Noel happened to catch sight of him struggling like that.
“Yes, take it, take it, take it! I will deliver it for you! Hand it over right now!”
Noel’s eyes lit up as he ran toward Baron Horn’s solitary cell.
Startled by the sight of Noel thundering toward him, Baron Horn recoiled in terror and scrambled into the corner of the cell.
“Hey! Why! Let me see it~! I want to see it too!”
Madness.
Noel’s face was full of madness.
A prince of an entire kingdom, recklessly shoving his hands and feet through prison bars.
The guard, who had been momentarily tempted by Baron Horn’s offer, felt deep relief that he had not responded when he saw that sight.
“Guard! Open the door! He is putting that in his mouth, look! Hurry!”
“Mmph!”
Baron Horn hurriedly tried to shove the note into his mouth.
The moment Noel saw that, he frantically tried to tear open the cell door.
In the middle of that chaos, the guard quickly unlocked the cell.
“Mmph! Mmph!”
“Hey, take that from him! Even if you have to shove your hand down his throat, get it out!”
“Yes!”
“Mmph!”
Remembering the crazed Noel from earlier, the guard hurriedly pried the note out of Baron Horn’s mouth.
‘If only I had swallowed it a little faster, I could have destroyed it!’
Baron Horn sincerely cursed the note for not being easy to chew up or swallow.
“Hey. Eating something to make it disappear, huh? That is not exactly the sort of thing a pampered noble like you should be doing~”
Prince Noel beamed as he accepted the now-soaked note.
Then he hummed cheerfully to himself as he stepped out of the cell.
Baron Horn tried to bolt through the open door as well, but the guard blocked him with an outstretched arm.
The guard had acted on instinct, driven by a nameless sense that his life was in danger.
“Guard, well done. Once this is over, I will reward you properly.”
“Thank you.”
“Tell me your name. I have memorized your face.”
“Sebastian.”
“Okay~”
Whether Baron Horn screamed behind him or not, Prince Noel carefully unfolded the wet note.
Parts of it tore where it had been folded, but since it had not been in his mouth long, the ink had barely run.
“Oh. It reeks just from one glance.”
Seeing Prince Noel smiling so brightly, Baron Horn stared in stunned despair.
Looking at him, Noel spoke seriously to Sebastian.
“Do you work in shifts?”
“Yes, I do.”
“You—no, Sebastian. If you did not switch shifts, how long could you stay here?”
“I believe I could remain until I go to sleep.”
“I see.”
Noel fell into thought for a moment.
Meanwhile, Sebastian grew tense when he noticed that Prince Noel, who had been speaking informally to everyone around him, had suddenly begun speaking politely.
From Noel’s perspective, he had simply changed his manner because he judged Sebastian to be someone worth treating like a human being.
“Then when the next shift arrives, tell them this as well. Prince Noel may conduct an inspection without warning, and under no circumstances are they to exchange even a glance with Baron Horn.”
“Understood.”
“I will make sure you receive proper overtime pay and incentives.”
“Yes.”
Overtime pay? Incentives?
They were words Sebastian had never heard even once in his life, but he answered that he understood anyway.
For some reason, it felt like he absolutely had to.
“Your Highness! I-I was wrong! The truth is, I have a sick daughter! I had no choice!”
Baron Horn immediately burst into tears and cried out desperately to the prince.
It was one last attempt to exploit Prince Noel’s well-known soft heart.
“Really? My father is in a coma, you bastard.”
“B-But…!”
“The king and the kingdom are both in a coma, so what kind of corrupt official is out here trying to play on emotions?!”
But it was useless.
Having lived as a politician, I had heard the sick-family routine so many times that I was sick of it myself.
From Prince Noel’s perspective, there was no less effective method of persuasion than that.
“Your Highness! No, guard! Guard!”
Leaving Baron Horn’s desperate cries behind, Prince Noel moved along briskly.
The beginning of the audit had started very brightly indeed.
The servant hurrying after him was met by Noel’s cheerful voice.
“Hey. Call the audit team.”
“The audit team?”
“There is not even a team? Then call the person in charge of audits.”
