Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume17 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 6===

He had forgotten.

It had entirely slipped his mind.

“(Oh, that’s right. That little kid called him a knight and he’s some famous noble boy back home, isn’t he? It makes sense people would recognize him on a boat full of rich and stingy Legitimacy Kingdom people.)”

The ladies and gentlemen there all wore tailcoats and evening dresses, so it was hard to believe this was the frontline of a war. In fact, they might not have been aware this was a battlefield. They might think of the ship as an isolated safe country.

The dance hall was tall enough to cover multiple floors of the ship, so it was as large as a gym. The floor was covered by fluffy carpet, the ceiling was lined with giant crystal chandeliers, fireplaces with real fire were installed at set intervals along the walls, and the stage was meant for a jazz band or orchestra instead of plays. The food was not arranged on long tables like at a buffet. The truly wealthy did not go get their own food and drinks. The many maids would probably look across the entire dance hall, weave between the people to cover as much of the area as possible, and provide the party guests with whatever they needed.

A large banner was hung up near the tall ceiling.

It said, “New Year’s Charity Tour!! The children braving such painful surgeries deserve to see the real aurora!”

Quenser snorted with laughter.

“So they have so much money they can just throw luxury around like it’s nothing, huh?”

“I-i-i-if they have so much to spare, surely they can give us some hot drinks and a change of clothes.”

Shivering Elise Montana wanted some fresh clothes, but that was liable to land her in a tight-fitting maid uniform. That thought amused Quenser enough to keep his mouth shut and see what happened.

Heivia was surrounded by people a short distance away.

That awful friend of a noble did not look exactly pleased with the situation.

“Sir Heivia, if you are here, does that mean the Legitimacy Kingdom military’s rescue operation is going well?”

“That is wonderful news. This is exactly the heroism I would expect from the Winchell family heir.”

“I am sure the children will be delighted. Hee hee. Because we can tell them that the picture book Prince Charming really does exist.”

Then a wealthy woman glanced over at someone else with a fan covering her mouth.

“Heh heh. But it seems you have also brought along the real Santa that the military arrested.”

“Hgee!?”

Elise (who had found a way to make a soaked military uniform look hot) was forced to face her worldwide shame yet again.

Quenser sighed and thought back to the base assumptions of this mission.

Then he lightly elbowed the side of the busty blonde glasses woman who was trembling both from the cold of her wet clothes and the heat of her embarrassment.

“(Nh, hh…eek??? Wh-what? Are you still not done sexually harassing me?)”

“(Pipe down, Miss Sensitive. You need to be on your guard.)”

“What?”

A few things here seemed out of place.

There were some boys and girls even younger than Quenser and Heivia – only about 10 – mixed in with the party guests. They were wearing tuxedos and cocktail dresses, but their nervous expressions and awkward movements showed they were not used to this. Quenser felt more of an affinity with them, so they were likely commoners.

One small boy in a tuxedo noticed the bomb-wielding battlefield student was looking at him, so he hid behind a woman in an evening dress. Only then did Quenser realize he still had a cute cockroach in hand. The wealthy woman rubbed the small boy’s head with a thin smile.

“Quenser.”

Heivia turned back to say something and Quenser shrugged.

“Sorry, but I’m a commoner. I doubt I could join that conversation. I don’t know all that noble etiquette.”

“That’s not what I was asking. What are we going to do now?”

The surrounding ladies and gentlemen’s ears pricked up when they heard that question.

In fact, they even cut in like they were in charge.

“If we might be so bold as to ask…”

“How exactly do you intend to evacuate everyone? Will you be using a helicopter or a tiltrotor? Or are you sending in a submarine to break through below the thick ice?”

“We have all the children to think about, so we would like to focus on preserving human life. Would you be kind enough to tell us what you are planning in advance?”

Something bothered Quenser.

It did not sit right with him.

These nobles were so absurdly rich they could share their luxury with others, yet they would abandon their money to prioritize the lives of mere commoners without even a blood relation? Not a chance. And he was not just prejudiced or biased against nobles. That was truly how the Legitimacy Kingdom worked.

But that was not the main point here.

Quenser’s group had to make their next move sooner rather than later. They had arrived first, but the Information Alliance soldiers would arrive at the aurora observation ship before long. If it came down to a direct fight over the ship, who could say how far the damage would spread.

