The Grand Duke hadn’t landed a single shot on the target, while I hit mine on my very first try, which made the atmosphere take a strange turn. I was learning for the first time that the Grand Duke had a surprisingly competitive streak.

"Have you handled an arkebuse before?"

"This is my first time firing one. The powder smoke is so thick I can hardly breathe."

"The court clergy hate it. They call it the very breath of the devil."

It looked like one of the court priests was among his attendants. When I glanced at the man’s face, I caught him glaring at the firearms with a look that mixed disgust and outright contempt.

The Church had branded firearms as the devil’s weapons and forbidden their use, but as always, that meant nothing to the nobles. The clergy considered gunpowder itself an act of impiety.

The sulfur in gunpowder was viewed most negatively of all. The clergy believed that where fire and brimstone burned, there too was purgatory, and they held to the conviction that Sodom and Gomorrah had been destroyed by fire and brimstone.

So naturally, a weapon that combined both could find no favor with the Church. But there were people who despised firearms even more than the clergy did, and those were the knights themselves.

For men who held it as the highest virtue to charge into battle at the front lines with noble spirit and courage, the idea of being killed by some nameless peasant’s bullet was unthinkably humiliating.

That was why knights scorned these powder weapons, calling them Satan’s tools, utterly devoid of any heroic quality. I, on the other hand, knew exactly how terrifying and effective they truly were.

"When a knight with a reputation as great as yours asked for an arkebuse, I could hardly believe it." 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

"As Your Highness well knows, I’m a man who values practicality over romance."

"And you see real utility in a weapon as cumbersome as this?"

The handler was diligently reloading the arkebuse. I could see with my own eyes the long process required just to pull the trigger again. Just watching it, anyone would doubt its usefulness.

And keeping the match cord lit was crucial.

The attendants kept twirling the burning cords so the flame wouldn’t die out.

Crack!

The Grand Duke took careful aim at a target fifty meters out and squeezed the trigger.

A cloud of arkebuse smoke billowed outward. But the Grand Duke missed again.

Was a matchlock really that inaccurate?

And yet I’d hit the target at fifty meters with ease.

Watching me land a clean shot, the Grand Duke clicked his tongue in amazement.

"Didn’t you say this was your first time handling an arkebuse?"

"I thought I just got lucky, but it seems I really am a good shot."

The smoke was awful, but the more I fired, the more I started to enjoy it.

The Grand Duke’s competitive spirit kicked in, and he took turns firing alongside me as if we were in a contest. The firearm handler and his attendants were kept running. In the end we fired eleven shots between us, and I hit eight of them.

The Grand Duke managed to hit four.

But even I couldn’t really hit anything past fifty meters.

I’d clearly lined up my sights, yet the ball would veer off somewhere else entirely.

"Not only is reloading absurdly slow, but past fifty paces it becomes useless."

"Accuracy really does drop sharply. The noise is loud, and the powder smoke blocks your view."

"Even so, you want to use this weapon? You’re aware, of course, that powder is enormously expensive."

At a gesture from the Grand Duke, one of the attendants told me the price.

Five gold coins per barrel. My jaw nearly dropped.

Fortunately, the men I intended to train as a pilot group numbered around ten.

If that figure ever grew to a hundred or a thousand, a single barrel of powder wouldn’t even begin to cover it.

The firearms were handmade, costing roughly twenty-five silver coins each. The attendant explained that the armory currently held fifty guns in total, five of which were defective. Well then, those five would do nicely for research purposes.

"Are you giving all of these to me?"

"Keeping them serves no purpose except for the occasional novelty of firing them like this. I’d intended to sell them at a reasonable price to any prince who wanted to raise a unit of gunners, but there were no takers."

Until you asked.

The Grand Duke added that last bit before handing the matchlock to one of his attendants.

I was already busy turning the gun this way and that, inspecting every part.

"The more I look at you, the more you resemble the baron."

"The duchy has more than a few barons, Your Highness. Which one do you mean?"

"My dear friend. Surely you can guess?"

"...You mean Baron Constance."

Like August, an oddly large number of nobles had remarked that I resembled the baron. Could it be that the Grand Duke’s particular kindness toward me stemmed from this resemblance to his late friend Baron Constance?

"Do I really look that much like him?"

"Not at all. The baron was far better looking than you."

Hmm. Was that supposed to be a parting shot? It’s awkward to say it myself, but Hilda told me she was drawn to my looks the first time she saw me, and I’m distinctive enough that even I’m sometimes startled when I catch my reflection in a mirror.

I’m serious.

Apart from the crown prince and Vermeer, I had never met a single man better looking than me.

