WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

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◈ The Royal Sentinel has a Strange Newspaper

Chapter 3

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Good Order, Good Inspection (2)

"Oh goodness, I'm terribly sorry about that, gatekeeper-nim."

The coachman bowed deeply at the waist.

What an impressively flexible spine that was.

"This foolish commoner should have been more perceptive and read the situation properly. Oh, how dreadfully sorry I am, I really..."

He didn't get to finish that sentence.

Before he could reach under the cargo wagon and pull out the longsword he had stashed there, Clang! Su-ho had already swept his spear around in a single sharp arc, beating him to it.

"...!"

A clean, precise strike.

The longsword went spinning out of reach, skidding across the ground with a clatter.

The coachman's eyes went wide. For a low-ranking gatekeeper, the movement of that spear was anything but ordinary. He simply hadn't expected the man to show that kind of speed.

In truth, Su-ho had a secret that nobody else knew about.

【Illegally Distributed Longsword】

Of course, it was the Contraband Magnifying Spectacles at work.

He had already clocked the position of the weapon, helpfully highlighted in red, from the very start. As luck would have it, the weapon the coachman had hidden happened to fall under the category of contraband as well.

'So it wasn't false advertising after all. The item quality is genuinely solid!'

It was almost a shame that it was a single-use consumable.

'I need to earn more Subscription Points and make sure I order the other products too!'

With his internal approval rating for the Prophecy Gazette quietly climbing, Su-ho gave his spear a light, unhurried spin, rotating it a full turn like a windmill blade.

His wrist movement was casual, almost bored.

"Are we going to make this more serious than it needs to be?"

His voice matched perfectly.

Like he was asking about the weather.

"I'm giving you the chance to turn yourself in right now."

"...".

"It's not too late, ahjussi. His Majesty the King's benevolence runs wide and deep."

The coachman's gaze darted sideways, taking quick stock of his surroundings, whether out of spite or actual consideration.

His younger sibling, who had finally snapped back to attention and was now nocking an arrow to the string. The other gatekeepers. The soldiers of the Royal Capital Guard who had been stationed up on the battlements, all of them forming a living wall around him.

Beyond that, bystanders who had caught wind of the commotion were gathering in a thick, murmuring crowd.

"..."

His gaze returned to the front.

A gatekeeper with a spear levelled at him, wearing a face as placid and unthreatening as some kind of desert fennec fox, and yet that stance... Well, it wasn't as though a low-ranking gatekeeper would have awakened to aura, but...

That strike just now.

His hand was still tingling from it.

A brief shadow of deliberation crossed the coachman's face.

"... I surrender."

"Well, that's a wise decision."

One matter settled.

The suspect was apprehended without further incident.

The task of escorting him to the interrogation room was handed off to the other clan members. Su-ho still had something rather more important to deal with personally.

Specifically, Crystal Leaf, worth a small fortune.

This haul, piled high across the wagon right in front of him, was the real job that needed his direct attention.

"You... H-how did you know?"

His sibling came up beside him, hovering a little awkwardly.

"Know what?"

Su-ho gave a vague answer as he reached into his breast pocket and drew out a small glass vial. Inside it was a vivid red viscous liquid.

It was a sealing ink. A liquid sealing ink, specifically, the premium version of the red stuff you used to stamp official seals. Apparently it had been invented more or less by accident one day while the researchers at Alchemy Hall were fiddling around with slime-type liquid monsters, or something along those lines.

"The Crystal Leaf, obviously! How did you figure out he was smuggling it?"

"Hmm. An older brother's intuition?"

"This absolute lunatic, I swear. Not like I can sew his lips shut with an arrow. Oh, for the love of... "

The method for using liquid sealing ink was straightforward enough.

First, you wrapped the confiscated item in a sealing cord. Since the entire cargo wagon was being confiscated in this case, Su-ho went about it somewhat loosely. Once the cord was in place, you poured the liquid sealing ink over it with a practiced hand, and then...

Squirm, squirm. Strangely enough, the red liquid would wriggle and crawl on its own, seeping into the gap between the cord and the wagon to seal the confiscated goods.

