Chapter 32: The Concrete Jungle and the CEO's Deduction

The rattling military carriage finally crested the last major hill of the eastern road. Inside, Alistair was practically vibrating with anxiety, his crooked glasses slipping down his sweaty nose. Julian looked nauseous in his itchy wool, and Aurelia—”Aura”—was leaning eagerly out the window.

As they approached the outskirts of Dian Village, the Duke expected the wooden gates to fly open at the sight of his royal crest. Instead, a heavy wooden barricade completely blocked the main road.

“Halt!” a booming voice commanded.

Three men wearing sleek, black leather armor—the Vanguard—stepped in front of the horses. They carried heavy crossbows, their expressions entirely deadpan.

The Duke shoved the carriage door open, his patience completely exhausted. “I am Duke Balmarrat Matthew! Lower the barricade at once!”

The lead Vanguard guard didn’t flinch. He marched right up to the carriage, pulling a heavy logbook and a charcoal pencil from his belt. “By order of Lord Takuya Kazuha, all incoming traffic must be logged and verified. No exceptions for titles. State your business and the names of your passengers.”

Before the Duke could explode, the guard physically leaned his upper body into the carriage, holding up a glowing oil lantern to inspect the interior. The sudden intrusion caused a chaotic chain reaction: Julian shrieked and scrambled backward onto Alistair’s lap, Alistair let out a terrified squeak, and Aurelia instinctively raised her fists, ready to punch the heavily armed guard in the throat.

“Identify yourselves,” the guard grunted, completely ignoring the tangle of screaming nobles.

“Stand down, Vanguard!” a familiar voice yelled over the din.

Silas came jogging down the dirt path. The head of construction was completely covered in white chalk dust, carrying a massive roll of blueprints under his arm. He quickly flashed a carved wooden token to the guards. “They are clear! The Duke is the primary investor of the Syndicate. Let them through!”

The guards smoothly stepped back and lifted the barricade. Silas pulled himself into the carriage, coughing out a cloud of chalk dust that made Julian sneeze violently.

“Apologies, Duke Balmarrat,” Silas grinned, wiping his brow with a dirty rag. “Lord Takuya’s new border policies are absolute. We have a dedicated perimeter patrol now. Welcome back to Dian Village.”

As the carriage rolled past the massive Rammed Earth walls, Julian and Aurelia pressed their faces against the glass. Their jaws physically dropped. The muddy, desperate refugee camp the Duke had described weeks ago was completely gone. In its place was the chaotic, roaring skeleton of an industrial metropolis.

Everywhere they looked, the village was heavily under construction.

“By the Gods,” Julian whispered, his eyes wide. “What is all this?”

Silas proudly pointed out the window, eager to act as a tour guide. “We are laying the new dual-road system, young master. See there?”

Laborers were deep in excavated trenches, laying down massive foundational stones. Beside them, a smoother, raised pedestrian walkway was being framed with wooden molds. Heavy horse-drawn carts carrying steel rebar and a gray, sludgy powder rumbled past them.

“And over there,” Silas pointed to a massive plot of land surrounded by newly built brick walls. Inside the walls, the wooden framing and deep stone foundations of a massive, sprawling complex were being erected. “That is Master Kaguya’s General Hospital. The main ward is still just scaffolding, but the sterilization wing is being framed today. Even the quarantine units have their own isolated foundations.”

The Duke stared at the sheer scale of the construction. “A hospital that size? It rivals the Royal Keep!”

Silas chuckled, pointing to another walled-in area where carpenters were hammering wooden beams into a large, multi-roomed structure. In the courtyard, half-finished wooden play structures were being assembled. “The new schoolhouse, Duke Balmarrat. The children need a secure place to exert energy and learn so the laborers can work without distraction.”

But what truly stunned the royals was the commercial and residential division.

Silas pointed toward the center of the town, where a massive, standalone structure was rising. “That large white and gray building is the Market Mall. It is strictly a two-story commercial space for large-scale trading, merchant stalls, and bulk goods. No one lives there.”

“Two floors?” Aurelia accidentally whispered, instantly clamping her hand over her mouth. Vertical architecture for commoners was a concept unheard of in the Cynthia Kingdom.

“Indeed,” Silas nodded. He then pointed to a completely separate sector of the village, surrounded by a low, sturdy stone wall. “And that walled sector is the residential area. Lord Takuya designed it for high-density accommodation. Inside that low wall, we are building rows of two-story flat buildings for the workers and their families to live comfortably. To save them from walking to the Market Mall every day, we are building a few small shoplots directly into the residential wall to supply basic needs—bread, salted meat, and simple tools.”

The carriage finally rolled to a stop in front of the Administrative Headquarters, a sturdy building that hummed with frantic activity.

The Duke ushered Julian and Aurelia inside. The main hall was a sea of desks, overflowing ledgers, and the rapid, deafening clack-clack-clack of eighteen Sempoas calculating numbers at blinding speed.

At the front of the room stood Takuya. He was in his element, a ruthless CEO directing his corporate machine. He was rapidly signing requisitions, pointing at maps, and barking orders to Hameel.

