Empire of the Ring

Excavation of the underwater site at the Arirang Island revealed ancient residential-style remains scattered in the Aegean Sea, but it was fortunate that there were no temples or statues from ancient times.

However, it was additionally discovered that there were too many sunken ships near the harbor, preventing warships with a deep water line coming in and out of the harbor. The sunken ships remaining in the water were relatively large because they used to carry goods along with the Silk Road hundreds of years ago. Although their sizes were huge, they could be easily crushed and destroyed by explosives as they were made out of wood. Youngho was going to salvage anything useful or blow them up in the water.

So, the process of decommissioning was going on in the sea now.

Among them, a carrack ship that was built around the 17th century was decided to be pulled out and displayed on the island. It was not a difficult task to salvage a sunken wooden ship that weighed 300 tons for the royal bodyguards who used to be in Korean Navy Special Forces. They only needed to be careful with the ship as it was old and easily breakable.

Except for the carrack ship haling team, the rest of the royal bodyguards were salvaging underwater artifacts.

Youngho and Jong-il were spending most of their time at the salvage site in case there were any valuable artifacts.

Even now, they were looking forward to seeing objects that were being pulled up to their ship with a net as most of the relics were well-preserved.

“Hey! What are those?”

Jong-il shouted as he saw two chest boxes covered with barnacles and mussels as they were pulled out of the net.

“Knock it out. You’re making a fuss whenever you see anything coming out of the water.”

“This one is different. That box looks like as it was made yesterday. Don’t you think there must be something special about it?”

“We’ll return to the Arirang royal territory if that one turns out to be nothing, all right?”

“I got you. Still, let’s just open one or two more boxes before going.”

Even though Jong-il was excited, Youngho had not much expectation since he had not found any useful or valuable item so far. As he had a lot of work to do at the royal territory, it seemed to be a waste of time to wait for all the relics to be pulled out.

“Look at that. The same boxes keep coming up. Let’s go ahead and open one of them.”

Rectangular chest boxes that looked like the first one kept coming up, and both of them got curious. Park Jong-il tried to open the box with an iron lever, only to break the lid halfway before opening it.

The chest was filled with rusted coins.

Jong-il, who took out one of them, rubbed it on his clothes and popped it out in front of Youngho.

“Youngho! Isn’t this a gold coin?”

“It looks like a copper coin to me. What are you talking about?”

“How can this be copper coin? You can’t wipe copper coin so easily like this. Once copper coins get discolored, it’s the end of the story.”

Although the word “gold coin” caught Youngho’s eye, Youngho did not believe it. In any case, gold coins or copper coins were worth a fair amount in themselves, so he was diligently calculating the number of boxes and the amount of coins in his head.

At the end of the day, a total of 23 chests were recovered from the sea.

There were so many sunken ships around where they found the chests that it was still unknown how many more boxes they would be able to find in the future. Youngho could not hide excitement from his face.

It was unknown why there were so many sunken ships on the island, but that was not important. Youngho and Jong-il were now discussing what to do with the relics.

“You know, just because we found them at the sea from Greece does not mean they are the property of the Greek government.”

Park Jong-il said.

“Are you saying that we should hide the discovery of the artifact from the Greek government?”

“Hide what. We found them in the territorial water of our own island, so they’re ours. These ships must be from the countries of the Mediterranean coast. I think they were sunken by pirate ships. So at least you can’t insist that they belonged to Greece. And it’s an international custom that ownership of undersea artifacts belongs to the one who salvages them.”

Park Jong-il’s words were tempting as he said the owner of underwater artifacts was the one who first found them. However, the story would be more complicated if the owner of the items was a powerful country such as France or Italy.

The Russian government had been consistently claiming ownership of 150 trillion Korean won worth of gold bars and gold coins in the sea from Ulleungdo Island, Korea. They were from a cruiser that sank during the Russo-Japanese War. The fact that Russia nailed it as its property meant that it would not recognize the sunken ship’s ownership even if it was salvaged by another entity, regardless of the international custom.

