Chapter 9: Every Page a Clean Coin
Under a fine, drizzling morning rain over the capital, three streets around the central commercial square had been swallowed whole by a single, endless line of people.
Mud splashing up their trouser legs, cold rain soaking through, thousands of people — from silk-cloaked noble knights to lace-parasoled young ladies, discharged soldiers to mage academy students — inched forward, step by patient step, toward the grand building with its gold-plated bronze sign: The House of Vance Grand Knowledge Booksellers.
Lucian pulled his fur-lined hood down low and stood frozen across the street, staring at the scene in front of him, his temples twitching over and over.
This had blown so far past a normal book launch it wasn't even funny anymore.
Along both sides of the avenue, an entire ecosystem of spin-off merchandise had sprung up like mushrooms after rain.
At a shop on the east side, a crowd shoved and jostled to buy crude black wool "Authentic Nameless Knight Shadow Cloaks" — going for fifty gold pieces apiece.
On the west corner, a tea house called Where the Knight Rests was packed to the walls, selling bitter herbal tea called "Taste of Solitude" at ten times the normal price — marketed, the sign said, as "the drink a hero sips through the white nights of snow."
Even the children running around on the sidewalk were swinging little black-painted wooden swords carved with the empty circle ⭕, shouting off dramatic lines Lucian had scrawled out at six years old just to sound edgy.
Regulus... you're a bloodsucking businessman who wouldn't leave a duck a single feather.
Lucian pressed a hand to his forehead, feeling every ounce of dignity his former finance-employee self had ever possessed getting ground into the pavement and monetized down to the last drop of blood by his own father.
He tugged his hood lower, slipped through the frenzied crowd, and entered the bookshop's main hall through the entrance reserved for the guild's honored guests.
The moment he stepped through the elaborately carved oak doors, a middle-aged man in an elegant suit, a diamond House Vance pin fastened to his chest, hurried over. This was Vandel — General Manager in charge of the family's entire cultural distribution network.
The instant Vandel recognized Lucian, he froze, then bent into a perfect ninety-degree bow.
"Greetings, young master! Have you come to personally inspect the capital branch?"
Lucian glanced across the thousand-square-meter hall, where dozens of staff worked at breakneck speed, packing stacks of thick books that still smelled of fresh magical ink. "Business is... going alright, I take it?"
"Alright? Young master, this is a miracle!" Vandel's eyes lit up like a pair of lamps, his voice shaking with pure exhilaration. "In just twenty days, we've completely sold out three hundred thousand printed copies across all sixteen major cities! Every single one of the family's magic printing presses is running three shifts, around the clock!"
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Vandel dropped his voice and leaned in close, boasting with his chin nearly tilted at the ceiling.
"And thanks to this staggering revenue — from the book itself and every licensed product besides — last week we officially paid a hundred thousand gold pieces in legitimate tax to the Imperial treasury! Do you know how the Chief Tax Officer used to strut around, always threatening to inspect our warehouses? He personally brought a gilded receipt to the Vance estate himself, bowing and thanking my lord, begging us to open more presses to help fund the crown's budget!"
Lucian said nothing.
A hundred thousand gold pieces in clean tax revenue. That meant the real revenue from this garbage book had already crossed two million gold in under a month.
Every last coin of dirty gold — the demon-race spoils his mother had looted through her war years, the dragon-hoard treasure his father had claimed — had all been washed clean, openly, legally, so thoroughly that even the Inquisition had issued Sword Emperor Regulus a certificate as a "Model Cultural Entrepreneur."
A cold shiver ran down Lucian's spine. The book had escaped his control so completely that even House Vance's political standing was moving with it.
"How does it look right now?" Lucian asked, keeping his tone level, hiding the numb dread settling into his chest.
"The old noble houses are losing their minds with jealousy," Vandel said with a smug grin. "They always looked down on House Vance as crude upstart merchants who'd only made it on swordsmanship. But now, with His Majesty personally using our publishing taxes to fund the northern legions, House Vance's political standing has climbed right up to the founding dukes."
Vandel looked at the ten-year-old standing in front of him.
Beneath the grand chandelier, Lucian stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his handsome young face utterly unreadable. He showed no joy at the millions of gold pieces. No pride at the political victory. His dark eyes looked distant, as if gazing straight through the entire continent.
In reality, Lucian was frozen with pure secondhand mortification, and quietly calculating every possible way to assassinate his own father without technically violating filial piety.
But to Vandel and the nobles gathered in the hall, that same expression read as something else entirely.
Look at the young master of House Vance, the crowd murmured, awe creeping into their voices. Ten years old, carrying himself like a mountain — calm, unshaken, standing in a sea of gold and absolute power without so much as a flicker of expression. The rumors were true — this mysterious young master really is the mind behind the entire Vance cultural empire.
"Oh, young master!" Vandel said, as if suddenly remembering something, pulling out a folder stamped confidential. "Per my lord's secret orders — to satisfy the millions of readers out there practically rioting for a new book — the press has finished the magical printing plates for Volume 2! First run goes out next month, and it's a record: one million five hundred thousand copies, continent-wide!"
One million five hundred thousand copies.
Lucian slowly lifted his head.
In the center of the bookshop's grand hall hung an enormous oil painting, tall as a three-story building, mounted in the place of honor. It depicted a knight in a black cloak, standing alone atop a ruined mountain peak, sword driven deep into the earth. Beneath it, gold-leaf lettering shimmered:
The Nameless Knight — Guide Through Humanity's Darkest Night.
Lucian stared at the painting, the corner of his eye twitching twice in absolute helplessness.
I just created a cultural monster. And now it's feeding this entire family.