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ArabicArknights: Prime Minister of Kjerag — Chapter 16
Chapter 16: Kjerag Needs a Heaven-Sent Hero
High above the biting winds of Kjerag, the Karlan Holy Mountain loomed, casting its long shadow over the Holy Stone Plaza.
The local legends painted a vivid picture of this sacred ground. In the ancient, forgotten eras, the great goddess Kjeragandr had carved Kjerag from the ice, guiding her people toward virtue before falling into a deep, epoch-spanning slumber. When she finally opened her eyes again, the world she had nurtured was unrecognizable.
A tyrant had seized the snow-capped nation. He spat on Kjeragandr’s teachings, erecting a wicked cult in his own image. He bled the commoners dry with suffocating taxes, forcing them to build grotesque palaces that scraped the heavens. The snow country wept under his heel, and countless devout followers perished in the freezing mud.
Furious, Kjeragandr unleashed a cataclysmic, month-long blizzard. The howling whiteout swallowed the tyrant and his towering monuments alive. When the skies finally cleared and the surviving believers returned to worship her, the goddess looked upon the decimated fraction of her flock. Overcome with sorrow, she wept.
A single divine tear fell upon the buried ruins of the tyrant’s palace, crystallizing into the Holy Stone. To honor this miracle, the frozen tomb of the tyrant was consecrated as the Karlan Holy Mountain, and the plaza cradling the Holy Stone became Kjerag’s most sacred ground—the site of the annual Holy Hunt Ceremony, forever veiled in the thick, fragrant smoke of burning incense.
Of course, the historical accuracy of such myths was highly debatable. The only absolute certainty was that the Karlan Temple had conveniently sprouted in the wake of this “divine miracle.” The Temple elders had effortlessly tacked on a self-serving epilogue to the myth: The great Kjeragandr, wishing to prevent another tyrant from rising, handpicked her most devout and benevolent followers to form the Karlan Temple, granting them absolute authority over all mortal affairs in Kjerag.
Ernst could only scoff at their sheer audacity. The Karlan Temple had always been masters of spinning a good yarn. Pulling authority out of thin air was no different from the ancient Terran religions claiming the divine had personally handed them the keys to the kingdom. Even if a god truly existed, they usually just left their prophets to suffer. The sprawling religious states and their immense political power? That was the work of ambitious mortals, having absolutely nothing to do with the divine.
Well, unless the ‘god’ in question was someone like Hong Xiuquan, claiming to be the literal brother of the messiah to conquer a nation—then Ernst might have to retract his statement.
Thanks to the Temple’s relentless propaganda, Ernst’s scheduled ascent up the Holy Mountain was destined to be a miserable trek.
At six in the morning, the freezing mountain air bit at his skin. Ernst, having burned the midnight oil in his office, stepped out of the low-slung bungalow right on schedule and began his solitary march toward the Karlan Holy Mountain.
His route took him straight through Turicum. As Kjerag’s sole gateway to the outside world, the town’s residents had absorbed a trickle of foreign culture and modern pragmatism. They still bowed their heads to Kjeragandr, but the blinding fanaticism of the inner territories had long since cooled in their veins. As Ernst walked alone down the frost-caked cobblestones, the townsfolk merely peered through the frosted glass of their windows. Their eyes held a mix of bewilderment and pity, watching him as if he were a condemned man taking his final steps to the gallows.
They were indifferent spectators. Having already tasted the sweet fruits of modernization brought in by Enciodes SilverAsh, they naturally leaned toward the SilverAsh family’s pragmatic approach. Nobody threw insults at him here, but not a single soul stepped out into the cold to offer him a word of support, either.
It’s none of my business, so I’ll keep my head down. Apathy was the creeping sickness of urbanization, and the people of Turicum were already showing the symptoms. Ernst walked through the quiet streets in silence, fully aware that this eerie calm was merely the prologue.
Just northeast of Turicum lay the sprawling, undeveloped tracts of land that Ernst had boldly mortgaged to Magnus Bank.
Usually a desolate stretch of snow and rock, the area was now choked with a seething mass of bodies. The biting early morning chill did absolutely nothing to cool the raging inferno in their chests.
The second Ernst came into view, the crowd exploded. Leading the vanguard was Gulo of the Paleroche clan, his face flushed purple with rage as he hoisted a crude wooden sign.
“Traitor! Ernst, you filthy traitor! Don’t you dare sell Kjerag’s land!”
Gulo’s roar shattered the dam. In an instant, hundreds of voices merged into a deafening wall of hatred.
“This is the sacred soil the Great Goddess Kjeragandr bestowed upon us! How dare you pawn it off?!”
“How could the SilverAsh bloodline produce such a disgusting parasite?!”
“Enciodes and the Saintess will spit on your name!”
A barrage of unintelligible, guttural Kjerag curses filled the air.
For the first time in his life, Ernst truly understood the physical weight of a thousand murderous glares. Even as he pushed past the initial blockade, the mob surged alongside him, flanking his path and cutting off his front, screaming themselves hoarse. Projectiles rained down from the furious sea of people—jagged stones, handfuls of frozen dirt, and even heavy iron fire pokers whipped past his head.
