Watching Bismarck leave, Prince of Wales gave a cold snort.
As expected, the Commander still favored the German line most of all.
Not only had he summoned both Bismarck and Tirpitz as marriage ships, he'd even used targeted summoning to call over more German shipgirls while they were away.
No, things couldn't continue like this—something had to change.
Prince of Wales quietly clenched her fist.
Bismarck sailed all the way back to the Naval District. After exchanging a few words with Fletcher, who was on watch at the harbor, she went straight toward the warehouse.
As expected, the others were all gathered inside.
Just then, Bismarck's heart skipped a beat.
She froze in her tracks, her expression stiffening.
Hikaru sat cross-legged in front of a crate of resources, surrounded on all sides by shipgirls.
Among them was a new face.
She looked like a high schooler—slim, with golden hair faintly touched with white, wearing a peddler's leather vest. Grinning foolishly, she pulled a wad of bills from the pocket of her apron and counted them over and over again.
Her joy radiated from her like light, like fire, softening the sly look on her face into something more silly than shrewd.
"Stop counting already!"
Tirpitz, desperate for a nap, was being driven mad by the noise. She shoved the merchant girl. "Leipzig, if you're going to count, go somewhere else. Stop keeping me awake."
"Just one last time, heehee. This is the first paycheck I've ever gotten from the Commander!"
Leipzig clutched the bills as if she were the happiest person alive.
It was already the end of the month—three days since U-47 had been summoned.
Leipzig, the light cruiser, had arrived at the Naval District yesterday. Among the German medium-sized shipgirls, she was the luckiest this time.
As for the warehouse manager Leipzig's personality, she had two defining traits: greed for money, and worship of Tirpitz.
Yes, even someone as lazy as Tirpitz had admirers. Hikaru had been dumbstruck when he saw it with his own eyes.
But Leipzig spoke with utter conviction—Tirpitz, as a "fleet-in-being," didn't even need to sortie. She just lazed around in port and still received a lavish salary. To Leipzig, that was the perfect idol.
Then Leipzig promptly latched onto Hikaru demanding her own salary.
Historically, Leipzig had no great battle record. In fact, she was damaged in a collision with Prinz Eugen in heavy fog, later converted into a training ship.
Her ability was to boost the hit rate, firepower, and experience of German shipgirls in the fleet—but the experience gain was mostly useless, since most of them were already maxed out.
Leipzig herself was also max level. But instead of battle, she cared more about her pay.
When Hikaru summoned her yesterday, she had come prepared—pulling out a notebook and carefully tallying all the back pay she claimed was owed over the years, then demanding it from him with righteous indignation.
It had left Hikaru utterly dumbfounded.
Leipzig's eccentric personality turned out to be her norm; every shipgirl at the Naval District confirmed it. After an entire afternoon of Leipzig cornering and pestering him, Hikaru finally gave in and agreed to pay her.
At two thousand per month, plus "emotional damages" and other add-ons, Hikaru ended up compensating Leipzig a full one million in district currency.
Since the Naval District didn't have that much cash on hand, Hikaru wrote her an IOU. What she carried in her apron now was the entirety of the district's cash reserve.
Those several hundred thousand in bills had her so giddy she hadn't slept since yesterday, terrified someone might steal them.
Tirpitz had even tattled that, if not for the sheer volume of the cash, Leipzig had wanted to sew it into her underwear or stuff it inside her bra.
Even though Hikaru had seen Leipzig demanding "salary" in the dream Naval District before, actually meeting her and witnessing this obsessive greed for money firsthand had left him stunned beyond belief.
"What's the point of a salary anyway?" Tirpitz asked blankly, completely unable to understand. "We're so far from the Eastern Continent that we can't even spend it. And this money's probably been passed around who knows how many times—it's crawling with germs."
"Spend it? That would be such a waste! Of course I'll save it. Later, when I get the chance, I'll exchange it for gold. In that way, I'm no different from a dragon." Leipzig held a bill up to the light, her eyes glazed with bliss. "So beautiful. And as for germs—hmph! I already purified the money as soon as it touched my hands. Pure, sacred money could never be sullied by human filth!"
[End of Chapter]
[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]
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