Chapter 1: Influence

“So the volume of orders hasn’t changed?”

“It hasn’t, sir.”

Three days following the competition, after classes had ended. The students were now hurrying to the courtyard to fulfill their secondary duties. Having no relation to social intercourse, though, I was walking in the opposite direction while discussing the orders we received over the last few days with my dear secretary Mia.

Her docile hairstyle matched her still-childish features. She was plain compared to the cheerful schoolgirls from the upper echelon of society, but she had a sweetness to her like a flower blooming in a field, and the strong will of a wildflower. She had a tendency of displaying the latter towards me, though.

The girl referring to me as “sir” was a fellow student at the Academy in the same grade as me. Apparently she referred to me as such because of our positions within the company, seeing that I joined before her. It’s not clear when exactly I was born, so she may in fact be one or two years younger than me too.

The Catholic school-style uniform she was wearing now was a huge difference from the rags she had when she was just an orphan in the village. It got to the point where my foster father was seriously worrying that some pest would latch on to her.

On that point, a peddler in town who was interested in my calculation abilities and my stories of apiculture ended up adopting me. This was a world where a boy with an unknown past could never be trusted. If I were to act in the company’s stead, I had to inherit his name.

There were also discussions of adopting Mia, but apparently that decision was being held off until I was married. I was told it was because it seemed like I was going to be tricked by some useless woman, and she didn’t like the idea of calling such a woman her sister-in-law. Her reasoning was so indirect that I didn’t really get it, though.

“So nothing’s changed despite that happening...” I mumbled doubtfully.

“Yes. There have been no shops turning down our business. Conversely, we’ve had new customers showing interest in copper honey. Also, there haven’t been any inquiries from the noble market like we were worried about.”

My secretary was so capable that one would suspect that she had our entire account book committed to memory, so there was no mistaking her analysis.

“We’d be unable to cope with a massive amount of orders we can’t turn down, after all. Moreover, none of this would damage Dreyfan’s share in the market. Is that the reason they haven’t been putting more pressure on our current clientele?”

“But their heir did threaten you today, as per usual.”

“That he did. He’s apparently been boasting about his new connections. Seems like lately he’s been getting along with an upperclassman named Rowan or something. He went out of his way to deliver me the information himself, so I guess I should thank him.” This was something he told me just before I left the classroom.

“That would be Earl Rowan’s son. The earl himself is the vice-commander of the Second Chivalric Order. Incidentally, that girl’s father, Viscount Adel, is one of the order’s commanding officers.”

“That girl’s called Claudia, I think? Don’t say that in front of her.” I recalled the schoolgirl with a red ponytail who scowled at me during the competition.

“Don’t worry, sir. I’m not like you, going out and picking a fight with the heir of the guild’s representative right in front of the princess,” Mia said as she looked up at me with squinted eyes.

“Ahem. So his new connection is related to the military, then? All of them up until now were administration-related, so this is a new trend...”

Two kids having a squabble would inevitably lead to the parents squabbling as well. It was necessary in this world to consider the family name as a close existence to the person themselves. Using political marriage as an analogue produces a poor image, but in short, they had arrangements for inter-enterprise relations and amalgamations. Thinking of it like that, it was generally accepted that the interests of the family were more important than personal interests. We couldn’t afford to pick our business partners based on personal emotions. Only through one’s kith and kin, including one’s vassals, does the family name live on.

“He can’t possibly be thinking of crushing the Weinders using the knights’ military force, right?”

“If the Dreyfans were inclined to do so, there are far simpler means of accomplishing it,” Mia remarked.

Setting aside the reputation of the guild representative, just looking at it from a cost-effectiveness point of view, it was out of the question. It was like using dynamite just to squish a single bug; nobody would do it. I, at the very least, trusted in President Dreyfan’s sense for profitability.

“In which case, it’s business related. So what’s got them diving into business with the knights?”

“Sorry, I’ve yet to find that out...”

“Oh, fair enough. Military information doesn’t leak out all that easily, I suppose.”

“However, there is one possibility. Unlike the First Chivalric Order charged with protecting the capital, the Second Order’s mission is the suppression of monster floods.”

Campaigns which required the order to march all the way to the eastern border were accompanied by costs which were on a different order of magnitude from the trade of luxury items like honey.

“Under that hypothesis, it means they don’t have time to deal with the likes of us. That means the lack of movement from the Dreyfans isn’t because the princess’s publicity had a small impact. In that case, we’re okay for now, but...”

“It’ll be a problem after they settle their more important business.”

