Chapter 18 – The Truth Behind the Mine
I headed to Duchess Sharon Abner’s office, with Miel and Soya following close behind.
The more I thought about it, the clearer it became—
the Coel family must have tricked the Abners.
How bold of them—to deceive a ducal house.
But if it wasn’t fraud, how else could a contaminated mana crystal mine suddenly become clean again?
People were already whispering about it in my previous life, I recalled.
Rumors had spread that the Coels themselves had tampered with the mine’s contamination, only to later “fix” it for profit.
The suspicion was quickly buried under money and influence, of course.
I frowned.
If that’s really true, they’re awful. How could they exploit the one thing keeping the Abners alive?
Because there was a hidden story behind that mine.
The Abner family had always been one of strength and warfare.
During the age of the Unification Wars, they’d held tremendous influence—
known as the Shield of the North, defenders of the empire’s borders.
That was their golden age.
But when the wars ended and peace came, everything changed.
A new discipline—Magical Science—rose across the continent.
The Abners’ ancestors couldn’t keep up.
Their vassals grew lazy, their branch families selfish.
Every one of them waited like vultures for the main line to collapse.
So when Sharon Abner first inherited the title of Duchess, the family was already falling apart.
A famine soon followed, and everyone assumed the Abners were finished.
But against all odds, they recovered.
And it was because Sharon had discovered a mana crystal vein in the northern territory.
That mine had changed everything.
It was the miracle that saved the Abners from ruin.
Everyone thought the northern lands were worthless, I thought. And then mana crystals started pouring out of the ground.
People assumed that meant the Abners must be rich now.
But mining wasn’t that simple.
Mines cost a fortune to develop.
You needed enormous funds just to build tunnels and extract the stones safely.
And that was when Sharon had turned to the Coels for help.
She’d borrowed their money, trusting them.
She couldn’t have known they’d stab her in the back later.
By the time those thoughts settled, we were standing before the study.
I knocked softly.
Moments later, Wendel stepped out.
“My lady? What brings you here?”
I smiled up at him and slipped past.
Duchess Sharon Abner looked up from her desk, lowering her glasses.
Stacks of papers surrounded her, but her expression was calm.
“It’s you,” she said evenly. “What brings you here?”
“Duchess, are you very busy right now?”
I glanced quickly at the piles of documents on her desk.
But Sharon shook her head. “Not at all.”
Perfect.
I stepped closer and leaned forward over the desk.
“Then, um, can I ask something? I’m really curious. But if you don’t wanna answer, I’ll leave right away!”
She gave a faint smile. “Go ahead.”
I took a deep breath.
“I read in the newspaper that there’s a mana crystal mine in Abner territory—the one you discovered!”
Her eyes immediately sharpened.
“But mana crystal mines are super, super rare, right? You can make lots of money from them!”
“…”
“So… why isn’t the Abner family rich?”
For a moment, Sharon just stared blankly.
Even Wendel, standing by the door, looked startled.
I tilted my head innocently.
“I read it in Today’s Capital Terra! It said the Abners are the poorest out of the twenty great noble houses!”
That column was one of the most famous in the empire—
and back in the orphanage, Teacher Ann used to read it every week.
Thanks to that, stacks of those newspapers had gathered on the shelf.
Good thing I studied them all after returning to the past, I thought proudly.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “The Abners have a mana mine, but they’re still poor? Why?”
I kept pressing her gently, waiting for an answer.
I already knew the truth, more or less—
but I needed her to say it herself.
That way, I could move on to the next step of my plan.
***
Sharon Abner looked at me, her expression caught between amusement and sorrow.
“…You’re asking why our family has no money.”
“Yes!” I nodded eagerly. “If you sell mana stones, you get lots of money! So why not?”
She sighed softly.
She was the one who’d allowed the question, so she owed an answer.
But how could she explain something like this to a child?
After a long pause, she finally spoke.
“First of all, mana stones can’t be sold as they are.”
I gasped. “Huh?! Then what do you do?”
“What comes out of the mine are raw stones. They have to be purified using a refining formula.”
“Oh! Refining formula! I know that one!”
Sharon blinked in shock.
She knows that?
The refining formula for mana stones was an extremely complex magical process.
Only two families in the empire possessed it: the Longtons and the Coels.
Both guarded their formula fiercely, encrypting it so no one could steal it.
How in the world does she know that word? Sharon wondered.
“Then,” Annelia asked innocently, “you can really make real mana stones with that formula?”
Sharon gathered herself. “Yes.”
She added carefully, using simple words.
“But to use the formula, we have to pay the families who own it.”
“Why?”
“Because it belongs to them. If we use their creation, we must pay for it.”
“Ohhh… I see!”
Annelia nodded hard, looking like she understood perfectly.
Her bright little face somehow encouraged Sharon to go on.
“For example,” she continued, “if we earn ten tera from selling mana stones, half of it goes to the ones who own the formula.”
“Half?! That’s so much!”
“Yes. And there’s another problem.”
Sharon stood and knelt down in front of me, meeting my eyes.
“Let’s say you discover a mana vein underground. But to reach it, you’d have to dig deep and move heavy rocks. Could you do it alone?”
I shook my head quickly. “No… I’d ask the workers to help dig and break the rocks!”
“But would they do it for free?”
“They’d probably ask for money!”
“And if you don’t have any?”
I froze, scrunching my eyebrows in thought.
“Um… then maybe… I could borrow a little… from you, Duchess?”
Sharon smiled faintly. “Exactly. Adults call that an investment.”
She lifted me and set me gently on the sofa, then sat across from me.
“When the Abners built the mine, there were people who helped fund it. Every time we earn money from the mine, we have to pay them a share.”
“Why? Couldn’t you just give back what they lent you once? Why every time?”
“…That’s how adults make their deals. Once it’s written, it can’t be undone.”
That meant—she had a contract with the Coels.
Her gaze dimmed, memories surfacing.
“I’m supposed to just trust a woman like you?”
“Seventy billion tera is no small sum…”
“Is there even anything worth mining there?”
“You’ve spent your life at tea parties and dances! How will you take responsibility if this fails?”
Back then, her family’s finances were collapsing.
She’d needed capital desperately—but no one believed in her.
Not even within the Abner family itself.
“We cannot allow the duchy to fall into Sharon Misherian’s hands!”
“This is absurd! There’s already a grown male heir—what nonsense is this?!”
“She should stick to tea and music!”
“This is why we never trusted the Misherian bloodline!”
The voices of scorn echoed in her memory.
Everyone had doubted her. Everyone had mocked her.
And yet, she’d proven them wrong—
at least, for a while.
