Chapter 251 Femme Fatale - Side Meyer -
The moment I locked eyes with that woman, I felt my fate.
At first glance, she looked like just a young girl. But I know from experience that judging someone by their appearance is very dangerous.
There's no doubt she's beautiful. Her hair, like spun moonlight, her blue eyes that give off a sense of calm, and her graceful curves――just her looks alone could earn her a fortune.
I had heard about her appearance before meeting her. Of course, I attended the closing ceremony to uncover her true identity.
However, knowing about her and actually seeing her were 2 completely different things. The moment I entered the venue, my gaze was drawn to her shining silver hair, and when she glanced around the room, our eyes met for just a second, piercing my heart.
She probably didn't notice. But I felt a sharp pain in my chest, as if all the blood in my body had frozen.
This is definitely not love. It was a shock that couldn't be expressed with such light feelings. Without a doubt, this woman is my femme fatale. If I don't kill her, she will come to end my life someday.
I didn't feel a heat rising in my body; instead, I felt a chilling cold that made me tremble if I let my guard down. The emotion closest to this is probably "fear."
Born as the second son of a small merchant family, I've been involved in business since I was young. During my school days, I finished assignments faster than anyone else and let the wealthy noble's son copy my answers in exchange for favors. I always treated my "friends" kindly, and based on the information I gathered from them about noble families, I sold products I bought at low prices to those who needed them.
When I found out that my friend's family was on the verge of bankruptcy, I pretended to help them by buying jewels, art, and silverware. Greedy merchants, thinking they could take advantage of noble families, tried to buy these items for cheap. However, I bought them at a slightly higher price and received gratitude from my friend and his family. Of course, I didn't buy them at a price that would cause me a loss. Selling them would still give me a decent profit.
This way of secretly turning noble assets into cash at reasonable prices spread by word of mouth, and soon I started getting requests from a noblewoman who was infatuated with her lover. It's true that the basics of business are "credit" and "trust."
What started as a way to earn a little pocket money turned out to be more than I expected. By the time I finished school, I had more money than my family's total assets.
After graduating, I was hired as an accountant for a mercenary group and at the same time, I established my own merchant guild. My family thought I would help with the family business since my brother was set to take over. However, the family business was already at a scale that my brother could manage alone, so I didn't feel like helping out.
The mercenary group was run by my friend's father, so I didn't hide the fact that I was starting a merchant guild. He was a generous person who believed that as long as I did my job well, I could do whatever I wanted in my private time.
This mercenary group was not a second-rate organization that hired wandering adventurers. They trained young men who had no plans to inherit a family to become soldiers from scratch, teaching them to act as a cohesive unit. They also had many combat experts who taught promising recruits reading, writing, and strategy.
I was hired as an accountant, but to avoid being looked down upon by the rough mercenaries, I needed to train myself as well. The cost to raise a soldier is high, and to increase their survival rate, we must provide high-quality weapons and armor. However, there are always those who will try to sell or steal this equipment for their own gain. To deal with such people, I had to become strong enough. Before I knew it, I could handle a pen and a sword with equal skill, and I still never skip my training.
The mercenaries sent to various places actively gather information to improve their survival rates. Of course, this information is shared throughout the mercenary group, so just being at headquarters allowed me to learn about various business opportunities. I could quickly find out what strategic supplies were lacking in which regions. No one would be foolish enough not to take advantage of this. I used the mercenary group's information to make profits in my own merchant guild.
Also, whenever I heard that a country was economically blocked due to war, I checked what items were being exported to that country. I bought up stock from merchant guilds that were supposed to sell those items at low prices and used the mercenary group's information network to develop my own trade routes.
It was a risky business, but it turned out to be surprisingly profitable. Moreover, I was thanked by both the merchant guilds with excess stock and the people of the economically blocked country, treated like a saint. Since I had sent the elite of the mercenary group to develop the trade routes, my school friend, who was entrusted with managing the mercenary group after a change in leadership, also became very wealthy. In this way, my merchant guild grew into a multinational merchant guild with bases in many countries before I even realized it.
On the other hand, my brother, who took over our father's business, came to borrow money from me after making several mistakes in his trade. However, since lending him money would only be a drop in the bucket given his situation, I suggested that he close the business. To my surprise, my brother said something unexpected.
"Then, Meyer, I will retire, so you take over. I can't let the Silt Merchant Guild, which our ancestors left behind, end with my generation."
