Chapter 22.
"It’s fine. I have enough money to last through my journey."
Even with just the change, I had enough money to manage a small territory for 10 months.
Despite looking ashamed, Lisbon looked seemingly interested as he asked about my destination.
"Where is your destination?"
"I’m going all the way to the capital."
"Oh, really? Then would you like to come with us?"
"Oppa!" Alice yelled in protest at the sucker’s proposal.
However, Lisbon only flashed a bright smile as though he couldn’t hear his sister’s voice.
"I would appreciate it if you were to accompany me since I don’t know much about the world, but wouldn’t this be an inconvenience?"
When I spoke humbly in contrast to the excitement I was feeling inside, Alice immediately, coldly replied, "Yes, it is an inconvenience."
But there was a nice sucker sitting next to her.
"No, it won’t be. It’s nice to have more company."
"Oppa!"
I calmed down Alice who was becoming angry.
"If you"re worried about the financial situation, you don"t have to worry about my share. As I said earlier, I have plenty of money now."
"No, you can just screw..."
"I can also contribute money to some extent."
I added in these words before Alice could tell me to screw off.
"— How much?"
When she asked with a slightly softened expression, her brother Lisbon quietly called out her name.
"Alice."
"Oh, it’s all right. I don’t know your schedule, so it’s hard to give a definite answer on how much I could provide support."
I grinned at Lisbon.
"If you’re not planning on going straight to the capital and planning on taking a detour, I’ll have to take a detour as well so the amount of money I would provide will be reduced correspondingly."
Before listening to their plan, I called the waitress to make an order.
"I"d like 5 wheat bread, 1 mushroom soup, 1 roasted chicken leg, 2 parmesan cheese on tomato soup, and 2 garlic steaks."
I realized while placing the order that I had ordered the same menu for Lisbon as his sister.
"Oh, would it be okay if I ordered the same menu as your sister for you?"
"But if you did that, that money won’t be enough....”
Lisbon looked worried as he looked at the refined bronze coins I had taken out.
He was definitely a sucker! He was worrying over my finances when he could just say thank you and eat the food I bought for him.
I took out three more refined bronze coins and placed them on the table.
"I told you I have enough money. Please take the order as I just said."
"Yes, Sir."
The waitress went away after writing down the order and Lisbon looked at me with an apologetic face.
"You don"t have to be so sorry. You said you wanted to be a knight, right? You must be pretty strong, so please escort me safely to the capital."
I told Lisbon who was looking at me with sorry eyes.
"Would it make you feel better if this dinner and financial support is the sincerity for the escort you will provide?"
"Well, but....”
Perhaps it was because she felt uncomfortable about receiving free money or she was just frustrated at her brother, Alice said, "Oppa, you are protecting the weak according to the chivalry code. That man is just expressing his grat.i.tude. It’s not like he told you specifically how much money he will provide. He’s just providing us with the extra bit of money he has excluding the amount he needs for himself. It could just end with several refined bronze coins." Alice tried to persuade her brother quite desperately.
How much money had the sucker thrown away for a n.o.ble lady like her to talk as such? I was a little curious but decided to refrain from asking for now.
Despite Alice’s persuasion, Lisbon remained silent. It seemed as though she was angry at his silence since she shot deadly glares at him.
"What is the problem? Are you saying that you can’t accept it because the grat.i.tude of the weak is worthless? Is that your chivalry code?"
"No, that’s not it."
"Then what?"
“—”
I decided to send some backup.
"Or are you uncomfortable traveling with me?"
"No? No way. It"s just... I’m bothered with taking money....”
At this rate, even the spectators would get cancer. It would make me feel better if I were to tell Alice later to take away even the iron coins from her brother. Taking away the last bit of money from his hands should teach Lisbon a lesson.
"Then how about this? I’ll lend money to you instead of providing you with support. You can earn that money when you arrive at the capital, right?"
He was a n.o.ble, so wouldn’t he have a base at the capital?
Even if they didn’t have one, they could request money from their family so money probably wasn’t an issue for them.
"If I’m lending money instead of providing support, I think I"ll lend you as much as my limits go, so it’ll be a better trip for you guys. What do you think, Miss Alice?"
Alice replied with such a smile to my question as if she had never antagonized me before, "Of course, thank you. Brother is okay with it too, right?
"Uh…yeah."
By the time the sucker reluctantly agreed, the food had already begun to fill the table.
"Let"s have a meal first."
My belly was clamoring for food.
-o-
After finis.h.i.+ng the meal, we bought three days worth of food and went to a place where carriages gathered outside the village.
We paid for one of the carriages there and headed in the direction of the carriage station in another village.
According to Alice’s schedule, we had to take a carriage from here to another village two days away. Thereon, we would take a train headed straight for the capital.
