Chapter 13: Paper trailThe Month of Noel, Day 20, Year 681 of the Second Holy CalendarDominic Bck cursed Luce with all his heart. If he were the descendant of a god, then he should be able to curse someone, right? However, despite all of his cursing, nothing happened. He sighed before grabbing the following document, “Child bor ws, this has to be illegal.”

  Dominic had suggested going after the documentation at the bank. Still, for a straightforward reason, the traditionalist faction was the only group that actually used the bank, and they used it religiously. Knowing that and knowing how important money was to a noble, it was obvious to investigate the bank. They would keep documentation of who deposited what and who withdrew what, when, and once you know that, you would know not only how much they were making but when they were making it. Important information, which is why he had suggested it to Luce.

  She had responded by tasking him with managing the whole thing. She sent soldiers to seize all of the documents he requested from the bank while temporarily shutting down the whole business and then dumping them into his p. One positive thing that could be said about this was that she had temporarily suspended his studies so that you could focus on the investigation.

  The bank of House Norton actually had a very good filing system for each bank account; they had a folder for each account, where pieces of paper were divided into three, clearly stating how much money was deposited or withdrawn and when the transaction took pce.

  The current document is hand-detailed with the reports from one of the noble houses making up the traditionalist faction. They were a rather minor house with nothing of particur note about them. On average, Nobles of the traditionalist faction make around 250 gold coins annually. He had no idea if that was a lot or a little, and this particur house had followed that trend so far. But the piece of paper in his hand stated that for some reason, 500 gold coins were deposited at once. He wasn't the least bit surprised that this had happened multiple times.

  He gestured over to the guard at the door who walked over dubiously. He handed the piece of paper to him. “This transaction,” and pointed to it on the document. “Have it investigated.”

  “Your highness, they deposited 500 gold coins what's so surprising about that?”

  Dominic kept his poker face but just barely. This world didn't have basic investigation techniques, and he wasn't dealing with professionals. Hell, he was hardly a professional himself. He probably would have already been indicted if he were dealing with a country with strict ws about privacy and personal information like the United States of America. “This House makes around 15 gold coins a month,” From what he knew, they ran several luxury cigarette stores throughout the Lapetra. “Don't you think it's the least bit strange that 500 gold coins were mysteriously deposited into their account?” Dominic gnced at the document again. “Oh, by an unknown sender.”

  The guard scratched his cheek. “Maybe the head of household won cards or something?”

  “Then he would have deposited it into the bank himself and not had it sent by an unknown sender,” Dominic stated ftly. The guard still looked unconvinced. Is it my appearance that people just assume that I'm wrong or stupid because I look like a child? Dominic thought, “Why am I bothering to expin this to them anyway? They're not actually the ones doing the investigations, they're just delivering my requests to Luce, who actually does the investigation. I don't need them to understand, I just need them to follow orders.”

  “Anyways, just go and do it, tell Luce, then come back here. I'll probably have another one by the time you do.” The guard left with that unconvinced look on his face.

  Oswald, working at the other desk, raised a document. “This one's very suspicious, too.”

  “Put it on the desk. I will have them take care of it when he comes back,” Dominic said without even looking up from his document. Dominic's retainers had finally returned from being under house arrest. He was under strict orders from Luce not to trust them with anything important. Except for his two guard knights and Jane who he was told to trust implicitly.

  “I thought guarding a prince would be more exciting, fending off assassination attempts, overhearing important conversations, and marching off to the battlefield. Who knew it would just be paperwork?” Maria Neivul said from her own desk covered in a filing cabinet worth of documents.

  “Well, you did do one of those things, fending off an assassination attempt,” David commented absent-mindedly from his own desk. “Besides, this isn't actually too far away from what I used to do back in the Army. You spend the mornings training, the afternoons helping whatever staff officer happens to get his cws into you do paperwork.”

  Maria looked at him with a grumpy face. “I might not have taken part in a ‘real battle,’ but I never had to do paperwork so I think that's a you experience.” David didn't seem to understand, but there was a slight rivalry between them. It had to do with the fact that David was appointed solely on his accomplishments, or rather, accomplishment, while Maria was a patented political appointment. Further straining their retionship was that David had taken part in a real war while Maria had not.

  In the Kingdom of Bck, knights had to receive a certain number of Battlefield achievements before being knighted, which was different from every other kingdom. In those kingdoms, nobles were automatically knighted if they received training as a knight once they came of age. Since the kingdom had been peaceful in recent years, Apprentice knights temporarily transferred to the Redtower border regiment, where they engaged in a few raids and skirmishes and received their Knighthood. Which is what Maria had done, but some of the older knights questioned their accomplishments.

  David didn't actually do that, but Maria was slightly prickly around him anyway, always assuming that he was questioning her capabilities. Not helping matters was that David was completely oblivious to her hostility and kept making overtures to get along as colleagues.

  “Will the two of you be quiet? Some of us are actually trying to work,” Jane said irritably.

  “We're just having a bit of a ugh. No need to get so worked up about it, Lady Jane,” David said. He sounded like a schoolboy who knew he was in trouble while talking to the 50-year-old principal. Which was weird since he was in his twenties and Jane was barely 18.