They had to change things here, but what would that require?

He had to remember the base assumptions of the mission.

“In that case…”

“Yeah, I get the feeling we’re thinking about the same thing here.”

Quenser and Heivia started speaking and the rich nobles leaned forward eagerly.

“Wh-what will you do? How exactly will you evacuate us!?”

“We won’t.”

Quenser let the other boy say it.

This would receive less backlash coming from a fellow noble.

And Heivia Winchell did not hesitate to do so.

“Instead, we’ll throw all the gold into the ocean. Then the Legitimacy Kingdom and the Information Alliance will lose any reason to attack the ship.”

Yes.

The two sides were not after the human lives; they were after the gold these rich nobles were trying to hide in a secret bank. The human lives were only at risk because that gold was on the ship.

In that case, they only had to let go of that gold.

“Gold is heavy, so if you load it into a ship container and drop it from a crane, it should break through the thick ice and sink to the bottom of the ocean. Then the battlefield will shift there. I imagine it would be a fight between submarines. But whatever it would be, no one would want to attack the ship any longer, so you can wait here until the spring thaw.”

“Um, but, Sir Heivia!?”

“What’s wrong with that? Gold doesn’t rust or corrode in seawater. It’s such a valuable precious metal because you can trust it to remain the same no matter what you do to it, right? As long as you know how much you dropped down, you can recover it just fine. You could leave it there for 100 years and the amount wouldn’t change.”

The attacks might not stop unless they could prove they had dropped all of the gold from the ship, but they likely had paperwork ready for the secret bank. And since the ship was floating in the water, the depth at which it “sank” into the water depended on its weight. If the listed weight and its current floating height were compared, they should be able to prove the veracity of their claim.

“By the way,” added Quenser. “Even if we did try holing up in the ship, the gold would end up at the bottom of the ocean along with the ship itself if the Information Alliance decided to fire an anti-ship missile or ship’s gun at us. Gold isn’t changed by fire or seawater, so they won’t lose any of it even if they have to dredge it up from the bottom of the ocean afterwards. That leaves them with no reason at all to hesitate. The gold won’t function as a shield.”

Everyone fell silent and Quenser could not blame them.

At first, it might seem like the two idiots were presenting an obvious and reasonable idea, but they were ignoring one piece of the puzzle that the rich nobles refused to budge on.

Yes.

They could not let the gold be stolen by an enemy nation like the Information Alliance.

But if the Legitimacy Kingdom took it into custody, it would mean revealing the existence of all the gold they had hoped to hide in that secret bank. They did not want to lose any of their money to additional taxes, so they could not let the Legitimacy Kingdom have the gold either.

Right now, the gold was within their reach.

Even if they knew its weight kept them from escaping here.

But if they let it sink to the bottom of the ocean, not even those rich nobles could access it. They would require the help of either the Legitimacy Kingdom or the Information Alliance militaries. They would be unable to prevent their assets from being stolen before their eyes.

So they could not do that.

They knew it was the safest option, but they could not choose that optimal answer.

“No, you misunderstand.”

However, a gentleman in a tailcoat said something that entirely surpassed Quenser’s expectations.

“Sir Heivia, there is no gold on this ship.”

At first, the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes had no idea what he meant.

After all, wasn’t this entire battle predicated on that gold’s presence? If the ship was not on its way to the secret bank, the Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance would not have been so hellbent on sending troops to the Arctic.

So there was only one conclusion:

“You’re still blinded by greed after all this? What happened to focusing on preserving human life!? You’re the ones that said you wanted to save the kids’ lives!!”

“You can hide the gold if you want since we can’t exactly search such a large ship in a timely manner, but holding onto it only increases the risk. Like we said, the Information Alliance has no real reason not to attack the ship.”

If that happened, Quenser’s group only had to escape with the children brought along on this charity event. The Legitimacy Kingdom only wanted the money and they could recover it from the ocean floor just fine, so Quenser’s group had no obligation to get blown up along with the stubborn rich nobles.

If they wanted to die, they were free to do so.

That may have been the difference between a commoner and a noble right there.

