Chapter 3: Good Orders, Good Inspections (2)
Translator: Pai_
"Oh dear, my apologies. Sir Gatekeeper."
The driver bowed deeply.
It was an impressively servile set of joints.
"This dim-witted commoner should've known his place. Ah, my sincerest apologie..."
But the driver's words never finished.
Before he could pull the longsword from beneath the cargo wagon, clang! Su-ho had already swung his spear, one step ahead.
"......!"
A clean hit.
The longsword, struck by the spear, went flying and tumbled across the ground.
The driver's eyes went wide. For a mere lower-class gatekeeper, that spear moved far too well. He hadn't expected this kind of reflexes, not in the slightest.
The truth was, Su-ho had a secret advantage.
【Illegally Trafficked Longsword】
The Smuggling Magnifying Glasses, of course.
He had pinpointed the weapon's location from the start, marked out in red like graffiti. As luck would have it, the weapon the driver had hidden also happened to be an illegal item.
'So it wasn't false advertising after all. The item quality is actually good!'
It was almost a shame this was a single-day consumable.
'Gotta earn points fast so I can order some of the other products too!'
After Su-ho mentally bumped up his favorability toward the Prophecy Newspaper, he spun his spear in a whirling circle like a windmill.
His hand movements were light.
"Are we really going to escalate things here?"
His voice was light too.
Like he was asking about the weather.
"I'm giving you the chance to turn yourself in right now."
"......."
"It's not too late, mister. His Majesty's mercy runs wide and deep."
Under the thinly veiled threat, the driver's eyes darted around.
His sister, who had finally come to her senses and nocked an arrow. The other gatekeepers. The Royal Capital Guard soldiers stationed on the walls. Together they formed a wall of bodies.
Beyond them, a crowd of onlookers who had caught wind of the commotion buzzed and murmured.
"......."
The driver's gaze returned forward.
The gatekeeper's stance with the spear. His face radiated no hostility whatsoever, like some desert fennec fox, and yet his posture... Surely a mere lower-class gatekeeper couldn't have awakened Gang Qi, but still.
That strike just now.
His hand was still tingling.
A flash of deliberation crossed the driver's face.
"......I surrender."
"Phew, smart choice."
One case, closed.
* * *
The culprit was arrested without further resistance.
Escorting him to the interrogation room was left to the other clan members. Su-ho had more important business to attend to.
Namely, the Crystal Leaf, worth its weight in gold!
This bounty, packed to the brim on the wagon before him, was the real job Su-ho needed to handle personally.
"You....... H-how did you know?"
His sister came up beside him, hesitating.
"Know what?"
Su-ho answered offhandedly as he pulled a glass bottle from inside his coat. The bottle was filled with bright red slime.
Seal ink. Slime Seal Ink. The premium version of that red stuff used for stamping documents.
Supposedly some accidental invention that came about while the Alchemy Fortress was fiddling around with slime-type monsters, or something along those lines.
"What do you mean 'know what'? Obviously the Crystal Leaf! How did you figure out he was smuggling it?"
"Hmm. Big brother's intuition?"
"Ugh, this absolute lunatic, I swear. Can't exactly sew his lips shut with an arrow. Ughhh......."
Using the Slime Seal Ink was simple.
First, you wrapped the confiscated goods with a sacred cord. Since the entire cargo wagon was seized goods in this case, well, roughly, more or less. After draping the cord around it, you poured the Slime Seal Ink on with a practiced hand, and then...
Squirm, squirm. Remarkably, the red slime burrowed on its own into the gaps between the wagon and the cord, sealing the confiscated goods.
Then you pressed the stamp onto it, and thud! Finished with a seal.
【Seal (封印)】
【Royal Capital, South Great Gate (王都 南大門)】
【House of Obsidian Baron (黑要石 男爵家)】
【Lower-class Gate Soldier, Mun Su-ho (下級門卒 門守戶)】
He held the stamp in place, letting it sit for a moment. The still-soft Slime Seal Ink hardened in an instant, and the gatekeeper's official seal came through crisp and clear.
A splendid harmony of the modern Kingdom Language and the ancient Dragon Language!
"Mm."
Su-ho's satisfied nod carried a subtle hint of pride.
It might not look like much, but pressing a clean stamp onto Slime Seal Ink actually required proper timing and technique.
"Good. That's my work for the day, done."
"It's not even past lunch yet, you know?"
"Now, now, dear sister. If not for me, that Crystal Leaf would've made it through and eventually dragged our entire family straight to ruin. Everyone was in chaos and I'm the one who scored the bust, so I'd say that counts as a full day's work done solo. Right?"
"......."
His sister was about to fire something back, but hesitated.
Unlike the illegitimate child before her, she was legitimate-born. A fine education and natural talent, that twin-horse carriage, had driven her childhood forward.
No matter how infuriatingly soft and easygoing the illegitimate child's face looked, as always, how could she fail to notice?
That the sentence "would've dragged our entire family to ruin" was really just a polite way of packaging "would've dragged you to ruin".
And so she wavered. Thinking about the grandmother's keepsake Su-ho had found for her that morning made her waver even more. But then, when she thought about how this illegitimate child was the reason their mother had transformed from a loving parent into a bitter wraith who coughed up blood before passing away...
Damn.
"......Thanks."
"A little louder, please. With genuine respect for your oppa. Put your heart and soul into it, and say: 'Thank you so very much.'"
"Drop dead. Please."
His sister turned and left.
Faced with such a textbook reaction, Su-ho, born of another world, could only marvel.