Then, with the cord still wet, Thud! You finished it off by pressing the official seal down hard.

【Sealed】

【Royal Capital, South Gate】

【House Mun, Baron】

【Junior Gatekeeper Mun Su-ho】[1]

He held the seal pressed down and waited a moment. Then the liquid sealing ink, still pliable just a second ago, hardened in an instant, leaving the gatekeeper's official stamp sharp and clear.

A rather elegant fusion of the Kingdom Script used in the modern tongue and the ancient Dragon Tongue.

"Mm."

There was a quiet, oddly satisfying pride in the way he nodded to himself.

It might not look like much from the outside, but even pressing a seal cleanly into liquid sealing ink took a certain feel for the timing and a practiced hand.

"Right, that wraps up today's duties."

"It's not even past lunchtime?"

"Now, now, little sibling. If it weren't for me, those Crystal Leaf shipments would have hit circulation, and our entire family would have been in serious trouble down the line. Everyone else had their hands full and I was the one who caught the lead, so as far as I'm concerned, I've done a full day's worth of work all on my own. Am I wrong?"

"..."

His sibling opened her mouth to fire something back, then stopped.

She was the legitimate child, unlike the illegitimate one standing in front of her. Both a proper upbringing and natural talent had run side by side throughout her childhood, pulling her forward.

No matter how Su-ho's face kept that same infuriatingly mild, easy-going expression it always wore, how could she fail to pick up on it?

That the phrase "our entire family would have been in serious trouble" was really just a polite way of wrapping up "you would have been in serious trouble."

So she wavered. Remembering the heirloom he had found for her grandmother that morning made her waver even more, but then, thinking about how it was because of this illegitimate son that their mother had transformed from a mother into a second wife and died coughing up blood...

Damn it.

"...Thank you."

"A little louder, please. Sincerely, with genuine respect for your oppa. Say, 'thank you so very much,' and mean it."

"Just drop dead. Seriously."

His sibling turned and walked away.

Su-ho could only marvel at just how textbook that reaction was. Being a native of another world, he found it genuinely admirable.

This really was the age for it. The kingdom might be uncivilised, but that was precisely why the people in it still carried a certain old-fashioned charm. A younger sister who snapped and swore at her sort-of-oppa, what a tradition, and where else but the kingdom would you still get to savour something like that?

"Hey! What are you all standing around for! Whether the Ursalite crashed or not, our job still needs doing properly!"

For the record, Si-ah had genuinely kept the unspoken agreement she and Su-ho had made.

Her voice rang out from beyond the checkpoint almost immediately after, quick and sharp.

"Uncle! Auntie! I'm the youngest one here, so why am I the one clearing out the cargo wagons? This is entirely your fault, both of you."

"Ah, no, Si-ah. Why is it suddenly our fault..."

"Can't you see how backed up the queue is? I've been swamped, and because of that I almost missed the drug shipment! Just you wait and see what happens at tonight's overtime shift. The spirits will walk right through the gate. Father. And where have you disappeared off to now, Father?"

"Geum hyung just stepped out to use the latrine. More importantly, that over there..."

"Forget it. Tell the illegitimate one to deal with that himself. Never mind, everyone get back to work! Money to earn!"

Once Si-ah had cracked the whip, the rest of the family, though they kept glancing over at Su-ho with barely concealed envy, eventually pulled themselves together and returned to their posts.

At any rate, since the grandsons had all died in the last war, the clan's heir was its granddaughter. She ranked second in authority within the family, behind only their father.

The battle-weary survivors, their retirement plans reduced to ash overnight by the Ursalite crash, swallowed their grief and fell back into formation.

"Hey, has the pace picked up a bit?"

That lifted the coachmen's spirits.

"Oh, now that's more like it, finally!"

"Did you see that gatekeeper fight earlier? The young man was something else..."

"Crystal Leaf smuggling, of all things. That man wouldn't have enough necks to lose even if he had two. Absolute madman."

The checkpoint was back to normal.

It was always sluggish, the procedures and paperwork that had to be verified were unreasonably complicated, and at any given moment there was a precarious balancing act between maintaining public order and covering one's own back, but none of that was unusual.

