Chapter 216: A Delicious Silver Mine
The monsters that were called demons or demons by the people of Astera, and were despised by them, were actually Plagues.
They were incomparable to the Plagues that had appeared in the solar system and attacked Earth in terms of size and combat power, but that was because they had not evolved enough.
Arma had warned that Lucia could grow as big as a Plague Queen if he kept feeding her.
The matter was settled for now when Leobold decided to trust her.
Anyway, the Plagues’ ego was very weak.
The higher beings had distinct personalities, but the numerous Beast-class ones only had survival instincts.
In that respect, the Plagues in Mare were very unusual.
Each individual had an ego and hated humans.
He didn’t know why, but anyway, the demons who were digging silver in the Sagris silver mine were shocked when they met Lucia.
―M-mother?
It was easy to think that there was no law or order among the demons, but there was one thing.
The strong ones have everything.
This also applied to Mare, where power struggles, battles, wars, and sieges were constantly taking place at this moment.
And the losers gave everything to the winners.
In that respect, the demons who appeared in this silver mine were astonished by Lucia.
―S-so big and beautiful…
―Even if our mother fights, she can’t match her…
She hadn’t actually compared herself, but Lucia was a bigger and stronger being than any Plague Queen in Mare.
She had become incredibly powerful by eating all kinds of ingots on the Settler and the mining ship alone.
Naturally, her control over her minions also became stronger and this applied to the demons of other groups as well.
―Come here, my children.
―Mother…
The demons became docile sheep and embraced her bosom.
When things went like this, Leobold, who was watching from outside the tent, was dumbfounded.
“It’s over without a fight… They accepted her as their master. How absurd.”
“Maybe it’s thanks to raising Lucia well. If their power was similar, they wouldn’t have become her minions so easily.”
“And we took on the risk… We decided to trust her, so let’s watch.”
That’s how the demons in the Sagris silver mine were turned into golems by Lucia.
They had their egos taken away, but in fact they didn’t have much meaning to their egos.
The Plague Queen was the sum of all the Plagues’ wills.
Lucia’s will was their will, and this was different from species like humans.
Anyway, this incident provided Arma with a lot of information.
He detected an ether storm in front of him, although it was small-scale.
“This ether storm appeared in the solar system with the largest scale ever and is estimated to have also appeared on the ninth planet Nox. The warp gate can be said to be a result of the ether storm.”
Although not as large as that, it was constantly happening near the planets Mare and Terra.
The demons of Mare used it to appear on Terra.
“Can’t we control it?”
If that was possible, he could teleport as he pleased.
Arma shook his head.
“It’s impossible for now. We need to identify what ether energy is before we can control it precisely.”
“Yeah, it’s hard to try something we don’t even know what it is.”
Even those who lived in Astera didn’t know what ether was.
They just used it as a matter of course.
Anyway, thanks to Lucia’s intervention, the threat factor of the Sagris silver mine disappeared completely.
Even so, the miners were reluctant to enter easily.
They believed that the lord would kill them.
Some even begged him on their knees in front of Leobold.
“Lord, please spare me. I have an old mother and a wife and children… How can they live if I die…”
“Please let me write a will at least…”
Leobold suppressed his laughter and ordered them to enter the mine with a cold expression.
“If you hear anything strange, you can come out right away. I’ll pay you twice as much and give you plenty of supplies. So work hard.”
The miners felt bitter but also tempted.
In fact, any mine was dangerous.
The mine was where most deaths occurred among many workplaces, and if the tunnel collapsed one day, mass death was certain.
They didn’t even get good treatment there, so they were lucky if they had old gloves and their meals were only watery porridge with black bread crumbs.
It was a life of living without dying.
Compared to that, the amount of equipment and supplies invested in the Sagris silver mine was considerable.
Although the work was hard, at least they felt confident that they wouldn’t die and that if they did die, their bodies would be recovered.
The miners carried their pickaxes and vowed.
“Anyway, our lives are no different from the lord saving us.”
“Our lord will take care of our remaining family if we die. I believe that.”
Thus, the sound of vigorous pickaxe work began to be heard in the quiet Sagris silver mine.
The explosives, which were said to have been invented by the Imir Republic for the first time, were also introduced for the first time, and a large rock cracked with a bang.
The miners rushed in and broke the silver ore and carried it out of the tunnel.
Even though the work was continuing, the demons didn’t seem to show up.
