I Became The Leader Of A Revolution In A Romance Fantasy

< Chapter 22 >

If I had to point out just one of the dumbest aspects of the current state of the Republic, I would unhesitatingly point to the executive branch.

Because, over the past year, that thing is still not fully formed.

Even in the kingdom where bureaucrats had no real power and the king and the House of Lords controlled the details of policies, the executive branch, hit directly by the revolution, was virtually decapitated.

And since then, reorganization has been sluggish.

Whenever one side pushed for something, the other side opposed it in a chaotic mess, leaving the executive branch, which was supposed to run the state, practically dead.

The National Assembly and the Revolutionary Committee were like quack necromancers trying to move that corpse.

There were pros and cons to this.

1. Cons: The country was virtually paralyzed, with only the head causing a ruckus while the body couldn’t move.

2. Pros: If the relevant standing committee members played Go-stop, they could enjoy almost unchecked power.

In fact, having this so-called ‘pro’ was more problematic.

If you were a congressman or a revolutionary committee member, would you want to change such a convenient and favorable situation?

Anyway, because of this, the issuance of government bonds, which should have been pushed by the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, started to be replaced by our own makeshift efforts.

###

It was the moment I got out of the car.

A flood of interview requests swarmed me.

“Congressman! Congressman Hastings!”

“Isn’t this the first time there’s a meeting with the Royalist congressmen? A meeting between the leaders of the Royalist and Revolutionary factions! This seems like a significant political event! Could you please say a few words?”

“Please be honest about your current relationship with Congressman Andrastra!”

“Did you come prepared with a bulletproof vest?”

My media-friendly smile cracked slightly.

The last two guys. I remembered their names.

I’ll make sure they never enter the National Assembly again.

In the meantime, Ms. Lize stood in front of the reporters.

With her frail body, she blocked those scoop-hungry monsters, shouting with all her might.

“Congressman! Please go inside quickly!”

Was that really necessary?

It felt like a zombie movie.

Anyway, Ms. Lize had been acting particularly strange since the explosion incident.

I left her to play her tragic survivor role and entered the Royalist’s office.

###

The office, funded by the mysterious benefactor Count of Monte Cristo, felt more like an exclusive social club than a party office.

Especially with an emphasis on ‘exclusive.’

The moment I stepped inside, I felt like I should have worn a bulletproof vest as hostile gazes poured in from all directions.

“Traitor scum.”

“How dare you set foot in here!”

“Disgrace of the nobility! Your blood is screaming!”

‘What an incredible atmosphere.’

I swept my hair back and laughed.

“Nice to meet you, fellow congressmen. And everyone else.”

A torrent of furious shouts erupted.

The enraged old nobles started throwing all sorts of junk.

Nothing seemed particularly dangerous, so I quietly brushed them off and stood my ground.

At that moment, I heard a familiar voice from the top of the stairs.

“Stop it!”

A voice that instantly froze the crowd.

Visenya Andrastra descended the stairs with a graceful yet firm stride.

Although her appearance was objectively special,

“……”

I somehow got the feeling she had practiced this entrance all night.

Thinking that made it a bit pathetic.

“Princess! Why are you stopping us? It’s not enough to kill that traitor and offer him to our ancestors!”

“If we let him walk out after coming here on his own, the Royalists will become a laughingstock!”

While the Royalist supporters pleaded like that, I watched them with a rather cold expression.

Visenya sighed, “Ehh.”

“If we just let him go, it won’t be us who become a laughingstock, but if you all touch my guest as you please, then my honor will truly become a laughingstock, right?”

“!”

“Ugh!”

The Royalist friends, whose political lives consisted 80% of pretending to be loyalists, were all sunk by that one remark.

They belatedly bit their lips, embodying the image of ‘nobles who want to tear that guy apart right now but endure because they know honor.’

“……”

The filth that had already hit my chest protested subtly, ‘You damn bastards.’

But as a business partner, I could understand this level of duplicity.

Visenya nodded slightly at me and then pointed to the door with a dignified yet aloof gesture.

“Shall we go in?”

“Excuse me.”

And so we entered her office.

#

“But no matter how I think about it, meeting alone in an enclosed space doesn’t seem like a good idea – Oh, my God!”

There was a gaze glaring at me from inside the office.

There was another person here like my Jini back home.

If he stayed still, his presence almost disappeared.

(Of course, Jini being hard to detect in dark places is different in mechanism from having a weak presence.)

“Lord Roche?”

“Eugene Hastings…!”

The red-haired lady was grinding her teeth with a look that seemed like she wanted to devour me at any moment.

“What the-”

What’s her problem now?

I didn’t expect gratitude for the last time, but I thought it would at least serve as some lubricant in our creaky relationship.

Being together in the rubble of a collapsed bombsite isn’t exactly a normal relationship.

But then Visenya chuckled and, with a somewhat complicated expression, rested her chin on her hand.

“You see…”

“Oh, no!”

That’s unexpected.

Even Camille Roche was stopping Visenya from saying something.

Visenya then said, “If Milmil says no, then no it is!” and closed her mouth.

What on earth is going on?

“So, anyway, you came here today because of ‘that rumor,’ right?”