It would mean confronting the Dreyfans after they become even bigger.

“What a nightmare... Wait, hang on. What if we think about it from a different approach?”

It’s been approximately forty years since the last foreign war. What used to be five chivalric orders were now three. They’d been downsized by forty percent. The prince who took command of the smallest one, the Third Chivalric Order, was the talk of the town at the time of his appointment.

Disarmament of the army is, in short, a reduction of the workforce. Moreover, members of the knights were fundamentally nobles. In which case, it had to happen gradually. As for the merchants who depended on nobles as their clientele, they were watching their shares drop at the same rate as the disarmament. And here we had the largest such company forcing their way into a new market. If they used the influence of the guild representative to do so...

“There’s a company shouldering the burden of the demands that come from military campaigns, right?” I asked.

“Yes. The Kendall Company, ranked third in the Culinary Guild. There are stories of President Kendall quarrelling with the Dreyfans in the past.”

“I see. So even if they’re still not on Dreyfan’s level, they’re way more of a big shot than we are...” And so we’d found Dreyfan’s enemy. Thinking about the timing of this incident... “I’m still not certain, but it’s worth keeping in mind. Even if the probability that this becomes useful is a mere ten percent, if we were to gather ten more leads with the same odds...”

“We’d have a 0.9¹⁰ percent chance of it not being useful. Inversely, that means there’s a 65 percent probability that it will be of use.”

Are you a human calculator or something? I guess this is only natural for someone with synesthesia. Numbers are as easily perceivable as colors to Mia, and she is capable of seeing numerical formulas by stereopsis, as if they had depth. I mean, that’s kind of why I scouted her in the first place. But...

“...”

“Am I mistaken?” Mia said as she cocked her head to the side.

“No, your calculations are spot on. However, in reality, there are times when those ten conditions aren’t always independent of each other.”

I recalled the greatest financial crisis back in the other world. The entire world suffered a massive economic slump as the result of one large bank, connected to a complex web of financial institutions, calculating the probability of bankruptcy upon going independent.

A punctured tire doesn’t occur very often. If we say the probability of puncturing a single tire is 0.01 percent, then the likelihood of puncturing two tires at the same time is abysmally low, so carrying a single spare tire should suffice until you can get to a mechanic. However, that has nothing to do with splinters covering the road. And what if that happened on the highway where the distance between vehicles is practically nil?

At any rate, genius mathematicians brought about a financial crisis, and I wasn’t even worth comparing to them. In reality, complex economic analysis only possesses a limited amount of power.

“We’ve gone off track. Umm, everything just now was hypothetical, so...”

“Understood. I’ll gather information on the Dreyfans and the Second Chivalric Order... as well as the Kendalls.”

Even though Mia’s mathematical capabilities far surpassed mine, she also had a much greater social life than me. I mean, she at least had a network of commoners she associated with here at the Academy.

“Sorry for making you investigate a friend’s company.” Mia’s best friend was from one of the companies under the Kendall umbrella.

“It’s alright. Nothing they haven’t done to us. Also... what shall we do about the princess?”

“I still can’t get a read on what she wants. I feel like something should come up any time now, but the person in question never comes to school anyway...” I unintentionally let out a sigh. The one to bring about this situation was none other than that beautiful princess. Even if there was no effect on the market, I couldn’t just ignore her.

“I investigated her some, but haven’t really acquired any worthwhile information. The only thing I’ve found is that she’s busy with preparations for the Spring Festival.”

“The one her guard mentioned during the competition? The Oracle Princess holds a post at the cathedral, right? It’s probably just some honorary position though...”

“Lilka and the others were at the Spring Festival last year, so I’ll try asking them.”

“Thanks.”

“Think nothing of it. This sort of information gathering is my job. You just focus on your own job at hand, sir.” Mia glanced over to the end of the hallway, and we split ways to fulfill our own duties.

“In any case...”

Now that I was all alone, I gazed out the window in the direction of the gazebos in the courtyard. On the surface, many of the students were happily passing their time with each other. It even looked like a scene of afterschool activities from the other world.

However, in truth, this was a fight for their lives. There were two days of the week where the ban on high society meetings was lifted, and the conversations held in the gazebos at such times were implicitly known to be half-official.

Who invited whom? What did they talk about? These things held great meaning. It looked like a cheerful scene, but this was the battlefield of high society.

And the competition hosted by the princess happened right there, last week.

“She’s the fourth born, but still a bona-fide princess...”

It was honestly surprising how little influence she had.

“Well, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thankful for that. Now then, it’s time to get to work.”

