Infinite Reincarnation – Arthur Hurt - Chapter 158



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Infinite Reincarnation – Arthur Hurt Chapter 158

28-Military supply

Originally, such information was confidential to his rivals, but since it was information that could be found out anyway, Arthur honestly showed the list of deliverables and the expected delivery price list that he had shown to the Plavan General to Viscount Bartrand.

When he saw that, he jumped.

“That’s ridiculous!”

“What is it?”

“How can there be such a delivery price?!”

“Uh… because I didn’t add much margin?”

At Arthur’s words, Viscount Bartrand looked puzzled and then made a suspicious expression.

“Aren’t you going to show any sign of sincerity?”

“A sign of sincerity?”

“Yes, to the generals who gave permission for the military supplies.”

Arthur felt something was off about those words, but he pretended to be innocent on the outside.

“Should I do that?”

“If we don’t do it, there’s no way we’ll get permission to supply the military?!”

Bartrand raised his voice again this time, but it felt different. At first, he was angry because a competitor had appeared who had cut off his livelihood so ruthlessly, but after hearing the price Arthur could supply and the reason for it, he felt a sense of urgency.

Arthur could guess why his attitude had changed, but he kept his cool and pretended to be innocent to avoid getting entangled.

“No… I was just going to sell it at a reasonable price, so I asked you to be more considerate of my brother’s promotion review… … .”

At the sight of Arthur trailing off, Viscount Bartrand pounded his chest as if he felt suffocated. His bulging belly rippled.

“You idiot who can’t tell the difference between heaven and earth! Do you know what you’ve just done?”

Yeah, I know. But the words that came out of my mouth were different.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

When Arthur lowered his head, Bartrand could not bring himself to say the words “military supply bribery”, so he just hit his poor chest. He’ll get hurt if he keeps doing that.

“Anyway, I’ll raise the delivery price by at least two, no, three times more than it is now! Do you understand?!”

“Uh… That’s fine with me, but would that make it possible for me to supply the military? What about my brother’s promotion?”

“Ugh! I’ll help you! Anyway, it’s three times! Three times! Do you understand?!”

When Arthur asked innocently, Viscount Bartrand gritted his teeth and said, “I came to protest and ended up helping, but right now, it was more important to put out the spark that had been lit.”

Viscount Bartrand, who had repeatedly urged Arthur to raise the price, hurried back.

Arthur came out to the door and saw him off, offering a greeting, but Viscount Bartrand, who seemed to be in a hurry, simply waved his hand in greeting and jumped into the carriage, urging the coachman on.

Looking at that sight, Kadan couldn’t help but be amazed.

“Wow, you’re more nimble than you look.”

“If someone’s feet are hit with fire, their footwork becomes lax.”

I could guess why Bartrand was in such a hurry. He must have been in such a hurry to put out the embers of the powder keg of military supply corruption. It is not unusual for small-scale corruption to be entangled in military supply, so it could be said that military supply corruption is an open secret, but there is a limit to everything. It must have gone beyond that limit, which is why he is moving so hastily.

Arthur tried to avoid the repercussions by pretending to be naive and ignorant as much as possible, but since he didn’t know the scale of the military supply corruption, he couldn’t know how far things would go. However, looking at the four-fold increase in the supply price and the attitude of the Plavan government, it seemed like the matter wouldn’t just go down the drain.

Above all, wasn’t the timing right? At a time when the Kingdom of Jatra was preparing for a retaliatory war of preemption, it was difficult for a large-scale military supply scandal to go quietly.

But Priest Kadan, who knew nothing about military corruption, was impressed by other aspects.

“Sir, how can you be so kind?”

This was Arthur’s response to Viscount Bartrand. He responded to the man who had been so rude and shouting without even a single frown, and then quickly changed his attitude and sent him away. To Kadan, who did not know the whole story, it must have seemed like magic.

Arthur replied.

“Because it benefits me?”

“Oh!”

Arthur’s stubbornness forced him to continue speaking as Kadan was impressed.

“Kindness that comes from the heart is the most desirable, but from the perspective of worldly wisdom, the meaning of always being kind to others is… … .”

As Arthur’s words grew longer, Kadan’s expression grew increasingly bored and even disgusted.

Yes, being consistently kind to others, regardless of whether they are being mean or not, is a discipline and self-discipline that I have, and it is a virtue that gives me the confidence of consistency in the eyes of others?

“But why did you do that to the Johnson family?”

Cardan, who was getting tired of Arthur’s nagging, couldn’t hold back his snort and started to spit on him. If it was a virtue to always treat others kindly, shouldn’t he have treated those thugs kindly instead of beating them up?

Arthur tilted his head.

“Why is that?”

“You got beaten up.”

“You taught me a kind lesson.”

Kadan tilted his head as if he didn’t understand, but then he felt something pass through his mind as Arthur stared at him intently. It was a condensed memory. A memory of the time when he looked down on the death penalty and rebelled.

Of course, that night’s memory was also included. Thinking back now, was that the moment when my outlook on life changed?

And then I realized. Ah, the executioner was kind back then. He was kind enough to teach me a lesson by beating me with a stick.

Arthur asked, looking at Cardan who had a knowing expression on his face.

“all right?”

To that question, Kadan nodded in understanding. Arthur’s death sentence was as strange as it was great.

