Chapter 57: The Devil’s Contract (2)

The atmosphere in the reception room sank in an instant. The viscount’s eyes burned with rage. Lloyd’s expression, however, grew more casual as he received such gaze.

“What do you mean by ‘I knew it was you’?”

Lloyd shrugged. He tilted his head to the side.

In a brazen manner, he asked, “It looks like you still haven’t put down your pride, viscount. You suspected that it was me a long time ago, and your heart must have sunk earlier when you confirmed your suspicion. Yet, you say, ‘I knew it was you’? Come on, isn’t that reply too contrived?”

“What…”

“I like the expression on your face right now. Let’s keep it that way,” ordered Lloyd.

Lloyd raised his hand as he buried into the sofa, and with a slight gesture, he flicked his fingers.

“Look now. You were already suspicious of me, as I thought. How nice would it have been if you just came clean when we first met?”

“So… you are indeed the one who messed up my dye workshop?”

“Yes, I did it,” admitted Lloyd.

“What have you done?”

“Are you asking about the method?”

“Haa. Of course.”

The viscount heaved a heavy sigh as he glared at Lloyd. He was curious for a good reason.

The dye workshop. The mere thought of it brought a sigh out of the viscount.

My most precious dye workshop…

The workshop was the viscount’s golden goose. Laconata was a fabric that was specially processed with the Ladona berry extracts. The Laconata fabric was extremely beautiful. It was luxurious and multicolored, to say the least. Its fine and deep gloss was indescribably unique. Other fiefdoms could never copy the product even if they used the same Ladona berry. The unique color could only be obtained when the Ladona berry was harvested from the western area of the eastern mountain range. One could try to plant the berries elsewhere, but the color and gloss would be lost. Not only that, those berries could not be used because of how they changed during the transportation process. The color of the fabric reflected this change as well.

What was more, the viscounty had special knowledge from producing the Laconata for over a hundred years. Thanks to all these factors, the Laconata fabric was considered a valuable specialty that could only be produced in the Lacona viscounty. So, it became the backbone of the Lacona viscounty’s economy and livelihood. It was a priceless golden goose but one day, the goose started to act strange. No, it died.

That…was something that didn’t make any sense.

One morning about fifty days ago, the supervisor of the dye workshop came to the viscount, and he started begging for his life the moment their eyes met. The supervisor said that he was sorry. That he committed a capital offense. He explained that the Laconata cloth came out strange. Once the cloth was dyed, the color turned out terribly. The distinguishing gloss was completely gone.

At first, I thought the problem wouldn’t last more than a day.

The viscount thought that the output for the day was a spoiled batch. He figured that something must have gone wrong with the raw materials, the berries or the cloth went wrong. He had thought so but that wasn’t the case. The following day, the day after that, and for one whole month, the Loconata’s identifying gloss and color did not come back. Instead of the beautiful color, now, it was dull and bland. The fine gloss could not be traced at all. It was just gray and muddy. It was a defective product that wasn’t fit to be sold in the slightest. It had become total trash.

That’s when it started.

The dye workshop was in a state of emergency. So they decided to start anew by disposing of the concentrated juice in the storage and making them from scratch. Even so, the Laconata’s color didn’t return. They tried out changing the fabric in its entirety but the result was the same. There was no gloss Naturally, the merchants who regularly purchased Lacotana turned and went away. Even the customers who had done business with the viscounty for a long while stopped their purchases one by one. What was the viscounty’s reliable source of income for so long was gone.

Even as things spiraled out of control, no one could figure out the reason behind the death of the Laconata’s color and gloss. Regardless of how many attempts the viscount made or how much effort he put in, the reason still remained a mystery.

The viscount flew in rage as the situation drove him mad. He developed bald patches on his head from severe stress. Add to that, his kidney ached every night, and bile rose up his throat. Despite this, all the viscount could do was form fruitless doubts. Yes, that bastard. Lloyd Frontera. Suspecting him was all that I could do! Actually, his doubt was purely circumstantial without any actual proof. It was impossible not to doubt the boy. After all, he had unilaterally disposed of the wastewater into the river, greatly damaged the fiefdom, and threatened the baron.

At this point, the biggest grudge holder against him would be the people of the Frontera family and the most likely suspect was Lloyd. This kid is young but meticulous. The boy had proved countless times his preparedness and shrewdness. With such character, the boy was absolutely capable of plotting something like this. Lloyd was the person that came to his mind no matter how many times he racked his brain. The mystery, however, was how the boy managed to master such a scheme. That was exactly why he had agreed to grant an unexpected audience with Lloyd. He wanted to confirm what trick the kid had employed in his dye workshop. The viscount yearned to find out how he did it.

“What in the world did you do to my workshop when you are nothing but a penniless beggar?”

The viscount gritted his teeth and he glared at Lloyd. Curse? Dark magic? There were no other explanations other than that. Lloyd chuckled.