I turned my gaze from the cheerful gazebo over to the barren corridor in front of me, and proceeded towards the large door at the end. This was the other reason I came all the way out to this troublesome city. Within it laid a treasury of precious information concerning this world. In short, it was the school library.

Just as I reached out to the door of the library, it opened from the inside. A schoolgirl with a red ponytail stepped through.

Watching me immediately step aside to make way, the schoolgirl visibly grimaced at me. Incidentally, I was doing my best not to make the same face right back at her. It was that girl, of all people.

It’s actually quite rare for the princess’s aide to be on her own. What business would she have here, anyway?

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

I held back my urge to respond with “I’m the regular, so what are you doing here?” Wait, hang on. I turned to look at the library door. Is the princess herself in there? In that case, it’d be better for me to retreat.

“Allow me to tell you one thing,” she said with a scowl. “Don’t come to any foolish misunderstandings from what happened last time.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m telling you not to misunderstand Her Highness’s compassion.”

I was left taken aback by this. No matter how pretty she was, she was still a flower far beyond reach, where a single misstep would send me crashing to my death. I was just consulting Mia on how we should be keeping our distance from her.

“Or perhaps you plan on scheming to use the princess’s position...”

I simply remained silent, and Claudia began coming up with another suspicion. Apparently, she saw me as some scoundrel looking to line my pockets by abusing the princess’s authority. That honestly offended me. Of course, it wasn’t because she dares to say something like that, despite her princess’s publicity for us having no effect. It was because she assumed that I, being pressured by the current system of this Kingdom as I am, being in the middle of making preparations to change it how I like over the course of the next few decades in what could be considered a mild and partial rebellion, would, of all things, get carried away by the system itself.

“What basis do you have to say such sl—”

“Well, if it isn’t Weinder.” Just as I was about to calmly criticize what she had to say—in other words, just as I was about to do something that held no benefit at all—a familiar voice called to me from behind.

“Hmmm, so this is the son of a basket carrier you spoke of?”

And an even more arrogant voice followed it. Incidentally, “basket carrier” was a derogatory term used for peddlers here.

I was now surrounded by three unwanted critics. It put an unnecessary load on my working memory. I turned to look at the newcomers to the siege, and spotted a schoolboy standing haughtily next to Dreyfan with his arms crossed. He looked to be an upperclassman, perhaps a third or fourth year, and appeared to be the type to go to the courtyard at these times. Meaning, this was little Dreyfan’s new patron...

“Indeed, My Lord. He’s the one deceiving the masses by selling watered... pardon, imitation honey.”

He withdrew his statement of it being watered down, evidently because the competition actually did have some effect. But still, imitation honey? Actually, I don’t care. Call it what you like. If you’re going to be that careless, then you shouldn’t notice all the questionable excess profit we make off it.

I am in fact your enemy, Dreyfan, and around ten years later, when you succeed your company, I do plan on dealing you losses that you can’t possibly ignore. However, what’s your cognition of me? Those eyes you’re looking at me with don’t seem to perceive an enemy. Those twisted eyes are those of someone making use of an authority that they take for granted. Shouldn’t you show some irritation at failing to understand that I actually have the upper hand?

Not like I really want him to assess that he’s fallen behind me, though. His evaluation of me belongs to him; he can do whatever he wants with it, and it’d actually be troublesome if he had an accurate assessment of me. But you know, even if he thinks he’s a hundred times better than me, I still think myself a thousand times better than that.

What I really don’t understand, though, is that even though he’s so openly hostile to me, he doesn’t even consider the risk of a counterattack. The fact that he can believe he’s in a complete safe zone is somewhat disconcerting.

Realistically speaking, the stronger one’s position, the lower the probability of a counterattack. That’s simply how the world works. However, no matter how strong one’s position, the risk will never be zero.

Having a weakness exposed could lead even the weak to trip you up. And what would happen if another “strong opponent” were to attack while you were stumbling? So taking that into consideration, did an enemy that could be completely ignored exist even for a large company? All it invited was probing into your weaknesses.

Besides, it’s precisely because I have value that I became a target worth spending time and resources on. People who possess assets worth spending the time to trick them out of are the targets of the truly formidable swindlers.

I mean, in my case, I do plan to do things through proper business. As long as they don’t cross a certain line, at least.

“Oh, and if isn’t Miss Adel... Is this man perhaps once more causing trouble for Her Highness the Princess?” Dreyfan winced for the first time since he showed up upon spotting Claudia.

“I was just in the middle of warning him so that such a thing does not occur.”

