How to Survive as the Second Son of a Mage Family - Chapter 33

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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How to Survive as the Second Son of a Magic Noble Family (33)

When Leo frowned with a face asking what the hell he was talking about, Elias shrugged his shoulders.

I should change the topic around here.

“Elias, I heard you’ve been going back and forth to the restricted areas a lot. I want to hear what you’ve discovered. We need new materials now.”

“Ah, welcome. My mouth was itching to talk anyway.”

Elias looked around, then pulled out one sheet from a pile of maps stacked on one side and spread it on the table.

He grabbed a piece of graphite rolling around with his bare hands and drew circles on the map.

“The barriers are the problem.”

“Barriers?”

“The barrier compatibility is low. Currently classified as low-grade, but there are already 7 places that need mid-grade level barriers. See?”

One student stood up following Elias and bent his head toward the map.

“Right now it’s 15 low-grade and 5 mid-grade… so it should be 8 and 12 respectively?”

“Right. The ridiculous crazy number of 15 low-grade barriers is a problem that arose from trying to cover barriers within a small budget. As you know, maintaining barriers costs an enormous amount of money.”

Maintaining one average-sized low-grade barrier costs 10 million won per day in Korean currency.

That’s 300 million in 30 days, and 3.6 billion in a year.

If all 21 restricted areas were low-grade, the annual maintenance cost would be about 76.6 billion won, which seems like an amount the government could sufficiently afford.

But the moment it jumps to mid-grade, 50 million won is invested per day alone.

According to Elias’s survey, there would be 12 mid-grade barriers alone. The cost of maintaining 12 mid-grade barriers would be 219 billion won per year. Of course, after conducting mid-grade surveys, they might encounter cases where high-grade barriers need to be set among them.

In the novel, Elias’s standards weren’t excessive.

He could have set the standards more strictly, but Elias didn’t do that and only pointed out areas that were impossible to compromise on as improvement targets.

“And the problem is doubling because they don’t clean inside the barriers. What could have been endured with low-grade barriers now barely requires mid-grade barriers to block. Because they don’t do that damn cleaning.”

That’s also a budget problem. More precisely, it was because the budget wasn’t allocated appropriately due to pride issues about assigning such miscellaneous cleaning to Royal Mages.

Melvin asked hesitantly.

“The Imperial Court wouldn’t put people in danger like that… Maybe they don’t have money…?”

“They do.”

Elias shook his head firmly and snapped his fingers.

“But they need to use it to fill their pockets, so there’s no money to spend on safety.”

“…Why did you think that?”

“They pass bills like ‘the law on using family names as surnames’ but neglect barriers because they don’t have money? That’s ridiculous. They waste sessions discussing such things, and even received budget to replace nameplates and administrative records throughout the regions on a large scale. Creating and passing such useless bills means everyone wants to secure their own share.”

“Elias…”

Leo sighed at Elias’s rough choice of words.

The expression is rough, but it’s true.

Not long after the Empire was established, such a bill was enacted for the incomprehensible reason that magical characteristics should be prioritized rather than the territories they ruled.

The reason some people currently use family names instead of place names or country names in their surname position is because of that.

However, now it’s become neither here nor there, with more people who just removed place names from previous practices.

Even in the novel, Elias had harshly criticized the Federal Committee and Imperial Parliament, which correspond to the upper and lower houses of parliament, for allocating budgets to such useless places.

‘It’s fresh and good to hear it directly.’

Although Leo has a worried face wondering if he’ll say this outside the group too, as far as I know, no one dies from that.

Anyway, Elias went around investigating restricted areas and used the barrier compatibility issue to attack the Federal Committee.

At the same time, he spread the facts about magical beast damage and incorrect barrier compatibility to the media in huge headlines.

Normally, the media doesn’t publish negative stories about royalty, especially the Imperial Court, but it was possible because Elias had caught a major weakness.

When public opinion boiled over as if the Federal Committee would rise up immediately, they finally hurriedly passed a bill requiring internal cleaning of all barriers within the Empire once a month.

Thanks to that, the number of people suffering damage from magical beasts was greatly reduced.

Elias seemed to somewhat close his mouth at Leo’s call, then muttered quietly.

“The Imperial Parliament is… just a lackey of the Federal Committee. Forget about them, we need to attack the Security Bureau too.”

“Right. Do that.”

Leo nodded soullessly and answered.

“But that’s not urgent. It’s the Federal Committee. There’s one thing they need to know now. They need to pass a budget bill to completely overhaul those damn barriers.”

This side is going according to the original work.

This much is sufficient.

I nodded at his words and asked.

“Eli, which areas did you say you visited?”

“Too many. I’ve been to all the low-grade ones except Meppen and one other place, and I went to the one high-grade area on the day I broke my leg. Now it’s time to visit the five mid-grade ones. Oh, Leo, how was Meppen?”

“It was ordinary. Except for the insects being contaminated too.”

“Insects~?”

Elias’s face hardened instantly.

The students also looked shocked.

“Insects get contaminated too? There were no such cases before.”

“Did it spread from other animals?”

“…But thinking about it, there’s no theoretical reason it couldn’t happen.”

Elias muttered.

“Insects were contaminated. There definitely wasn’t anything like that in the places I visited.”