To be honest, it wasn't a very appealing proposal. It was a small merchant guild that could easily collapse, and it had debts that didn't match its size. But there was one big advantage: I could put up the sign saying "Royal Supplier to the Lombart Royal Family." The Silt Merchant Guild was the official merchant for the Lombart Royal Family.
"Alright. I can't let a royal supplier merchant guild go under. I will take over the Silt Merchant Guild and merge it with my own merchant guild."
In reality, it was more like my merchant guild absorbing the Silt Merchant Guild, but we agreed to keep the name "Silt Merchant Guild." My brother and his wife would retire comfortably in the suburbs of Lombart, living off their pension, and I decided to hire all their children as employees of the Silt Merchant Guild.
Since my brother and I are only a year apart in age, I didn't plan to let him retire. However, he quickly pulled out of the business, saying, "If I stay, the old employees will be confused." Maybe my brother didn't really like the business that much.
My brother has an astonishing number of children, with 4 boys and 4 girls, totaling 8 kids. I've been so busy with work that I've put off getting married, and as a result, I'm still single even after turning 30, with no children out of wedlock. So, I've decided to adopt all of my brother's kids and plan to make one of the capable boys my successor in the future. Since they are still teenagers, the decision will likely be a few years away. As for the girls, I hope they will marry into families that are beneficial for the merchant guild, but if they want to have love marriages, I won't stop them.
I'm only 40 years old, and some say, "You could still get married and have a successor now." However, I haven't been interested enough in women to actively want to marry. If someone comes along who would greatly benefit my business, then I might consider marriage. But thinking about it, I don't see the point in rushing into marriage with a woman who wouldn't bring any real advantage.
In this situation, I unexpectedly met an incredible woman in Avalon.
A female merchant suddenly appeared in Grandchester, selling products I had never seen before, capturing the hearts of the nobles. She then bought up all the wheat in Grandchester, shocking the other merchants.
By combining the wheat prices and harvest amounts shown by the Grandchester territory, it's easy to guess the face value of the promissory notes written by the Sophia Merchant Guild. I pride myself on being a major merchant in the commercial city of Lombart, but that amount is not something one can just write down easily.
Over the past 6 months, I've noticed that my plans to corner Roisen have been slowly falling apart.
Because of the fighting among the sons, the now-weakened King Roisen has appointed his nephew Gerhart as Crown Prince.
Gerhart's ascension to the throne changed the expansion policy that Roisen had been pushing through invasions of other countries, and he began to focus on improving domestic affairs. The Crown Prince believed that the drop in crop yields was due to a decrease in agricultural workers caused by conscription, so he first released the soldiers.
At first, this policy seemed successful. In fact, the crop yields gradually started to increase. However, 3 years later, the yields began to decline again.
This was expected. After all, Roisen had lost the "blessing of the fairies." If left alone, the land would continue to degrade. To be safe, I visited several people who had formed bonds with fairies and asked them to check on the information about the land of Odel. The results were just as I had predicted.
Looking through history books, it is easy to understand that Roisen was once a desolate land where no one could live. The King of Odel formed a bond with the fairies, and for many years, the royal family of Odel had enriched that land.
The barbarians of Roisen know too little about the greatness of the fairies. They should realize that it's not just a fairy tale by looking at the neighboring country of Avalon. If they truly wanted to enrich that land, they should have formed a genuine marriage alliance with the royal family of Odel, who had bonds with the fairies. By mistreating and imprisoning the last princess, they lost the fairy's blessing, and the land is slowly returning to its original wasteland state.
However, from Roisen's situation, I came up with the idea of obtaining Roisen's mineral resources through food, especially wheat. Crown Prince Gerhart, who was originally a warrior, has a rather simple way of thinking. He easily believed that marrying a legitimate wife from the Coastal Union and relying on food imports was something "normal."
Princess Marguerite of Sardinia was truly dedicated. Just when I was thinking about raising the price of wheat, she begged her family to keep the price steady. Her brave behavior in a foreign land made Sardinia break away from our alliance and sell wheat to Roisen at a low price, which ironically became the reason for Princess Marguerite's life to be shortened. I haven't done anything, but I have a good idea of who the culprit is.
Then, as planned, I started selling wheat to Roisen at a high price. At the same time, I began working on Avalon, which is next to Roisen, especially targeting the Grandchester territory, a grain-producing area. If Avalon started supplying wheat to Roisen, our plan could fall apart.