***
When the Sagris silver mine was opened, the attention of the Bagran Kingdom was focused.
As it boasted a large amount of deposits, they wondered how much silver would come out.
“It produced 30 tons a year in its heyday. That’s what fed the Bagran royal family.”
“The silver content is so high that you can get results by just pushing in manpower.”
“They say dwarves came from the Imir Republic? Then they won’t be able to withdraw easily because of their pride.”
“By the way, why aren’t the miners dying?”
The amount of silver produced was one thing, but what attracted more interest was how many people died.
To the nobles of Bagran, the commoners who didn’t have ether flowing in them didn’t matter how many died, and sometimes bets were made.
Some merchants even had coffins ready near the mine, but they were embarrassed that no orders came in.
“Maybe the baron is hiding the deaths? It’s normal for 20 or 30 people to die by now.”
“What about the miners working inside? Their faces are completely different from other mines.”
“I don’t know… Well, maybe he promised to pay them a lot of money. Maybe he fed them a lot too.”
“Why would he do that to someone who’s going to die soon?”
“…”
That was the biggest mystery.
Baron Vandus strangely spent a lot of money on his people.
The nobles who couldn’t understand that it was an investment sneered at him for wasting money.
To most nobles, commoners were disposable goods that could be used and thrown away at any time, as long as they gave birth to children.
So investing in them seemed strange.
This perception was much worse in Zaium, and only the Holy Kingdom and Elbrang were a little better.
The former tried to treat the believers formally, while the latter focused on rejecting other races.
The reason why the treatment of the commoners fell to the bottom was because the war was waged by the nobles.
The knights who controlled the Goliaths, the magicians who engraved all kinds of magic circles, and the ether engineers who produced and managed them, the war was almost entirely theirs.
There was no room for the commoners to intervene, and naturally, the perception that the commoners had no role in the war was fixed.
Of course, it was impossible to conduct the war with only nobles, and the support of the commoners was essential in various fields.
The nobles were not able to live without eating, and the mercenaries were once commoners.
But the status of the Goliaths was so huge.
One Goliath could face more than a thousand soldiers, and this had the effect of lowering the status of the commoners even more.
Anyway, the influential people who flocked to Sagris Silver Mine were waiting for someone to die.
Leobold said to Prince Ruad, who visited the mine.
“Everyone seems to be waiting for when they will hear a cry.”
“It’s an inevitable reality. It’s not something I should say here, but they are a bunch of people who delude themselves that they have golden blood. If you stab them with a sword, everyone will bleed red.”
Prince Ruad seemed to have a different opinion from ordinary nobles.
He inspected the equipment near the entrance under Leobold’s guidance.
The dwarves were busy testing it.
“Is that how you mine silver? What’s the principle?”
“It grinds the ore into powder. Then you add a solvent and wait for two weeks to a month, and you get an alloy as a precipitate. If you heat this alloy in a furnace, mercury will fly away as gas and only silver will remain.”
“That’s amalgamation. Sir Vandus seems to be quite knowledgeable despite his appearance.”
“I heard it from the Imir Republic.”
There were more than one or two equipment and technology brought from the Imir Republic.
Thanks to this, they agreed to pay 5% of the silver mined in a year as a technology fee, but this was not a blow at all.
The ones who actually mined silver were the workers at 3km underground.
When miners dug ore with their bare hands in a tunnel near the surface and golems carried it out.
The workers injected ultra-high temperature and ultra-high pressure plasma into the entire tunnel, blowing away impurities and extracting only silver precisely.
The work speed was so fast that they dug more than they could carry.
The silver ingots piled up on one side of the tunnel were carried by exploration ships to Settler through another entrance.
The original plan was about 10 tons per day, but as they went deeper underground, the silver content increased and the work became easier, so it rose to 15 tons.
Leobold, who received the report, said it didn’t matter and ordered them to continue digging.
“Anyway, we’ll swallow it up in a few years. Dig it all out.”
Meanwhile, about three weeks had passed since the first ore was transported out of the tunnel.
After working hard by dwarves, conical ingots with holes pierced by mercury came out of furnace.
“This is first ingot! The purity is over 90%!”
“Ooh!”
The people gathered at site cheered and influential people from capital turned pale.
Especially people from royal family couldn’t take their eyes off silver ingot.
They couldn’t shake off thought that it was all ours.