I was amazed at Alice’s explanation that there were trains in this world. I changed my view of this world to one where civilization was more developed than I had previously thought.
Come to think of it, I wondered if a train was a big deal in a world where you could fly with magic.
We were forced to spend two days on a boring carriage paying an expensive fare of 10 refined bronze coins per day. We didn’t encounter any bandits, and this carriage didn’t turn out to be involved in human trafficking, so we uneventfully arrived at our destination city.
The only incident that happened during the journey was Alice vomiting from motion sickness. As far as I who had a strong physical body, or Lisbon who had trained himself with the dream of becoming a knight was concerned, motion sickness was a distant story.
During the boring period, I spent a good time asking Lisbon questions about the basic norms of the empire.
Upon arriving at the city, Alice quickly descended from the carriage and took a deep breath while Lisbon and I burst into laughter.
"Phew, don’t laugh!"
The sight of Alice wiping the saliva around her mouth with her eyes wide open reminded me of a poisoned cat.
When Lisbon and I got off the carriage, soldiers approached and demanded identification cards.
There were several carriages around us just like the location we had started from. There was also a small building that looked like a management office.
For carriages, it was difficult to frequently get in and out of the normal city entrance. Besides, it was quite time-consuming to get off the carriage, check the IDs, and get on the carriage again. Due to this, carriages were sent to the outskirts of the city without inspection where they would undergo separate scrutiny.
The inspection was just simply matching the photo on the ID with our faces properly. My encyclopedia, Lisbon, said that this was to prevent criminals who had bounties on their heads from entering the city.
When we took out our identification cards as the soldiers requested, Lisbon and Alice were both surprised to see the card I brought out. In particular, Alice stared at me in disbelief that a man who had no common sense was a n.o.ble like her.
The sucker who had thought of me as an orphan and helped me out admitted to the gaze of sympathy he had been sending me and apologized. He was truly a good-natured sucker.
We spent a day in the city relieving the stress we had acc.u.mulated from the carriage ride and took a train to the capital the next day. The train was much more expensive compared to the carriage. Part of the reason may have been due to Alice booking the first-cla.s.s coupe, such that a three-day train ride to the capital cost two silver coins per ticket. Since there were three of us, it was a total of six silver coins or thirty times the cost of the carriage.
"Alice, how about we book a cheaper seat?"
Lisbon tried to stop Alice from booking the first-cla.s.s coupe by borrowing one silver coin from me on top of the three silver coins I had lent out earlier. This was because three silver coins would have been enough had she booked the first-cla.s.s coach without a bed. But Alice glared at Lisbon as if she was asking if he had anything more to say.
"When we originally left home, we had enough money to pay for this much. If only Oppa hadn’t given our money away to the temple."
“But you saw how the children in the temple weren’t able to eat properly.”
"Why did you donate the money behind my back? If you"d discussed it with me beforehand, at least we wouldn"t have used all our travel funds."
"So... sorry."
Lisbon was so sorry that he couldn"t even meet Alice’s eyes.
Although I had no idea what had happened before we met, based on what I heard, it looked like Lisbon was in the wrong here. I wondered how the two would have gone to the capital with their financial situation if they hadn’t met me on the way.
Alice quieted Lisbon down and spoke to me with a sigh.
"I"ll stop by the bank and pay you back as soon as we arrive at the capital."
Surprisingly, there was a bank in the empire. It made sense if you thought about it. If there were a mint that printed money, obviously, there had to be banks that were moving and circulating the money in the economy. Of course, unlike my past life where banks were located on every street, there was a lack of liquidity of money in this world since there was usually one bank per major city or territory in the empire.
Still, the banks had their own network systems using magic, and money was transferred between nearby banks through mage squads, so there was apparently no need to worry about bandits while transferring money from one bank to another.
Additionally, the banks formed agreements with mercenary groups or adventure a.s.sociations and used them as major branches. The banks were able to entrust these organizations with security, and apparently, their reputation was high enough that even high-ranking n.o.bles would use them.
It seemed as if they would be useful for converting the gold coins that were sleeping in my pocket s.p.a.ce.
Onboard the train, we were surprised by the luxuriousness of the first-cla.s.s bedroom cabin and the fact that it was several times faster than the carriage with little vibration.
I was surprised by the speed of the train which rivaled the ones from my previous life as well as the bedroom cabin which I had never seen before. However, the brother-sister duo acted like countryside b.u.mpkins who had never seen a train before.
It was obvious if you thought about it. If I were to recall the map I bought from the informant, the train was for now only connected to the capital and the territories of high-ranking n.o.bles. A viscount was by no means a low rank, but it was insufficient to make the empire build a train track all the way to their territory.
My lips curved into a slight smile as I watched the brother and sister become amazed at the sight of their surroundings whoos.h.i.+ng past outside the window. That’s how we ended up on a train heading to the capital.