Arknights: Prime Minister of Kjerag — Chapter 92

Chapter 92: I Won’t Take This Salary for Nothing

Kjerag, Turicum. Inside the Government Office Building.

The heavy oak doors had barely clicked shut behind Ernst when Ho’olheyak leaned across his desk. Her serpentine tail swayed with a lazy, hypnotic rhythm, and a deeply amused glint danced in her eyes.

“Did you hear the news?” she murmured, her voice dripping with the thrill of fresh gossip. “Enciodes carried out a massive purge the moment he returned to Karlan Trade yesterday. I heard he fired several hundred employees in a single breath.”

Ernst settled into his high-backed leather chair. Uncharacteristically, he didn’t take the opportunity to kick his brother while he was down. Instead, he sifted through the paperwork on his desk and offered a dry retort. “It isn’t a layoff. It is simply supplying society with exceptional talent.”

“Boss, you really do know something, don’t you?” Ho’olheyak’s lips curled into a knowing smile. She straightened her posture, the fabric of her uniform shifting elegantly. “Forget it. If you don’t plan to elaborate, I won’t pry.”

Ernst, of course, couldn’t elaborate. The simple truth was that this entire situation was a direct result of a choice he had forced upon Enciodes.

Although he still didn’t entirely understand why Enciodes had ultimately chosen to hold his hand during the Holy Hunt Ceremony—rendering a significant portion of Ernst’s careful countermeasures useless—the Prime Minister hadn’t walked away empty-handed.

The harvest from that tense standoff was substantial. The reconnaissance team composed of Platinum, Ho’olheyak, Joyce, and a few others had successfully located Karlan Trade’s hidden special forces stationed at the foot of the mountain.

It wasn’t inherently scandalous for the SilverAsh family to maintain a private military force. Even though the Paleroche family served as the nominal protectors of Kjerag, every Great Family maintained their own household guards. After all, they couldn’t exactly march all the way to the Paleroche estates to beg for reinforcements every time a stray pack of Beastbirds harassed a remote village.

But the deployment of this specific unit defied all innocent explanations.

According to Kjerag’s ancient traditions—specifically the rigid laws enforced by the Karlan Temple—no citizen of Kjerag was permitted to move armed forces freely within the Holy Mountain’s perimeter during the Holy Hunt Ceremony. Not even the patriarchs of the Three Great Families were exempt.

If a patriarch wished to bring an escort, they were permitted to do so within strict parameters. Arctosz Paleroche, for instance, had brought a veritable army of imposing Ursus warriors. But by the laws of the Temple, aside from a handful of chosen champions who entered the hunting grounds, the rest of the retinue was strictly confined to the Holy Stone Plaza.

If one chose not to bring an escort, that was perfectly acceptable as well; they could simply remain in their own territory, out of sight and out of mind.

So, what exactly was the purpose of Enciodes’s elite troops?

They hadn’t ascended the mountain, nor had they remained in their designated territory. Instead, they had massed in the shadows along the mountain path. What were his true intentions?

By the old laws, anyone who violated the Karlan Temple’s decrees and incited chaos during Kjerag’s most sacred ceremony was to be dragged to the summit of Mount Matterhorn, strung up by their necks, and left for the Beastbirds to peck out their hearts and livers.

Considering that Ernst fully intended to lease Mount Matterhorn to Rhine Lab as a future research black site, he had graciously offered Enciodes two choices.

Option one: Enciodes could swallow his pride and disband the unit immediately. All native Kjerag soldiers would be reassigned to the new industrial factories for labor service. Foreign mercenaries, such as the Victorians, would be evaluated; if they possessed useful talents and wished to stay, Ernst would personally arrange their employment. The rest would be summarily deported.

Option two: Ernst would have a quiet chat with Enya to formally reduce the severity of their punishment. In the spirit of promoting modern civilization and humanitarian values, he would commute the traditional mountaintop hanging to a swift, efficient beheading, ensuring a quick end for the entire Snowcap Patrol.

Enciodes knew better than to think Ernst was bluffing. No one who survived in the political arena was a spotless white lotus. Enciodes had clearly positioned his troops to blockade the mountain path in preparation for a coup. If Ernst simply let it slide without imposing a penalty or making an example of the conspirators, he would project fatal weakness.

Naturally, Ernst was far too refined to bloody his own hands with the executions, but Arctosz Paleroche would have been absolutely thrilled to swing the axe.

As for the risk of inciting public outrage among the people of Kjerag by executing a company of coup conspirators?

One had to remember that while the Grand Elder was dead, the Karlan Temple’s Elder Council remained very much intact. Those ancient clerics, their faces lined with wrinkles as deep as scripture, still held immense sway. If Ernst truly wanted to push the issue, these orthodox zealots would trip over themselves to act as his executioners.