“Takuya!” the Duke called out.

Takuya looked up, the heavy bags under his eyes barely diminishing the sharp, predatory gleam in his gaze. He walked over, offering a respectful bow before shaking the Duke’s hand. “Duke Balmarrat. You are back early. And you brought guests.”

Takuya’s dark eyes swept over Julian and Aurelia.

To the Duke, they looked like dirty peasants. To Takuya, who had spent a decade in corporate boardrooms reading micro-expressions and assessing threats, the disguises were hilariously transparent.

He looked at “Jules.” The boy was wearing scratchy wool, but his posture was timid, and his fingernails were immaculately manicured. More importantly, when Takuya glanced at the boy’s hands, there was not a single ink stain, paper cut, or writer’s callus on his fingers. Impossible for an apprentice scribe.

Takuya then looked at “Aura.” She had ash on her cheeks, but her skin beneath was flawless. Furthermore, she stood with her shoulders squared, her chin slightly raised, and her weight perfectly balanced—the rigid, ingrained posture of high-court etiquette, not a feral street orphan.

Takuya immediately deduced they were high nobility, likely the royal children the Duke was so fond of. A massive, invisible chessboard instantly materialized in Takuya’s mind. The Duke brought the royal bloodline directly to me. He decided to ruthlessly play along to leverage their presence.

“My new apprentices,” the Duke lied smoothly. “Jules is a scribe here to learn economics. And his sister, Aura. She is, ah… feral. And strictly mute.”

“Fascinating,” Takuya said, his tone perfectly flat. He looked directly into Julian’s terrified eyes. “Well, Jules. We have no room for dead weight here. If you want to learn economics, you learn it in the trenches.”

Takuya gestured to the Head Accountant. “Take the boy. Put him on the audit team.”

Before Julian could protest, he was dragged to a desk, shoved into a chair, and handed a Sempoa. The Head Accountant slammed a five-hundred-page ledger of raw iron extraction data in front of the future King.

“Double-Entry Bookkeeping, boy,” the accountant barked rapidly, his fingers flying over his own Sempoa. “Every transaction is recorded twice. Debits on the left, credits on the right. The foundational equation is Assets equals Liabilities plus Equity. If the final balance does not equal absolute zero, you find the missing copper. Now, look at the beads. The bottom beads are ones; the top bead is five. Slide them to add. Go!”

Julian stared at the Sempoa, his brain completely short-circuiting. The math was so advanced, so flawlessly logical, that the Crown Prince realized he was completely out of his depth mathematically compared to Takuya’s trained commoners.

While Julian was being mathematically humbled, Aurelia—bored and realizing she couldn’t speak anyway—slipped out the side door of the headquarters.

She wandered through the bustling construction site, dodging men carrying timber, until she found herself near the walled perimeter of the hospital. Off to the side, operating out of a temporary, sterilized wooden structure, was the clinic.

Aurelia peeked inside. The room smelled sharply of high-proof alcohol and boiling herbs.

Standing over a wooden table, carefully examining a glass vial, was Kaguya. He wore a pristine, fitted white tunic, his jet-black hair tied neatly back. His face was intensely focused, coldly analytical, and remarkably handsome.

Aurelia stepped forward, accidentally kicking a metal bucket. CLANG.

Kaguya’s head snapped up. His dark eyes locked onto Aurelia. For a moment, time in the clinic seemed to completely stop. Despite the ash smeared on her cheeks and the ridiculous, oversized flat cap hiding her hair, her emerald eyes burned with an intense, undeniable fire. Kaguya stood frozen, genuinely in awe of her breathtaking natural beauty.

Aurelia was equally stunned. She had met handsome knights and polished lords all her life, but none possessed the sharp, composed, and striking handsomeness of the doctor standing before her.

“Who are you?” Kaguya asked, his voice unexpectedly soft, though still carrying his professional tone. “This is a sterile zone. Contaminants are not welcome.”

Aurelia panicked. She remembered her “mute” persona. She began waving her hands wildly, pointing to her mouth, shaking her head, and pantomiming locking her lips with an invisible key.

Kaguya stared at her frantic charade for three seconds. Then, the clinical coldness in his expression melted away, replaced by a rare, genuinely honest smile.

“You can cease the performance,” Kaguya said, his voice warming. “It is insulting to my profession.”

Aurelia froze, her hands hovering in the air.

“I am a surgeon,” Kaguya explained, walking over to the washbasin. “I study human anatomy. A true mute who attempts to vocalize relies heavily on diaphragmatic pressure, and the structural tension in their neck muscles becomes highly pronounced. You breathe calmly from your upper chest, and your glottal muscles are entirely relaxed. You are faking it. Badly.”

Aurelia dropped her hands, letting out a soft breath. She was less embarrassed and more genuinely intrigued by his sheer, terrifying intellect. “You are infuriatingly observant.”