The times were truly what they were. The kingdom might be uncivilized, but thanks to that, its people still carried a classical charm. A little sister who spat curses at her oppa (not really), bristling with every word... where else but the kingdom could one savor such fine tradition?
"Hey, what are you all doing! Everyone! Whether Bear-Light Stone turned to garbage or not, we still have to do our jobs properly!"
For the record, Si-ah did keep the unspoken promise she had made with Su-ho.
Her shouting came blasting from the other side of the guard post almost immediately.
"Uncle! Auntie! Does it make sense that I, the youngest one here, am the one pulling wagons out? This is all your fault!"
"W-wait, Si-ah. Why are you blaming us for......."
"Can't you see the line right now? I've got so much work dumped on me that I nearly missed the drugs because I was overwhelmed! Just watch if it's like this during the night shift too. The ghosts will break right through the gate. And Father? Where has Father disappeared to now?"
"Your brother Mun Geum just stepped out to the privy. More importantly, that over there......."
"Ugh. Tell the illegitimate child to deal with that himself. Anyway, everyone get back to work! Make that money!"
Once his sister cracked the whip, the family members stole envious glances at Su-ho, then somehow or other returned to their duties.
At any rate, ever since the grandchildren had died in the last war, the clan's heir was the granddaughter. Aside from their father, she held the most authority.
The stragglers whose retirement plans had been obliterated by the Bear-Light Stone crash the night before swallowed their tears and reformed their ranks.
"Oh hey, things seem to be moving faster now!"
The drivers waiting in line perked up as well.
"Ahh, finally, what a relief!"
"Did you see that gatekeeper fight earlier? That young sir really went and......."
"Crystal Leaf smuggling, huh. Wouldn't have enough necks even if he had two. Absolute madman."
The inspection process returned to normal.
As always, it was painfully slow, and the procedures and paperwork that needed checking were maddeningly complicated, and the tightrope walk between maintaining public order and covering one's backside was stretched razor-thin.
But this was the normal flow at the Royal Capital's gates.
"Mm."
Thanks to it all, Su-ho finally had some breathing room and ducked into the guard post to check the Prophecy Newspaper.
His hands flipped idly through the newspaper and flyers, then stopped short. His eyes went wide.
And for good reason: the articles had changed.
【Correction of False Report!】
「Prophecy Newspaper, October 16th Edition, Page 1.」
「Regarding the report that 'Mun Si-ah ssi has been searching for her late grandmother's keepsake for four days with no leads'. We offer our sincerest apologies to our subscribers.」
「Upon investigation, it has been confirmed that Mun Si-ah ssi had already found the keepsake on October 15th. We hereby issue this correction.」
【Correction of False Report!】
「Prophecy Newspaper, October 16th Edition, Page 2.」
「Regarding the report that 'a large quantity of the illegally cultivated narcotic herb Crystal Leaf was confirmed among cargo wagons that family members let pass through the South Gate yesterday'. We offer our sincerest apologies to our subscribers.」
「Upon investigation, it has been confirmed that the South Gate detected the illegally cultivated narcotic herbs in a timely manner. We hereby issue this correction.」
"......!"
Su-ho's jaw dropped. The articles were being corrected in real time!
But what truly stunned the Newspaper Otaku in him was something else entirely.
'They... acknowledged the false report and then issued the correction?'
'They didn't even shrink the text down. It's enormous!'
In Su-ho's understanding of the world, this was simply unheard of.
'They even put the correction at the very top of page one?!'
Even in his previous life, media outlets that actually delivered corrections properly could be counted on one hand.
The vast majority would somehow print the text small enough to be mistaken for ants, then brush it off with a "anyway, we corrected it, cheers" and call it a day.
And how much worse was this uncivilized kingdom?
Su-ho had lived as a citizen of the kingdom for nearly twenty years, and he had never once witnessed a correction notice.
Numerous concepts had long since fled from the minds of the kingdom's journalists, but among them, "fairness" had never existed in the first place.
'What manner of true journalism is this!'
Su-ho became a fan of the Prophecy Newspaper on the spot.
There had been plenty of factors, cheats and whatnot, but the fact that what truly dealt the finishing blow to his heart was a few scraps of correction notices... well, that was just so very him.
Oh, and while it was less surprising, there was one more piece of new information.
This time, the change had appeared not in the newspaper but on the flyer.
【Your actions contributed to a report correction.】
【A thank-you gift is being delivered!】
【You prevented a mental breakdown in Mun Si-ah, a key source for the 'Family Newsletter': Subscription Points +10】
【You eliminated a political threat to Mun Si-ah, a key source for the 'Family Newsletter': Subscription Points +20】
【You neutralized a threat bearing down on your entire blood-related clan, sources for the 'Family Newsletter': +30】
【Current Subscription Points: 60】
Su-ho blinked.
"Oh? I see."
He had been wondering where and how to farm Subscription Points.
It seemed like whenever the content of "tomorrow's article" got "corrected" because of his actions, Subscription Points were given out as a thank-you reward.
Furthermore, the Family Newsletter treated his family members as its reporting sources, meaning the better he protected them, the more points he would earn in return.
In other words.
'A newspaper of truth, built together with its subscriber.......'
He was deeply impressed.
'Magnificent......!'
Suddenly, Su-ho wondered why the Prophecy Newspaper didn't have a portrait of His Majesty the King printed on it like every other newspaper did.
If his loyalty to the Prophecy Newspaper kept growing like this and he inadvertently committed psychological treason, just who exactly was going to take responsibility for that catastrophe?