[ Everyone Likes Me ]
Just like the title, I was transmigrated into a trashy romance fantasy novel where everyone likes the Heroine.
And at the worst possible timing, no less.
"Kyle Leopold, why..."
A girl fallen pathetically while clutching her cheek, gazes pouring from around us, and the Crown Prince showing hostility toward me.
It seemed I had been transmigrated as an extra who bullied the Heroine during her childhood.
More precisely, should I say I was the scapegoat she manipulated to highlight her own pitifulness?
Anyway, I had just been transmigrated and was bewildered, but before I could do anything, I was exiled to the South.
'Grand Duke of the South, Admiral of the Southern Navy, and Commander-in Chief of the South'
With nothing but hollow titles piled onto me.
At that time, Kyle Leopold's age was 15.
Considering he was of Imperial Family blood, he was only exiled, but everyone knew that was effectively a political death sentence.
After all, the South, centered on emerging forces like merchants, factory owners, and capitalists, was a region where the center's control did not properly reach.
Moreover, there were no mages worth mentioning in the South.
No matter what strange ideas Kyle Leopold might have, the South was a place without even the capacity to raise a rebellion.
Everyone thought that the 15-year-old brat holding the hollow position of Grand Duke of the South could do nothing.
It was natural.
Even I thought so.
A life where one could play and eat roughly and still have a guaranteed old age.
Considering how hard modern people struggle to achieve such a life, the position of Grand Duke of the South, which had no responsibilities and no involvement in the original story, was truly comfortable.
Rather, it was for the best. I'll live without doing anything, just playing and eating.
Even on the first day I received the title of Grand Duke of the South, I thought that.
...I had thought that.
[ Das Kapital ]
[ Workers of the world, unite! ]
"Confiscated seditious books and printed materials from factory workers. Your Grace."
One month after taking the position of Grand Duke of the South.
It was the time needed to realize that the place I lay was not on a comfortable bed, but on the guillotine of the Revolution.
In hindsight, that was true.
'Everyone Likes Me.' The cause of death of 'Kyle Leopold' in the so-called 'Monajoh' was Revolution.
That scene I had glossed over, thinking that he had such a rotten personality that he deserved to die, had an unimaginable background.
The Empire, which had enjoyed peace for too long, did not welcome innovation. It considered industry vulgar and left it roughly tucked away in the South, and from that moment, the South began to walk a slightly different path from the Empire.
Thus was born the current city of capitalists, beyond the reach of central law.
And nineteenth-century England showed just how harshly capitalists could squeeze workers in a world with inadequate labor laws.
In the single lump of eel jelly given as a meal after seven days a week and nineteen hours a day of labor, there was enough power to unite the workers of all nations.
At that point, only two choices remained for me.
1.Run away to a countryside no one knows before the Revolution breaks out.
2.Normalize the South.
The choice I picked was number 2.
Having been a modern person, I had no confidence I could live in this era's countryside.
So I brought out the knowledge from my previous life.
Thanks to Kyle Leopold's Perfect Memory, bringing that knowledge over was not very difficult.
"Ah, this is called the 'Labor Standards Act.'"
"It is a law that defeats wicked capitalists and lets workers live like human beings."
While the protagonists of the original work spent their youth laughing and chatting at the Academy, I had to fight wicked capitalists in the South.
The legitimacy of the hollow Grand Duke of the South was filled by the workers who supported me.
The Grand Duke of the South's Army, which had only been maintained for appearance's sake, had at some point become a righteous force overthrowing wicked capitalists.
Seven years passed like that, and in the year I turned 22.
"For violations of the Labor Standards Act and unpaid wages, I sentence Count Allen Bernhardt to twenty years in prison."
Only after driving the last wicked capitalist out of the South was I barely able to normalize it.
At that point, the South was no longer a place of exile.
During the seven years I spent with the South, I seemed to have grown attached without realizing it.
Whenever the South, whose constitution had been improved, grew, I felt proud for no reason, and I enjoyed pushing forward modernization projects. I felt as if I understood why people who love their work exist.
Maybe that was why.
"...I hear the Empire's situation isn't good these days."
"They say the relationship between the East, West, North, and the center isn't what it used to be?"
"Is that all? I hear the neighboring Republic is frighteningly expanding its colonies amid this gap. At this rate, the Empire might be pushed out of the top spot."
"Hah, I hear monsters and Black Magic users are running wild amid that gap too. What on earth is His Highness the Crown Prince thinking..."
"It's truly fortunate that the wise Lord Kyle Leopold rules this South."
With the constant bad news about the Empire's mainland, I became anxious without realizing it.
"There are rumors that it's all because of 'that woman' who appeared in high society seven years ago."
As it grew frantically, before anyone noticed, the South had become the only growing place in the Empire, which had turned into a mess.
A shaking Empire. Collapsing public order. And the South, wealthy but weak in strength.
The first to show interest in this cash cow were pirates.
"Why is this ship yours?"
Pirates began running rampant in the South. The profits were so high that even bandits were about to board ships and head out to sea.
It was the prelude to an untimely Age of Great Pirates.
The next to show interest were monsters.
The high-quality magic stone products produced by the South were very good prey for undersea monsters.