With their mastery of religious rhetoric, the people of Kjerag wouldn’t just accept the execution of “heretics who desecrated the Holy Hunt”; they might even argue the punishment was too lenient. If one mountain peak wasn’t enough to hang them all, they would gladly use every peak in the nation. They would innovate execution methods, blending tradition with modernity, breaking through the technological bottlenecks of the Victorian gallows to create a highly efficient, one-stop judgment and sentencing service with unique Kjerag characteristics!

If anyone doubted the Temple’s ruthlessness, they only needed to ask Valais’s father for his perspective. Hadn’t the Grand Elder branded a devout, high-ranking follower of Kjeragandr an “impious sinner” with just a few words, leading to his swift death by poison? And not a single soul in the Paleroche family had dared to question it.

If it came to bloodshed, Ernst could even play the merciful savior, publicly pleading for the lives of the condemned to boost his own political capital, maximizing the utility of their deaths.

He could have even taken it a step further and directly implicated Enciodes in the treason.

But unless absolutely necessary, Ernst had no desire to push things to the brink. The hallmark of a brilliant politician was knowing exactly where to draw the line—knowing when to pull the weeds out by the roots, and when to leave a man an exit.

Kjerag was still a developing nation. Concepts like national identity and class consciousness had not yet fully formed. The most reliable bonds holding the populace together were still bloodlines and blind faith.

Would driving Enciodes to total ruin actually benefit Ernst?

Clearly not. He might gain uncontested rule over Kjerag, but Karlan Trade would instantly collapse without its founder. Ernst simply lacked the time, energy, and specialized personnel to take over the massive supply chains, foreign resources, and corporate infrastructure left in the wake of such a collapse.

, if Ernst, acting as Prime Minister, failed to protect his own brother—the patriarch of their family—it would effectively sever his ties to the secular bloodline. He would be forced to rely entirely on the Temple’s religious authority to govern.

And as history had proven time and again, religious authority was invariably the most regressive foundation for a modern state. Reforming Kjerag solely through the church was a massive gamble, fraught with hidden landmines.

Just as Enciodes had once noted, Ernst desperately needed Karlan Trade’s cooperation.

And so, Enciodes had predictably chosen the first option.

Strictly speaking, it wasn’t much of a choice at all. That was the beauty of a flawless counterattack. Ernst’s terms were already incredibly lenient. He had provided the soldiers a way to survive, and he had secured a stable path forward for himself.

‘This may not sound like a compliment, but brother, you are a good person. You leave a path for yourself, and you leave a path for others to live. In this specific regard, I am not your equal.’

Ernst still remembered the exact tone Enciodes had used when he finally agreed to disband the Snowcap Patrol.

The words had left Ernst feeling a strange phantom itch of unease, mostly because in his previous life, a very similar phrase had been used to describe someone else entirely.

‘Unfortunately, I don’t have ten billion in subsidies to throw around.’

Regardless, Ernst had won this round. It wasn’t a minor victory, nor a moderate one. It was an absolute triumph.

The Snowcap Patrol was a professional military force that had undergone rigorous modern training. As a rule, the literacy and discipline of trained soldiers vastly outstripped that of the general civilian populace. And these weren’t just any civilians; they were Kjerag’s citizens, who were desperately lacking in modern education.

This influx of disciplined manpower was miles ahead of the curve.

While these soldiers hadn’t yet undergone the necessary ideological molding to serve as instructors at the Xinghuo Night School, filtering them into administrative and technical roles that required basic literacy, numeracy, and practical discipline was a masterstroke.

In a single move, Ernst had solved a massive logistical headache. If he hadn’t secured this workforce, he would have been forced to purchase an entirely new Originium Heater production line just to artificially train the technicians Kjerag so desperately lacked.

Having observed her boss in silence for a long time, and utterly failing to decipher the grand, terrifying blueprint for Kjerag and Terra that was surely spinning behind his eyes, Ho’olheyak finally abandoned her deductions. She tapped a folder against the desk to draw his attention.

“Boss, a missive arrived from the Duchy of Windermere today. They expressed deep appreciation for your ‘timely reminder.’ Duke Windermere herself will be traveling to Kjerag in half a month to personally convey her gratitude.”

Ernst blinked, pulled from his deep strategic reverie. He stared at the folder for a long moment before his memory finally supplied the context of what he had actually ‘reminded’ Duke Windermere about.

Even after remembering, his confusion only deepened. “Ah? I only passed along a single sentence. It shouldn’t have been that monumental, should it?”