He’s saying there were no contaminated insects in the 14 places Elias visited. This part is the same as the novel.

Elias fell into thought with a hardened face, then shook his head and asked.

“…No. But why are you asking where I’ve been?”

“I wanted to ask if you’ve seen contaminated insects in other places. Since you haven’t, let’s move on to the next topic. I have something to tell you.”

“What is it? I’m curious.”

“I think the restricted areas were used as experimental sites. Narke and Leo think the same.”

While the students looked at each other, not immediately understanding, Elias opened his eyes wide in surprise.

“…That’s quite a surprising change of perspective.”

“What are you talking about, Lucas. I feel like I just heard something very shocking?”

One student burst into hollow laughter as if he couldn’t believe it.

Elias smiled faintly and stroked his chin.

“This wasn’t the time to worry about barrier compatibility. They installed barriers to protect people, but instead, those protective tools created places where they could experiment freely.”

I’m thinking of using barrier compatibility too, but I waited until he organized his thoughts first.

He lost focus in his eyes and tapped the table with his finger.

“It makes sense. There’s no reason it couldn’t happen. Even if I were Pleroma, I’d use that separation policy in reverse.”

He shifted his eyes to me.

“But the problem is this. How exactly do they continuously penetrate the barriers, and where from? The moment an unauthorized object or living creature above a certain size passes through a barrier, a report goes in. They even receive unbearable shock.”

“What if all 21 restricted areas were their residential areas from the beginning? Or we could assume there were passages there before the barriers were installed.”

Melvin’s jaw dropped to the floor with his mouth gaping.

The corners of Elias’s mouth, who had a frighteningly hardened expression, slowly twisted upward.

“You’re saying there’s a traitor in the Imperial Court.”

At his changed tone, everyone’s gaze turned to Elias’s face. Elias frowned deeply, then returned his tone to normal.

“Even if not the Imperial Court, at least someone who secured a position in the Imperial Government. Right? They argued that those ‘little experiments’ were dangerous signals and had barriers installed. After that, they could experiment freely with their guard down.”

Leo took out and spread the materials he had prepared.

“Right. So I looked into who initially argued that barriers should be installed.”

“Oh, when did you find this kind of thing again?”

“Before visiting your hospital room. At the top, Florian Amelie, Albert Ernst, Winfried Hintz. These people actively pushed the agenda forward.”

Elias nodded and asked.

“All Federal Representatives?”

“Right. And Esther Friedrich, Wiltrude Albrecht, Sander Ludovika, Werner Strauch, these ones didn’t participate.”

“Not even the unpaid lower house, but the upper house is doing this? These guys are typical tax thieves regardless of their Pleroma connections.”

“…That’s true but… Rudolf Heinrich, Henning Berend, Trude Leopold, they’re representative opposition figures. They all expressed their position that the budget was excessive.”

“These bastards are also really…”

Leo pretended not to hear Elias’s words and turned to the next page of the materials.

“Among journalists, those who actively covered barrier agendas were Astrid Metzler, Dietmar Peschke. Among scholars, Friedrich Schuler.”

“We need to consider these people’s Imperial Court connections too.”

Elias, who was scanning the list Leo presented, grinned wickedly.

“This got interesting. Luca, is this the method you mentioned for screwing over the Imperial Court?”

“I don’t remember saying that.”

“Whatever. So, what are you planning to do from now on?”

* * *

“We express our gratitude to His Highness Leonard, Prince of Bavaria, and Count Nicolaus for their efforts on behalf of Meppen.”

The Baron raised the corners of his mouth in a confident smile as he handed over a plaque of appreciation, while requesting a handshake with his other hand. Shutter sounds and flashes burst from the journalists the Baron had invited.

After briefly answering the journalists’ questions, we quickly left the scene.

“What is your schedule after this…?”

“We’ll be returning to school.”

Leo smiled at the journalist and gave a simple answer before moving to the warp location the Baron had prepared.

Thanks to Baron Meppen sending a telegram to the school immediately yesterday, we moved to Meppen again today, which is Tuesday. However, since it was a weekday, we couldn’t skip school, so we came early in the morning for a brief greeting before heading back.

“Why was the month-end evaluation postponed?”

“Well… it’s classified for now.”

Today is the last day of October, but due to the sudden postponement of the month-end evaluation, we have to attend classes at school.

It was quite fortunate, actually.

Right now, I’m carrying around a bottle containing contaminated mosquitoes in my bag. I had arrived at this location early before coming to the Baron’s estate to collect the mosquitoes.

‘I want to throw it away right now.’

Anyway, I now had the time to bring this to the group meeting place.

So when dawn came, I placed the collection container I had brought in advance on the table.

Elias showed noticeable interest.

“Wow, what is this? The color is no joke.”

“The mosquitoes I mentioned yesterday.”

Melvin and several other students looked at the mosquitoes filling numerous bottles with their pitch-black color and subtly licked their parched lips. Melvin mustered up courage and pointed at the collection container.

“But… why this, Lucas?”

“Let’s try breeding mosquitoes from now on.”

Melvin looked at me with soulless eyes as if he had heard something like a bolt from the blue.

“Why…? Why…?”

“Why do you think? We need to get a bill proposed.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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