Moreover, as the South grew rapidly, the checks flying in from all over began to intensify.
"What? You're telling us to pay this much tribute? Isn't this twice the amount compared to five years ago?"
"Hasn't your production increased threefold compared to then?"
"That's because Lord Kyle and our workers..."
"Tsk tsk, if it weren't for the Empire's mighty military power, could you have developed comfortably without being invaded?"
"Then at least the pirates in our waters..."
"Ahem, I'm not sure about that. Anyway, pay this much tribute this year.
Otherwise, the center might stop protecting you."
Unfortunately, the South had no military power to solve this.
Naval warfare in this era was a magical duel in which both sides fired magic at each other from atop ships.
'Magic is stronger, so why bother firing cannons?'
'If you get hit by magic, it's over in one blow anyway, so why bother making ships sturdy?'
Because of such thinking, even in the age of the Industrial Revolution, where large steamships could occasionally be seen, the navy still had nothing but sailing ships, ironclads, and early-model armored ships.
Unfortunately, in the South, which was centered on commerce and industry, there were few outstanding mages.
Kyle Leopold, who was of Imperial Family blood, was certainly a great mage, but that didn't mean I, the Grand Duke of the South, could spend all day running around subjugating pirates.
Thus, I reached a single conclusion.
"I need an extremely powerful force that can be used in emergencies."
One that doesn't require a mage's help, at that.
So I called for my Adjutant right there.
"Lucilla."
"Yes, Your Grace."
The one who opened the door and entered was a silver-haired girl.
She was the only servant who followed me when I was exiled, and also a Revolutionary Comrade who fought alongside me against the South's capitalists.
"I won't be showing myself for a while. In the meantime, I'll leave the Adjutant position to you."
Lucilla's characteristic emotionless blue eyes stared intently at me.
"What are you going to make this time..."
"The strongest weapon."
After saying only that, I shut myself in my room immediately.
***
Lucilla accepted the temporary Adjutant position Kyle had entrusted to her, as if she were used to it now.
She had already refused many times, saying, 'How could I take on such an important position?'
She knew well enough herself that those words did not reach Kyle.
And, more than anything...
"If it's him, he surely has something in mind."
She remembers the day he first shut himself in that small room.
After racking his brain for days, he came out holding a book called the 'Labor Standards Act.'
The changes that followed were truly tremendous.
At first, no one in the Empire thought that the position of 'Grand Duke of the South,' which nobles, merchants, and capitalists all ignored, could seize real power.
However, Lord Kyle brought the new force known as workers into politics.
Factories cannot run without workers. The same was true for commerce and transportation.
Lord Kyle, who in an instant took hold of the workers who were the foundation of society, did not waste that power on vain things but used it to improve the South.
Thus, he personally wrote the myth of the South, the only growing region in the collapsing Empire.
He proudly proved himself to the center, which had failed to recognize Lord Kyle's greatness.
That was why she could wait with peace of mind.
Until the international situation surrounding the South began to move urgently.
"Adjutant Lucilla, urgent report!"
"What is it?"
"The County of Sarsen is violating the Sarsen-Lutetia Treaty and building a fortress in the Sarsen region! Estimated completion is in about three years!"
The Sarsen-Lutetia Treaty was one of the provisions of the free trade agreement between the South and the West.
Its content was simple.
In the Sarsen-Lutetia region, the only overland route between the West and the South, no obstacle that could block free trade may be built.
If they violated the treaty, there could be only one purpose.
"...Those damn Westerners ignored us when things were hard, and only now are they trying to stick a straw into the South's prosperity."
Building a fortress requires enormous costs.
So the side that built it collects money from passersby to cover those enormous costs.
And the Sarsen-Lutetia region was the only overland route from the South to the West.
In other words, it meant they would extort money from every merchant using the South's overland route.
"Protest immediately! This is an act that violates the Sarsen-Lutetia Treaty!"
"We already tried. But... the County of Sarsen claims this is a measure to protect the South from outside invaders and shows no sign of backing down an inch."
Lucilla bit her lip hard.
Even an 8-year-old brat could tell that was a lie, but that didn't mean the South could do anything about it.
The central government did not like Lord Kyle.
The West had no reason to intervene when money was entering its own pockets, and the other regions would clearly step back, saying it wasn't their business.
Armed conflict is... humiliating to admit, but difficult.
After all, in the South, a place of exile, there were no proper mages except Lord Kyle.
"These thieves think we're a colony."
We're being robbed with our eyes open, and there's nothing we can do.
Lucilla's hands trembled with rage.
It was exactly at that moment that Kyle Leopold's door opened.
"Phew... With this, the basic design is complete."
Kyle Leopold immediately convened a meeting and spread the blueprint in the center of the round table in the meeting room.
It was an excessively elaborate blueprint for something made by an ordinary person.
It was thanks to Kyle Leopold's ability to automatically visualize the blueprint before his eyes when he had sufficient understanding of the subject.
Seeing the blueprint of a massive steel warship, one council member cautiously asked.
"What... is this a blueprint of?"
Kyle Leopold answered without a trace of hesitation.
"Dreadnought."
It was the name of the greatest war machine humanity had ever created, an invincible warship that could smash any fortress like a straw.