“It keeps my patients alive,” Kaguya replied. He gestured toward the washbasin. “Since you have already breached the perimeter, you might as well make yourself useful. Wash your hands in that basin with the lye soap. Scrub up to the elbows. I have an Elven architect recovering from a shattered femur in the back. I need to check the geometric traction on his splint, and I require an extra set of hands to hold the weight steady.”

Aurelia’s eyes widened with genuine curiosity. “An Elf? Here? Show me.”

✽✽✽✽✽✽

Back in the Administrative Office, the Duke and Takuya had retreated to a private back room.

The Duke detailed the meeting at the Royal Capital. He explained how the King was mesmerized by the recurve bow and the Clear-Water, but more importantly, he warned Takuya about Earl Cedric Thalwyn.

“The Earl’s faction looked ready to commit murder when I told them you were auditing my ledgers,” the Duke said grimly. “Thalwyn is corrupt to the bone. If he thinks you are a threat to his smuggling operation, he will strike.”

Takuya nodded slowly, his expression hardening. He had officially entered the political war. “Let him try. Vane’s Black Vanguard is fully operational. If Thalwyn sends assassins or spies, they will disappear into the forest before they ever see our walls.”

The Duke sighed, leaning back in his chair. “It is a heavy burden, Takuya. But seeing this village… it gives me hope. Walk with me. Explain this madness outside.”

Takuya led the Duke out the back door, away from the chaos of the headquarters. They walked along the edge of the deep trenches being dug for the dual-road system.

“The King is broke because the kingdom is inefficient,” Takuya began, shifting into full presentation mode. “You cannot tax a dying economy. To make money, you must facilitate rapid, unbroken production. That requires infrastructure.”

Takuya pointed toward the northern hills. “First, water. I am building a Roman-style Aqueduct. We dam the high river, use gravity to funnel the water into a massive central Castellum Aquae—a pressure tower. From there, subterranean pipes feed clean water directly into the residential area and the hospital. No more peasants wasting half their day carrying buckets. Time saved is labor gained.”

The Duke stared at the trenches. “And the two-story buildings in the residential flats? Wood cannot support that much weight safely in high winds, especially housing so many families.”

“It isn’t just wood,” Takuya corrected, pointing back toward the scaffolding. “It is reinforced concrete. A mixture of lime, aggregate, and water poured over a skeleton of high-carbon steel rods. It doesn’t just dry; it cures through an exothermic chemical reaction. It gives the building the compressive strength of solid stone, but the steel allows it to flex without shattering. We build upward safely.”

Takuya stopped walking and looked Duke Balmarrat dead in the eye. “But to power this, to truly industrialize, I am moving beyond wood and coal. I need to expand our borders. I need massive tracts of land to the west, near the Zephyr Forest edge.”

“For what?” the Duke asked, thoroughly baffled.

“For two new industries,” Takuya said, his voice dropping with intensity. “First, a Rubber Plantation. Inori found seeds of a tree that bleeds a white sap—latex. When mixed with sulfur and heat, it creates an airtight, flexible material called rubber. We need it to seal high-pressure steam engines and create sterile medical equipment. We will hold a global monopoly.”

“And the second?”

“An Oil Refinery,” Takuya grinned, the thrill of the capitalist taking over. “Beneath the clay, we struck crude oil. It is a highly pressurized sludge of ancient hydrocarbons trapped beneath the bedrock. I am building a fractional distillation tower. We will boil this black sludge. The lightest vapors will condense into Kerosene—a liquid fuel that burns infinitely brighter and cleaner than animal fat. We will light the streets and the hospital safely. The heavy sludge left over is Asphalt, which we will use to pave our roads to be perfectly waterproof.”

The Duke’s mind reeled. Steel skeletons, bleeding trees, and burning black mud. It was practically sorcery, grounded entirely in logic.

“Take the land,” the Duke agreed instantly, waving his hand. “Take whatever acreage you require toward the forest. Just send the land-claim paperwork to my office in Suebic Town for the official record.”

“Excellent,” Takuya smiled, his corporate empire officially securing its real estate.

They stood together on a small rise, watching the sun dip below the horizon as the blast furnaces cast a fiery, orange glow over the skeletal frame of the rising city.

“Your apprentices are doing well,” Takuya said casually, slipping his hands into his pockets. “Jules is currently having a mental breakdown trying to understand basic accounting, and Aura is likely wandering around Kaguya’s sterile clinic.”

The Duke chuckled. “They are sheltered. They need the discipline.”

“Indeed,” Takuya said, his voice terrifyingly calm. “Though, for future reference, Duke Balmarrat…”

Takuya turned his head, his dark eyes locking onto the Duke with absolute, piercing clarity.

“…If you are going to smuggle the Crown Prince of the Cynthia Kingdom and the Royal Princess into my village, you might want to ensure the boy has at least one callus on his hands, and the girl doesn’t stand like she’s balancing a crown on her head.”

The Duke completely froze. The blood drained entirely from his face, his jaw dropping open in absolute, paralyzing shock.

Takuya simply smiled, looking back at his city. “Don’t worry, Duke Balmarrat. Your secret is safe with the Syndicate.”