“Audit… um, do you mean the logistics officer who sends gifts?”
But that bright beginning collapsed the instant it began.
“What? Do not joke with me.”
A chill ran down Noel’s spine, and he stopped walking.
You are one of the servants attached directly to the prince.
Should you not know the palace organization inside and out?
“D-Did you not say audit?”
“An audit. The team that inspects and investigates corruption and things like that.”
“Ah. Th-The knights?”
Seeing the servant still confused even after that explanation, Noel’s eyes widened.
Then he smacked his own forehead hard.
Right.
This was already a country where corruption had once run rampant.
Even if an audit team had existed, there was no way it had been doing its job properly.
“Butler. Do you not know what an audit team is either?”
Just in case, Noel asked the butler.
Out of everyone he had seen in the palace, this man was fairly old, so Noel had hoped he might know something.
“As the nation’s operating budget was reduced, personnel were cut, and the team was eliminated in that process.”
“How many years ago?”
“More than five years ago.”
Noel squeezed his eyes shut, then slowly opened them again.
I was hoping to hand this off to the audit team and wrap it up quickly, but there is no audit team.
Then I have no choice but to handle it myself.
“First, prepare a carriage and summon the Knights Order’s investigation division. I will come down in about thirty minutes.”
***
I calmly entered the office, sent all the servants outside, and closed the door.
“Haa…”
Then I let out a long sigh.
I knew this was going to be rough, but I had not expected the nation to be this much of a disaster.
So even petty corruption like this has been happening everywhere.
“Still, it is good that I secured at least one solid piece of evidence.”
I added Baron Horn’s memo to the list of evidence I had organized.
A note with an address in some rural backwater and a message instructing someone to handle things quickly.
Anyone could see it was an order to destroy evidence.
It was probably physical assets like diamonds, things that were difficult to trace.
“I have already ordered the seizure of his property, and I have gathered the evidence well enough. I have done everything that needs to be done.”
The overall picture was already clear.
Baron Horn’s real estate assets had increased exponentially over the past three years, the contract terms with Mernia had suddenly become suspicious, and Horn’s desperation to hide something was obvious.
No matter how I looked at it, every sign pointed to Baron Horn having embezzled funds.
“There had better still be a lot of diamonds left. Not other processed assets.”
The amount Horn was believed to have amassed was substantial.
If I could recover even that much properly, the treasury would become far more secure.
“Is the carriage ready?”
“Yes. The carriage is ready. Ten people from the Knights Order’s investigation division are also assembled.”
“Let us go.”
The thought of stabilizing the treasury naturally quickened my pace.
The moment the palace doors opened, the sight of the knights lined up in a row was pleasing in its own way.
“Oh. Quite a lot of you have gathered.”
“Greetings, Your Highness!”
I looked over the faces of the knights standing in a line before me, one by one.
Which of these men should I take with me?
“Greetings! I am—”
“We are in a hurry, so introductions later.”
“Yes!”
I quickly stopped those who were about to introduce themselves one by one.
There was no time for that.
Baron Horn’s family might notice something was wrong and take action.
“Hmm.”
If I was going to carry out the audit myself, it would be best to bring one knight with me.
He could protect me, help collect evidence quickly, and assist when the matter moved into formal legal procedures.
But I could not immediately judge which of these men would be suitable.
What kind of interview question should I even ask?
“Your Highness.”
While I was deep in thought, one of the ten knights standing in line suddenly raised his hand.
“Speak.”
“If you require someone to take charge of Baron Horn’s case, may I fill that role?”
At that sudden offer, I blinked a few times.
What was this?
In situations like this, it was usually one of two things.
Either he was on Baron Horn’s side, or he had a grudge against Baron Horn.
“My apologies, Your Highness. This fool occasionally speaks out with unnecessary personal opinions.”
But then something strange happened.
As I stood there suspicious, the knight who appeared to hold the highest rank hurriedly shoved the volunteer backward.
Though he was not actually pushed far.
“There he goes again.”
“Good grief.”
And then there were the displeased looks and clicking tongues from the knights at the end of the line.
Oho.
This was absolutely the signal that I had just found a stubborn but dependable ally, was it not?