Arknights: Prime Minister of Kjerag — Chapter 103

Chapter 103: Platinum, You’re the One!

“The matters concerning Lungmen and Rhodes Island are temporarily settled, Vina. Now, I have a rather serious question that requires your professional opinion.”

Ernest leaned back in his chair, tapping a pen rhythmically against his mahogany desk. “What are your thoughts on expanding the department?”

Recruiting for the Foreign Ministry naturally required consulting the current head of said ministry. This was precisely why he had written letter after letter urging Vina to return to Kjerag. Ernest had absolutely no desire to do the thankless, politically messy job of parachuting random personnel into her department. If the newly recruited diplomats and Vina possessed incompatible personalities or clashing philosophies, the resulting friction would be a massive net loss for his administration.

Knowing that Ernest was discussing genuine state affairs, Vina straightened her posture and began to think carefully.

As the Minister of Foreign Affairs, she was currently a lone commander with no troops. Expanding her staff was an inevitable necessity. But to be entirely honest, Vina had zero experience managing a bureaucratic department. When it came to establishing standards for diplomatic recruitment, her mind was completely blank.

After a long stretch of silence—during which she desperately tried to conjure a professional-sounding answer—she finally offered a tentative suggestion.

“Could we… perhaps avoid recruiting anyone with a noble background from Victoria?”

She brought this up, of course, because of her highly sensitive identity.

Ever since Duke Windermere’s representative, Mr. Kent, had visited Kjerag, Vina had been living on edge, terrified that her true Aslan heritage would be exposed. Yet, whether by sheer luck or some unspoken political maneuvering, neither Kent nor Duke Windermere herself had made a single mention of her royal background.

Did they truly not recognize her?

Vina held onto a desperate glimmer of hope. But she also knew perfectly well that if she had merely gotten lucky this time, that luck would eventually run out. If Ernest recruited a handful of Victorian aristocrats to work directly under her command, the exposure of the Foreign Minister’s true identity would only be a matter of time.

When people on the internet finally meet up in real life and their fake personas shatter, it results in complete social death. Vina’s situation was far more advanced. Her persona and her reality were entirely honest, but if the wrong Victorian noble recognized her face, her “social death” would involve a physical, permanent sleep in a wooden box!

She loved the quiet, peaceful atmosphere of Kjerag and her current life here. She wanted to keep this secret buried for as long as humanly possible.

Fortunately, upon hearing her slightly bizarre condition, Ernest merely rolled his eyes.

Please, are you perhaps overestimating Kjerag’s global appeal just a little bit?

He was sitting here stressing over whether he could successfully poach two literate Victorian foot soldiers, and she was already demanding a ban on the aristocracy?

How was this any different from a rundown vocational college proudly declaring, “We refuse to accept any provincial valedictorians!”?

Not to mention, if a genuine Victorian noble actually applied, Ernest would have to seriously wonder if he had the means to keep them in line. Those aristocrats were absolutely not to be trifled with. Hadn’t two Dukes just died in a brutal political gang war in Londinium a few days ago?

However, Ernest kept these cynical complaints locked safely inside his head.

Although his role as Prime Minister frequently forced him into the position of the exhausted straight man dealing with eccentric subordinates, he couldn’t just crush her enthusiasm. For Vina to dare set such an absurd condition, didn’t it just prove her high expectations for Kjerag’s future?

Right, we absolutely look down on mere nobles! Our entry-level requirements demand at least a princess, a prince, a saintess, or the tragic orphan of a fallen dynasty!

He mentally scoffed. If people of that caliber actually flocked to Kjerag, the nation wouldn’t even need an economic development plan. They could just collect daily protection fees from them—exactly like Delphine did—and the citizens of Kjerag would live in absolute luxury.

After composing his expression, Ernest nodded seriously. “I’ve noted that down. Are there any other specific conditions besides the anti-noble clause?”