This was simply the standard flow at the capital's gates.

"Mm."

With things settled, Su-ho finally had some breathing room, and he stepped into the guardhouse to check the Prophecy Gazette.

He was leafing through the newspaper and the flyers without any particular expectation when his hand came to a sudden stop. His eyes went wide.

Well, they had good reason to, because the newspaper articles had changed.

【Correction and Retraction!】

「Prophecy Gazette, October 16th, Front Page.」

「Regarding the report that Mun Si-ah-ssi 'has been searching for her late grandmother's heirloom for four days with no result.' We offer our sincerest apologies to our readers.」

「Following further investigation, it has been confirmed that Mun Si-ah-ssi had already recovered the heirloom on October 15th. We hereby issue this correction.」

【Correction and Retraction!】

「Prophecy Gazette, October 16th, Page Two.」

「Regarding the report that 'a large quantity of Crystal Leaf, an illegally cultivated narcotic plant, was found among the cargo wagons cleared through the South Gate by her family yesterday.' We offer our sincerest apologies to our readers.」

「Following further investigation, it has been confirmed that the South Gate did in fact intercept the said illegally cultivated narcotic plants in a timely manner. We hereby issue this correction.」

"...!"

Su-ho's jaw dropped. The articles were being updated in real time!

But what stunned him even more, him being something of a newspaper enthusiast, was a separate fact entirely.

'They actually admitted to the error and ran a proper correction...'

'And the font is the same size. They didn't even shrink it!'

By any standard he held, this was unthinkable.

'On top of that, they ran the correction at the very top of the front page!?'

Back in his previous life, news outlets that actually conveyed corrections properly could be counted on one hand.

The overwhelming majority would just squash the text down until it was barely distinguishable from an ant, slap it somewhere it would never be seen, and call it done.

And the kingdom, as uncivilised as it was? Su-ho had been living as a citizen of this kingdom for nearly twenty years and had never once in all that time witnessed a proper correction being issued.

Among the many concepts that had apparently gone AWOL from the heads of the kingdom's journalists, "impartiality" was perhaps the one that had never existed in the first place.

'Now this is what genuine journalism looks like!'

Su-ho became a devoted fan of the Prophecy Gazette on the spot.

There had been all sorts of factors at play, the cheat-like advantages and everything else, but the thing that had ultimately landed the decisive blow straight to his heart was just a couple of correction notices. That was rather fitting for a man like him, one might say.

Oh, and there was one more piece of news, slightly less shocking but new all the same.

This one came not from the newspaper itself but from the flyer, where another change had appeared.

【Your contribution aided in the issuance of a correction.】

【As a token of our gratitude, a complimentary gift will be delivered to you!】

【You prevented a mental breakdown in Mun Si-ah, a key source for the 'Clan Edition': Subscription Points +10】

【You eliminated a political threat facing Mun Si-ah, a key source for the 'Clan Edition': Subscription Points +20】

【You neutralised a threat that was about to befall all related blood relatives covered as sources: +30】

【Current Subscription Points: 60】

Su-ho blinked.

"Well, well. I see."

He had been wondering where and how he was supposed to farm Subscription Points.

It seemed the system worked like this: whenever the content of a "tomorrow's article" ended up being corrected because of something he had done, he would receive Subscription Points as a kind of reward.

Going further, within the Clan Edition, the Gazette appeared to treat his own family members as sources, and the better he protected them, the more Points came his way in return.

In other words...

'A newspaper that seeks the truth together with its subscribers...'

He was genuinely moved, somewhere deep down.

'Remarkable...!'

It suddenly struck Su-ho that the Prophecy Gazette, unlike every other newspaper he had come across, had no portrait of His Majesty the King anywhere on its pages.

If this kept up and his devotion to the Prophecy Gazette grew any stronger, he might one day accidentally commit psychological treason without even meaning to. And if that tragedy were to occur, who exactly was supposed to take responsibility for it?

[1] Mun Su-ho, 문수호 (門守戶) has three characters meaning “Gate”, and “One who Protects”, with Gate being the family name, Mun. So literally, his name means “One who Protects the Gate”.

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