WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Oblivious

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◈ Prince of Rage ◈

Chapter 40

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Gringen was a city with advantages, but it also had disadvantages. That was true of any city, but Gringen's strengths and weaknesses were especially stark.

It had waterways that allowed trade with the sea, and it produced abundant peat and gemstones. On the other hand, it lacked farmland and was short on timber.

That meant the city could not easily feed itself or construct buildings.

There were wetlands nearby, so they could make plenty of bricks by packing and firing clay. But brick construction required intensive labor, something Gringen could not undertake.

Gringen had no single ruling power. Every sort of faction competed for control, leaving nothing but a cycle of exploitation. Its high crime rate was only an added problem.

What ran through the city was not rules or order, but the law of the strong devouring the weak and survival of the fittest.

Even becoming the leader of a gang did not guarantee a safe life.

They had their own internal disputes, and it was common for gang leaders to be replaced every other day.

No one looked to the future or thought about how they could survive and prosper.

Honestly, it looked like the city closest to hell.

Valerie came to that hellish place. He was the Salt Prince who had dealt with Groin-Ripper in a duel.

He bought an old building on the outskirts of Gringen and began gathering people there.

At the same time, he bought and brought in timber, lime powder, food, and other supplies through the waterways. The supplies flowed in without interruption.

He paid people to pack and bake mud into bricks, dig peat, and even gather stones or bundles of reeds suitable for construction. That money gave them their daily bread.

People were recruited for work they could do with nothing but their bodies, paving roads, hauling building materials, and constructing houses. And those houses would belong to the people who built them.

Of course, the houses were sold to them on credit, but the debt was manageable as long as they kept working.

Such work required enormous funds, but everything was covered by the money from selling gemstones and the gold Regin had left behind.

In other words, capital, labor, and determination were coming together to create something.

That something was a livelihood, a life, and hope.

Valerie was not doing this because of some noble philosophy, ideology, or kind heart. As someone who had taken Knut and fled, it was simply part of his plan to take control of the city.

But sometimes, people found an unintended purpose along the way.

A purpose worth offering up one's heart for.

Yorick carefully counted on his fingers and moved the beads of an abacus one by one as he worked through the figures.

After a long while, he picked up his pen and wrote down the numbers. Too much ink stained the page, and his handwriting was crooked.

Then, as though asking whether he had done it right, he looked at Valerie sitting beside him.

Valerie showed no expression. He only watched Yorick write down each crooked number.

Yorick counted on his fingers again, moved the abacus beads, and wrote down more figures.

That was how he filled the columns with numbers.

Only after Yorick had filled an entire page did Valerie point at the ledger.

“This one, this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one are wrong.”

Almost none of them were right.

“I-I'm sorry.”

“You don't need to apologize. Take your time and do it again. Your finger counting is correct, but you make mistakes when moving the abacus beads.”

“Exactly. Do I really have to use this? And why am I practicing different ways to record the same thing? My head feels like it's going to burst.”

“You'll have to handle larger and larger sums. This will be easier then. And it's good to record money already spent separately from money that will be spent, and money already received separately from money that will come in. That way, you can know how much the mercenary band currently owns. It isn't just about looking at cash. If you only record what was spent and earned, you won't be able to manage it once things grow larger.”

“...”

Valerie had once handled cash accounts, and before his regression, he had always closely monitored the army's finances while leading it. That was why he was teaching Yorick this knowledge.

Honestly, it was difficult for Yorick to learn. Still, Yorick worked hard in his own way. He did not give up and kept at it.

The problem was that he felt self-conscious.

From Valerie's perspective, it would have been irritating to keep pointing out the same mistakes and watch someone as slow as him.

Yet Valerie had never once shown irritation or anger. Perhaps he was patient, or perhaps he swallowed it all down.

Yorick nervously spoke up.

“But, Sir Wid.”

“What is it?”

“Aren't you angry?”

