Chapter 44 : chapter 44
Chapter 44. Draft Proposal for the Construction of a Welfare and Basic Medical Security System
When the adjutant found Logaris, he was staring blankly at a pile of bottles and jars, muttering to himself as though he were planning his next “great invention.”
“What is it now? What new idea has Sylvia come up with this time?”
Even after being dragged into the meeting room, Logaris still sounded irritated.
His mind was full of thoughts about how to turn those half-finished potions into Golden Lion Coins.
Sylvia ignored his complaints and merely stared at him.
“Logaris, do you remember that thing you wrote before when you had nothing better to do?”
“The document you mocked as ‘the ravings of a naive dreamer.’”
Logaris frowned and searched through his formidable memory.
“You mean… Draft Proposal for the Construction of a Welfare and Basic Medical Security System?”
“I should make this clear first.
With our current level of infrastructure, implementing something like that is practically a fantasy.”
“But we can at least take the first step.”
Sylvia’s tone allowed no argument.
“Refine it.
Make it workable, or at least make the first step workable.
By tomorrow morning, I want to see a perfect plan.”
Looking at the bewildered Logaris, she finally explained her intentions.
“We are going to ask Lady Margaret to endorse Fleeting Youth, but we are not asking her to endorse a luxury product.”
“We are giving her an opportunity instead.
An opportunity to fulfill the dream she has pursued all her life.”
“Fleeting Youth is the spark that will ignite everything.
And this draft in your hands is the real gift we are offering that old lady.”
Logaris' brow instantly knotted into a tight furrow.
His first instinct was to refuse this troublesome task.
This was not his field at all.
But Sylvia’s words were like a stone dropped into the depths of memory, and the ripples they stirred were impossible for him to ignore.
Those pages he had mocked as the “naive dreams” of an idealist concealed a past he had long sealed away and refused to revisit.
After a long while, he let out a deep sigh, as though he were exhaling all the heaviness that had been lodged in his chest.
“Fine.
Some of the potions I planned to sell might fit into this plan as well.”
He took the paper and pen handed over by a clerk nearby.
“Give me a quiet room and a large amount of coffee.
Until I am finished, no one is allowed to disturb me!”
The moment he finished speaking, he rushed out without even looking back, leaving the entire room staring at one another in confusion.
Sylvia watched Logaris' hurried retreat with clear admiration in her eyes.
“Loga… he is basically the perfect brick.
Wherever he is needed, you just move him there.”
Grayson and the other aides saw the princess' strangely affectionate gaze and immediately felt uncomfortable all over.
…
While Logaris stayed up through the night desperately refining his “welfare protection plan,” the direction of public opinion in Winter City was also beginning to shift in subtle ways.
Inside the taverns, drunken mercenaries shouted loudly.
“Have you heard?
That princess is a butcher!
The moment she arrived, she chopped off the heads of seven nobles!”
“That is nothing!
The taxes on my relative’s shop went up by fifty percent overnight!
That is not taxation, that is outright robbery!”
Naturally, these rumors were being stirred up behind the scenes by Baroque, the chairman of the Winter City Chamber of Commerce.
After Sylvia had forcibly levied heavy taxes on him, he had suffered enormous losses.
He could hardly wait to drive that woman out of the Northern Territory.
But after the painful lesson he had learned earlier, he no longer dared to make any major moves.
He could only resort to petty, underhanded tricks in the shadows.
Yet none of these undercurrents affected the plans within the Duke’s Manor in the slightest.
The next morning, Sylvia looked radiant and full of energy.
Logaris, on the other hand, had two heavy dark circles under his eyes.
His face was so pale that he looked like a ghost that had just crawled out of a grave, and in his hands he carried a thick stack of documents whose ink had not yet dried.
A plain carriage quietly made its way toward Lady Margaret’s charitable estate.
There were no luxurious buildings there.
Instead, there were only neat rows of schoolhouses, workshops, and orphanages.
The air carried no trace of the perfume found in noble estates.
