Leo furrowed his brows, his expression clearly questioning what Elias had just said. Elias shrugged nonchalantly.

It was time to change the subject.

“Elias, I heard you’ve been traveling through the restricted zones a lot. I’d like to hear what you’ve discovered. We need new data.”

“Oh, I’d be happy to share. I’ve been itching to talk about it.”

Elias glanced around, then picked a map from a stack piled in the corner and spread it out on the table. He grabbed a stray piece of graphite with his bare hand and circled a spot on the map.

“The barrier is the problem.”

“Barrier?”

“The barrier suitability is low. Although currently classified as lower-grade, there are now seven places that need a mid-grade barrier. See?”

A student stood up and bent over the map, following Elias’s lead.

“There are currently 15 lower-grade and 5 mid-grade… So, you’re saying it should be 8 lower-grade and 12 mid-grade?”

“Exactly. The absurdly high number of 15 lower-grade barriers is due to budget constraints. Maintaining barriers is incredibly expensive, as you know.”

Maintaining a typical lower-grade barrier costs around 10 million won per day.

That’s 300 million won per month, and 3.6 billion won per year.

With 21 restricted zones all having lower-grade barriers, the annual maintenance cost is approximately 76.6 billion won, a sum the government could manage.

However, the moment it upgrades to a mid-grade barrier, the daily cost shoots up to 50 million won.

According to Elias’s survey, there would be 12 mid-grade barriers. Maintaining these for a year would cost 219 billion won. Additionally, if mid-grade areas are surveyed, some might require high-grade barriers.

In the novel, Elias’s standards were not excessive.

He could have set stricter criteria, but he only targeted areas that were non-negotiable for improvement.

“And the problem is compounded by the lack of internal cleaning of the barriers. Areas that could have been maintained with lower-grade barriers now require mid-grade ones just to hold because they haven’t been cleaned.”

This, too, was a budget issue. Specifically, the pride of imperial mages prevented appropriate budget allocations for such menial tasks.

Melvin hesitated before asking.

“The imperial family wouldn’t endanger people like that… Could it be because of a lack of money…?”

“They have the money,” Elias said firmly, snapping his fingers.

“But they need to fill their own pockets, so there’s no money left for safety.”

“…Why do you think that?”

“Passing bills like the ‘Law on Using Family Names as Surnames’ while neglecting barrier maintenance due to a lack of funds? It’s ridiculous. They wasted a session on this nonsense and took a budget to overhaul nameplates and administrative records across the regions. These kinds of pointless laws are just an excuse for everyone to get their share.”

“Elias…”

Leo sighed at Elias’s harsh words.

The expression was coarse but true.

Shortly after the empire’s establishment, a nonsensical law was enacted emphasizing magical traits over ruling territories.

As a result, some people’s surnames now include family names instead of place names or national names.

However, this has led to an odd situation where more people have detached the place names from previous customs.

Elias had criticized the federal committee and imperial parliament in the novel for allocating budgets to such useless endeavors.

‘Hearing it in person is refreshing.’

Though Leo seemed worried Elias might say this outside the meeting, I knew he wouldn’t be killed for it.

Anyway, Elias criticized the federal committee for the barrier suitability issues he discovered while investigating the restricted zones.

At the same time, he publicized the beast attacks and incorrect barrier suitability through the media.

Typically, the media wouldn’t carry negative stories about royalty, especially the imperial family, but Elias had a significant leverage.

As public opinion flared up, the federal committee hastily passed a law mandating monthly internal cleaning of all barriers within the empire.

This significantly reduced the number of people affected by beast attacks.

Elias, seemingly trying to hold his tongue at Leo’s call, mumbled softly.

“The imperial parliament is… just a lackey of the federal committee. Forget them, we also need to deal with the Security Bureau.”

“Yes, let’s do that.”

Leo nodded absentmindedly.

“But the urgent matter isn’t them. It’s the federal committee. They need to know one thing: they must pass the budget to overhaul all those damn barriers.”

This part was proceeding exactly as in the original.

This much is sufficient.

I nodded at his words and asked.

“Eli, which zones did you say you’ve been to?”

“Too many. I’ve been to all the lower-grade ones except Mepen and one other. I went to the high-grade zone the day I broke my leg. Now it’s time to check the five mid-grade ones. Oh, Leo, how was Mepfen?”

“Ordinary, except the insects were contaminated.”

“Insects?”

Elias’s face hardened instantly.

The students also looked shocked.

“Insects can get contaminated? There haven’t been any such cases.”

“Did it spread to other animals?”

“…Thinking about it, there’s no reason it shouldn’t be possible theoretically.”

Elias muttered to himself.

“Insects are contaminated? There definitely weren’t any where I’ve been,” Elias said, implying that none of the 14 places he visited had contaminated insects. This detail matched the novel.