“Out of nowhere?”

“You have to repeat the same things over and over, and I keep getting them wrong.”

“I didn't expect much from the start.”

“What!?”

“Why?”

“Ah, even so, aren't you being too harsh?”

Valerie gave a faint smile.

“Don't worry. That doesn't mean I hate or dislike you. Yorick, you're perceptive and you have determination. If you keep at it, you'll definitely learn. You're only anxious because you're impatient.”

“...”

After hearing Valerie's words, Yorick stared at him.

“What now?”

“It's strange.”

“What is?”

“You seem heartless, but you're also good at saying things that give people courage and strength. As you said, I'm fairly perceptive, but I still have no idea what kind of person you are, Sir Wid.”

“Is that so? I never thought about it.”

“Didn't you tell me to become a predator? My life changed so much after hearing that. The clothes I wear, where I sleep, the way I think. I realized how happy it makes me to help others instead of caring only about myself. Living is fun these days. I think I'm starting to look forward to the future. I never used to feel that way. It's all thanks to you, Sir Wid.”

“Thank you for saying that.”

Thank him for saying that? Why was he thankful? How could someone speak like that?

To Yorick, the typical noble was Knut. Sensitive and self-centered. Though he could be affectionate too, that was what he was like.

But Valerie was somehow different. He was an illegitimate child, yet he felt even more noble than an actual noble. Yorick would never dare say it aloud, but that was what he thought.

“You're frightening when you're frightening, but when you're dignified like this, you're truly dignified. If I ever saw a real prince, I think he would be like you, Sir Wid.”

He left out the potentially uncomfortable part about an illegitimate child seeming like a real noble. Saying Valerie was like a prince was the highest praise Yorick could give.

But Valerie flinched inwardly. Ignorant people sometimes showed unexpected insight, and this seemed to be one of those times.

“Get back to calculating. I'll check it later, so don't do it carelessly.”

“I won't.”

Valerie rose from his seat and left the house. The midday sun hung in the sky, but the weather was cool.

A fence that had not been there before now surrounded the house. Beside it stood a stable under a separate roof. There was not much to see, but compared to when they first arrived, the place was clearly tidier.

It had already been a month since they came here.

Valerie brought Snow out of the stable and mounted Snow. Once he passed through the fence and looked around, he could see houses nearby that had risen to a certain height. Some were nearly complete.

They laid bricks with lime mortar, built wooden supports inside and out, and stretched simple tarps above so the construction would not be soaked by rain.

The plasterers and bricklayers he had hired demonstrated their skills before putting others to work. Off to one side, bread and dried fish were being distributed.

When Valerie rode past, the people working on the buildings and those sitting on the ground in the middle of a meal stopped what they were doing and greeted him.

They hurriedly removed whatever they wore on their heads and held it against their chests. Some bowed at the waist, while others even fell to their knees and lowered their heads. It was as though a great noble were passing through.

Valerie had not ordered this. It was a voluntary expression of respect. They could now live and eat because of him, so it was natural for them to be grateful.

Valerie did not particularly welcome such displays of respect, but he could not exactly tell them to stop.

Still, he needed to show his face from time to time for things to run properly. Even if he was not watching or inspecting anything, they needed to know that the person spending the money cared.

The problem was that people called Valerie “Prince.”

They did not call him that because they knew he was a real prince. They merely shortened Salt Prince to Prince, but Valerie had told them not to.

Valerie passed their greetings as though indifferent and followed the road stretching toward the river. Before long, he saw people floating down the river on what looked like rafts.

They came ashore somewhere without even a dock. The people waiting for them immediately rushed over and dismantled the rafts. In truth, they were not rafts at all, but timber being transported downstream.

Several people dragged the logs away, where they were dried. The logs that had already dried were cut, shaved, and shaped at an outdoor sawmill.

Arne was among them.