“According to the Duke’s letter, it was,” Ho’olheyak replied, her tone perfectly neutral but her eyes gleaming. “She stated that without your direct intervention, Mr. Kent would have fallen victim to Duke Caster’s poisonous schemes.”

“…”

Ernst sat in silence for three full seconds. Then, without a shred of hesitation, he nodded with absolute shamelessness.

“Draft a reply for me. Express my deep relief regarding Mr. Kent’s safety, and tell her I am deeply honored that Duke Windermere took my intelligence so seriously. We are close collaborators, and as the facilitator of this alliance, it is my sworn duty to ensure Mr. Kent’s wellbeing. Tell her no thanks are necessary.”

He had no idea what had actually transpired in Victoria, but if the political winds were blowing in his favor, he would gladly hoist his sails.

also, Ernst’s phrasing was a masterclass in plausible deniability. He had deliberately avoided specifying when he had been concerned for Mr. Kent’s safety. If the political landscape shifted and someone came looking for a scapegoat, Ernst could easily pivot: ‘What? As a business partner, I’m not allowed to ask about Mr. Kent’s health? What reminder are you talking about? I had nothing to do with that—Delphine wrote that letter!’Ho’olheyak read his intentions instantly. She flashed him a crisp’okay’ gesture, her tail flicking with amusement as she turned toward the door.

She made her way down to the mailroom. Whenever Vina—the Minister of Foreign Affairs who inexplicably doubled as the head of courier logistics—was absent, Platinum would temporarily cover the shift, and Ernst would dutifully pay the assassin two separate salaries.

Vina’s pay, on the other hand, was being aggressively docked. It was her own fault for failing her mission. She had blown the entire budget allocated for the Originium Heater procurement and hadn’t even brought the item back. As far as Ernst was concerned, she could starve on the neon-lit streets of Lungmen to pay off her debt.

Meanwhile, halfway across the world in the luxurious Lungmen Grand Hotel, Vina was currently dipping premium sliced meat into a boiling hotpot alongside Wei Yenwu and the Rat King, nodding politely at their conversation. “Ah, yes, yes, of course.”

Back in the Kjerag mailroom, the Harvest Festival holiday meant that Platinum was also off duty.

Ho’olheyak seated herself at the heavy mechanical typewriter—the most advanced piece of technology in the entire Kjerag Government building, save for Joyce’s offline terminal. Her fingers danced across the keys, drafting the polite, diplomatic reply exactly as Ernst had instructed.

But when she finished, she didn’t pull the paper from the roller. Instead, she fed a fresh sheet into the machine and began drafting a second letter.

A letter of severe condemnation.

She was intimately aware of Ernst’s current administrative headaches. No matter how brilliantly he painted his grand blueprint for the future, the cold, hard reality remained: the Kjerag Government was flat broke.

No money meant no progress. Securing funding was the absolute priority.

But Ernst, constrained by his position, was too ’embarrassed’ to directly demand economic compensation from Duke Windermere in exchange for his life-saving reminder. Ho’olheyak, ever the dutiful and perceptive subordinate, decided to use her extensive black-ops experience to help her boss out.

She drafted a scathing letter of condemnation. It didn’t actually matter who it was addressed to, because it was never going to be mailed. But since Duke Windermere’s primary political rival was Duke Caster, Ho’olheyak cheerfully typed the Caster Duchy’s address onto the envelope.

The contents of the letter were wonderfully unhinged. It formally condemned Duke Caster for her consistent disregard for allied nations, accusing her of failing to contribute to the economic development of Kjerag and the overall peace of Terra. It labeled her a warmonger who constantly fanned the flames of discord across Victoria, crowning her as Terra’s resident instigator. It concluded by wishing her a swift and early demise in a catastrophic Originium fertilizer explosion, noting that her death would at least provide some fleeting entertainment for the global populace.

The language was deliberately crude, the grammar slightly chaotic, and the accusations bordering on the abstract. But amidst the venom, one core motive was made crystal clear: The necessity of contributing to the economic development of Kjerag and the peace of Terra.

The latter half of that motive was standard political boilerplate that any noble would gloss over. The former half—economic development—was the actual hook.

Satisfied with her masterpiece, Ho’olheyak pulled the page from the typewriter and tucked it neatly into a secure folder. She wouldn’t show it to Ernst just yet. She would wait until the exact day Duke Windermere arrived in Turicum.

“Boss, the letter condemning Duke Caster you requested is ready. Shall I dispatch it after your final review?”

She would read those exact words out loud in front of their guest. If Duke Windermere had even half a brain, she would instantly understand the extortion hidden beneath the theatrics.

“Don’t ever say I don’t look out for you,” Ho’olheyak murmured to herself, her tongue darting out to lick the corner of her lips. “I certainly won’t take this salary for nothing.”