Syringe in One Hand, Gun in the Other 25 (Patreon)

Syringe in One Hand, Gun in the Other

Chapter 25

-VB-

Alan Marris

With the warlord taken care of and unless the Rus decided to send their Eastern Army after us, we found ourselves in a stable position. And when the news arrived at Joseon, the king really wanted us on his side. So much so that he offered our new “country” privileged trading, diplomatic, and military partnership with his hermit kingdom. 

He wanted more than just training for his military now.

No, he saw a chance to go for broke and told us that we were free to recruit any “shamans” from his country on the condition that we treat them well and “return” them to his kingdom after ten years for each shaman with no questions.

And what were these shamans? 

We … were apparently mistaken about the “Mild Deviance” categorization of this world. Apparently, magic was a thing here. 

Like real magic, not Entity or some other divine intervention. We were still cautious, though. Despite what we knew on the local magic and how long it had been around, there could be problems (like Entity-like beings that could be manipulating from behind the scenes) in the future. So being asked to train people we didn’t know how to train…

But then again, this was a chance for me to also hire a lot of people with no diplomatic backlash. And the king never specified that the “shamans” couldn’t renew their contracts independently. We knew that he intended for those “shamans” to become some sort of battalion or regiment he could use to defend his country, probably against the local Akitsushima Dominion and the Chinese warlords. 

That was for some other time.

Right now, the king was insisting that we take two of his daughter with us.

And frankly, we didn’t want to because we knew more or less why he was pushing them onto us, and we got to hear it when we went to visit and sat cross-legged across from him in his private “office.”

“I am dying,” the king told us while trying his best to not wheeze through his lips. He was not succeeding.

Something had happened between our last talk and now that made his health detriorate abnormally quickly. 

“... Is it poison?” we asked without any preamble.

“Sharp. Yes. It seems that my enemies in court do not wish to wait any longer for the crown prince to become the next king, utterly sure of themselves that he will not kill them for killing me. My son may dislike his family but he is also a man who abhors the idea of someone else harming what he considers his. Even his trash is still his trash.”

“I see.”

“But he sees Princess Jaehwa and Cheya as trash for being commonborn. I ask that you take them with you, if only to spare their lives.”

“I get nothing out of this.”

“Then I shall grant you even more land as their dowry.”

He grabbed one of many scrolls on his desk and spread it out in front of him between us. It opened up to show us a map of …

“This is the province that we are situated in,” we remarked.

“Yes,” he said as he pulled his arm sleeve back, picked up a brush, dipped it in ink, and then drew a line. “If you accept my daughters as your wives or cocubines and keep them safe, I will give you all of the counties west of this line within North PyongAn Province as dowry.”

… Utterly mad. There was no way that his court was going to accept this. Giving away land to foreigners for a mere dowry? It would be different if it were titles but …

But with how easily we defeated the locals, we knew that we could easily defend and even expand from it.

“You realize what we can do with this, Your Majesty,” we bluntly told him. “Legitimacy through your daughters, actual territory within your ancestral lands… Are you trying to give us a casus belli to take over the peninsula?”

---

Sunjong, King of Joseon

He set his brush down and stared into the disbelieving gaze of the foreigner.

Most people, especially foreign agents, would have accepted it on the spot. At least now, Sunjong was certain that this man across from him, Alan Marris who was the leader of the mercenaries, was not a foreign agent of the western imperial powers.

That only made this decision better.

“When I was much younger, I tried my best to change my country for the better, if only to ensure that we can survive the coming storms,” he replied. “My father prevented me. And when I became the king, the nobles prevented me. And now, in my dying days, my son prevents me.” He took a deep breath in. “It is unfortunate.”

The foreigner didn’t say anything.

“And so I must force the change now,” he said and looked at the man. “Either you force it or my son adapts. Either way, the blood of the House of Yi will continue. And if you become something more than a mercenary outside of my ancestral lands, then the House of Yi can only benefit from having one of its own in another land.”

“... You are being awfully forward with me.”

Sunjong laughed. “Death has a way with people like that. You can’t hide anything anymore.” 

The white man continued to stare before nodding. “I will accept if you give me more land.”

He laughed. “Greedy bastard.”

-VB-

Alan Marris

We did not think that we would be here taking over land but it was what was happening, and in a way, this was a good thing for us. We could use the new territory to build more defenses further away from the local headquarters, use the mountainous forest as training grounds (for new recruits), and the people here could make things that we can’t make with our powers or weren’t important enough to have time slots on our production clones. 

This was not a bad deal.

Which was why when the wedding was set for the princesses and ourselves for next week, we went with it after he declared to the royal court that “Western North PyongAn” would be granted to us as dowry.

Perhaps it was the outrage of it but someone went and killed the king before the week was up while we were still in the royal palace.