Medieval Knight System: Building the Strongest Empire Ever!

I’m the type who enjoys investing everything I earn in developing my lands and watching contentedly as they flourish. My lovely Hilda shuns luxury too, so there’s no wasteful spending.

Michael had clucked his tongue about what a boring couple we made. I’d like to fix that gambling-addled head of yours first. No wonder your wife prefers the Feuzen villa to her own home.

"Spend the rest of your days here. I’ll pay off your nephew’s debt, no strings attached."

"You’ll pay off the debt? You would show this old man such kindness?"

Gens’s emotions, which had been as still as the surface of a windless lake, surged violently. The old man had lost everything but his pride, and for his nephew’s sake he had been willing to swallow his humiliation and return to Mainz.

Because he had to secure a patron somehow.

I decided to take care of that part first.

A commoner’s debt was pocket change to me, but for the man who owed it, his whole life hung in the balance. And I wanted to lend a helping hand to those in desperate need.

Gens seemed truly moved.

No words could have drawn a stronger reaction than that offer.

"Now I finally understand why the Lord has not yet taken this old man’s life. I have lived this long so that I could meet a great lord like you."

"No need to praise me that much just for paying off a debt."

"No! No noble has ever offered to pay off a debt with no strings attached as you have, my lord. Most would have lent me money with my press as collateral, or found some other way to exploit me."

A typical noble would inevitably draw up a malicious contract or bury poison clauses in the fine print to squeeze out a profit, deceiving naive commoners as a matter of course. It was the classic swindle of nobles who knew the law.

Just as Johann Fust had inserted an immediate repayment clause to seize all of Gutenberg’s presses, men who would stop at nothing to strip others of their rights were a dime a dozen.

They never thought of earning money honestly, only of fleecing people. My old world or this one, those bastards are all the same. If I ever come to wield influence in Mainz, the Fust family will be the first I crush.

They cheated using law and power, so they can’t complain about being crushed by greater law and power, can they? It’d be nice if Gens were still alive by then to see it, but I wouldn’t mind settling his lifelong grudge on his behalf.

"If Strasbourg’s in chaos right now, your nephew could be in danger too, so bring him here. Rosenheim has immigrant benefits, so settling in shouldn’t be a problem."

"Thank you, my lord. You are my Christos."

I seem to be hearing "Christos" (messiah) a lot these days. Anyway, Gens settled in Rosenheim instead of returning to Mainz, and Wenzenberg took charge of the nephew’s debt and the family’s relocation.

Seeing how well I treated Gens, Wenzenberg must have decided he needed an even closer relationship with me, because he readily offered to help with no conditions attached.

A merchant who knows how to conduct himself makes a decent business partner.

And Wenzenberg, in particular, is afraid of me.

"Really? Truly? You’re not lying? Oh, Lord!"

When I told Lily the news, she jumped up and down with joy. At the sight of a grown young lady bouncing around like that, Angela’s sigh deepened, and that was surely no illusion. Hilda only laughed and called her cute.

"But you’ll have to publish under a pen name. If it got out that the noble crown princess had written and published a novel, wouldn’t the nobles come swarming like hornets?"

Just as churchmen would have thundered from the pulpit about the natural order of things, the nobles here would raise hell. A woman writing a book? The crown princess, no less? Absurd!

That was common sense here, the arrogance of an age that treated literature as the exclusive domain of men. It was also why the few women writers of this era became famous in history.

Christine, the most notable of France’s women writers, had weathered the nobles’ attacks thanks to the French queen’s patronage, and even so she remained a remarkable author who overcame vicious prejudice.

Here, in a land even more conservative than France, such patronage was unthinkable, so a pen name was essential if Lily’s novel was to be published. We could present the author as someone writing under my protection.

"I don’t mind. I’d rather see people enjoying my novel than become famous as an author. Unlike you, Brother, who never even read it, Hilda really loved my novel!"

"What do you mean I never read it? I read the beginning!"

Though I gave up partway because it was a cringingly sappy romance novel.

The protagonists of the novel were Hilda and me. Originally it had been a story about a knight and a princess, but Lily decided our story was more interesting and rewrote the whole thing from scratch.

Hence the title: [The Charging Wolf].

Oh, God. Good grief!

Hilda rated it highly, saying it was very entertaining, but it wasn’t to my taste, so I could hardly offer an opinion of my own. Still, if the novel became a real bestseller, wouldn’t that be meaningful in its own way?

The heroic ballads and other records that mentioned me dwelled solely on the battlefield. Lily’s novel put my romance with Hilda front and center instead.

"Let’s make your pen name Girl in White. No pen name suits you better."

Lily leapt up at that.

"What?! My pen name won’t be Girl in White, it’ll be Wolf!"

"Why would you take the nickname Hilda uses for me? No."

But Hilda seemed to like the name Lily had proposed.

"Wolf would work well. Girl in White is a bit much for a literary pen name, isn’t it? With Wolf, anyone would assume the author was a man."

"I knew it, Hilda’s the only one who takes my side!"

And so, with Hilda’s strong backing, Lily’s pen name became Wolf. Watching the two of them chatter away excitedly, I gave my permission rather than spoil their mood.

Come to think of it, should I try publishing a book too?

It wouldn’t make big money, but it could bring in some pocket change.

Collecting fairy tales and legends from around the world and publishing them, as the Brothers Grimm had done, seemed like a fine idea. Writing wonderful stories with lessons to teach would be enjoyable too.

But this was the time to solidify my foundation and keep my ear to the ground about the tangled situation in the region, so I set the idea aside. It would make a fine hobby for my old age.

Under Oscar and Peter’s leadership, one company completed its preparations for the campaign.

"Be careful, Wolf. I’ll take good care of the territory."

"I’m counting on you. I leave everything in your hands while I’m gone."

After sharing a tender kiss with Hilda, I headed for Vintenheim once more. This was real combat, not training, so the soldiers’ faces were graver than ever. The duchy army soldiers, on the other hand, looked like they were off on a picnic.

They’d been cooped up in Rosenheim for a while, so it made sense that they were itching for action. As a battle-tested unit, they had been put in charge of guiding the gunners, and they’d griped about being saddled with a pack of greenhorns.

They clearly saw it as babysitting duty they had never asked for. They had their doubts about firearms, too. I’d have liked to invite them to take a bullet and see for themselves. Fortunately, Oscar and Peter got along fine.

The weather had turned warm, which made the march easier.

As we neared Vintenheim, a Gale Knights patrol joined us.

"The vice commander has dispatched patrols to the Vintenheim border."

"Good, Anton’s been handling it properly."

"And we’ve taken in some refugees who crossed over from Essenbach."

As I’d feared, unemployed mercenaries seemed to have struck Essenbach’s rear. The Count of Essenbach was still in the east, so his heir was handling the response, but I doubted the young man could manage it properly.

"Once there’s nothing left to loot in Essenbach, they could come down to Vintenheim."

Mercenaries obsessed with a quick score are the worst kind. They know no limits, all but laying villages to waste before they flee. Leben and Ladwig had suffered that way.

And that fear ultimately became reality.

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