It was filled instead with the scent of food and the laughter of children.
The place was solemn, yet brimming with vitality.
The two of them were led into a simple room bathed in sunlight.
Lady Margaret sat in a rocking chair, quietly knitting a sweater.
She looked very old, and her body was frail and thin, yet her eyes were astonishingly clear, as though they could see straight through the human heart.
“Welcome, Your Highness.”
She raised her head and smiled kindly, like an old grandmother from next door.
“There have been quite a few rumors about you in the city lately.
‘The Butcher of Winter City’ is quite the explosive nickname for a young lady.”
Her tone was teasing, but there was no malice in it.
It felt more like a lighthearted test.
Sylvia did not avoid it.
She sat down calmly.
“As long as the granaries of the Northern Territory are full, they may call me whatever they like.”
Lady Margaret nodded in approval, then turned her gaze to Logaris.
“You must be Professor Logaris.
This is the first time I have ever met a young man who can make those old fossils in the Holy Church stomp and curse every single day.”
“I have read your papers, and I have also read their rebuttals against you.
To be honest, your journal articles are far more interesting.”
Logaris merely pushed up his glasses and said nothing.
He was used to scrutiny and hostility.
Praise without prejudice, on the other hand, made him rather uncomfortable.
Lady Margaret set her knitting aside and pointed at the teapot on the table.
“Very well.”
“I imagine the two busiest people in the Northern Territory did not come to visit an old woman like me at dawn simply to have a cup of tea.”
She poured tea for both of them at an unhurried pace.
Her gaze was deep, and there was a knowing amusement in her tone, as though she had already seen through everything.
“Or perhaps the two of you have come up with some earthshaking plan and need this old bag of bones to do her part?”
Sylvia smiled.
She knew that when dealing with a wise and clear-sighted person like this, any attempt at beating around the bush would only make her seem ridiculous.
“Madam, we do indeed need your help.”
As she spoke, she took a delicate crystal bottle from the dimensional storage pouch she carried with her and gently placed it on the table.
Inside the bottle, the emerald-green liquid seemed to contain life itself, radiating a soft halo.
“What is this?” Lady Margaret’s attention was immediately drawn to it.
“Professor Logaris' latest alchemical creation.
We call it Fleeting Youth.”
Sylvia did not try to build suspense.
She directly laid out the potion’s effects in full.
With dark circles under his eyes, Logaris added in the dry tone of someone reciting an experiment report, “Strictly speaking, it is a failure.
My goal was immortality, but it cannot achieve that.”
“Its primary effect is supreme restoration.
As long as the soul has not been extinguished, even if the body is reduced to a single finger, it can fully regenerate within minutes.
The price is that the user will temporarily regress into a childhood form between the ages of six and sixteen.
Their power remains intact, and the effect lasts for three days.”
The room fell into a brief silence.
Lady Margaret stared at the potion, and the smile on her face slowly faded.
She had lived for more than seventy years.
She had seen too many miracles, and she had also seen too many lies.
But the effect described for this potion had already surpassed everything she understood about magic and alchemy.
“To restore the dying and regrow flesh upon bones…” she murmured softly.
Then she raised her head, and her eyes turned sharp.
“And then, rejuvenation?”
“Your Highness, forgive my bluntness, but if this thing is taken outside, every powerful figure in the kingdom will go mad for it.
Why would you bring it before an old woman like me?”
This was not something that belonged to the world she cared about.
It was a toy for the powerful, an elixir for the rich to prolong their lives.
Sylvia had been waiting for exactly this question.
She did not answer right away.
Instead, she gave Logaris a look.
With great reluctance, Logaris pulled out the thick stack of documents in his arms, still smelling of ink and coffee, and slammed them down on the table with a loud smack.
The thickness of the pile was even more exaggerated than a dictionary.
“What is this?” Lady Margaret frowned.
“A promise.” Sylvia looked straight at her and spoke one word at a time.
“And it is also the true gift we wished to offer you today.”