Chapter 175 - Because It Is Precious (2)

Ferda asked in confusion.

"Do you dislike being called Your Highness?"

"It is not that I dislike it, exactly. I think it feels awkward. Mr. Ferda, you are the man who will become mine, aren't you?"

"That is correct."

"If you call me what everyone else does, I feel as though there is too much distance between us."

He nodded as though he agreed with her words.

"Then may I call you Lady Valdrova?"

"I don't like Lady either. I would like you to call me warmly, as if you were someone who knew me."

"You mean... you would like me to call you Valdrova?"

"Rather than that, how about a nickname?"

"A-a nickname?"

A proposal as adorable as her voice came his way.

"Penelope said that she calls Zed Zeze, and they call Penelope Pepe."

"Is that so?"

He knew, since they had called each other that often when they talked.

"So I wanted to call you Pepe too, Mr. Ferda, but... since the nickname overlaps with hers, it feels a little strange."

"... Indeed."

The Shadow Circle reacted.

Hatred toward Penelope boiled up inside Ferda.

"Then how about Fer-Fer?"

"If Your Highness likes it, I will gladly accept it."

Fer-Fer.

It was similar to the names of monsters passed down in the western regions, but Ferda was satisfied with that.

"What would you like to do, Mr. Ferda?"

"What do you mean?"

"The nickname."

He flinched.

"... Must I do one too?"

"My name is Valdrova, so... would it be Val-Val?"

"Val..."

"I looked it up, and apparently they call little puppies that."

Valdrova pretended to be a puppy.

His face flushed hot, and he could not bring himself to move his hands or feet.

Afraid he might make an unsightly expression, he forced himself to bite down hard on his lip so he would not lose his senses.

"Try it once. Val-Val."

"Val..."

"Yes."

"Your Highness Valdrova."

The anticipation that had been floating up burst with a pop.

"Is it no good?"

Valdrova asked like a puppy that had been struck after having its hopes betrayed.

Ferda answered while clinging to the thread of reason that was barely holding on.

"Yes, that would be difficult."

"Why?"

"Lady Valdrova, you are a dragon, and I am human. No matter how one looks at it, that gap is as great as the difference between a king and a commoner."

And while commoners' married lives might allow informal speech, in the lives of nobles, which were mostly built on political marriages, nicknames for one another were difficult.

"I see."

She seemed convinced.

Ferda could breathe a sigh of relief.

"Then when will we get married?"

The second round followed immediately.

The black tea he had been drinking felt as if it might lodge in his throat.

"I believe it will be after Hestia village has prospered, for now..."

Because he thought that only then would he become the sort of person Luri had said the other dragons could acknowledge.

"When will that be?"

"It seems it will take at least five years."

"I cannot wait that long."

Valdrova was firm.

"You make me so excited that even waiting for tomorrow to come is painful... I cannot wait five years."

"Even so, getting married immediately would also be difficult."

"Then at least change the way you address me. So that I can wait a little longer."

"..."

"To Val-Val!"

Ferda was rendered speechless by Valdrova's resolute attitude.

Was this truly the same woman who had always anxiously worried she might misspeak?

He wondered if that damned demon had made her acquire some strange talent.

"... Val..."

Ferda forced his mouth open.

"I do not think I can call Your Highness Valdrova's name so lightly."

Ferda spoke gently.

"The name Valdrova is a name that must be respected. Treating it lightly would be unnecessary, both as your fiancé and toward the people who believe in Your Highness the Grand Duchess."

"Hmm... Is that so?"

Valdrova showed disappointment again.

Of course, it was only an excuse.

It was an excuse he had forced out because Ferda could not do such a thing.

A worry crept up in him that the repeated refusals might have hurt her feelings.

"In that case..."

However, Valdrova did not despair.

In a voice like sunlight breaking through a gloomy sky, she said this.

"Let us decide on a new name."

"A new name...?"

"When you think about it, my name is called in many other places. Mr. Ferda, you will now receive the name Valdrova as well."

The Grand Duchy's territory of Valdrova, Valdrova Castle, and Valdrova herself.

"If the name Valdrova cannot be made light, then a name of mine that only you can call, Mr. Ferda. Please make that name for me."

"How could I possibly name Your Highness?"

"A name must be given by someone else because someone calls it for you. So I would like you to give me my name, Mr. Ferda. And..."

Excitement seeped from her fidgeting fingers.

"From now on, you will be the one to call it the most..."

The name I will call the most.

He forced himself to turn his head and hide his burning face.

He felt as if he understood Valdrova's feelings.