The officials sent by King Bagran III heard roughly how much silver ingots were made per day and panicked.
“More than 150kg? That’s more than twice as much as before?”
“Even if Prince allowed it, it’s still property of direct territory…”
“We have to report this to Prince! What will be left if Baron digs so much?”
Prince Ruad frowned slightly at unexpected number when he heard report, but he didn’t care.
“Is that so? I suppose we should be grateful that there are no deaths.”
“But, Your Highness.”
“I know your concerns. You want to claim that the Sagris Silver Mine belongs to the royal family, and that the silver ingots that are being produced now should be transported to the royal road, right?”
“Yes, yes…”
“It’s not too late, Your Highness.”
“You can still revise the contract and make it less than six months. The baron will accept it.”
“The baron should not be greedy after making so much money.”
The officials repeatedly suggested, but the prince scolded them instead.
“Are you telling me to betray his trust? There is a clear contract, and if we use the royal authority to overturn it, what will happen to His Majesty’s reputation? Have you not seen what happened to Denova?”
“…”
Denova was on the verge of ruin as a lot of investment money was withdrawn.
Everyone expected to land on the floating continent and mine resources, but everything went up in smoke when the blue dragon appeared.
Elvrande was obsessed with catching the blue dragon, and other countries secretly hoped that it would come to them.
The situation around the floating continent was a mess.
The original goal of landing was nowhere to be found, and it seemed to continue until the fleet of Baron Vandus set sail.
The prevailing opinion was that if Denova had kept its promise with Baron Vandus, it would not have been this bad.
Investment is psychological, so if they had announced that Baron Vandus’s fleet would cooperate with us, the investment money would not have flowed out like this.
Even though the officials bowed their heads silently, Prince Ruad spat out his anger.
“The baron kept his promise to me. He provided me with three times the profit and lent me a huge amount of 20,000 gold. Now that he makes a little profit from the Sagris Silver Mine, you want me to take it away from him? How do you think he will see me then?”
“If we take back the management rights of the mine, it might be profitable for now, but Baron Vandus will no longer be on our side. It is foolish to lose trust for greed. I hope you know that too.”
“We apologize, Your Highness.”
“It seems that we were short-sighted.”
They all bowed their heads again, and Prince Ruad finally loosened his collar.
“By the way, I wonder why those demons don’t show up. The shadow elves too. Does the baron have something?”
“It’s not enough to explain it by just good luck.”
“It’s suspicious that there are no deaths at all, Your Highness. There might be a need for investigation.”
There were some casualties, though.
Due to the dangerous nature of mining work, there were many crises where people were crushed by rocks or suffocated by lack of air, even if they did not die.
However, the temporary smelter built by Baron Vandus also served as a clinic.
They could treat patients on the spot without having to move them, and let them rest as well.
This gave the miners courage to go back into the tunnel.
Prince Ruad looked at the report sent from the smelter and pondered.
‘He tries to preserve as many skilled workers as possible to increase the mining output. Is that it? It’s completely different from what the nobles say.’
The ability of commoners was anyway limited, so they only had to invest as many people as possible.
That was their logic.
It was based on the nobility’s view that everything other than war was trivial.
They valued Goliath-related personnel somewhat higher, but they ignored them too if they did not deal with ether.
You could see how they treated the dwarves who came from Imir Republic.
How could they fight with them?
‘If Baron Vandus hadn’t intervened, they would have all gone back.’
The dwarves’ personalities were not inferior to those of the elves.
It was a mystery how he persuaded them.
Some said he offered them precious liquor and they were very satisfied, but it was just a gossip among miners.
Anyway, Baron Vandus’s management of the silver mine suggested a lot in just two months.
Prince Ruad showed his sincerity by visiting the mine frequently and learning new technologies.
But not all members of Bagran royal family were as smart as him.
***
Bang!
The dressing table shook and even the woman’s face in the mirror trembled slightly.
She couldn’t stand her anger and got up and glared at Count Lantis who was sitting on the sofa.
“That’s four tons a month! That means we’re giving 50 tons of silver to that rat bastard in a year! Does that make sense?”
She was Eolin Bagran, Prince Ruad’s sister.
The succession order of Bagran had been fixed on Ruad long ago, so she and the rest of the royal family had to look for other ways.
Like most royals, they could become knights or devote themselves to research as court mages, but Eolin had no talent for anything.
