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80% Black Iron’s Glory / Chapter 4: 3-The Red-bricked Mansion

Chapitre 4: 3-The Red-bricked Mansion

Morssen's complaints were meaningless to Claude. Nobody should expect a farmer who spent his entire 26 years within 50 kilometres of Whitestag Town to have any sort of knowledge about the scope of what he could ask for.

A poor farmer who couldn't even reliable get food and lived in abject poverty his entire life would never think about things like deeds, sobriquets, official positions or other ethereal luxuries. Bread and housing was the extent of the riches that existed in his mind.

The greatest wealth Habis had known before then was a few silver coins he had once glimpsed in the inn's owner's hands. The highest official he had ever talked to was the tax collector and the local baron's butler. The extent of his interactions with the latter was 'Hello', 'How dare you show me disrespect! You should be whipped!'

Just asking the prince for the house had already taken more courage than he ever knew he possessed. He had even prepared to be beaten for daring to be so audacious. To the young Habis, the Hogg-style building was the largest and most beautiful building he had ever seen. He would look at the young masters and ladies enter the mansion in their luxurious carriages, from afar when he was younger.

He believed the red-bricked mansion was the heaven his parents had told him about in his bedtime stories. The place where food rolled off the table like sand through one's fingers. He dreamt of spending a winter in there without running the risk of losing a finger to frostbite. His dream growing up had been to be a servant in the mansion, but a position was never open.

Karjad's agreement was the greatest thing that had ever happened to him and he fainted on the spot.

The prince kept his promise. He had his men leave the building alone, taking from it only the weapons and documents. He left even the vault untouched.

When he woke up again and finished being treated, he walked around the house like a ghost. He gawked at everything he saw, he touched every piece of silverware, every glass, every lamp, every gold-plated handle, every painting, every sculpture, every curtain, every rug. He had to make sure every time that the thing he was indeed existed and had not been dreamt up by his short-circuiting mind.

Karjad stayed in the town for just three more days before leaving with his men. Habis didn't follow him. He was too injured. It was good he had been injured, if he did not have that excuse, he would have had to flat out refuse to join them because he just wasn't willing to leave the house.

"If that old bastard had better foresight, he would have gone with the prince instead of playing watchdog over this house! He might have earned us a manor, a castle even, had he gone along. Instead we're just commoners with an above-average house!"

Morssen, of course, never discussed whether his father could have survived the rest of the war had he marched with the prince's forces. None of the men in the brigade survived the war. The entire brigade was wiped out when the prince was chased out of the capital. Only eleven of the men that left the town with the prince that day survived, but they all became nobles, the lowest rank was a baronet.

They shocked the entire prefecture when they returned to visit their family after the war ended. The people only remembered those eleven's glory, not the hundreds that had left with them and never returned, who only achieved the rank of fertiliser in some far-off field.

Morssen was just like them. He didn't experience the war, so he knew nothing about how horrible it had been and could talk about it casually. He acted like it was a simple thing for his father to go to war and that choosing not to made him the ultimate coward.

Claude, instead, thought of his grandfather as an honest farmer and an all-round good person. Almost the entire town came to visit when they heard about his reward. His story quickly morphed into one where he was the town's first hero, the man who had single-handedly wiped out the oppressive noble and the hundreds of men that guarded his mansion.

He had no family anymore, his parents dead early on in his life, so he welcomed the visits and hosted them graciously. The mansion indeed became his heaven. He didn't keep track of his expenses, however, and his wealth decreased at a visible pace. His silverware and wine glasses also quickly became less. When he surveyed his house a few months later, he had lost everything, even the rug under his bed. Not even the golden frames around his paintings were left. Even his gold-plated door handles had gone the way of the dodo.

He finally realised how much his guests appreciated his hospitality.

The mansion was way too big for his lonesome self. The attic aside, the first and second floors had four rooms, and each had its own toilet and washroom. The ground floor had a grand hall, a dining hall, two kitchens, three storehouses, four servant rooms, and a toilet.

He couldn't keep up with maintaining the house, it took him two days just to sweep the place, and it quickly deteriorated. It was already coming apart at the seems just a year after he got it.

Habis learned his lessons and carefully watched over what little he had left. He didn't want to hire a servant in fear the person would steal his remaining wealth. He eventually decided to get a wife instead. His target came to be the miller's only daughter, Mollie Miller.

The chubby girl was quick to fall for the town's first hero. It certainly helped that the 19-year-old was in the midst of a spell of romanticism. Habis was her knight in shining armour.