"Then how exactly do I resemble him?"

"His personality and his curiosity, perhaps. The baron took interest in things others overlooked."

"Was it the baron who advocated for adopting firearms?"

"Sharp wit—that’s another thing you share."

The Grand Duke laughed openly and confirmed it. As the prince of Rosenheim, Baron Constance would have wielded enough influence to push through the adoption of firearms even against opposition from the Military Department and the Finance Department.

"But with the baron’s death, it all came to nothing."

"I’d heard he fell in the Great War."

"Yes. The baron made himself bait so that I could live. My foolish stubbornness got my friend killed. Could there be anything more sorrowful than that?"

Remembering Baron Constance’s death, the Grand Duke’s face turned heavy with grief. From this exchange I could sense something strange. So it wasn’t the Grand Duke who had demanded the sacrifice?

The emotion I read through the Manager Scouter was pure mourning.

That left my head spinning with confusion.

"When I speak with you, I sometimes find myself becoming candid without meaning to."

For a moment I almost asked why the Grand Duke’s Guard had been watching me. I could tell the Grand Duke held some affection for me, but this was an extremely sensitive matter. What if the surveillance really was on his orders?

A prince might openly air his displeasure and use it to pressure the royal family, but I, at most, was a small village lord propped up by the royal family’s favor. I wasn’t in any position to push back.

The War Minister’s backing?

In front of the Grand Duke, that was no shield at all.

The Military Department’s authority was, in essence, a privilege the Grand Duke himself had granted. If he revoked it, the department could do nothing. My father-in-law, in particular, was a devoted member of the Grand Duke’s faction, a man of fierce loyalty.

So instead of probing into sensitive matters, I decided it would be wiser to draw out information I didn’t already have. The relationship between Baron Constance and the Grand Duke—uncovering that was the best I could do for now.

"I’ve heard Your Highness and Baron Constance were childhood friends."

"Indeed. We were inseparable, much like Franz and Leo. No, closer than those two, really. Franz, at least, never caused real trouble. Being dull is the one thing he and the baron have in common."

The Grand Duke gave a brief account of his youth. Even that little glimpse made it clear what a troublemaker he had been, and it gave me a fair sense of how much cleaning up Baron Constance must have done as his constant companion.

"We were truly close. Setting aside the bond of lord and vassal, he was the only friend who could make me completely candid. The queen used to be jealous of him."

"...What was the queen’s relationship with Baron Constance like?"

"Poor. She told me outright to keep my distance from him."

Poor? What on earth was going on?

Weren’t they exchanging love letters?

Or had she been putting on an act so the Grand Duke wouldn’t catch on?

Fooling a man with a conspiracy (neutral) disposition would be extraordinarily difficult. The thing about people drawn to intrigue is that they tend to be very sharp. A fool can’t weave a real conspiracy.

"I’d heard she suddenly began keeping the baron at arm’s length."

"Hmph. You ask sensitive questions without batting an eye."

The Grand Duke’s mood soured.

Damn it, I’d pushed too far.

"My apologies, Your Highness. Please forgive my impertinence."

"I’ll let it pass this once. Richard, who seems to have so thoroughly captured your interest, was a just man. But that does not always lead to favorable outcomes. That very nature of his became a poison."

A just nature, turned to poison?

I couldn’t fully grasp what the Grand Duke meant.

That was the only hint he gave me.

And that hint only deepened my confusion.

"I can’t give you cannons—those are strategic assets—but I’ll hand over the fifty firearms and five barrels of powder. Beyond that, you’ll have to pay. You understand why, of course?"

"Because powder is precious. I understand."

"You’ve upheld the dignity of the royal family, so consider this your reward."

I was more than grateful just to receive twenty-five gold coins’ worth of powder.

What also crossed my mind was that since powder was expensive largely because of saltpeter, if I could learn how to manufacture saltpeter, producing powder would become much easier. I knew it was generally made by aging waste matter.

It was a foul-smelling process, but since saltpeter was very difficult to obtain naturally, mastering a way to produce our own powder, however unpleasant, was vital.

I might only be the lord of a small village, but I had to at least try.

And if it worked, it could become a substantial source of income.

If, that is, I could pull it off.

"The introduction of firearms is going to stir things up for a while."

"It’s only a small fief. Surely it can’t cause that much of a stir?"

"Hahaha, I mean that in another sense. Well, you’ll find out soon enough."

In another sense?

I wasn’t quite sure what he meant.

But that knowing smile of his was distinctly irritating.

In any case, I’d managed to borrow the armory’s firearm handler for a while.