Vina shook her head. She truly had no other demands. As for personality traits, she felt it wasn’t necessary to list them out. People could easily disguise their true nature. Writing “enthusiastic, kind, positive, and active” on a recruitment poster was just like a candidate writing “team player, eager to learn” on a resume. It was meaningless filler that both sides used when they ran out of actual things to say.

After all, what kind of interviewer actually sits down and asks, “Excuse me, are you a kind person?”

To truly understand someone, you had to meet them face-to-face, converse with them, and observe their daily habits. This was exactly why every profession outside of raw manual labor required a probationary period.

“Understood,” Ernest said, leaning forward and folding his hands on the desk. “I will be visiting several Victorian-speaking nations for an inspection and research tour soon. Would you like to accompany me?”

“Inspection and research” was, simply put, a publicly funded business trip.

After much deliberation, Ernest had decided that before posting public recruitment notices and initiating another exhausting mass-selection process, he needed to go out and try his luck. Maybe he could pull a couple of SSR-tier talents in person.

His targets were clear: nations that used Victorian as their official language. Namely, Victoria, Columbia, and Rim Billiton.

The last option, Rim Billiton, was still highly uncertain. Ernest had read intelligence reports indicating that the mining region hadn’t been very peaceful recently, with a violent independence movement stirring up chaos. If the territory was genuinely dangerous, given his current status as a head of state, it wasn’t suitable for him to risk getting involved.

Of course, besides those major nations, there was a very special place that hadn’t escaped his strategic gaze.

The independent city-state of Siesta.

To understand Terra’s geopolitical landscape, one had to recognize a fundamental truth: while ancient, sprawling empires like Victoria, Sargon, and Yan existed, the concept of a unified ‘nation’ was not the standard. Independent city-states were the true norm.

In the modern context, the massive social collectives referred to as ‘countries’ were originally just alliances of independent cities. Even today, some mobile cities that nominally belonged to a larger empire still fiercely retained their own unique customs and laws, entirely separate from their parent nation.

From the very day he took office as Prime Minister, Ernest had never stopped observing Siesta.

Siesta shared a remarkably similar geopolitical environment with Kjerag. It was sandwiched between three massive powers: Victoria, Iberia, and Sargon. Because of this, it constantly bore the crushing pressure of their overlapping spheres of influence.

However, compared to Kjerag, Siesta possessed one incredibly lucky advantage: two of those three neighboring superpowers were currently in terrible shape.

Iberia had been in a state of rapid, terrifying decline ever since the deep Silence, falling into a dark age of stagnation. Its external expansion had completely ceased, and its sphere of influence was visibly shrinking by the year. The domestic situation was even bleaker. The glorious empire that once sailed invincible armadas across half the known world—ready to retaliate with overwhelming force if Leithanien so much as insulted them—was long dead and buried.

As for Sargon… Ernest always found it incredibly difficult to evaluate that particular empire.

It was a bizarre, chaotic amalgamation of the worst traits imaginable. It possessed the comedic incompetence of a village idiot, the stubborn, backwards conservatism of an isolated cult, and the brutal, endless infighting of a permanent warzone. It had learned absolutely none of the good traits from its neighbors, choosing instead to stitch all their worst flaws together into one massive, dysfunctional state.

It was maxed out. Truly maxed out in all the wrong categories!

If it weren’t for some legendary, emperor-like figure in their ancient history who had successfully resisted the Nightzmora Khagan’s invasion—pulling off a divine tactical maneuver that redirected the Khagan’s forces south toward the Foehn Hotlands—and the sheer volume of ancestral wealth they sat on, Ernest couldn’t fathom how Sargon hadn’t been carved up by emerging powers centuries ago.

That left Victoria. Normally, with two of its major competitors on their last legs, the Victorian Empire should have easily swallowed Siesta whole.

But as the entire world knew, Victoria was currently drowning in its own bloody internal crises.