“Oh, has the rumor already spread? There’s no such thing as a secret in politics.”

Visenya tilted her head as if she were about to scold me, then soon gave a honey-sweet smile.

“If you keep pretending not to know, I won’t say anything, even if you are the Count.”

“Hey, it’s Congressman, not Count-”

In her playful, almost childish tone, there was a sharp insight.

“You’re the Count, aren’t you? The one spreading rumors about those bonds.”

No matter how you look at it, my ability to read the political landscape falls short compared to my intellectual capacity, but I guess even this kind of trick couldn’t escape her eyes.

I smiled a bit slyly.

“When entering the enemy’s lair, it helps if the media beats the drums first; it gives the rhythm a bit more life.”

“Learning a lot, aren’t you? I’ll definitely use that next time.”

“The Royalist friends have stiff necks; they haven’t built the kind of rapport with journalists that allows for agile media play.”

We burst into laughter simultaneously without knowing who started it first.

On the other hand, Camille Roche looked like he was about to choke, unable to stand the informal yet factual conversation filled with heavy stones of truth.

I handed Visenya the documents.

“Review them.”

Without a word, Visenya took the documents and carefully flipped through each page.

Then she closed the documents with a snap.

“It’s essentially a Lottery Bond. Instead of interest payments, if you win the ‘Golden Bond,’ you get ten times the face value.”

“The ‘Golden Bond Draw’ happens at the point of purchase, and as the purchase amount exceeds certain thresholds, the probability of winning from a new pool increases.”

“…It’s a truly peculiar product. And if you collect different types of Golden Bonds… hmm.”

Visenya quietly looked at the numbers, her gaze shifting here and there.

“In reality, it’s similar to paying 1.1128% interest to all buyers. Actually, it’s a typical low-risk, low-return bond. No, considering it’s a 10-year bond, with volatility taken into account, it’s more like a middle-risk, low-return bond?”

“?”

Was she really calculating that in her head?

I hurriedly searched the documents and found a neatly written note, ‘approximately 1.1%.’

“…That’s correct.”

Facing a human computer made me feel uneasy.

I was a humanities major!

Now, Visenya was fully engrossed in the documents.

With each page she turned, her golden eyes moved rapidly.

As her focus intensified, her previously upright and elegant posture gradually transformed to resemble that of a kitten, huddled like a developer enduring a late-night shift.

She clutched her knees with one hand while busy flipping through the documents with the other.

Camille, familiar with this sight, quietly filled a glass with some beverage.

As the glass filled, Visenya sipped it eagerly, not even noticing who was refilling it, and licked the drops off her lips.

I was a bit stunned by this unexpected scene.

This was never described in the original story.

I asked Camille, unable to contain my curiosity, despite sensing she still didn’t like me much.

“Is she always like this?”

“…No one can stop the Princess once she’s focused.”

There was a hint of pride in her words.

‘Damn writer. Left out details like this.’

Depictions of Visenya diligently working were skipped over in favor of endless ‘subtle emotional expressions’ that ultimately resulted in a blood-soaked narrative of misery.

Still engrossed in the documents, Visenya mumbled as if sleep-talking.

“The maturity is uniformly 10 years. So, essentially, you’re saying you plan to use the budget freely for 10 years without paying a single cent in interest?”

“That’s right. Considering the scale of the budget we envision, we can’t afford to pay interest annually.”

“I agree. But honestly, if it’s just a Lottery Bond, it doesn’t seem like a very attractive product.”

“Hmm.”

Sharp observation.

Of course, that’s not where it ends.

Visenya, having covered the documents, stretched languidly as if waking up from sleep, the intense concentration clearly having worn her out.

“Uuuuugh! And, hmm, I have two questions.”

She then belatedly noticed me blinking across from her.

“Eek!”

Startled, she covered her face with the documents,

“Ahem, ahem!”

She placed the documents back down with a composed expression as if nothing had happened.

“……”

Wouldn’t it be better to just live a bit more comfortably?

What a princess, always so concerned with appearances.

Anyway, I pretended not to notice her stretching and picked up the interrupted conversation.

“What are you curious about?”

Visenya returned to her poised princess demeanor, as if on cue.

“First, the face value. This is quite unusual, isn’t it?”

I smiled.

“Is that so? What do you think about the face value of the bonds I proposed?”

“…Can I be honest?”

“Of course.”

The princess pondered, “Hmm,” as if she were choosing her words carefully to avoid hurting my feelings.

Then, very cautiously,

“…Really?”

She tilted her head slightly as she said it.

I expected such a response.

I spread my hands in the air and said,

“Well, here’s a headline that comes to mind: ‘History Repeats Itself! The Yield on New Bonds, Possibly-‘”

Hmm, how many times?

Unlike some people, I’m not a crazy mental math machine, so it took me a moment.

But soon, I had the answer.

“The yield on new bonds, possibly 40 quadrillion times.”

“What?”

After a million comes a billion.

After a billion comes a trillion.

A quadrillion is a trillion multiplied by ten thousand.

Visenya was stunned by the unimaginable number.

Then her eyes sparkled.

“Oh, surely not!”

I smiled silently.

I couldn’t help but laugh like a villain, though I was trying to do something good. Why was this happening?