* * *

After Bartrand’s visit, Arthur concentrated on the work of the workshop. He was busy taking care of his surroundings, but he couldn’t ignore the guild’s work. It was time to take care of the guild he was a part of.

The music box business, which had been booming, was gradually seeing a decline in demand as competitors emerged. However, it was not possible to squeeze out guild members or reduce the number of lines. In other words, was it a situation where a new source of income was needed?

Of course, since the Royal Central Army was being strengthened, it was possible to jump into the military supplies business, but the immediate consequences were too much to jump into.

Military supply corruption. A huge scandal broke out, involving all parties, including royalists, nobles, and neutrals.

There was no doubt that the spark had started with Arthur Hutt. Of course, the one who had ignited the spark was the loyalist and commoner officer, Plavan Jeongwi, but in the current situation, if the Tsuraz Craft Guild entered the military supply market, there was a risk that they would unite those who were confused by the military supply corruption scandal. That’s right, those bastards! It’s Arthur Hutt and the Tsuraz Craft Guild’s fault!

Arthur heard that the military bribery investigation officer, Plavan, took a risk and reported it to the king. He was definitely crazy.

Anyway, it is said that the king exploded with rage after receiving a report on the military supply corruption. He said that because of this kind of military supply corruption, he lost the war to reclaim the Traba Basin.

However, such a pretext did not serve as an excuse for the king to subdue the nobles. It was not that he was unaware of it from the beginning, and it was not only a certain faction that committed the military supply corruption.

That in itself was a question of whether this country’s military was really all right, but it was positive in that it discovered structural problems in the military supply system ahead of the war with the Kingdom of Jatra.

However, there was a sharp difference of opinion on how to improve it, so naturally the king, who wanted to centralize and control the supply, and the nobles, who wanted to prevent it, confronted each other.

It was certainly convenient to centralize supply, but for it to be efficient, there was a requirement: a large and clean bureaucracy capable of drawing up supply plans with precision and accuracy. A sort of staff force, perhaps?

However, the Kingdom of Skara did not have such an organization, nor such an idea, nor even the ability to do so, so the nobles’ view was that a unified supply system would eventually degenerate into a power tool that would support the king’s tyranny.

In addition, there were financial issues. In order to achieve the unified supply system that the king wanted, a unified source of funds was also needed. In this case, the sources of funds that had been provided through the sale of official posts, such as nobles donating a certain amount of defense funds when they became officers, and through bribery and connections, would disappear, so more national finances would have to be invested. Considering that the military supply corruption that was recently discovered started from such structural contradictions and thus began with livelihood-type corruption, the problem was ultimately financial.

After carefully examining the words of the nobles who opposed him with such logic, the king, who had to spend money out of the national treasury, that is, his own pocket, to unify the military supply system, had no choice but to reach an agreement with the nobles on how to somehow resolve the corruption in military supplies.

Even among his supporters, the royalists, there were those who hoped the king would restrain his greed, but wasn’t it the fact that the money was coming out of his own pocket that had a bigger influence on his decision? Arthur thought so as he watched the situation unfold.

“So what happens?”

“You are willing to compete on delivery price.”

Arthur’s question was answered by Plavan Jeongwi. He felt that he needed to know the situation of Arthur’s return, so he visited him and gave him the necessary information.

But that wasn’t what Arthur was asking.

“No, it’s my brother’s promotion review.”

“Well, I have to work hard.”

Arthur’s eyes narrowed. It was a casual remark by Plavan Jeongwi, but if he had not made the military supply corruption issue this big in the first place, Arthur would have found a supplier who could supply a reasonable amount of supplies, Hans would have gotten points on his performance evaluation, and the military would have gotten cheaper supplies. Everyone would have been happy.

But to throw everything away just because you don’t like it… That was a really useless greeting.

“I guess I should pay a defense fund.”

The reason I didn’t want to pay the defense contribution was because that was something that only officers could pay. Why would a commoner have money to pay the defense contribution? The reason commoners go to the military in the first place is to earn a living, so a defense contribution? It was like putting the cart before the horse.

So, the soldiers had an unpleasant side to officers. They were given the position of commanding them simply because they were from wealthy and successful families, without knowing the hardships of military life and without having proven their abilities.

It’s not that there weren’t talented people who were promoted to officer level because their abilities were recognized, but it was clear that there was some prejudice against those who were promoted by paying defense contributions.

Promotion through military supplies was the same in some ways, but it was more sincere than officers who just printed money and got promoted. At least it means that they investigated what supplies were and what the army needed. If Hans and Arthur were not brothers, it could have been recognized as a way to receive support from a wealthy person because of their ability.

Anyway, despite the disadvantages of promotion through such defense funds, the reason Arthur mentioned such a method was because there was going to be a war in the future. Wouldn’t it increase the survival rate of his older brother Hans if he had a slightly higher position in preparation for the war?

If Arthur were to evaluate war from a cynical perspective, war would be a game of exchange where the young are sacrificed to place medals on the chests of the old. But if we were to place more medals on the chests of our old people, we would win and our young people would die less, which is the fucking game that war is.

If I had known there was going to be a war, I wouldn’t have enlisted Hans… Arthur felt sorry, but it was already in the past.

Meanwhile, Flavan frowned as if he didn’t like Arthur’s mention of the defense fund.

“The magic of selling official positions kills the morale of the military and hinders the selection of excellent talent.”

“Have you ever said that to His Majesty the King?”

“I did.”