"One day at most, and we'll reach Free City."
Olmedo was speaking to the delegation's ambassador, Duke Franz Koch.
Duke Franz Koch belonged to neither the Ceremonial Affairs Department nor the Finance Department, so he would make the final decision.
"Wasn't it two days?" he asked.
"Ambassador, that included stops at other stations. This train goes straight to Free City."
Ambassador Franz Koch lowered his head, lost in thought.
A Finance Department official seated on the right asked Olmedo, "How will you keep the railway from being sabotaged?"
He already understood how the Magic-Powered Train and the railway worked. It was ingenious, worthy of the Genius ideas Arcanists had conceived in the Elf Calendar era.
But its weakness was glaring: damage one short stretch of the eleven-hundred-mile railway, and the whole thing would grind to a halt.
"We'll establish a patrol once regular service begins."
"Patrol a route over twelve hundred miles long?"
In the corner, a Finance Department official looked up, his furrowed brow plain to see. On the table before him sat a birdcage, but it held a Gold-Sniffing Rat rather than a bird.
"How do you plan to do that? How much effort will it take, and how much will it cost?"
"We haven't drawn up a budget yet."
The official's quill punched a black hole through his parchment. His work had taught him to spot a project ripe for corruption.
"Let's do the math. Every sixty miles would need a squad of knights, a lookout post, and a small alarm array just to provide basic security. At market rates, what you'd spend maintaining the railway could build a permanent Portal."
He held back the harsher questions. If the official in charge claimed to have spent a thousand Gold Narls hiring a Master Level Mercenary Company, who