The embezzlement in the Grandchester territory was going smoothly, and the stolen wheat was sold to Roisen at a high price. We also managed to steal most of their reserves, pushing Avalon to the point where they couldn't export food to Roisen.
However, Marquis Grandchester was surprisingly diligent for a noble from Avalon. I expected the embezzlement to be discovered during an audit a few years later, but Marquis Grandchester noticed it much earlier. Because of this, the governor and bureaucrats, who were supposed to escape in a few years, hurriedly fled to the Coastal Union side.
I couldn't let anyone suspect our involvement here, so I hired the mercenary group I used to work with to take care of all the governors and bureaucrats in the Grandchester territory. I received reports that not a single one survived. Just to be sure, I had another organization check the scene, and the number of bodies matched.
After confirming that the second son of Marquis Grandchester had taken over as the new governor, I decided to give up on my embezzlement plan. Instead, I came up with a plan to replace Marquis Grandchester while burning the wheat in the Grandchester territory. Considering the loss of supplies, they should have struggled for years.
However, this plan also failed. I couldn't harm Marquis Grandchester due to the riots, nor could I burn the wheat in the territory. Moreover, I received information that Crown Prince Gerhart had already contacted King Avalon.
I thought my plans were falling behind, but for now, to sabotage the negotiations with Avalon, I instructed the bureaucrats from Roisen that I had previously bribed to give Crown Prince Gerhart false reports about the amount of wheat he needed.
Having been in the position of Crown Prince for ten years, I thought he would have learned by now, but it seems his honest nature got in the way, and he took the bureaucrats' words at face value.
It seems this operation went well, as at the Grandchester territory's hunting tournament, the one sitting next to Crown Prince Gerhart was not the Crown Prince himself, but his son, Prince Andrew.
I went to Avalon to feel the atmosphere of Crown Prince Gerhart and Prince Andrew for myself.
However, as soon as I arrived in the Grandchester territory, I received news that Kojimo had failed in his wheat deal. Kojimo is definitely not an incompetent man. When he started his embezzlement schemes in Grandchester, he easily created a deal organization with just a little information and bait. Of course, for several years, the Silt Merchant Guild in Avalon has also been making profits from him.
Yet, with funds so large that Kojimo couldn't sniff them out, that mysterious woman suddenly struck us.
I couldn't hold back my curiosity, so I called out to Sophia at the dinner party I originally planned to skip. I told her I knew about the wheat hoarding and intended to see her reaction. However, she completely surprised me by smiling and calling me by my real name.
A chill ran down my spine, and my skin prickled all over in an instant. I desperately gathered my experience and pride as a merchant, managed to put on a smile, and continued the conversation, making futile efforts to uncover her true identity.
Sophia has physical traits that suggest she belongs to the Florence Merchant Guild, but according to my investigation, there is no woman matching her description in that family. More than anything, it was eerie that I couldn't pin down her age. She looks to be in her twenties, but if she has a bond with fairies, she might be much older. The more I talked to her, the less I could figure out her real age. She could seem cunning, yet also a bit naive like a young woman. At times, she even gave off the vibe of a much younger child.
I already know that Baron Jilbafuchs, who is Crown Prince Gerhart's right-hand man, visited the Sophia Merchant Guild. I received a report that when I hurriedly sent my best spies to gather information on the Sophia Merchant Guild, they almost got caught by the guild's golems and had to escape in a panic. I've never encountered someone whose identity is so unclear.
Also, during the ball, Baron Jilbafuchs took Sophia away, and at the same time, the main members of the Grandchester family also left their seats.
It's hard to think of anything else but that they are involved in some shady business with wheat. Plus, there's the Viscount Orson's daughter, who has formed a bond with fairies. If she tells Crown Prince Gerhart about the decrease in Roisen's crop yield, I can't even imagine what actions he might take.
For now, I quickly left the ball venue and rushed to Lombart without returning to the lodging where I was staying.
As a result, my judgment was correct. The Grandchester Knights, led by Jeffrey, were searching for me after I disappeared from the venue and first headed to the lodging. Thanks to the time I bought, I was able to safely leave Avalon without passing through the border gate, with the help of a mercenary group.
I probably won't be able to set foot in Avalon for a while.
But what does that mysterious woman mean to me? Words like 'archenemy' and 'rival' come to mind, but what fits even better is 'woman of destiny.'
What could my destiny be like?
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