Chương 64: Chapter 65: “Digging Season (1)”

In most webnovels, the semester break would have been a training arc. The protagonist would focus on training after finding out what he lacked from the last arc's life-or-death battle, emerge several power tiers higher, and return for the new semester with a new signature skill to show off. However, that was for Arthur. Though Celestia trained daily, mostly with Jade in the office's training grounds, and sometimes alone, training only constituted a fraction of her day.

Most of it was spent at her desk or on her feet overseeing the projects that needed to be in place before the new semester began. Paimon had gotten used to bringing her meals to the desk. The railway was the most urgent of the projects. With Summit having been built around the Tower, the city's founding principle had always been progress.

Technology and magic here advanced faster than anywhere else on the continent, and the engineers who had taken Celestia's commission had thankfully not needed to be persuaded, excited at the prospect of a new line of transportation technology. Between the Reingarde purse and the city's own research guilds, the funding had been more than sufficient. The result, after several weeks of work, was a functional tram.

It was the first-generation machine, powered by magic stones, and it ran from the Tower's base, to the commercial district, and to Summit Academy's mountain base. Between here and there, there were only a few stops, and there were more plans to extend the railway and add more stops in time. During construction, the complaints had been constant. Sections of the main roads had been closed for weeks to lay the rails. Merchants rerouted their delivery schedules.

Carriage drivers grumbled about the loss of familiar routes, and noble households that had grown accustomed to unobstructed approaches to the commercial district found themselves taking longer paths. Half the letters on Celestia's desk during that period had been either complaints or pointed inquiries about when the work would be finished. The more common objection, behind all the rest, was a simple question. Why did the city need this? Carriages already existed.

The people had used carriages for their whole lives, and the system worked well enough for them. A new contraption that ran on rails and could only stop where it was permitted to stop struck many as unnecessary. Celestia had anticipated this. That was why she had announced the opening weekend to be free. The first day drew a wary crowd. People came to look at the tram more than to ride it.

Small groups gathered at each of the few stops and watched the machine pull in, and a uniformed conductor gestured politely for them to step aboard. A handful of children boarded first as their parents followed. Inside was a row of padded benches, a glass-paned window running the length of the car, and a ride that was smoother than any carriage they had taken. The tram moved slowly by carriage standards.

A carriage at full pace could overtake it on an open stretch, and it only stopped at several designated stations. Both of these had been noted, by the more skeptical voices, as evidence that the tram was inferior to what the city already had. But most of those that rode it did not seem to mind. As commoners, carriages were only used for business purposes or in emergencies; if they needed to get from Point A to Point B, they used their own two legs.

So, riding this was more of a curiosity and a marvel rather than the thought of convenience. They looked out the windows at the streets they had walked a thousand times. The ride was steady from the first stop to the last, and the wary looks from the morning had faded by the afternoon. By the end of the weekend, the tram had carried several thousand people. Most of them were still talking about it by the time they returned home. It was only after that the pricing was announced.

Most of the city had assumed the fare would be steep. A new invention, running on magic stones, surely this was a service designed for the wealthy. The noble families would ride it to the commercial district, while common people would continue to walk or hire the cheapest carriages they could afford. But the announced fare was one-thirthieth the price of a carriage for more than the normal distance. This was, initially, assumed to be a mistake.

Several people returned to the ticket window to confirm what the bulletin boards had said. After all, errors were common. But the fare was actually true! And if the line expanded beyond the current stops, a commoner could cross the city for a mere pittance when compared to the same journey that normally costed them a headache. The novelty of the tram became, very quickly, something that they could easily fit in within their household budget. The merchants noticed next. Carriage logistics were a continuous expense.

Wheels broke. Horses injured themselves on bad roads. Scheduling around weather and road conditions consumed hours that would otherwise have gone to actual business. But a line that ran on fixed rails at a predictable price per unit of cargo? It solved several of those problems at once. Several merchant houses sent inquiries to the office about cargo use. Could a car be reserved for goods instead of passengers? What would dedicated costs for a single one cost?

There were also questions about whether the line might be expanded toward the warehouse district in the future. Celestia's office replied to each inquiry; that a commercial cargo service was quickly under development and would be released soon. She had planned for this, of course. And in actuality, the commercial part of the plan has already been prepared. It was just a matter of getting the contracts.

'The first weekend is to bring in a good perception,' Celestia thought.

'A few stops to show the city the use of a railway. And the idea of expansion will show them the massive benefits that came with it.' All of it was secondary. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work. The railway's expansion would take months more, and by the time Summit's railway network reached the outer districts and began handling commercial cargo at scale, her real priorities would already be in motion. There were two of them. The first was mining.

The Tower produced magic stones in greater quantities than anywhere else on the continent, and the vast majority of them were sold through the Adventurer's Guild, collected from tower climbers who pried them out of monster corpses. The supply was inconsistent. Some weeks yielded bounties; others yielded almost a pittance. Summit's industries depended on it, and prices fluctuated accordingly. What the guilds had not yet discovered was that the Tower had mining veins on the World Floors.