What was easy for others, but difficult for one person.

"Understood. I will think on it and tell you."

"Yes."

"Do you have anything else to say?"

"Hmm... Ah!"

She let out an exclamation and began chattering about something.

"Penelope..."

"..."

His excitement and embarrassment shattered into pieces.

As he listened to the stories she had shared with the first friend she had ever made, Ferda thought.

Before a name, he should find her a new friend first.

Ferda examined the current situation for the sake of managing the territory.

What every living creature needed was food, clothing, and shelter.

Among them, food was the most important no matter what one said, and among that, drink was an element that absolutely could not be left out.

Most of the Grand Duchy's territory of Valdrova drew its water sources from rivers, and when water was scarce, it used underground reservoirs.

Unless there was an extreme drought in which the river completely dried up, the conditions were in place to overcome difficult crises.

Ferda had originally planned to draw and use water from the river as well.

However, through this incident, he realized just how complacent that plan had been.

'A river can be contaminated at any time.'

When the demonic creatures laid siege, they contaminated the river water to slowly kill the Grand Duchy's territory.

He had learned that if things directly tied to life had too many variables, they could collapse easily.

'But I turned it into another opportunity.'

Burnel Marquis.

By creating a purification device, he had allowed them to endure the siege.

After the subjugation of the demonic creatures, Isabella moved busily to actively make use of this purification device.

And she showed Ferda the fruit it had borne.

"This is the place."

The place where the second gift Isabella had spoken of was located.

It was away from Hestia village in the Grand Duchy's territory.

More precisely, it would be fair to call it the border of the Land of Demons.

In this place, where there should originally have been wasteland, a single stone building stood alone.

"It looks like a tomb."

"It may look insignificant on the outside."

When Isabella infused mana and unlocked the security device, she opened the door.

Once the door opened, he could tell.

What mattered was underground.

Ferda followed Isabella down.

After they descended about five meters, they left the spiral staircase and an open space appeared.

"This is the second gift offered by the Iorga Magic Tower."

A space whose size brought to mind the Empire's coliseum arena.

The outer walls supported the surroundings with solid stone and materials, and inside, long pipes had been designed in an intricate arrangement.

It was construction work that would easily have taken humans ten years.

"When did you create a space like this?"

"The Iorga side proceeded with the construction when you went to the capital. You need not worry about safety."

That meant it had been less than a month.

As expected of the Aspect of Magic, something this complicated and labor-intensive was a piece of cake for her.

"Does the Iorga side often do things like this?"

"We do when necessary, but that does not mean we do this for humans. Especially not for other dragons."

"So this is the power of an alliance."

"That is correct."

The alliance was only a pretext.

'It must be because of their pride, after all.'

The pride of dragon spawns was famous for being uncontrollable.

To those who had inherited their blood, their dragon was father, mother, and god all at once.

They did not forgive those who insulted them, and they considered behavior unworthy of that name a disgrace.

The fact that Burnel Marquis had purified the water of the Land of Demons was a disgrace to them.

These gifts could be seen as a means to make up for that disgrace.

'If I keep scratching at their pride like this, wouldn't something come out?'

Ferda recalled the legend of the golden goblin.

The old joke that money came out the more you hit it overlapped with Iorga in his mind.

Afraid his inner thoughts might be seen through, Ferda shifted his gaze along the pipelines.

The pipes looked complicated, but the broad structure was clear.

A large pipe placed where the Land of Demons had been, and round steel barrels it passed through.

It was structured so that it passed through about three of those barrels and then led to Hestia village.

He wondered how this thing worked.

"Oh, greetings, Regent."

Just then, the person who could explain that to him arrived.

It was Burnel Marquis.

"So I see you here."

The man who should normally have been shut up in the laboratory at Valdrova Castle was in this basement away from the village, so surprise came first.

"As this is important work, I was personally checking to ensure nothing had been omitted. Hundreds of thousands of liters of water will be supplied through these pipes, so should I not examine it thoroughly?"

There was a sparkle in his eyes of an entirely different order from when he made the magical engineering rifle.

Whatever else one might say, it seemed inevitable that his heart leaned toward practical things like this more than making weapons.

"Explain it to me. How the purification work happens."

"Of course! If you look here on this side..."

Ferda honestly had not expected a thing from the explanation.

But something surprising happened.

'He explains it better than I thought.'

Wasn't he explaining it simply and clearly, on an entirely different level from when he explained the principles of mana stones?

With appropriate analogies, the understanding sank in smoothly.

