kscans

Chapter 3 - Chapter 3. Part One, Wicked Schemes

What a completely unenviable scene. All these popular rich kids.

Strolling down a less-trafficked hallway, I glanced out the window. I could see the roofs of the gazebos arranged in the courtyard. Students, their classes finished for the day, were enjoying elegant tea parties. In Japan, this would be the fast food joint after school. The difference was that for them, this was a high stakes game with their futures on the line.

Commoners look for future patrons, while nobles assess their future subordinates. Commoners exchange information amongst themselves, and nobles form alliances according to their parents' factions. Who invited whom, and what conversations took place there, all of it holds great significance. It may look glamorous, but I hear it’s a battlefield they call socializing.

It’s a world that has nothing to do with me, having been further branded an impertinent commoner after the commotion with Dorefano three days ago.

I’ll admit, my social skills are lacking. But please, just give me someone I can talk to with numbers. Just one or two people would be fine. I’m not asking for a hundred friends. Making that many would bankrupt me. There’s even a legend about a commoner who went broke after getting friendly with a high-ranking noble and being invited to their birthday party. For now, I’ll focus on my other objective. I’m much better with that than with people, and I have a subordinate who can handle interpersonal relationships just fine.

"Senpai."

"Ah, Mia. Perfect timing."

Just as the entrance to the library came into view at the end of the hall, a head of black hair appeared beside me. She was a petite girl with shoulder-length black hair tied into small pigtails. Her well-formed features still held a touch of youthfulness. Compared to the female students of the upper class, who valued glamour, she was plain. But I knew she possessed both the loveliness of a wildflower and the resilience of a weed.

She calls me Senpai, but we’re in the same grade. Apparently, it’s because I’m her senior as a member of the Vinder Company. Well, her birth year isn’t exactly clear, so she might be a year or two younger than me.

Her uniform, reminiscent of a missionary school’s, was a world away from the patched clothes she wore five years ago. My father has genuinely started to worry that she’ll attract the wrong kind of men. There was even talk of adopting her, but she apparently refused, saying not until I was married. From what I hear, her reasoning was that I seem like the type to be deceived by a hopeless woman, and if she became my sister, she would lose the option of not calling that woman her sister-in-law, a prospect she disliked. Her logic is so indirect I can’t even follow it.

In my past life, all my siblings were brothers. Here, I'm an only child. I guess I just don't understand how girls think.

She’s a true prodigy who entered this academy on a scholarship. I’m in the same boat, but in my case, I’m basically lying about my age. Mia’s academic ability, especially her mathematical talent, is the real deal.

And while her social skills are several steps down from that, she’s still better than me. After all, she’s properly integrated into the commoner student network. If it weren’t for Dorefano’s interference, I’m sure I could have made at least one friend…

"I've finished gathering information on the House of Count Rowan. The head of the house is the second-in-command of the Second Knight Order, and his eldest son also holds the rank of unit commander. That woman's father, the head of House Adele, is also a unit commander in the Second Knight Order."

"By 'that woman,' you mean Claudia? Don't say that in public."

"Rest assured, Senpai. I am not the one who picks fights with a count's second son and the Guild Master's heir in front of the Fourth Princess."

Mia gave me a reproachful look.

"That wasn't part of the plan. More importantly, is Dorefano planning to muscle his way into the Second Knight Order's military supply chain?"

"Most likely. Unlike the First Knight Order, whose duty is to protect the Royal Capital, the Second Knight Order has expeditionary missions, such as dealing with the Monster Floods in the east."

I see. It’s been fifty years since the last war with another nation. The Knight Orders, which once numbered five, have been reduced to three. I recall it being a topic of discussion when the Third Prince joined the smallest of them, the Third Knight Order.

Military downsizing is essentially personnel reduction, so it happens gradually. For a major merchant living off a rigidly divided market share, it must have felt like being slowly choked with silk floss.

To use the Guild Master's authority to force his way in there…

"...There must have been a merchant house that was meeting the demand for those expeditionary missions until now."

"Yes. The Kenwell Company, which competed with Dorefano for the position of Food Guild Master, was involved."

"I see. So, Kenwell holds a grudge against Dorefano, but they're in a position where they can't defy him right now…"

A potential weakness of Dorefano’s, discovered. It’s useless without the right conditions to bring it to light, but if I can poke at it at the right time…

"Even if there’s only a ten percent chance of it being useful, if we gather ten pieces of information under the same conditions..."

"That would be 0.9 to the tenth power. If you invert that, it comes out to a 65 percent chance of being useful."

Are you a walking scientific calculator? She truly does see numbers in color and equations as shapes. Then again, that’s why I took her in after I accidentally discovered that about her. However…

"..."

"Did I make a mistake?"

Mia tilted her head.

"No, your calculation is correct. But in reality, those ten factors aren't independent of each other."

There was a time when the world almost collapsed because the individual probabilities of failure for giant, interconnected banks were calculated separately. A flat tire is normally a rare occurrence. If the probability of one tire going flat is 0.01 percent, the probability of two going flat at the same time is one in a hundred million. With one spare tire, you could almost certainly make it to a repair shop. But that all means nothing if someone has scattered caltrops on the road. And what if that happens while you're racing down a highway with almost zero distance between cars?

"That sounds like one of your cases, Senpai. ...So, what should we do about the Fourth Princess?"

"We don't need to rush that one. Nothing has happened since then."