“Hmm… First, I would like to say kudos to you for figuring out that I was the cause. Your reasoning power exceeded my expectations. But my, my.”

He shrugged.

“What happened in your dye workshop…Technically speaking, I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“What do you mean?”

He didn’t do it on purpose? What joke is trying to say now?

The viscount’s face grew serious. The corners of Lloyd’s lips pulled further up and at last, Lloyd moved his mouth to reveal what had taken place in the workshop.

“That was collateral damage when we built the aqueduct.”

“Aqueduct?”

“Yes,” Lloyd replied.

“We built it in the valley. Very nicely.”

“What does that have anything to do with my workshop?! Speak properly! Stop beating around the bush like you are mocking me!”

Finally, the viscount flew into a rage. He was seated on the close edge of the sofa, and he leaned forward toward Lloyd. Lloyd instead leaned far back.

“Tsk. You don’t have to be so impatient. Do you, by any chance, know the characteristics of limestone?”

“What…?”

“The limestone is one of the sedimentary rocks composed of calcium carbonate.”

“What are you saying…”

What gibberish is he spewing now?

Lloyd continued to explain, “The bones and shells of clams, reefs, sponges, plankton, and many other organisms are made up of calcium carbonate. And when they die, the compound collects at the bottom of the sea. Over time, they accumulate and harden into one. That’s what limestones are.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Shh. Listen until the end. Anyway, the limestone formed in such a way is quite an excellent construction material. Just like for building the aqueduct we created in the middle range of the mountain. Oh, and the limestone foundation turns the water into limewater.”

“Limewater..?”

“Yes. It sounds grand, but it’s actually simple. The calcium and magnesium ions in the limestone get dissolved in the water, slightly altering the mineral ratio of the water.”

“What does that have anything to do with my dye workshop?”

“It is related in many ways.”

“How so?” The viscount’s eyes widened.

“Because the very water of the valley the aqueduct is located at is upstream of the Prona River, which flows from the viscounty to the barony.”

“What…?” The stoic expression of the viscount turned dazed.

He looked like someone who had received a blow to his head but Lloyd continued to explain, his voice sounding casual and nonchalant.

“Are you starting to get the picture now? We conducted a long series of explosions to build the aqueduct in the valley. We blew up the limestone bedrock buried in the valley slope and extracted and brought them out. Oh, in the process, we used our tools quite often to process and cut the limestone into small pieces. Eventually, that led the valley to be carpeted with a huge amount of limestone crumbs and shards. So many that counting them would be like trying to count grains of sand. Thanks to that…”

The smile that Lloyd had on his face was gradually turning evil.

“The valley water slightly became closer to limewater.”

“Then could it be that the reason the color of the Lacontana’s dye has changed is…”

“Yes. It’s because there was a minute change in the chemical makeup of the Prona River.”

“What…That cannot be…” The color drained from the viscount’s face.

“Of course, you would be completely unaware of it. After all, the change was very small and subtle. You couldn’t have even detected it from drinking the water. And it surely isn’t going to have a big effect on the people and environment.”

Lloyd’s evil smile deepened. It was just what he had said. However, it was difficult to say that the blasting and processing of the limestone in the valley had inundated the valley with other minerals. The impact it had on humans, organisms, and the surrounding environment was menial. It was comparable to the impact bananas had on humans with their potassium and radioactive elements.

The potassium in bananas contains radioactive isotopes, but in order for a human to be exposed to radiation, one needs to consume at least one hundred million bananas a day. The same applies here to how the minerals in the Prona River impact the human body. I don’t know. It might take drinking around one hundred million liters of water for someone to die from a mineral overdose.

The limewater hardly affected humans. Of course, it was exclusive to humans and the natural environment.

“But it would be a different case for your dye workshop. I presume you use the river water to make your dye and dispose of it. That’s how the wastewater that flows to the fiefdom was made. Am I correct?”

“It is what it is. That’s a chemical reaction. Oh, maybe you don’t know what chemistry is. Anyway, even a slight change in the river that hardly affects people leaves a great impact on delicate undertakings such as dyeing.”

“That’s…”

“Aw, what do I do? My heart is about to break. I liked the Laconata cloth. It was pretty.”

“But I suppose you can say goodbye to your Laconata forever. The river is going to stay in that state for at least a decade. It’s not like you have any other method to draw water from somewhere else. You can try making distilled water to get rid of the lime, but that’s still going to change the composition of the water, so Laconata’s signature color won’t come back regardless.”

“I’m going to sue you!” bellowed the viscount at last.

“I will raise this unreasonable matter to the Royal Court!”

“Yes, you go sue me,” Lloyd replied greasily.

“If you want, sue me as much as you want. But do you think you will win?”

“What?!”

“Limewater is not a pollutant in the first place and obviously not toxic.”

