WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Haruto
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Pushover Young Lord in a Romance Fantasy Won't Take It Anymore ◈
Chapter 40: You're Finished Now
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A week passed in the blink of an eye.
“You sons of bitches! Bring out the merchant guild head right now!”
Looking down at the first floor, Irina let out a deep sigh.
The Imperial Capital branch's VIP lounge had not seen a quiet day lately.
The cause was none other than a cosmetic product.
It could hardly be called just a cosmetic product.
The value of a cosmetic product known only to Lucia, the star of high society, was bound to soar through the roof.
For a week, Lucia had used the same cosmetic product at every social engagement, and her beauty had grown more radiant by the day.
That visual impact was enough to drive every young lady and noblewoman mad with impatience.
Rumor had it that even the Empress had requested a private audience with Lucia...
Yet Lucia had kept silent, and the cosmetic's secret remained unsolved.
Crash!
“Ahhh!”
“W-What are you doing?!”
“You said you'd deliver them by the dinner party! Bring that bastard out here!”
The noblewomen's cheering from a week ago was nowhere to be seen.
Now, those nobles were beyond reason.
The penalty fees alone had dealt a serious blow to the merchant guild's cash reserves.
If anything else went wrong, the guild's very foundation could be shaken.
It was bad news for Patrian, but good news for Irina.
Leaning against the railing, Irina swept her indifferent gaze across the lounge.
It should be about time for things to explode.
“Out of the way! This is urgent!”
The back door of the lounge swung open, followed by a frantic voice.
The senior employee in charge of finances rushed in, pale as a sheet.
Still panting, the employee spotted Irina on the second floor and shouted.
“D-Director! We have a serious problem!”
“Stop making a fuss and report.”
“A demand for repayment has come in for the promissory notes issued into the market!”
Even the noblewomen causing a commotion froze at those words.
“The creditor is demanding immediate repayment!”
Rumors that the guild had failed to deliver had spread, causing its credit rating to plummet.
Citing the loss of the benefit of term, the creditor was demanding repayment even before the promissory notes reached maturity.
After half a beat of silence, Irina asked.
“Who is the creditor?”
“The G-Grand Ducal House of Cardenos...!”
Thud!
Someone collapsed onto the floor.
The merchant guild was on the brink of bankruptcy. At that realization, the noblewomen went frantic.
“My money! Give me back my money!”
“Take responsibility right now! Do you know how much money I poured into your guild?!”
The commotion grew worse as they tried to recover even a fraction of their money.
Amid the spreading despair, Irina hid her smile.
A trap had thrown the guild into chaos using an unknown cosmetic product as bait, then drained its cash through a barrage of penalty fees.
Its final blow was to use repayment of the promissory notes to cut off the merchant guild head's last breath.
Irina pushed up her monocle and sharply scanned every corner of the lounge.
‘He isn't here.’
One person was still nowhere to be seen.
The Patrian merchant guild head, the root cause of this entire disaster.
Normally, he would have strutted around pompously, but he had not even shown his face.
“He tucked his tail and ran already.”
A mocking laugh slipped from Irina's lips.
Once the situation turned against him, he had clearly dumped the bomb on everyone else and fled alone.
A cowardly bastard without an ounce of responsibility.
“What a pathetic piece of trash.”
The master of the Empire's number one merchant guild had turned out to be this pathetic. It was embarrassing.
Rather than anger, profound relief and joy washed over her.
If he had run away on his own, this would end all the more easily.
In truth, Irina had been targeting Astin from the beginning, not Ethan.
Without hesitation, she turned away from the balcony.
She now had the perfect justification to incite the key personnel into launching a coup.
“Summon the directors and elders to the emergency meeting room.”
* * *
At the very top of the Patrian Merchant Guild was the emergency meeting room.
The elders and directors sat around a massive round table.
Every face was grim. The room was filled only with groans and heavy sighs.
“To think things would get this bad.”
Everyone silently agreed with one elder's words.
A great merchant guild that had endured for over a century was about to go bankrupt overnight.
All because of a single cosmetic product.
“How did it come to this?”
“A flood of penalty fees, and now Cardenos is demanding repayment of the promissory notes. They are determined to bleed us dry.”