Had Magnus Bank not anticipated the backlash, Ernst would have been torn apart. A sturdy perimeter of heavily armed Columbian security contractors held the surging locals at bay, their riot shields forming a desperate wall between the young politician and the furious mob.
It wasn’t until he finally broke through the worst of the gauntlet, leaving the immediate vicinity of Turicum behind, that Ernst spotted Luther Magnus waiting on the snowy path ahead.
The illustrious Columbian banker took one look at Ernst’s disheveled state and let out a long, exasperated sigh. “I warned you to listen to me, Ernst. These unruly savages… what could they possibly understand about development, pioneering, or the grand vision of the future?”
Luther casually patted the heavy replica pistol strapped to his waist, his tone dripping with absolute certainty. “You can talk yourself blue in the face, but they won’t hear a word. The only language this kind of rabble understands is this.”
Ernst simply brushed the dirt from his coat and shook his head. “This is exactly what I anticipated, Mr. Luther.”
He glanced back at the screaming mob held behind the barricades. “The people haven’t actually done anything wrong. From where they stand, they are simply bleeding to protect their home.”
Luther clicked his tongue, unimpressed. “In such a pathetically foolish way?”
“Yes,” Ernst agreed, a faint, stubborn smile touching his lips. “And you should be thanking Kjeragandr for their foolishness, Mr. Luther. If these people were Columbian citizens, their class-action lawsuits and formal complaints would already be sitting on the Vice President’s desk, and I would be facing an immediate vote of no confidence. But the Kjerag people don’t know how to play that game. So, our contract proceeds without a hitch.”
Luther Magnus froze. He stared at the young man, his eyes widening in genuine astonishment at the sheer, calculated pragmatism beneath that calm smile. Finally, the banker shook his head, a wry chuckle escaping him.
“I have to admit… I truly wish you were born Columbian. With a mind like yours, you would have built an empire to rival mine.”
Ernst pursed his lips. He lifted his gaze, staring past the banker toward the towering, snow-draped peaks of the Karlan Holy Mountain.
“If Columbia hadn’t been blessed with a heaven-sent hero all those years ago—someone willing to stand up and lead the bloody resistance against Victorian rule—would your nation be the shining land of opportunity and dreams it is today?”
Columbia’s founding heroes hadn’t known if they would survive, but they drew their blades anyway. They had rallied Columbian natives, Victorian defectors, and idealistic volunteers from Laterano, Leithanien, Gaul, and every corner of Terra. They bled, they fought, and they won. That was the price of Columbia’s modern prosperity.
But what about Kjerag?
The future of the Kjerag people was suffocatingly bleak. Sandwiched between the terrifying military and economic might of Columbia, Victoria, and Kazimierz, their starting line was no better than Columbia’s had been centuries ago. The locals might be blind to it now, but in ten or twenty years, when the illusion of isolation finally shattered, the colossal Nomadic Cities of the great powers would already be parked at the foot of the Karlan Holy Mountain, ready to swallow them whole.
This frozen country needed a heaven-sent hero of its own.
That hero could be Enciodes. It could be Enya. And naturally, it could also be him—Ernst!
If no one else was willing to shoulder the crushing weight of progress, then he would drag this nation into the future himself. It was certainly a better plan than passively gambling his life on the original timeline, waiting for Enciodes to trigger the Snow Mountain Incident.
Leaving the silent banker behind, Ernst adjusted his collar and resumed his grueling trek toward the Holy Mountain.
A few paces behind him, standing at Luther Magnus’s side, was an elderly Sankta man. He wore a heavy black trench coat and a battered cowboy hat, the brim pierced with distinct metallic rings.
“Mr. Cliff,” Luther said, nodding respectfully to the veteran mercenary. “Thank you for making the trip out here personally.”
Cliff, the legendary CEO of Blacksteel Worldwide, slowly shook his head. His sharp, weathered eyes remained locked on Ernst’s retreating back.
“Is that the VIP you hired us to babysit?”
Luther nodded. “A pristine territory completely untouched by Catastrophes, boasting unique, world-class snowscapes… it’s a goldmine. It will become the ultimate vacation sanctuary for Terra’s elite. The development contract Prime Minister Ernst signed with me guarantees I’ll make an absolute fortune. Spending a fraction of that to hire a premium Blacksteel detachment to keep him breathing is just sound business.”
“Usually, when I take your money, it’s to have my operators tear a regime down,” Cliff remarked, his voice a dry, humorless rasp that stated a terrifying truth. But a second later, the corner of his mouth twitched upward into a rare, faint smile. “However… I think I understand why you’re playing defense this time.”
The old Sankta tilted his head back, taking in the stunning majesty of the snow-capped peaks and the solitary, unyielding figure of the young politician marching toward them.
“I’m getting old,” Cliff murmured, a hint of genuine satisfaction in his tone. “Getting to see scenery this beautiful, and a young man with that kind of fire in his gut… this trip wasn’t a waste of my time.”
He glanced sideways at the banker. “When that resort of yours is finally built, make sure you reserve a cabin for me.”
[Rhodes’s Note: “Hong Xiuquan” was a historical figure from the Qing Dynasty who claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ. He led the Taiping Rebellion and established the Heavenly Kingdom of Peace, merging religious fanaticism with immense political and military power.]