“No, you still misunderstand,” whispered a woman in an evening dress while stroking the head of the small boy hiding behind her. “There is something here we must protect at all costs. That much is true. But it is not gold, so dumping it into the ocean and recovering it later is not an option.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The most important thing for us is the experience and technology needed to support the children’s painful surgeries and keep them alive. Sir Heivia, we must protect that no matter what it takes. Is there no way of moving the ship or staying here and fighting? We will help in any way we can.”

This time it was soaked Elise who elbowed Quenser in the side.

“(So are they actually good people? It sounds like they are paying the medical costs for these children who might as well be complete strangers.)”

“…”

That would make for a moving story, but something seemed off to Quenser.

If that was the story here, these nobles would definitely be advertising that fact. They would have a TV crew on the ship or record this conversation on a phone to upload it to a video site. For the rich, charity was a way of spending money to buy popularity, yet that piece was missing from the puzzle here.

And.

So.

The rich nobles, who had never worked a day in their lives, went on to tell the truth of the matter.

“The artificial joints and organs supporting these children are made from a very valuable rare earth known as Immortanoid. In other words, they are carriers. We can implant the necessary amount inside their bodies to smuggle it wherever we need to go.”

“Thanks to the market price being intentionally driven up, I believe that longevity mineral is worth 200 times the price of pure gold. As long as we have the surgeries performed overseas, the authorities will never notice and no security guard is going to demand a child removes their medical implants just because a metal detector gate found a suspicious reading.”

“But Immortanoid will permeate water to create a mineral spring, so unlike gold, its nature is easily changed. Its value will likely plummet if it is dropped into the ocean.”

They were not reluctantly revealing the truth as a last resort and they were not tearfully confessing their sins out of guilt.

They were simply explaining it because it was relevant to the topic at hand. Almost like they were bringing up a piece of trivia about rain because people were discussing the weather.

“You…”

There was a pause.

And then Heivia Winchell shouted with every last ounce of his strength.

“You motherfuckers!!!!!!”

It was actually the child himself who jumped at how loud Heivia’s voice was.

And he was still hiding behind the evening dress woman as if he had been taught that was the safest place for him. Even though he was forced to have his body sliced open, stuffed full of unnecessary implants, and sewn back up every time those rich nobles needed to transport something. He must have been forced into such a desperate situation that this seemed like the better option. People suffering from heavy abuse could not take a step off of the hopeless path back home even though they knew they would be beaten when they arrived. Because if they were late, they would be yelled at and beaten even harder. Being spared that was the only form of “salvation” these children knew.

“Hm? There is no need to resort to foul language, Sir Heivia.”

“Immortanoid is a longevity mineral. Its weak radiation is said to activate the body’s cells and it is a rare earth worth 200 times the value of pure gold. Normally, people like them could never dream of receiving this kind of treatment.”

“And it is only natural for commoners to work for nobles. We are not making them carry anything dangerous like drugs or weapons. In fact, carrying Immortanoid in their bodies will only improve their health. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement, is it not?”

They felt no guilt.

They were not aware they had even done something wrong.

This felt like a glimpse of how nobles treated commoners.

(Santa Claus doesn’t exist, huh?)

Had that child really been saying that Santa would never visit them whether he existed or not?

Those children lived in a locked-down form of peace.

They had been imprinted with the idea that taking just one step outside of that meant living in constant fear of starvation and death. Those young souls had been forced to believe that it was best to have their unnecessary branches cut away, to have supports tied on, and to give bloom to the exact flowers the adults wanted.

But that process was not complete.

Not yet.

When that child had seen Elise Montana, he had decided Santa does exist and run off to “tell Claudia”.

He had clearly seen the arrival of something he found unbelievable: Santa Claus.

The idea of someone who would arrive from outside that closely-managed world and reach out a helping hand for nothing in return had seemed so implausible, and yet someone wearing red had arrived after all.

So.

In that case.

“Heivia,” said Quenser while handing his awful friend what he held in his hand.

Then he walked up, took the hand of the small boy hiding behind the evening dress lady’s back, and gently pulled him away.

He moved outside of a 2 or 3 meter radius to take just the one step off of the rails prepared for that boy.

And Quenser Barbotage spoke just one word.

“Concussion.”

With a powerful boom, a shockwave slammed into the air and those goddamn nobles collapsed to the floor.