Before I knew it, his eyes had taken on a sly, insinuating look.
What kind of infinite-loop progression was this, where everything somehow led back to engagement!
“You are saying this because you need me! Please refrain from talking as if it is because you truly have feelings for me!”
I shouted with a flushed face and jumped to my feet. If I stayed any longer, it felt like I would be helplessly swept along.
“E-Evelyn.”
Rastan reached out toward me with a slightly dazed expression, but I dodged him and ran out of the office.
“I am leaving, so do not stop me!”
Because I had told him not to stop me, Rastan really did remain seated, just watching me with a helpless look on his face.
Seeing that, even in the midst of it all, felt a little absurd.
‘Just moments ago you were oozing temptation and making advances, yet the moment I tell you not to, you immediately turn gentlemanly… that really is so like you.’
I stormed out and slammed the office door shut. When I leaned my back against the door, a long sigh escaped me.
“Hoo…”
‘Is the problem that he really speaks in such a confusing way? Or is it that he’s just proposing a contractual engagement, but his face creates a misleading atmosphere?’
Only after grumbling inwardly did I realize that my heart was pounding hard.
Clearly, after my engagement with Gerald had been broken off, Rastan’s proposal had become more assertive and overt.
‘Well, Rastan doesn’t know about Rosie, so maybe it’s only natural.’
Or perhaps, though he couldn’t tell me, the Emperor was continuing to pressure him by probing his intentions to marry the Princess. In that case, it might be difficult for Rastan to wait for my situation much longer.
After letting out another sigh, I started walking back to my room.
All I needed to do now was steadily drive House Lansval into ruin.
‘If things continue this way, the final chance to confirm Rosie’s existence will come.’
***
Thanks to the hot rumors circulating these days, the atmosphere in the Lansval household was extremely bad.
“Chef, what is this?! The meat is undercooked!!!”
“That is because it tastes best when it’s medium rare…”
“Shut up! Do it again!”
Gerald and Helga lashed out excessively over even trivial matters, and yet they still insisted on receiving reports about the state of the rumors through the trading company’s employees, only to fly into another rage.
-Bang!
Today as well, Gerald slammed down on the desk in his office hard enough to break it, grinding his teeth.
“Ha, so now everyone thinks I’m completely impotent?”
“Yes, the public opinion criticizing how you could hide something like that and try to get married is…”
“You of all people! You should have denied it!”
Gerald vented his anger by jabbing the reporting employee’s forehead repeatedly with his finger.
A blaze of resentment boiled up from deep inside his gut.
It was true that he had hidden his hair loss from Evelyn, and it was also true that despite his promiscuous behavior, he had never had a child until now.
For nearly ten years, he had fooled around with countless women, but the only one who had ever claimed to be pregnant was Dona, just a single woman.
But Gerald didn’t think about any of those inconvenient facts at all.
In the sharp atmosphere, the servants of the Lansval household had to walk while even suppressing the sound of their footsteps, for fear of stray sparks landing on them.
After several days passed and Gerald and Helga’s tempers had calmed slightly, something finally happened.
As usual, Gerald was sleeping in late, eating lunch, and reading the newspaper when his eyes suddenly widened.
“Huh? What’s this?”
It was because an unbelievable article had been splashed across the paper in bold headlines.
[Large Number of Monster Corpses Discovered in the Beksy Region!]
Gerald hurriedly read through the article. The content roughly went as follows.
While digging the land to build a resort facility, workers kept dying one after another.
The workers raised objections, but the construction company ignored them and pushed the work forward. Eventually, an anonymous tipster reported it to the authorities, and an investigation was conducted in secret.
“So then… they found a huge number of monster corpses buried underground at the construction site…?”
It was only now discovered that the land had been contaminated by the demonic energy emitted by improperly handled monster corpses.
The article also briefly explained the background.
During a war a few years ago, both countries had actively used monster legions. Mage units controlled monsters and sent them to attack the opposing nation.
In the process, a large number of monster corpses were produced, and in the Prasen Empire, the disposal of those corpses was outsourced to private companies.
However, that company pocketed the disposal fees and, instead of properly handling the corpses, roughly buried them in areas with no civilian residences.
By the time Gerald reached this part, he recalled one of the trading company’s ledgers left behind by his father, and his eyebrows twitched.
“This… could it be that my father…?”
That was right. Gerald’s father had secured the contract for this disposal project at the time, then passed it off to a subcontractor instead of handling it himself.
Since, on paper, the subcontractor was responsible for everything, the Lansval Trading Company bore moral responsibility at most, but no legal responsibility.
There was nothing new about it. House Lansval had always made money through various illegal and underhanded businesses like this, and it was with that money that they had eventually bought their noble title.
Because it was an illegal matter, the burial locations had been falsely recorded in the documents, so Gerald had no way of knowing that the place in question was the Beksy region.
“What the hell is this?! Why is the trash my father buried coming back to me…?!”
Filled with resentment, Gerald clenched his fists tightly, his body trembling. The hot spring resort development project was essentially finished for good now.
“I’ve done nothing but diligently grow the business I inherited from my father! Why?!”
If anyone was to be punished, it should be his father who had done it himself. Gerald couldn’t understand why an innocent, pitiful person like himself had to lose most of his assets.
Of course, he didn’t think at all about the fact that he himself had become a noble and lived in luxury off the money his father had earned in that way.
The workers who had unjustly lost their lives because of his father, and the circumstances of their families as well.
***
Rastan folded the newspaper and let out a light whistle.
“Impressive. How did you know this would blow up?”
I was sitting on the sofa in Rastan’s office, reading the same article printed in another newspaper. I lowered the paper slightly and looked at him.
“I heard that workers were continuously dying at that construction site. And that the landowner knew and ignored it anyway. So I reported it to the authorities.”
Strictly speaking, I wrote the report and Ris went to submit it, but still.
If Dona had entered the Lansval household later, I would have had to push back the timing of reporting this as well.
But thanks to the stellar performances of the actors Rastan procured, Dona entered House Lansval at a blazing speed, and because of that, I was able to proceed with this matter immediately without delaying it.
“Well done. It is a bit disappointing that you did not ask me to handle it, though. If I had known, I would have gone in faster and ordered them to dig into it more aggressively.”
“I did not want to borrow your hands for something I could do on my own. And I felt bad asking you to handle something so trivial.”
Rastan opened his mouth. As always, he was clearly about to say, “That’s fine anyway.”
But it was right to handle my own affairs myself whenever possible.
I already owed more than enough, and the law of causality also pointed in that direction.
So before he could speak, I quickly buried my face back in the newspaper and cut him off.
“Did you know? According to the law, the current owner of the land has to bear the cost of purifying the demonic energy. They kindly explain it at the end of the article.”
If it were someone who bought the land without knowing, it might feel unfair, but the law was the law.
That was why, when something like this happened, people usually didn’t report it and instead kept it quiet, calling in so-called back-alley mages outside the system to roughly purify just the surface of the land and cover it up.
“But this time, because the authorities conducted an investigation, it became officially known, so they cannot just deal with it roughly and bury it.”
Seeming to understand the entire situation, Rastan lifted the corners of his lips in satisfaction.
“The resort development project itself is already as good as ruined, and now they will have to pay for demonic energy purification as well.”
“Exactly. The acquisition cost for the resort project and all the construction costs so far won’t be recoverable, and now they will have to pay an enormous purification cost, plus compensation for the workers’ deaths and their medical expenses.”