“Even if we strip the entire merchant guild bare, we won't have enough cash to repay it all. What are we supposed to do...?”
The meeting, despite everyone clutching their heads, consisted entirely of wondering what they should do.
They could not be blamed. This was an impossible problem with no visible solution.
Kneel before the furious noblewomen and ask for more time?
With word of bankruptcy already spreading, there was no way they would agree.
Clutch at Cardenos's hem and beg for mercy?
They did not have it in them to utter even a single word before Cardenos.
Tap. Tap.
Seated at the head of the table, Irina tapped the tabletop with her fingertips.
They were no different from trapped mice. In that case, she only had to offer them a hole to crawl into.
Irina scattered the stack of documents she had prepared across the round table.
“If we cannot pay the penalty fees, we will be handed over to the Imperial Court on fraud charges. If we cannot cover Cardenos's promissory notes, every distribution network and asset of the merchant guild will be seized.”
“...”
“This happened because of the merchant guild head's complacency, arrogance, and petty personal desires.”
Despairing groans escaped the gathered members.
Nourished by their despair, Irina's blue eyes gleamed coldly.
“There is only one way to resolve this crisis.”
Irina straightened her back.
Dozens of eyes focused on her alone.
Could she possibly have something to rely on? Their hopeful faces clung to the one woman.
“We will immediately dismiss the current merchant guild head and hold him accountable for all of this. If you appoint me as the new merchant guild head, I will personally negotiate with the Grand Ducal House of Cardenos and put out this immediate fire.”
It was a carefully prepared performance.
Once the directors agreed, Irina would easily secure negotiations with Cardenos.
Having resolved the crisis, she would solidify her position and take her place as merchant guild head.
“Urgh...”
They each groaned as they watched one another.
Irina might have been a commoner, but everyone present was a merchant.
Status meant nothing before money.
They were only hesitating out of courtesy.
“To be honest, Managing Director Irina is the only one we can rely on.”
It did not matter whether Irina was a golden lifeline or a rotten rope.
A drowning person would grab even the tip of a blade.
More than anything, there was no other choice besides Irina.
If the merchant guild's leader was unfit, it was only natural for the second-in-command to take the position instead.
Unlike Ethan, Irina had climbed to this position through her own abilities.
“I support this. It isn't that we're appointing Director Irina for its own sake. That Ethan fellow ran off without taking responsibility, did he not? A man like that is unfit to be the master of this guild.”
“Exactly. We must drag that incompetent bastard down at once!”
“If it is Director Irina, I can trust her with this. Since we're discussing it, let us be honest. Her birth is low, and she's a woman, but isn't she far more skilled in business than Ethan?”
“We should sign the resolution for his dismissal immediately.”
Irina let out a heavy sigh.
All this time, she had worried whether the plan would work and whether someone might catch her.
At this very moment, everything had ended perfectly.
On the board Astin had laid out, Irina would seize the position of merchant guild head that she had longed for her entire life.
‘All that remains is Young Duke Astin.’
Astin was probably delighted to have found such a useful puppet by now.
But she had already made arrangements to ensure he could not pull any tricks.
She would not hand the Patrian Merchant Guild over to anyone.
Even if the person coveting it was the legitimate son of a grand ducal house, Patrian had to belong wholly to her.
All that remained was to show him the cards she held.
If she did, Astin would not be able to make a move against her as he pleased.
A broad smile began to spread across her lips.
Bang!
The tightly shut doors of the meeting room flew open. Everyone turned toward the entrance.
Patrian's merchant guild head stood there, chin raised.
Ethan tried to look indifferent, but his appearance was a mess.
His hair was disheveled, his clothes were wrinkled from top to bottom, and cold sweat beaded on his forehead.
“You are late, Merchant Guild Head. No, I should call you the former merchant guild head now.”
“...What did you say?”
“The resolution to dismiss you was about to pass in this emergency meeting. Ethan, it's all over now.”
Irina sneered at him.
“Patrian does not need a merchant guild head driven mad by romantic obsession.”
He had been driven into this danger because he had misunderstood his relationship with Lucia.
He should have chosen between giving up Lucia or giving up the merchant guild.
He chose Lucia, and as a result, lost both.
He could never have had Lucia in the first place. Choosing the merchant guild had been the right answer.