"Understood. I will conduct additional investigations into Dorefano, the Second Knight Order, and Kenwell."

I nodded. Mia gave a small nod in return, then silently walked away. Before me was the end of the hall and the door to the library. My other reason for attending this troublesome place.

Opening the embossed door, I stepped into a quiet space. Desks for reading were arranged in the center, surrounded by bookshelves. The room was about the size of a large university lecture hall. The reason it was completely silent was because there wasn't a single other person here.

In this world, it’s not uncommon for even the smallest of techniques, let alone the most powerful assassination art, to be passed down to a single heir. Information is transmitted from person to person, and very little is ever compiled into books. After all, not only is the literacy rate low, but paper is expensive due to a scarcity of both technology and forest resources.

Most of the books here were compiled by eccentric nobles based on their personal hobbies. They are full of inaccurate descriptions and lack any effort to present information systematically. To be blunt, they’re written with wild imagination. You could say there’s no distinction between science fiction and a science textbook.

Macroeconomic data, the kind that was publicly available in my old world, is almost all classified as state secrets here. Or it simply doesn't exist. There might be warnings about nobles' tax evasion or rough harvest data, but how reliable is any of it?

Still, there is no other place within my reach with a greater collection of information. What I seek is knowledge of what one might call natural history, the flora and fauna of this world.

My criteria are as follows. First, find a book that accurately describes a region I know firsthand. Then, look for the information I want within that book. If it's not there, I look for another book by the same author. In the end, even books are dependent on the person who wrote them. Though, that might have been true in my old world as well.

I’m searching for so called commodities, plants and animals like cacao, silkworms, and rubber trees. There’s no guarantee they conveniently exist here, but I have reason to be hopeful. The flora and fauna of this world, including its humans, originated from Earth. They aren't exactly the same, much like how the milk vetch flowers bloom in summer here. But their basic biological structures are too similar.

I was reincarnated, but there was likely a large scale "transference" event between Earth and this world at some point. It happened once around Earth's prehistoric era, and that’s when humans arrived. It's conceivable it happened several times in even more ancient times. After all, creatures equivalent to giant reptiles and megafauna exist here.

If I could analyze their DNA, I could probably figure out when and on what scale these transfers occurred.

Incidentally, the animals that arrived in older eras seem to be better adapted, likely due to the long years they have spent living in this world.

My eyes fell upon a certain page. It depicted an animal with a large stone embedded in its forehead. A massive wolf. If the description was to be believed, its body length was equal to a human's height, with its height at the shoulder being about seventy percent of that. There was also a lean, hairless, ape-like animal that walked on the ground in a posture like a gorilla’s. And a tiger with long canines that looked like an elephant’s tusks.

Then there was a reptile that looked less like a dinosaur and more like a dragon. It apparently breathes fire, which makes me a little less confident about its Earthly origins.

These are magical beasts, creatures adapted to the magic that doesn't exist on Earth. Magical beasts cannot operate far from a source of magic, and magic flows along mountain ranges. This country has large mountain ranges to its east and west, and the monster habitats are the forests adjacent to them. These forests are characterized by trees with crimson leaves like autumn foliage, and are called Rubel Wald, the Red Forest.

The people of this kingdom do not set foot in those places. As an exception, swarms of magical beasts sometimes emerge from the forests at the foot of the eastern mountains. Whenever signs of this appear, the Knight Order is dispatched to exterminate them before an outbreak can occur.

So, even if useful plants and animals existed there, it would be like them being in a conflict zone. There's no way I can get my hands on them. Incidentally, the Empire, which borders our kingdom to the northwest, is a mountainous country and apparently has much more involvement with magical beasts. They probably possess different knowledge over there.

Magical beasts are kind of romantic in a way, but I need to find the seed for a new, more accessible product.

Expanding the milk vetch honey business is my top priority, but to negotiate that, I need a second and third arrow in my quiver. When dealing with the powerful, you can’t even get to the negotiating table unless you can make them believe they can gain continued profits from you. And if they betray you and just take your information, you have no way to strike back. There is no such thing as a negotiation between equals. It's that a negotiation can't even happen unless you are on equal footing.

If I have an advantage, even a partial one, I can create a kind of equality under certain conditions.

Information is intangible. If you keep it hidden, no one will know, but you can't use it. If you bring it out into the open, it can be easily stolen. It’s difficult to handle, but I have no choice.

"Damn it, the description cuts off right at the most important part."

I stood up. I was sure there was another book by the same author in the archives.

When I opened the archives door, the dusty air hit my nose. The space, lit only by the light from a clerestory window, was dim. I was probably the only one who ever came in here.

I squinted at the haphazardly packed bookshelves. Finally finding the illustrated encyclopedia I was looking for, I approached a window in the corner to examine it.

It was then that I froze in my tracks. Unbelievably, someone was already here.

A chair was placed beneath the window, and in it sat a girl with blue-silver hair. Unlike when I had seen her in the hallway, her long hair was tied back and draped over her shoulder. She had a book open in her hands.

Her slender, white fingers slowly turned a page. Her beauty was illuminated by the pouring light, her innocent eyes fixed intently on the book.

There could be no sight more out of place than this. I felt as if I had discovered an angel who had secretly descended to earth, unbeknownst to anyone.

"Why..."

"W-Who's there?"

The word escaped my lips unintentionally. The princess hastily closed her book and looked at me. But I, mesmerized by her, remained frozen on the spot.