Her father, Carmendor Miller, however, was one of the few who didn't think much of Habis. He believed the brat only got lucky and would squander his wealth away in no time. He was looking for a successor to take over his mill and look after his daughter and Habis wasn't it.

He turned Habis's request for his daughter's hand down. He said Habis was neither an honest nor a brave person. He would have joined Karjad were he truly what everyone said he was. It didn't help that his old friends had turned on him for not hosting the same parties anymore. The miller didn't want his daughter married to a stinge who was only looking for a servant.

The true love of a father for his daughter. Habis wouldn't have it, however, and Mollie, being the naïve romantic, went along with him. Carmendor returned home one day to find his Habis and his daughter in then nude beside the grinder. The bread was baked and there was nothing he could do. Unwilling as he was, he had no choice but to let the two marry to avoid a scandal.

Mollie thus became Habis's wife, wedded by a priest from the moon shrine. The miller, who hated Habis with a passion for literally stealing his daughter, soon found his worries come true. His daughter spent her days in servant attire toiling away in the mansion.

"You can't go on like this. No matter how much money you have, you'll run out if you don't have any income. You don't have any children yet. Once they come, however, you'll suddenly find your money worth much less than it is now. You have to find a job and earn your keep," the father had advised his despised son-in-law.

"Should I cultivate some land?" Habis had asked.

"Do you think you can still raise the hoe at this point?"

Habis was red-faced. His year of debauchery had left him unfit and bursting at the seams. He would probably drop dead before he even reached his fields.

"I suppose I can help you out at your place," Habis hinted.

"No, I'm still more than able to handle the mill," the man nearly yelled, "Why not, for the first time in your life, use that hollow, wooden brain?! You have gold, so pick it up! Haven't you thought about your mansion at all?"

"Mansion? What about it?" Habis asked, alert.

"I don't have my eyes on it," the miller snapped, "There are too many rooms, it's too much for you and Mollie alone. Haven't you ever thought of using the rooms to make money?"

"Using the rooms? How?"

The old man sighed. He had hoped his son-in-law had at least this much sense. But it seemed he would have to draw pictures for him.

"Turn your mansion into an inn. Think about it. It used to belong to Baron Rodeman. It's well-known. Its guests were all famous and many are curious about this place.

"If you renovate the rooms and make it into an inn, I'm sure many will be willing to pay a healthy sum to stay here and experience a baron's daily life for a while. You won't actually have to work, you'll earn money just for owning the place! And you can leave the place to your kids once you kick the bucket. It can become a family heirloom in its own right."

Habis was easily convinced.

"Trust me, Habis. You won't regret it. I'm sure a century from now your descendants will be proud of you."

So the red-bricked inn was born.


Chapitre 5: 4-Habis and Morssen

People always do things they think will bring about fortune. But no one ever considers what to do if things go wrong.

Habis and his father-in-law were no exception. Their idea wasn't bad per se, they'd forgotten, however, that the environment in which a business is founded is just as important for the business' success than the business itself.

The civil war had been going on for two years. The southwestern prefectures were the core of the prince's base and supplied most of his weaponry and supplies, not to mention his manpower. The burden dried the prefectures of their wealth.

No one could afford the luxury of going somewhere just to stay at a fancy inn. Business overall was in a slump. The prince had also cleaned out most of the nobility and government and he slashed excess expenditure.

Even his officials had to stay in tents rather than inns as they travelled. Habis's luxury inn was completely out of the question.

His mansion didn't see a soul after the first three days of curious stoppers-by. Just four months later, he had to let his staff go and turn his jewel into a run of the mill, though slightly fancy, inn. Despite his best efforts, he barely made a living.

The war ended six months later, and the prince ascended to the throne not long after. His complete overhaul of the kingdom's social, economic, administrative, and military institutions brought about the prefecture's recovery and Habis finally gained some breathing room as his business picked up.

By this time, Mollie was pregnant and Morssen was born ten months later.

These were the most blissful years of Habis's life. He had a decent vocation he could leave to his descendents, a virtuous wife, and an adorable son. Despite being far from as lavish as that first year, his life was still far better than he had ever dared to dream before the war.

Mollie was pregnant again when Morssen was four. When the day of birth came, however, it turned out she had twins. She couldn't handle the load, however, and, despite Habis making excessive donations to all three shrines in the town, she died not long after the second child was removed. The children could not survive without their mother, however, and died a few days later.