When Youngho explained that customs and common sense did not work in matters related to the great powers, Park Jong-il made a ridiculous comment.

“Let’s melt them all into gold bars, so we won’t have to think about them anymore.”

“Are you out of your mind? If we restore them well, their worth will be multiplied. Do you have any idea how much an archaeological value sells?”

“Hey, chill out. You said that it’ll be a headache if powerful nations intervened. So, I’m just saying there’s a simple solution.”

There were plenty of excuses to go around, though a little complicated when a great power intervened in the matter of ownership.

“We are the royal family of the Serbian kingdom. What will they do if we labeled the relics as legacy of the kingdom?”

“That’s good enough. So what are you worried about?”

“The mint is estimated to have been in the 15th and 16th centuries after the Serbian Kingdom collapsed. It’s because I’m a little shy to insist that it’s a legacy.”

“Oh, stop caring about everything. Don’t worry. Let’s leave the matter to Eriksson. He should know what to do with these.”

***

Upon returning to the royal territory, Youngho told Eriksson what happened on the island and was asking for advice.

“The island of the Aegean Sea you bought randomly is giving us a big gift.”

“It remains to be seen whether it will be a gift or a problem.”

“There’s nothing much to worry about the artifacts found in the sea.”

“Could it have been war funds if they carried so much gold on a ship?”

“Maybe they were. We need to know the exact year to figure out what they were for, but right now we need to think about how to deal with the gold.”

“The Director of Intelligence Department says we should just melt everything into gold bars.”

“That’s a decision that Earl Park would make. That’s a simple solution, but gold bullion and gold coins from the Age of Exploration contains a lot of impurities that it would not worth a lot if you melt them. In terms of the scarcity value of gold coins, it is a hundred times more profitable to circulate than to melt them.”

“Wouldn’t there be a problem if we just sold them?”

“There’s nothing big to worry about. It would be ridiculous for a country to claim the ownership of the relics recovered from the sea that most ships had sailed by in the past era.”

“Then we should advertise it as a legacy of the Serbian Kingdom and sell it on the market.”

“That’ll do it. At the time Serbian Kingdom was to be absorbed by the Ottoman Empire, it might have helped the countries of the Mediterranean coast. It would be sensible to say that the relics are the legacy of Serbian Kingdom since there had been many secret deals between royal families that were not known to the world in the past.”

“In that case, do you think we should keep the gold coins or put them up for auction?”

“We’ll have to take a closer look at the coins, but if they’re of archaeological value, you could try keeping them to sell them later. Also, if you put them up for auction, you can get two or three times the price of a gold bar of the same weight. If they’re in great condition, you can get more out of them.”

“Wouldn’t they be less valuable if there is no scarcity value?”

“No matter how many gold coins there were in the old days, it would be hard to satisfy the collectors’ greed.”

“What if there’s more?”

“You’re saying there’s more than you’ve collected now?”

“We’re in the middle of a search, and we’ll probably get a few to a few dozen more.”

“Let’s start by studying what happened in the past from the coast of the Arirang Island. I can’t stand it because I’m so curious.”

The delay on the Arirang Island left so much work for Youngho in the royal territory.

There was a lot to be settled, and the most urgent task was to prevent Kurdish young people from rushing to join the military. The Kurdish young people were so eager to enter the military without thinking much. Money could solve the problem of migration and housing construction, but too many Kurds wanting to become soldiers had been a headache.

Young people ought to be fascinated by a new culture that they had never experienced in Syria, but it was a problem because they all tried to carry guns as before because they were royal to Princess Jelyan and wanted to protect her. The numerous factories were being built to give jobs to the Kurdish immigrants, but they did not seem to care so much about other jobs.

Initially, it was planned to accept 10,000 Kurdish soldiers, but at this rate, the number was likely to jump well over 50,000. It needed to be slow down somehow as it was difficult to handle so many recruits at once.

On the other hand, considering the long borders of Kazakhstan, the soldiers were still in absolute need, which had always been a concern, but now the Kurds’ eagerness to join the military could be a way to resolve it in one fell swoop.