Celestia had read about them in the original novel. Late into the story, a minor character had rested in a cave. And upon waking, he found that the walls had been lined with magic stones and raw crystal. He had checked Floors 12, 13, and 14 afterward, and confirmed that each of them held similar deposits. The discovery would eventually trigger an industrial restructuring across the continent. If Celestia moved first, she could secure the magic stone veins before anyone else thought to look for them.

A monopoly on magic stones would give her direct influence over every industry in Summit that depended on them, which was nearly all of them. Her slaves were already prepared for it. The group was already ready to climb the Tower; the mining itself would begin once they reached Floor 11 and after Celestia herself had found and prepared the relevant locations. However… this had to happen before the new semester began. The second priority was political. The Reingarde name indeed opened many doors.

She had used it to get the railway project approved. But beyond the city walls, the continent was governed by the imperial family. Her father and mother were counted among the nobles who had quietly thrown their support behind the revolutionaries, an arrangement that had been tolerated by the imperialists for some reason. If that tolerance ever broke, and the Duke and Duchess were formally identified as backers of the revolution… Celestia would become a target for execution.

And so, the only path that remained was to make herself too valuable to remove. That was the purpose of her plans within Summit. If the city's economy came to depend on her operations, then removing her from Summit would cost Summit more than it could afford to pay. The imperial family could still move against the house, but they could not move against her without destabilizing the one city on the continent producing the most valuable resources in the world. A capitalist utopia, she would bring it to life.

And now, a moderately-sized group assembled at the Tower's entrance before the sun had fully risen. There were thirty-eight of them. They stood in rows near one of the many gates around the Tower, dressed in the gear Celestia had arranged through the Reingarde network. Celestia stood in front of them. She looked at the group for a moment before she spoke.

"You chose this path," she said.

"And I will not applaud you for it." The group was quiet through her speech.

"But what you may not have considered," she continued, "is that your lives have value. A dead slave accomplishes nothing for me. And for that reason, you are not permitted to die." A few of them exchanged glances.

"Your first objective is to finish Floor 5. Once you reach accomplish this, you return back to the office until further notice." She stepped back.

"Now, go." The group began to walk through the Tower's entrance. Celestia watched them go, and she had hoped that all of them would come back from this. But that was too much to expect; no amount of preparation could change the fact that there would always be losses. She picked up her spear. Beside her, Paimon had her own gear strapped and ready. She was looking at the Tower's entrance.

"Do you remember what we're here for?" Celestia said.

"Y-yes, my lady." Celestia's objective was Floor 11. She had to personally check where the veins were, and needed to prepare the site before her slaves reached it. * Several districts away, in the noble quarters that sat at the far end of Summit's commercial ring, a room on the third floor of a rented manor was furniture that did not belong to the building. The chairs were imported. The table was lacquered in three coats of an expensive mixture.

Along the walls hung four portraits, each one depicting the same young woman at slightly different ages, rendered in oils by four different painters. Between two of the portraits, a marble bust sat on a dedicated pedestal, carved to the same face. The young woman herself was seated at the lacquered table. She was listening to a man sweat. The merchant-noble across from her was a broad, heavy man who had purchased his title through a guild investment some years ago.

He held a cloth napkin with one hand and dabbed it around his forehead and neck.

"Y-Your Highness," he said, "House Reingarde is overstepping itself. With the development of this railway, the loss of profits is… it is simply going to be too much. The carriage routes alone—""I understand," the young woman said. Her face was calm. She had the kind of face that painters liked: even features, large eyes, and an innocent expression that would make the other person feel fond of her.

The four portraits on the wall had each captured a slightly different interpretation of it, but they were all of the same concept.

"I'll see what I can do," she said. The merchant-noble exhaled. His napkin-work slowed.

"T-thank you, Your Highness. Truly. I knew that coming to you was the right… that is, I am grateful, Your Highness. Most grateful." He stood, bowed twice, and left. The door clicked shut. The young woman remained seated for a moment. Then she stood and moved to the window.

"Sebas." A man wearing a butler uniform appeared from the side of the room. He was tall, grey-haired at the temples.

"Yes, my lady." In spite of her innocent-demeanor and face, the words she spoke showed otherwise.

"Would you be a dear and burn those chairs and the table? They're filthy now."

"Of course, my lady." Outside, Summit's streets were moving through the business of the mid-morning. She watched a section of the tram line from here, the rails running straight through what had once been a carriage road.

'Celestia von Reingarde.' Maribelle Aurelis, First Imperial Princess, had interacted with her for years. After all, they had an arrangement when they were younger. Celestia's influence within the northern duchy in exchange for Maribelle's support at courting her brother. Both of them had benefited, and both had understood what they were getting. But that had been before the annulment.

'You've changed quite a lot,' Maribelle thought, ' since that evening.' That night… it was as if she was looking at a different person. She was as haughty, prideful, and arrogant as she had always known Celestia. But… it was different. Slapping her brother? Defeating an imperial knight? And then there was this; noble girls who lost their betrothals did not typically go on to commission city infrastructure.

'You were useful before. Why did you have to go and break our deal? And why have you changed so much?' The tram line sat in the street below, unchanged by her looking at it. Maribelle turned from the window.