Habis never recovered. He turned to the bottle and spent his remaining years in a drunken stupor. He stopped caring about the inn and shoved all his friends out of his life.

His father-in-law, though stricken with grief, took Morssen in and raised him himself. The inn closed down a few months later.

Morssen thought nothing of his father. All his memories of the old man involved empty bottles and bruised cheeks from street fights. Before he went to live with his grandfather, he had seen his father smash up the house as if searching for his deceased wife, shouting her name and cursing the heavens. It terrified the young boy.

Luckily his grandfather soon took him away from that red-bricked hell.

In his twelfth year, the king's education reforms finally went into action and peasants were allowed to attend public schools. His grandfather sent him to the prefectural capital, Baromiss, to study in the first national elementary boarding school.

Habis had completely forgotten he even had a son by that time. Morssen did not see him once in his eight years in the school. His studies were also funded by his grandfather, his father didn't contribute a single coin. Morssen never forgave his father for that.

His father passed away while he was his second year of middle school. The old man fell into a sewer and drowned, too drunk to keep his footing in the shallow water. Morssen, quite the contrary to being aggrieved at his father's death, was relieved.

His father left him nothing but the mansion, other than ten silver thales of debt with the town's bars. His grandfather settled the debt.

Morssen only took three days of leave to return to the town to help his grandfather with the funeral. He returned to the city without even visiting the mansion.

Morssen graduated from middle school two years later and tried to get a job in the city. He was still in the middle of his search when he got a letter from his grandfather to come home.

Morssen obediently returned to find his grandfather bedridden with disease.

The old man wanted to leave everything to Morssen. He trusted his grandson would make a good miller.

He told Morssen his father's life story as he lay in bed.

"Do you hate my father?" Morssen asked.

"I never hated him. Habis became a drunk because the shock of losing his wife was too much. In a twisted sense, this shows I didn't let my daughter marry the wrong man. He loved her very much, at least."

"...Maybe his drowning is a sort of relief for us. We can only pray your father and mother met in the moon goddess's halls. I'm sure they'll have a pleasant afterlife..."

His grandfather passed away two months later. Everyone thought Morssen would take over the mill, but he sold it instead and invested everything in his father's mansion.

Morssen wasn't simply trying to inherit his father's career and restart the inn. He changed everything about the building.

He practically tore down the whole building. He tore down a part of the second floor's floor and built a stairway, sealed off that part of the building, and turned it into an en-suite apartment.

Morssen left the rest of the building as is though he installed a piping system and spruced up the aging furniture. He split the attic into three parts, for a total of six apartments and three attics.

He broke out the wall with the main door and replaced it with a class-work lattice. The part of the first floor that still had a roof was turned into two small shop lots.

He rented out the rooms and shops as soon as the renovations were complete. No one knew what was going through his head.

The renovations were completed in the 21st year of Stellin IX's reign. Aueras grew stronger years on year, especially with their overwhelming victory over their enemy, Nasri, and the annexation of Berkeley. With it, Aueras became the continent's lone superpower.

Trade prospered within the kingdom and its subjects lived bountiful and stable lives. The crafting and mining industries peaked and opulent displays were ubiquitous. As for Whitestag Town, which stood at the intersection of all the big trade routes between the three prefectures, it became a big town, a hive of merchants and travellers.

The entire mansion was booked within a day. The young man was far more adept at business than his father and grandfather. He was pragmatic and open-minded. His setup gave him a stable income and ensured he would never end up in his father's position. Most importantly, and he was very proud of this fact, it did so without taking up his day. It gave him the freedom to pursue public service, which would let him climb the social ladder, without having to worry about his income.

The news of his renovation was still criss-crossing the town when Morssen turned his sights on the town's chief administrator position. Being one of the first batches of students to graduate from the new schools, even being a peasant did not make his approval process difficult.

A key part of Stellin IX's reforms was his reform to the caste system, the foundation of which was the Rights of the Four Castes, a law outlines the new caste system and the rights and limitations of each caste. The old caste system was thrown out and replaced with a new four-tier system. From highest to lowest, the four social classes were nobility, dignitry, peasantry, and villainy; their members called nobles, dignitarians, peasants, and villains, respectively.

Educated as he was, Morssen could see things that most couldn't. While most of the townsfolk were satisfied with their status as peasants and thankful for the king's loosening of labour restrictions, Morssen had his eyes on becoming a dignitarian. He wanted to ride the wind of the Rights of the Four Castes and become a dignitarian to obtain more political power.


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