  Jane apparently picked up on it too, scowling at him her fiercest and meanest scowl. For some reason, she didn't like David either, but he suspected this was due to his unprofessional nature. It was far more prone to treating Dominic like a child than a prince, which rubbed Jane the wrong way. She was also scowling at Maria and Oswald, probably for compining and not stopping the conversation earlier. It was technically Oswald's duty as Chief retainer and Dominic's tutor to keep these people in line, which he was clearly not doing, at least in Jane's opinion.

  Should I do something about this? Dominic, while propping his head up on his fist, peered over his desk by sitting on a stack of books. “Is this the first test of my leadership?” Dominic realized, his heart racing, although he wasn't sure if that was because of excitement or nervousness.

  “I'm gd all of you enjoyed your self-appointed break now if you're done, we have a lot of documents to get to before we can have our actual break, so unless you want to go hungry this afternoon, I suggest we get back to it,” Oswald said ftly without even looking up from his desk. “Of course, me, Sophia and His Highness won't go hungry since we are the only ones actually working so we'll get food but the rest of you?” He shrugged and went back to work, which got them all poring over their documents once more in silence.

  “Oh yeah, I forgot delegation,” Dominic felt his excitement die. He hadn't been reincarnated as a middle manager; he'd been reincarnated as someone at the top of the organization, he didn't need to whip the foot soldiers to march.

  Once he was done for the day, he started to get reports back about the investigation findings. This was from yesterday and the day before with discoveries in the documentation. As he expected, you follow the money, you eventually the pile of shit shows up. Bribery, extortion, robbery, embezzlement, and a case of a nobleman selling the secrets of the Kingdom to the kingdom of Redtowers, honestly, it was like kicking over a rock and finding the bugs swarming underneath. There was always more than you expected.

  The investigations went smoothly, once they knew the right questions to ask. All they had to do was torture or threaten a few of the servants of the noble households. The Nobles of the traditional faction weren't particurly skillful operators when it came to being criminals. A significant portion of their household knew all about their crimes and since many of them were just hired servants or sves, they willingly bbbed about their masters business with only the slightest bit of encouragement. Since martial w was in effect, the militant faction had a free hand to do whatever was necessary to restore order, which included torture, bribery, or even freeing sves. The sheer ease with which they acquired the information led to Dominic wondering how it hadn't leaked earlier. But he had no answers and just had to assume that for whatever reason, it had not leaked.

  As Dominic was flipping through yet another document, he found something shocking - 10,000 gold coins. The document was for House Walton, which Dominic didn't recognize, but 10,000 gold coins was a shocking amount of money. From his personal understanding, a gold coin was about the same value as 10,000 in this world's money, although that was just a rough guess. 10,000 gold coins would be worth roughly 100 million dolrs. He knew that that was also the amount of money paid in compensation to the Kingdom of Bck following the Golden Stallion’s Invasion. He had heard rumors that they had to take rge loans which they were struggling to pay off to pay the compensation agreement. And yet here was an unknown noble House who received 10,000 gold coins in one go.

  “Oswald,” he immediately said. When Oswald came over, he handed the document over to him.

  “Sia’s fucking light,” Sia’s light basically meant Jesus Christ. The moment you realize what he said, Oswald gnced guiltily at Dominic, who of course, didn't care about his retainer swearing.

  “So I'm guessing that's not an amount of money which can be waved away as a sudden windfall?”

  “Absolutely not if this was some particurly wealthy Noble family like the Magentas or the Belmonts then maybe, but House Walton maintains a retively poor oil-making shop. Their rivals are far better at it and so most people only buy their oil when they have no choice.”

  “I see,” Dominic kicked his legs back under the desk. Although he maintained a calm exterior, he was actually panicking internally. Money was power in this world. Money could buy you knights and soldiers, and power came from the tip of a spear. The militant faction maintains an absolute advantage through their military power but if the traditionalist faction gained a sudden windfall, they could rapidly build up their military power or even bribe members of the militant faction over to their side to switch the tides.

  “Get this information to Luce as quickly as possible and advise to confiscate the money,”

  Oswald looks shocked. “You want to steal someone's money, Your Highness? That's just pin wrong.” Dominic gnced that him out at the corner of his eye he was already shutting people's businesses down just for being opposed to him. The next step is obvious - simply steal their shit.

  “This money was likely attained illegally or it's a bribe from a foreign power. We can't have our Nobles being bribed by foreigners can we? And if they do bribe our nobles it's only right to confiscate that wealth. Besides, martial w is still in effect so it won't legally be stealing and we can do with any financial problems of our own.” In truth, Dominic didn't know if they were having financial problems and strongly doubted it since they had the Lapetra Merchants on their side. But still more money never hurt anybody.

  He waved his hand at Oswald, who eventually took the paper and left the room. He noticed everyone else was staring at him, a mixture of expressions on their faces. “Did someone tell you you could take a break?” Dominic said, trying his best to smile. They all looked away and back down to their documents. “Should I be concerned that someone's apparently trying to bribe my uncle or should I be relieved that I found out so early? Although I suppose there's still no proof that this is an attempted bribery. It's possible that House Walton simply did just have a windfall.” Dominic ughed his own internal joke. No one was that lucky.