“I would certainly hope so. The Oracle Princess must be awfully busy right now,” Rowan remarked to Claudia, as she then averted her gaze.

Here we had the earl and viscount houses who led the knights of the Second Chivalric Order. It seems there’s some contention between them. In any case, they’re all just saying whatever they want, aren’t they?

If I was really planning on misappropriating power, wouldn’t my first action be trying to improve my relations with you lot? If you even thought of why I’m not doing that even a little, you should be able to find out why you ought to be more vigilant. But I guess it’d be troublesome if they actually did that, too.

Anyway, it’s not the time to be worrying about my schoolmates. Having a go at it in this situation wouldn’t be prudent. It’d do me no good, and the risk would be stupidly huge. It’d be far below the point of breaking even.

However, there are differences in how one pulls back. If I were to do so unconditionally after having my merchandise ridiculed, it would be a mockery to my precious customers. They’re precious precisely because they can discern honey which may be an imitation.

And as I searched for a means of retreat, my eyes wandered over and spotted a schoolgirl coming towards us in the corridor. She looks familiar; if I remember right, that’s Mia’s friend... I see. If I handle this correctly, it could be profitable.

“It certainly is true that me being here with Miss Adel could beckon misunderstandings,” I said as I bowed to Claudia. It is said that one should not invite undue suspicion upon oneself. “As Her Highness’s personal aide, it is only natural for you to be vigilant of those trying to make use of her authority. You truly are a shining example of a loyal knight, Madam.”

“Mm. It’s only natural for the one charged with assisting the princess.” Claudia looked surprised for just a moment, but she affirmed what I said with a proud look immediately.

I then looked to the other group, the strange combination of the sons of the top brass of knights and merchants.

“I’d like for you to teach an ignorant member of but a small company like mine how such further misunderstandings could be avoided... Miss Adel, if I remember correctly, Lord Rowan’s father serves as the vice-commander of the Second Chivalric Order, a mainstay of the national army, correct?” I took a glance over at the haughty upperclassman before continuing. “If, perhaps, a merchant was trying to entreat his authority, what would you think of that?”

One could call this evading a compromising situation. The air around us became dangerously cold. My words struck home with Claudia. That was just par for the course. It wasn’t something the daughter of Viscount Adel could possibly say to the son of Earl Rowan, from the standpoint of this country’s order, that is.

“Dreyfan, why are you together with Lord Rowan?” After confirming that Claudia had stiffened up, I turned to question Dreyfan. The girl at the end of the hallway hid herself and focused her attention towards us.

“Th-The Academy exists as a means for fellow students of different standings to intermingle.” He was clearly shaken, and what he brought out was a front that even he didn’t believe in.

This in itself was valuable information, by direct courtesy of the heir of the Dreyfans himself. It wasn’t enough to attract that girl’s full attention, however. So I made a show of cocking my head in confusion to my other upperclassman, and Rowan’s face visibly contorted.

“What nonsense. It’s only the natural duty of a knight to ensure that supplies are in perfect order. What’s strange about exchanging opinions with a representative of the company who handles those provisions?”

“I-I see. You certainly have a point, My Lord. Thank you very much for teaching one ignorant of military matters such as myself a valuable lesson.” I bowed my head towards Rowan. Indeed, I truly am grateful to him from the very bottom of my heart. I then took a slight peek to the side.

I could see that the girl hiding down the hall in my peripheral vision was wide-eyed in shock. It seems I managed to get her to verify this quite clearly. Her parent company couldn’t possibly ignore the relationship between Dreyfan and the son of a leader of the Second Chivalric Order, after all.

“As long as you understand. Let’s go.” Rowan seemed to have lost interest and turned to Dreyfan as he began to walk off.

Dreyfan looked a little worried, but followed after him. It seems they really are headed towards the courtyard. Just what sort of secret talk are they planning on having now?

I turned back to look at Claudia. I truly was thankful for her cooperation. It was enough to let me forget about the slight she made towards me earlier.

“...” Claudia turned around while remaining completely silent.

Just as I was wondering where she was off to, she seemed to be heading even further down the corridor past the library. Is there anything back there?

After confirming the knight had turned the corner, I put my hand against the library door. Thinking of the schoolgirl who was surely now in more of a rush than anyone else running down the corridor, I couldn’t help but smile.

Perhaps, from a self-preservation perspective, I did manage to make a slight profit from crossing a somewhat dangerous bridge. I’d need her to meddle with the Dreyfans to the point where they won’t have time to meddle with me, after all.