I calmly took a bite of my sandwich and thought to myself.
I hadn’t planned on taking Beron as well.
Originally, I only wanted to take Jejel Street.
Jejel Street, where the shops would have stocked away all sorts of things, was extremely useful. Two months wasn’t nearly long enough for supplies to have been completely scraped clean, eating anything and everything without discrimination.
But Beron had nothing but fields of perilla.
It was a textbook example of failed territorial management.
“Land is limited, distribution is easy… then shouldn’t we just grow crops that aren’t commonly cultivated on the continent?”
That was why Father had chosen perilla.
But there was a reason perilla wasn’t widely grown on the continent—people simply didn’t seek it out.
Beron has a large elderly population, too. I have to make sure those residents can survive as well.
If it were under the name of Harwin, maybe—but under the name of Searce, I absolutely couldn’t let anyone starve.
Still, there was no other choice.
That day at the harbor, Baron Harwin made sure that the freed Wendy was the first to lose consciousness.
After using the warp, the intruders said this:
“Can’t we just kill this man here and now?”
“Miss, if we don’t, we’ll be the ones who die.”
It was only natural. A lord who tried to sell off his own people, and the people who beat that lord down, couldn’t possibly live under the same sky.
“You’re all from Jejel Street, right? Then by tomorrow, you’ll be under my protection.”
If I brought Jejel Street into my territory, they would become my people as well.
As for the crime of kidnapping the lord’s uncle, I planned to personally hold them accountable. For example, forcing him to eat freshly baked bread slathered with potato salad… things like that.
If that wasn’t enough, I’d serve mushroom salad too—anyway, I was planning to resolve it in that sort of way, but then…
“Uh, I—I live in Beron.”
“Young man, you live in Beron too?”
“I-I take care of my mother…”
Of all people, one of them lived in Beron. That meant I had to take Beron as well.
At the very least, I had to take responsibility for those intruders who had trusted me and moved at my word.
It can’t be helped. I brought plenty of wheat, and if we all work harder together…
First, we’d have to plow up all the perilla fields in Beron and plant different crops.
If I search the shops on Jejel Street, I’ll definitely find seeds… find them, plant them…
The land where potatoes had been harvested was lying fallow too. I’d need to obtain suitable seeds and plant those as well.
I’ve roughly decided what to plant, at least.
Even if the warp would reopen in a month, we still had to survive until then—and beyond.
Alpheus will probably return without receiving any reward.
This was still the early part of the original story.
Which meant the protagonist was still being tossed around relentlessly.
The Second Prince would die, and in the end, his achievements wouldn’t be recognized. When he returned to his territory, neither his sister nor his subordinates would be there—only his uncle. That was the setup, but…
Did he manage to survive the crisis with Awakening Grass?
If I had fully acknowledged how crazy things were back then, I could have given him more helpful information.
Whether he survived or not, the warp wouldn’t activate for another month. That meant the day we’d meet again was still far off.
But at least now, he has a place to return to.
Either way, even a month later, we were still going to be poor. We wouldn’t be able to buy cheap grain from the western regions like before.
Thinking about that made my appetite vanish.
Dahlia, who had been biting her nails, spoke up.
“I’ll give you Beron.”
It sounded like, in her own way, she had made a big decision.
“Give up Jejel Street.”
Of course, no one was going to accept her “big decision.”
“Then you’re also giving up your father’s life.”
I said it calmly.
“You don’t seem to understand the situation. We’re not the ones who need this. Ah, I’m not surprised. You were never very smart to begin with, Dahlia.”
Dahlia couldn’t hold back her anger and began to fume.
Her mother tightly grasped Dahlia’s twitching hand.
Then her mother asked quietly,
“…Then how about ten sacks of wheat?”
At some point, Dahlia had also tightly grasped her mother’s hand.
“We’ll give you both Beron and Jejel Street. Ten sacks of wheat. How about it? That’s reasonable, isn’t it?”
I stared intently at their hands.
Two hands desperately clinging together, trying to save their family.
The uncle must have exploited my father for the sake of those two. And in the original story, he would have sold me out for them as well.
The sandwich became even harder to swallow.
“That’s not reasonable.”
I said it flatly.
“Goodbye.”
And I stood up abruptly.
Her mother grabbed my arm.
“I-I-I’ll give them to you!”
“Mom!”
“I’ll give them! Both of them! So please give us five sacks of wheat. Okay?”
At the same time, Dahlia cried out in shock.
“Mom, are you crazy?”
It was something I had never once said to my own mother in my entire life.
“Why are you listening to her? This deal makes no sense! Absolutely not!”
“We lived just fine without those two lands in the first place, Dahlia. As long as your father is alive, everything will be okay. We’ll live well again.”
Her mother soothed Dahlia.
“We’re the ones who are desperate, Dahlia. Isn’t Brisa the only one here who has wheat?”
Then she hurriedly asked me,
“I can sign as proxy, right? The lord is missing right now, after all.”
Territorial transactions were conducted through a “Territory Contract” issued by the Mage Tower. If the lord was absent from the territory, a proxy could automatically sign in their place.
And the moment the “Territory Contract” was signed, the record would be preserved at the Mage Tower, making it impossible to deny later.
“So, I can sign now, right? Yes?”
Of course. Quite literally, I had nothing to lose.
I made an elegant gesture to a maid, and soon the “Territory Contract” was placed before us.
And so, from noon that day onward, Jejel Street and Beron once again became part of the Marquisate of Searce.
“Alright.”
After assigning tasks to a group of knights, I addressed the shopkeepers of Jejel Street.
“Anyone who has seeds stored away in warehouses or elsewhere, bring them all. It doesn’t matter if it’s out of season or if the quantity is small.”
The people of Jejel Street, who had returned to the Marquisate of Searce after nearly two months, offered no resistance at all.
“I’ll trade them for wheat or potatoes.”
In fact, their response was—
“Woooooooah!”
Seeing people happy filled me with a sense of satisfaction.
Buoyed by that joy, I pushed aside my stray thoughts.
“We lived just fine without those two lands.”
I can’t live well without land.
I’m in a position where I have to worry about my own food right now.
No—actually, with black mages backed by Sevon even targeting my life, there was nothing I could do to prepare except hide quietly within my own territory.
I even found myself thinking it was fortunate that the warp wasn’t working. At least outsiders couldn’t come in.
Illegal warps can’t be opened without mutual cooperation. Which meant that, at the very least, no illegal warp would appear within my territory.
I was frightened enough to feel grateful even for that simple isolation. And yet…
“As long as your father is alive, everything will be okay.”
There was no one I could honestly open up to and rely on in this situation.
I was the only one of the Liente bloodline left in the Empire.
I didn’t want to tell the maids or the knights. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to burden them. To be honest, I was afraid.
“What? Sevon and black mages are after the young lady? Then our lives are in danger too?”
“We’d be honored to serve the last descendant of the Liente royal family, but, um… we don’t really want to die…”
What if the maids left?
In the original story, they followed me without knowing anything—and all of them died.
If they had known the ending, would they still have followed me?
“What? Sevon and black mages are targeting the young lady?”
“Then what did we do wrong? Especially since our marquis has nothing to do with Liente.”
“Aren’t they basically strangers anyway? Wouldn’t it be better to just hand her over and be done with it? The territory is already struggling as it is…”
Even if the knights followed me, wouldn’t that only be because of Alpheus’s orders?
Alpheus wouldn’t want to be put in a difficult position because of me.
I’m scared.
I bit down hard on my lower lip.
I didn’t know how to share my fear.