One had to admit that Siesta was truly blessed by the heavens. Despite having almost zero natural advantages—relying entirely on a single Originium mine and a scenic coastline that was actually just a massive lake—it had somehow managed to thrive.

But Siesta didn’t just survive on blind luck; it had a brilliant diplomatic strategy. The independent city-state nominally accepted the protection of Columbia, effectively using the rising superpower as a shield against Victoria.

Ernest was deeply fascinated by this delicate balancing act, which was why he had specifically penned Siesta into his itinerary. Even if he failed to recruit a single diplomat, visiting the city to study their advanced survival tactics would be highly beneficial for Kjerag.

It had absolutely nothing to do with Ernest wanting to take a relaxing vacation by the water! The Prime Minister’s actions were entirely for the public good, devoid of any selfish, beach-related motives whatsoever.

“No,” Vina replied, pulling him from his thoughts.

To Ernest’s surprise, the blonde Aslan shook her head firmly. “Let’s not. I just returned from Lungmen and I desperately need to rest. You should consider taking one of your other colleagues out to play… ahem, I mean, visit.”

She was genuinely exhausted. And more pressingly, after eating Lungmen’s incredibly rich, decadent cuisine for nearly two months straight, she could feel the physical consequences.

Among other things, she clearly felt that her uniform top was dangerously tight. She had struggled to button it over her chest that morning, constantly paranoid that a button might suddenly pop off like a lethal projectile. If she were just lounging in private, chatting with Ernest in his office, a wardrobe malfunction wouldn’t be the end of the world. But in a high-stakes diplomatic setting? That would be a catastrophic breach of etiquette!

When she stepped out into the world, she represented Ernest. She was the face of Kjerag’s foreign policy; she absolutely could not bring shame to her people by bursting out of her clothes mid-negotiation.

She planned to use this downtime to exercise rigorously, adjust her diet, and return to her normal measurements. She especially needed to fix this before Platinum glared at her chest again with those wide, betrayed eyes that practically screamed, ‘How could you let them get even bigger?!’

Ernest didn’t press the issue. He simply nodded and accepted her refusal.

After seeing Vina off, he gathered his coat and stepped out of his office, only to immediately bump into Platinum walking down the corridor.

The Kuranta assassin-turned-bodyguard stumbled slightly as she collided with him. A rare hint of genuine panic flashed across her usually stoic expression, her pale ears twitching nervously. She quickly composed herself, taking a half-step forward.

“U-um, boss… are you free right now?”

“Speak,” Ernest replied, amused by her sudden hesitation.

Platinum took a deep breath, reaching into her sleek bag. She pulled out a portable Originium massage patch and held it out to him, her cheeks dusted with a faint, embarrassed pink.

“A… belated Harvest Festival gift.”

Ernest paused, his eyes widening slightly as a memory clicked into place. Platinum had come to see him on the very eve of the Harvest Festival. So much chaotic political maneuvering had happened since then that he had completely forgotten their unspoken agreement.

He reached out, his fingers brushing against hers as he took the small Columbian device. This particular model functioned very similarly to the electronic massage patches from his previous life. It used trace amounts of Originium energy to generate soothing heat, while a small internal mechanism applied rhythmic pressure to aching muscles. While the physical relief might be minor, the emotional weight of the gesture was immense.

Ernest felt a genuine wave of warmth spread through his chest.

Even though he knew Terra was a real, breathing world where everyone had their own complex lives and agendas, the simple feeling of being remembered by someone always touched him deeply.

Platinum might have a history as a cold-blooded killer, but right now, she was incredibly warm. Honestly, much warmer than Vina!

Having accepted the gift, the traditions of the Harvest Festival dictated that Ernest absolutely had to return the favor. He patted his pockets, realizing he didn’t have a single appropriate physical gift on hand.

But then, a perfect realization struck him. Didn’t he just have a sudden vacancy for an all-expenses-paid, publicly funded trip to a beautiful coastal city?

Platinum, you’re the one!