The viscount was at a loss of words and so Lloyd mercilessly attacked him with the truth.

“And what can we do? We didn’t intentionally disperse the limestones and pieces of rocks into the valley. It happened in the process of developing the place. You do know that this doesn’t satisfy the ‘intentionality of action,’ which the Royal Law considers important, right?”

“Intentionality?”

“Yes, the intentionality of action. It refers to acts committed without a clear intention to harm. Plus, if we dig into the matter, the root cause of all this can be traced to you, viscount.”

“To me?! How?!” yelled Viscount Lacona.

“Well, you unilaterally dumped the toxic wastewater into the Prona River that passes my fiefdom. That’s why we worked hard to build the aqueduct in the valley. In the process of doing so, we had no choice but to blast the limestones for quarrying. And that changed the valley water into limewater, which eventually caused your precious Laconata cloth to be the color of poop.”

“What are you…”

“Do you get it now? Don’t cry.”

“No way. No way…”

The viscount, who was leaning forward as he spoke, helplessly sank into the sofa, his back hitting the chair. He let his body fall limp. With dazed and disappointed eyes, he looked up at the ceiling. At last, the cause of this incident was made plain to the viscount. His eyes already lacked focus. He got me this time. It felt as though he got hit by a hammer in the back of his head. However, no method to free himself came to his mind. He strove to come up with something. His wheels turned, but nothing good was there. Bring the matter to the Royal Court? The viscount knew it was useless. I can’t win. He’s right. The limewater is not toxic. It’s just water. So I can’t file a complaint against him. Even if he did so, even if he won the case with the blessing of god, the future of his viscounty would still be bleak. It’d take at least a year until a verdict is reached. The Laconata cloth would be in the same state as right now.

All of his customers would leave him. He would lose his specialty product and become a beggar.

That devil!

Lloyd was smiling in contentment as he looked at him. The sight of his devilish smile made his skin crawl. The viscount couldn’t place a finger on how much of the situation was calculated and planned out in Lloyd’s head. The viscount was afraid that the brat would do more damage if he did anything more. It felt like Lloyd already had a plan in mind in case he fought back.

It’s surely going to be the case, given it’s him.

The tip of his fingers trembled against his will and a sense of defeat enveloped him. Despair swept over him. He wondered if this was what it felt like to be an ant trapped in an ant lion’s pit. Someone once advised him to calmly close his eyes when things grew difficult in life. He did, only to feel that the darkness ahead of him was his future.

I can’t win. There’s no way out.

So, at last, the viscount gave up. He racked his brain for a solution but he came up with nothing. There was only one option left for him.

“I shouldn’t have done it.”

The viscount bowed his head. With a look of distress on his face, he said, “I will immediately stop throwing the wastewater into the river flowing to your fiefdom. So I plead with you. Can you please…forgive me just this once?”

“Forgive you?”

Lloyd arched his one eyebrow.

“Yes.”

The viscount lowered his head further down. He fumed with anger internally but there was nothing he could do. Lloyd, on the other hand, tossed the answer the viscount never expected to receive.

“Hmm…But what to do? The limewater river can’t be changed back.”

“What…?”

“You can clean up the pieces of limestones scattered in the valley, but that won’t do anything. The blasting exposed too much of the limestone bedrock.”

“What are you saying…”

“I mean it. Originally, the limestone bedrock was lightly covered with a silicate rock formation, which is a clastic sedimentary rock. To put it simply, there was a layer that blanketed the limestone. However, all of that broke, exposing the limestone in the water. There’s nothing you can do now.”

“What are you saying? Then…”

“It means that the river water will always be like this from here on out.”

The viscount became utterly speechless. He had thought that an apology would bring about some solution. That was the only hope he had left but it was fading away now. Just then, this devil, no, Lloyd Frontera, put on a smile.

“Well, but since you are asking for my forgiveness, I’m going to tell you that it isn’t completely impossible to revive your Laconata.”

“What is it?! How?!”

The viscount spoke hurriedly, grabbing Lloyd in the sleeve.

“Woah. Let go of my sleeve, please.”

“Oh, I am sorry. I was just in a hurry…”

“It’s alright. I understand anyway. Let me make you an offer.”

“An offer?”

“Yes, an offer.”

The viscount nibbled his lips as he looked at Lloyd and he waited. At last, Lloyd opened his mouth.

“This is my offer. Viscount, you consider your dye workshop and Laconata fabric very important, right?”

“Yes.”

“You wish to revive it no matter what, right?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Good. Then…”

Lloyd’s eyes curved in contentment. He then laid out the big plan he had been polishing since two months ago when the wastewater crisis first swept over the barony.

“If you wish to bring back the Laconata cloth and continue your beautiful tradition, use my fiefdom’s water supply. Of course, you’ll have to pay a generous monthly water bill with it.”