Chapter 71: The Stolen Monopoly

On Lucian's ebony desk, fourteen black-covered books lay scattered across three tall stacks.

The covers were flimsy cardboard pressed from rotting straw pulp, the magical print smeared and uneven, the thin parchment pages already yellowed like bread-wrapping paper. On the topmost book's cover, the hollow-circle ⭕ emblem was printed crookedly, off to the right, next to a badly misspelled title: 'The Elegy of the Nameliss Knite.'

Lucian held up a magical magnifying glass, examining page fifty-one of a pirated print from the Holy Mountain Empire, his eye twitching over and over.

Click.

He slammed the magnifying glass down onto the wooden desk.

Sylvia stood beside him, holding a financial report just delivered from the trading branches, her voice even.

"Master. Reports from three neighboring kingdoms confirm at least sixty underground printing operations currently running at full capacity. Total pirated copies estimated to have hit the market: over two million."

She flipped to the second page of the report.

"When Vance Commerce's legal representatives sent formal notice demanding royalty payments, the Holy Mountain Empire's Publishers' Association sent back an official response."

Lucian looked up.

"What did it say?"

Sylvia cleared her throat and read it aloud, word for word.

"'...The noble ideals and courage of the Nameless Knight are a sacred spiritual heritage belonging to all of humanity, not something for a pack of merchants to profit from. Our unauthorized printing and low-cost distribution is an act of humanitarian goodwill, bringing saving light to the poor. The Holy Mountain Church firmly refuses to pay a single copper in royalties to Vance Commerce.'"

BOOM!

Lucian slammed a fist down on the ebony desk hard enough to send all fourteen pirated books bouncing into the air.

The ten-year-old's eyes went bloodshot, every muscle in his face twitching with pure fury.

"Robbing me blind and dressing it up as morality! Four hundred thousand gold! Four hundred thousand gold in clean royalties stolen straight out of my pocket by those bastards!"

He ground his teeth, breathing hard.

"Not paying royalties is one thing — but you're pirating my book and misspelling the main character's title too?! I wrote 'Knight,' not 'Knite'! Absolutely uneducated criminals!"

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from NovelPhoenix; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Sitting in the armchair across from him, Eleanor, in a white silk blouse, hands folded in her lap, watched Lucian's whole body shake with fury, chest heaving, and felt a deep wave of emotion rise inside her.

He's outraged... Eleanor thought, her eyes full of understanding. A great man like him simply cannot bear to see noble ideals tainted and sold cheap by greedy men in the marketplace.

Eleanor walked over and rested a hand on Lucian's shoulder.

"Lucian, don't let it eat at you. I can send a formal diplomatic note on behalf of the Royal House of Solaris, demanding the Holy Mountain Church shut those printing operations down."

"Waste paper on a diplomatic note?" Lucian brushed the suggestion aside. He pulled out a red-ink quill and spread a continent-wide trade distribution map across the table. "They robbed me of four hundred thousand gold. I'm going to make them cough up four million."

Evelyn, feet propped on the tea table nearby, sipped her black coffee and smirked.

"A feudal world with piracy and cracked copies too? Want me to write you a self-destructing arcane DRM script? Anyone who opens a pirated copy gets it exploding in their face."

"No need for explosions," Lucian said, narrowing his eyes at the map. "They can only pirate at scale because they control the cheap parchment and ink-ore supply along the western border. We're going to run a full-scale financial takeover: buy up every paper mill and ink-ore operation in that region. Cut off their raw materials, and printing a pirated copy costs five times more than a legitimate one."

Ting!

A dim black Unified System v2.0 notification appeared before him.

['BESTSELLING AUTHOR' CLASS TRIGGERED SUPPORT SKILL:]

→ 'COPYRIGHT TRACKING' LV.1!

• Effect: Automatically locates the coordinates of any pirated print across the continent with a grammatical error rate exceeding 10% from the original text.

['BESTSELLING AUTHOR' CLASS LEVELED UP: LV.2!]

• Expanded cultural-commerce intelligence network across all 7 kingdoms.

Lucian's red pen traced a straight line across the border of the Holy Mountain Empire.

"Astra!"

"Present!" Astra sprang up from the corner of the room, ice cream bar in one hand, slapping the sheath of the Sun-Slaying Dragon Sword with the other.

"Get the carriage ready. We're going to recover illegally seized property."

Click.

The lab door opened.

Sylvia walked in, carrying a black leather book with lead binding, just seized by Vance Commerce's scouts from a smuggling convoy on the western border.

Her expression, usually composed, was unusually grave, her silver ears pinned flat against her head.

She set the book down on the table in front of Lucian, pointing at a carelessly translated line of Ancient Demonic on the inside cover.

"Master... there's something more serious here than lost royalties."

Lucian frowned, looking down at the page.

"What is it?"

Sylvia flipped to chapter forty-two of the illegal Demon-tongue translation, her finger trembling slightly as she pointed to a line of tactical command dialogue.

"The Holy Mountain Empire's pirated translation... mistranslated a critically important grammatical structure in Ancient Demonic."

She looked up, meeting Lucian's eyes.

"In the scene where the protagonist calls for a ceasefire... they translated 'Peace' as 'Annihilation.'"