'Well, being told to simplify it so Malcolm could understand was no ordinary difficulty.'

By making two extremes meet, he had succeeded in refining his words so that Ferda, who was closer to the middle, could understand.

In any case, to summarize it simply, it was the same as installing several layers of fine filters and drawing out water as cleanly as possible.

"I heard the enlargement work was not easy, but you managed it."

"That's right. I told you three years back then, didn't I?"

That was the research period needed to make it possible to draw water from the Land of Demons and supply it stably.

He had said that there was the enlargement work, and above all, because this was an issue highly sensitive to safety, it was necessary to confirm whether the supply was stable.

"That part became much easier thanks to the Iorga side taking charge of it!"

Isabella took over from Burnel's words.

"Inside these barrels are the large-scale purification devices our Iorga is presenting."

"You were able to shorten a period of three years so drastically?"

"The Blue Eye is a Magic Tower that aspires to the greatest magic on the continent. For work that requires trial and error, the Iorga side is a place where trial and error that humans could never perform can be carried out dozens of times over."

"It truly is incredible. If we had done something like this at Escolaia, they would only have snapped at us, asking if we had money to burn."

Isabella spoke as if extremely proud, and Burnel praised it.

Listening to that, Ferda muttered this.

"A golden goblin..."

"Yes?"

"It is nothing."

For some reason, only that word kept circling in Ferda's head.

Ferda, thinking there was no longer any need to be wary of others, decided to use everything he had kept crouched down until now as momentum for a leap forward.

He had decided to spur on the revival of magical engineering in Hestia village.

"These are the cooperation proposals sent from Escolaia. They all seem to be free of problems, and you need only approve them."

It was said that the magical engineering Burnel had presented had increased the number of those studying it at Escolaia with the conviction that it would open a new era.

Surprisingly, those studying this field of magical engineering were from mage families with fairly well-known names.

Ferda could understand how they felt.

'They must want revenge on their families.'

Among them, how many could there be who purely burned with academic passion and lived the life of a scholar?

It was a refuge chosen by those who had been branded as dullards by their families or pushed out in succession struggles.

Those who had clenched their teeth to live as mages naturally carried hatred toward the privileged who monopolized magic.

The current Chancellor of Escolaia was exactly that sort of person.

- Development proposal for a carriage using mana stones

'They want to make a carriage using mana stones...'

When that time came, the word mana automobile would be used far more often than carriage.

A carriage that moved not by horses, but by a mage's mana, was an object that had been looked down upon for not being noble.

However, that stubbornness would also collapse in an instant, and the roads would be filled with mana automobiles in the blink of an eye.

'I wanted to have this part for myself, but...'

One could not make allies by taking everything.

He handed this matter over to Stephan.

He had paid the price for supporting the east without asking questions or raising objections.

'In any case, it is only one part of the business.'

Ferda also had several businesses in mind.

He handed the organized documents to Isabella.

"Administrator."

"Yes."

"These are things I looked into personally. Could you secure investment here as well?"

Isabella opened the documents.

The moment she saw the title written on the first cover, she reflexively frowned.

"You intend to buy the mining rights to desert sand?"

"That is correct."

In the south, sand was everywhere.

Wondering what he meant to use it for after buying up all that sand, she turned to the next page.

"Glass, I see."

What Ferda was trying to obtain was the glass business.

"There was someone who presented a proposal to industrialize glass. I intend to bring this person in and build a glass factory."

"A glass factory... Of course, among luxury goods, it is a fine item, but I do not think demand will be that high."

"Look at the next page."

As Ferda said, she turned to the next page.

She could understand what he meant.

"Glass that does not break easily even without magic treatment..."

The word glass and the idea of not breaking were far too incompatible.

"Do you believe this is possible, Lord Ferda?"

Isabella did not seem convinced.

But Ferda knew.

He knew that glass, which had only been used for nobles' crafted goods, would come to be used in common homes as well.

The more magical engineering technology advanced, the more the paradigm of luxury would change.

"There is more than enough possibility."

There is possibility.

What if someone else had said those words?

Isabella would not have approved the work, and on top of that, she would have sharply asked whether they intended to waste money.

'He must have some thought in mind.'

If there was one thing Isabella knew about Ferda, it was the fact that he was not someone who did things on impulse.

Because she had that trust, Isabella quietly picked up the document.

"I will try to move this matter forward. And..."

Isabella spoke as if she had forgotten.

With a rotten expression that she rarely showed, she said,

"It seems that eyesore of a witch has produced results on the project."

There was no need to ask why she disliked that.