Valerie was easy to spot on horseback even from afar. Arne quickly noticed him and walked over, removing his dirtied work gloves and smacking them against his leg. Dust rose in clouds.

“How's the work? Anything happen?”

Valerie asked first.

“Nothing much. But do we really need to use timber and lime plaster too? It seems like we're spending more money than necessary, and we're short on workers.”

Quite a few people had gathered, but there was so much work that they still lacked hands. Hauling and shaping logs was especially dangerous.

“No. If we're building them, they should last.”

“These are people who used to live under tents. Do we really need to...?”

Arne meant that gathering people and providing them with a livelihood was good, but this might be going too far.

Building materials that were commonly used elsewhere were fairly expensive in Gringen. Every bit of it had to be bought.

“If we're thinking about sons, grandsons, grandsons' grandsons, and even their grandsons using these homes, then sturdier is better.”

“You're thinking that far ahead...?”

“If I only try to minimize losses and do the bare minimum, it feels like I'm using them. I don't want to do that.”

The plan was to win popular support, gain legitimacy through that support, and then take control of the city. But Valerie did not want to be calculating about winning that popular support.

Once, while on patrol, he had seen a frontier knight whose father had sold a horse, allowing the knight to make a living with the money. Valerie hoped the people of Gringen could be like that as well.

Money could corrupt people, but it could also breathe life and hope into them. Valerie wanted to use the gold obtained from the dwarves for that life and hope.

Arne thought quietly for a moment, then a playful smile formed on his lips. Looking up at Valerie on horseback, he spoke.

“I think it would be nice if someone like you became king.”

He was using the irreverent joke Valerie had once made about kings. It was half a joke and half sincere.

Like Yorick, Valerie wondered why everyone was like this today. When he made jokes about princes or kings, it was one thing. Hearing it from others felt strangely uncomfortable.

Even if he sincerely cared for people, it did not come from kindness. I'm not a good person.

“Prince! Priiince!”

Someone shouted from behind and came running toward Valerie while he was speaking with Arne. Valerie had told them not to call him that.

He frowned slightly and turned around. The runner looked extremely desperate.

The person reached Valerie and spent a while catching their breath.

“What happened? And don't call me that. I have no wish to commit an offense against the crown.”

Arne wondered inwardly when Valerie had become so concerned about it after making even more irreverent jokes himself.

In any case, the person who had hurried over spoke through ragged breaths.

“Gangsters, those gangsters, they stole the food and ran off. They even beat a bricklayer to death!”

The moment Valerie heard that, he turned Snow around with the reins. Then he galloped back the way he had come. Clop-clop, clop-clop. The sound rang out urgently.

When he arrived at the site, people were murmuring among themselves. The place where food had been distributed was a complete mess, and one person lay collapsed with blood streaming from their head.

Valerie dismounted and approached. The person's skull was cracked, and foamy blood ran from their nose. They were already dead.

It might sound wrong to say the damage was not severe when someone had died, but Valerie could tell this was not a proper attack. It was a warning.

“Who did this?”

Valerie asked. His distinctive intense gaze shone as sharply as a blade, and the people were frightened. Yet they tightly shut their mouths and did not speak carelessly.

They trusted and followed Valerie, but the people of Gringen had always been known for refusing to talk about crimes.

They feared retaliation.

Valerie knew why they would not speak. In a sense, they could not speak. But in Valerie's eyes, they were choosing not to.

He rose and looked around at them.

It was his first and final warning.

“You people listen to me carefully. I'll let this slide once, but if you refuse to answer me again when I ask you something, don't expect to see me ever again. Whether you starve to death, are murdered, or kill yourselves will have nothing to do with me. I won't even blink. You are people who mean nothing to me. Do you understand?”

Valerie had always turned cold when he was angry. His frost-like words made their hearts feel as though they had frozen, and their bodies trembled.

“Go get Skard.”

Then he passed through the crowd, took Snow by the reins, and headed home.

It seemed it was about time to start a fight.

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