“Since you have worked hard until now, I will not hold you accountable beyond this. Step down from the merchant guild and take care of yourself.”
Ethan's head hung low. His shoulders trembled at intervals.
It was the typical end of a loser. No one in the room felt even a trace of sympathy.
Only cold gazes stared at him, while some muttered insults under their breath.
“Pfft!”
A strange laugh burst out.
“Khahaha! Khahahahahaha!”
Ethan clutched his stomach and threw his head back in laughter.
The sudden outburst froze the atmosphere in the meeting room.
Ethan wiped the tears at the corners of his eyes with his fingertips.
“Irina, you bitch. Do you think I ran away?”
“...?”
“Ha, honestly. You're supposed to be smart, yet you can't even grasp the situation.”
With his hands behind his back, Ethan walked toward the round table.
“There is one little rat trying to swallow our merchant guild whole. That bastard is the one who caused this entire mess. Who do you think it is?”
He raised his brows and swept his gaze around the room.
“I'm talking about that bitch, a filthy commoner and cowardly traitor.”
At that, the elders began to murmur.
Uneasy glances drifted toward Irina.
Even amid the turmoil, Irina maintained a calm poker face.
The merchant guild head sharply pointed at her with bloodshot eyes. Every gaze followed his finger and landed on Irina.
“The spy who colluded with those grand ducal bastards to drain our guild's cash and hand over the promissory notes. Wasn't that you, Irina?”
Irina gave a hollow laugh.
It was a perfectly understandable suspicion.
The second-in-command was trying to become merchant guild head under the pretext of negotiating with Cardenos.
If someone turned a crisis into an opportunity, it was reasonable to suspect that person of causing the crisis.
“Anyone can make accusations with words alone, Ethan.”
“Words alone? Then what is this?”
Tap.
Ethan took something out and lightly tossed it onto the round table.
It was a mana stone with a dull sheen, a recording magic device.
“That is a recording of the conversation you had with Young Duke Astin in the second-floor lounge.”
That place...
Irina kept her expression blank.
She had already taken precautions against that. She had erected a perfect barrier, leaving no room for even a trace of sound to escape.
Crackle.
Static filled the meeting room.
The moment Ethan placed a small sphere of mana against the mana stone, a voice flowed out.
[Young Duke. Purchasing the promissory notes may allow us to recover the principal, but...]
It was Irina's voice.
Irina's gaze began to tremble.
“A soundproofing barrier is not enough. Did you think blocking sound meant you could block the vibrations of objects as well?”
Ethan grinned at her.
“It is a specially made magic device. It does not record voices. It reads the minute vibrational wavelengths of objects and reconstructs them into speech.”
Irina had never imagined such a thing was possible.
She knew every detail of the merchant guild's technical capabilities.
This magic device was either Ethan's own independent measure or the intervention of an unknown helper.
[Understood. I will begin my work as well.]
The atmosphere in the room shifted instantly.
The faces of those who had intended to rely on Irina twisted immediately.
“M-Merchant Guild Head! Is this true?!”
“Director Irina was going to sell us out?!”
Snap!
Ethan snapped his fingers.
Footsteps began to approach from beyond the open doors.
As everyone watched, a middle-aged man in a formal suit entered the room.
The moment Irina saw his clothes, her breath caught in her throat.
A laurel wreath and peacock crest were embroidered over his chest.
“This is House Rosenthal's plenipotentiary representative. He came personally to resolve the penalty fees and promissory note repayments.”
Rosenthal.
A great magic house that led the Sirius Mage Tower and the Magic Path within the Empire.
Another grand ducal house stood behind Ethan.
The magic device Ethan had displayed could not have been made with the merchant guild's technology.
It required the technology of the Sirius Mage Tower, or something comparable.
Rosenthal had the means.
That was also why Ethan had remained calm even in the face of Cardenos's repayment demand.
Irina's gaze wavered with unease. Even her hands resting on her lap trembled.
Before the enormous variable named Rosenthal, every plan she had completed was on the brink of shattering.
Ptooey!
Ethan rolled his tongue around his mouth before spitting out phlegm.
The sticky spit clung to the toe of Irina's shoe.
“You're finished now, Irina.”
Footnotes:
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