She had poor ether sensitivity even for a royal, so her fate was to go to a foreign country or another territory as a bride.
Eolin knew that well, so she turned her eyes away from luxury since she was young.
She had to spend money on her appearance as much as possible, so that she could get better treatment.
Her efforts paid off and she was engaged to a powerful noble from Zaium.
But as Bagran’s financial situation worsened, the money she could spend also decreased, and recently she couldn’t even buy a small piece of jewelry.
She was the princess of Bagran.
Eolin understood that, but she couldn’t accept that Prince Ruad of Orabien gave away the management rights of the Sagris Silver Mine for a year.
“That’s 50 tons of silver, how much is that? Tell me, Count Lantis. How much money will come back to me?”
“Most of it will be invested in the treasury, so it won’t be that much. You know the financial situation of the royal family very well, Princess.”
“Still! I should be able to buy at least one dress and one set of jewelry! I am the princess of this country!”
Eolin clenched her small fists in anger.
She was not the only one who thought this way.
As soon as silver started pouring out of the Sagris Mine, everyone drooled over it.
Even Bagran III just laughed bitterly as if he was hit in the back of his head.
“Four tons of silver a month? That’s much more than I expected. I hope they don’t mine it all.”
“No, Your Majesty. The scale of the Sagris Mine is not just that. It can be mined for at least 20 more years, so please don’t worry.”
“Baron Vandus owes me a debt. His father and brother died in battle, so it’s not bad to give him some favors. I entrusted the prince with this matter, so don’t mention it to him without permission.”
Even though the king’s order was given, the criticism of the mine did not stop.
Baron Vandus was taking too much silver.
It was an amount that could not be compared to the gold brought from the floating continent.
In the palace, in a social club owned by a great noble, in the guard, there were rumors that Baron Vandus was too much.
—That’s right. It’s customary to pay tribute to the palace if you have such an opportunity to make money.
—If he came near the royal road, he should at least greet us, not just stay in the smelter and go back to his territory. What is that?
—The baron doesn’t care about anyone.
It was not true that Leobold did not meet anyone.
He met Prince Ruad who visited the smelter, as well as technicians from the royal road and dwarves from Imir Republic.
He just didn’t need any of the powerful people in Bagran.
“I need technicians who work on the field, not those who rely on their bloodline and interfere with me.”
Of course, those people were not incompetent, but they did not appeal to Leobold.
As he acted unlike a baron and was arrogant, he naturally received a lot of resentment.
Eolin and Count Lantis were among them, and they were seriously planning to attack Baron Vandus.
They did not mean to attack his territory, but to launch a political offensive.
It was purely out of greed, but they thought there was no problem with that.
“The most important thing is justification, Princess. We need justification to save face for His Majesty. The baron is not plotting treason or committing a grave crime.”
“Then we can make him commit a crime, right?”
“That’s right. According to the rumors, the baron colluded with the shadow elves. His territory was never attacked by pirates last winter.”
The shadow elf pirates were so famous that even Eolin, who had no interest in domestic affairs, had heard of them.
“He must have colluded with the pirates!”
“The Sagris Mine is also strange. The demons that took hundreds of lives have not appeared at all since he took over the management rights of the mine.”
“He even communicates with demons… How far does his evil scheme go?”
Count Lantis was startled by her words and tried to clarify.
“No, I’m not saying that he conspired with demons. I want to emphasize that I did not say that.”
It might be possible with shadow elves, but demons were monsters that could not even communicate.
It was impossible for Baron Vandus to recruit them unless he was a non-human being himself.
“But we can spread rumors. Baron Vandus learned black magic and colluded with shadow elves and communicated with demons… How about that?”
Eolin smiled wickedly at Count Lantis’s subtle voice.
“That would be troublesome for him if the rumors spread in Zaium’s society.”
“That’s why I need your help, Princess. Please go to Zaium and spread rumors. Baron Vandus is quite famous, so it won’t take long for rumors to spread.”
He was famous for everything from fish distribution to floating continent exploration.
He just stayed in his territory and didn’t make his fame known.
Eolin slapped her palm and agreed.
“Fine. I need a dress and a jewelry set to show off in Zaium, so add some money. I can’t wear those old-fashioned clothes again, can I?”
“…”
Count Lantis lost his words at her bold demand, but he did not lose his smile.
“I’ll try to be as flexible as possible with money.”
Somehow he had a bad feeling from the start.
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