Elias, lost in thought with a hardened face, shook his head before asking, “But why are you asking where I’ve been?”

“I wanted to know if you’ve seen contaminated insects elsewhere. Since you haven’t, let’s move on. There’s something important I need to say.”

“What is it? I’m curious.”

“I think the restricted zones were used as experimental grounds. Narce and Leo agree with me.”

As the students looked at each other, unable to immediately grasp the idea, Elias’s eyes widened in surprise.

“…That’s an astonishing shift in perspective.”

“What are you talking about, Lucas? It feels like I’ve just heard something shocking,” a student said, laughing incredulously.

Elias faintly smiled, stroking his chin.

“We’re not just talking about the suitability of barriers anymore. Barriers, initially set up to protect people, might have inadvertently created perfect places for unrestricted experiments.”

While considering barrier suitability, I waited until Elias finished organizing his thoughts.

He focused his eyes and drummed his fingers on the table.

“It makes sense. There’s no reason it shouldn’t. If I were Pleroma, I’d exploit that separation policy to my advantage.”

He turned his gaze to me.

“But the problem is this: How do they continuously breach the barriers? Unauthorized objects or living beings above a certain size trigger alarms and are subjected to severe shocks.”

“What if the 21 restricted zones were all their habitats to begin with? Or maybe there were passages there even before the barriers were set up.”

Melvin’s jaw practically hit the floor.

Elias’s previously stern expression twisted into a slow grin.

“So you’re saying there’s a traitor in the imperial family.”

Everyone’s eyes turned to Elias as he shifted his tone. Then, he returned to his usual manner of speaking, furrowing his brows.

“Even if it’s not the imperial family, it’s definitely someone high up in the imperial government, right? They push for barrier installations by claiming those ‘minor’ experiments pose a threat. Then, once the barriers are up, they can conduct their experiments freely.”

Leo pulled out the prepared documents and spread them out.

“Right. So, I looked up who initially advocated for the barrier installations.”

“Oh, when did you find this out?”

“Before I visited your hospital room. The top names are Florian Amalie, Albert Ernst, and Winfred Hintz. These are the people who pushed the agenda aggressively.”

Elias nodded, asking, “Are they all federal councilors?”

“Yes. Then there are Esther Friedrich, Wiltrud Albrecht, Sander Ludovica, Werner Strauch. They abstained.”

“The upper house doing this, not even the unpaid lower house? Whether they are connected to Pleroma or not, they’re typical tax thieves.”

“…True, but… Rudolf Heinrich, Henning Berend, Trude Leopold. These were the main opposition figures. They all argued that the costs were excessively high.”

“These guys are also a piece of work…”

Leo pretended not to hear Elias and turned to the next page of the dossier.

“Among journalists who actively covered the barrier issue, there’s Astrid Metzler and Dietmar Peschke. Among scholars, Friedrich Schuller.”

“We’ll need to consider these people’s connections to the imperial family too.”

Elias grinned as he skimmed through the list Leo handed him.

“This is getting interesting. Lucas, is this how you plan to stick it to the imperial family?”

“I don’t remember saying it like that.”

“Whatever. So, what are you planning to do now?”

* * *

“We thank His Highness Crown Prince Leonard of Bavaria and Sir Nikolaus for their efforts on behalf of Mepen.”

The baron handed over the plaque with a confident smile, his lips firmly set, while extending his other hand for a handshake. The camera shutters clicked and flashed from the journalists invited by the baron.

After answering the journalists’ questions briefly, we quickly left the scene.

“What’s your schedule like for the rest of the day…?”

“We’ll be returning to school.”

Leo replied with a smile and moved to the warp location prepared by the baron.

Thanks to the baron sending a telegraph to the school immediately after yesterday’s event, we returned to Mepen today, on Tuesday. However, since it was a weekday, we couldn’t skip school and had to make a brief visit in the early morning for a quick greeting before heading back.

“Why was the end-of-month evaluation postponed?”

“Um… that’s still classified.”

Today is the last day of October, but with the sudden postponement of the end-of-month evaluation, we had to attend classes at school.

It was somewhat fortunate.

Right now, I was carrying a jar of contaminated mosquitoes in my bag. I had collected them early this morning before arriving at the baron’s mansion.

‘I wish I could just throw it away.’

Anyway, this gave me enough time to bring it to the meeting place.

By the time early morning came, I placed the collection jar on the table.

Elias showed visible interest.

“Wow, what’s this? The color is amazing.”

“The mosquitoes we talked about yesterday.”

Melvin and some other students nervously licked their dry lips as they looked at the jar filled with mosquitoes. Melvin pointed at the jar, gathering his courage.

“Wh-why did you bring this, Lucas?”

“Let’s start breeding mosquitoes.”

Melvin looked at me with eyes that seemed to say he’d been struck by lightning out of the blue.

“Why…? Why…?”

“Why? Because we need to propose a new bill.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep