The tall sky and the refreshing breeze could be felt.
“Where on earth is this place?”
Just as Alphius suddenly scooped me up into his arms and took a guarded stance—
“……What in the world is going on?”
A dumbfounded voice was heard.
Held in Alphius’s arms, I slowly blinked.
Standing in the tomato field with an incredulous expression was Leopold. He was wearing armor, as if he had brought the knights with him.
When I looked around, I could see endless farmland stretching out beyond the warp.
One thing was certain.
This wasn’t Baron Foreman’s estate. It was a fairly quiet agricultural region.
“Y-You… what are you doing here? And where even is this?”
Baron Foreman asked as he looked around restlessly.
Leopold answered slowly.
“The East.”
Oh my god. It wasn’t even the West.
We were all stunned by the unexpected situation.
‘Did the warp really get messed up? Already… all the way to the West?’
But as I looked around, something was definitely strange.
The tomatoes planted in long rows across the wide field were all drooping and withering. Considering it was harvest season, they should have been turning a deep red.
Leopold let out a sigh and explained.
“There was a problem with the fields. They said monsters might have appeared, so they requested support… I came to check, but it doesn’t seem like there are any monsters.”
Then he looked at us with suspicion.
“This is an interesting situation again. All of us meeting here in the East.”
Baron Foreman explained what had happened. He had invited us to his estate, but the warp had brought us here instead.
“Is it possible you entered the wrong coordinates? This warp has coordinate values similar to the warp in the cave in front of the Nozen Magic Library.”
After hearing the explanation, Leopold narrowed his eyes.
“This is the East, after all.”
Strictly speaking, this land belonged to the Duke of Dibostan in the East.
“I’ve entered those coordinates hundreds of times in my life.”
Baron Foreman denied it as if he felt wronged.
“I’ve never made that kind of mistake even once.”
Wendy whispered quietly to me.
“I heard he tends to be a bit inconsistent……. You shouldn’t have left the coordinate input to him.”
She had now become my escort knight. Not only was she skilled, but above all, she was extremely loyal to me.
“Wendy immediately bows to someone she acknowledges as superior, but it isn’t easy to make her bow in the first place. I only got her under me after sparring with her. So how did our Brisa earn Wendy’s loyalty? Hm? Like how the traveler’s coat was removed not by the wind but by the sun—did you lure her in with gentleness and warmth?”
“I didn’t lure her.”
I answered Alphius honestly.
“I starved her.”
The potato ban had been as effective as sparring. Hunger was something no one could resist.
“Taking off the traveler’s coat isn’t done by wind or sunlight. It’s done by an even stronger wind.”
Alphius had been shocked by my reinterpretation of a children’s fairy tale.
“Alphius, put me down.”
I whispered to him, and Alphius glanced at me as if checking my mood before setting me down.
I narrowed my eyes and scanned the surroundings. Despite how huge the tomato field was, there wasn’t a single person around. It was the middle of summer, when tomatoes should have been in peak harvest.
“Leo, why did you come here?”
When Baron Foreman asked, Leopold sighed with a tired expression.
“Gilav urgently requested help.”
Gilav was the third son of the Duke of Dibostan in the East. At the same time, he was also our academy classmate.
For Leopold to use the word “urgently”…… that meant Gilav had been making a huge fuss.
“He said the tomato field suddenly became strange, and that it might be monsters from the West.”
“What nonsense is that?”
Baron Foreman snorted in disbelief.
“Why would he ask the West about something happening in the East, and on top of that, why call the Grand Duke’s heir of the West?”
That was when it happened.
The warp we had come through began to glow, and soon, a pale-looking boy appeared.
“Because this isn’t only an Eastern problem, is it?”
A boy with silver hair and violet eyes appeared with an arrogant expression, accompanied by servants.
It was Gilav Dibostan.
“Monsters do not originally appear in the plains of the East. The only monsters that appear in the plains are the monsters of the West.”
The boy, dressed in extravagant clothing, walked confidently forward and stopped in front of Baron Foreman.
“If a tomato field turns like this overnight, the chances are high that monsters are involved. And if monsters appear in the middle of summer, then the assumption that the monster waves have stopped could itself be wrong. Wasn’t it already an unprecedented phenomenon?”
Gilav raised his eyebrows and crossed his arms arrogantly.
“That is why this is worth the attention of Lord Nozen, the young Grand Duke, who has dealt with Western monsters more than anyone.”
“What the heck…….”
I muttered with a sigh.
“So this is just Gilav being Gilav.”
Since we were all academy classmates, I knew Gilav well too.
He was an extremely arrogant and proud boy who believed everything should move for his sake.
On top of that, he was dramatic and cowardly. So of course he panicked at something like this and even called Leopold.
And since the West had suggested holding talks to gather information, they couldn’t exactly ignore a request like this.
“Yeah. That’s exactly it.”
Leopold agreed calmly.
“Gilav being Gilav.”
“What does that even mean?”
Gilav glared at us fiercely, and the two of us shrugged at the same time.
When Gilav started fuming, I blinked and asked back.
“Then is Gilav not Gilav?”
“…….”
Anyway, shutting him up was easy.
Leopold and I casually continued our conversation.
“Well, at the entrance ceremony banquet, he said the soup was green and claimed it was poisoning…….”
“That was broccoli soup.”
“And one day during class, he saw a bee he’d never seen before and ran to the infirmary…….”
“Saying we needed to prepare in case of an unknown pollen allergy from whatever flowers that bee might have brought.”
“Oh, and during gym class, when he fell and scraped his knee, he even demanded a tetanus test…….”
“Even though it was a lush green grass field with not a single piece of metal anywhere.”
In the end, Gilav exploded and shouted.
“What are you talking about! That field was under construction three years ago! There could’ve been metal left behind in the grass!”
“Sure, Gilav.”
Leopold sighed.
“Just like those incidents…… you probably decided there might be monsters here too.”
“But it’s strange!”
Gilav jumped around and pointed at the tomato field.
With my arms crossed, I looked around the problematic field. The coloring was definitely uneven, and in some places there was a bluish tint.
“These tomatoes were ripening perfectly, turning red just fine. And then overnight, they became like this.”
Gilav pointed at the nearest tomato’s color as he spoke.
“Are you saying this isn’t serious? What if monsters come down to the plains?!”
I answered very seriously.
“Then the tomatoes would get ruined.”
“Are tomatoes the problem right now?!”
Gilav snapped, and Leopold sighed and muttered.
“Your head is also a problem.”
I frowned and immediately refuted him.
“But his head has always been broken. Pointing it out now is meaningless.”
Gilav ignored our words and shouted sharply.
“They could advance all the way to the ducal estate! This would break the precedent that monsters outside the West only appear on hills!”
Gilav screamed with a sharp voice.
In his imagination, it seemed the monster horde had already invaded his bedroom.
I looked around the empty tomato field and asked.
“Then what about the farmers? Where did they all go?”
“As soon as I received the report, I evacuated them all! How could I leave my people here? This is land my father said he would pass down to me!”
So that was why Gilav had come in person.
As the third son, he couldn’t inherit the title. Instead, he was set to receive part of the Eastern territory, and it seemed this place was it.
“How can anyone know what kind of monster might appear and how?! This is obviously a crisis!”
After hearing that, Leopold replied leisurely.
“You’ll really become a good lord who takes great care of his people, Gilav.”
It was an elegant way of criticizing him for not caring about outsiders at all.
Then Leopold looked around and added calmly.
“For now, there are no monsters around here. And once again, unless monsters suddenly gain intelligence equal to humans and start using warps by themselves, Western monsters cannot come to the East.”
Gilav then stared at Leopold with suspicious eyes.
“Are you sure? Just because it’s not your land, did you investigate lazily?”
Only then, as if he had just remembered, he turned to me.
“But why are you here, Brisa?”
I answered with an uncomfortable expression.
“I don’t really want to say.”
“I know you’re not the type of rude kid who steps onto someone else’s land without an invitation.”
Just as Gilav said, this was the East. If I was here, it meant I had to explain why, whether I wanted to or not.
“Answer me. I asked why you came to the East, Brisa.”
There was no helping it.
In the end, I sighed and said.
“The warp malfunctioned. I didn’t set this warp’s coordinates.”
Gilav jumped in shock, horrified.
“See?! See?! I told you! I knew it!”
His face was already completely covered in panic.
“Even if the Mage Tower says everything is over, I never believed them! How could the Mage Tower properly understand something that happened for the first time in imperial history?! The disaster isn’t over! Even the warp is like this, so clearly the monsters must have a problem too—!”
“Yep. Exactly the reaction I expected.”
I shrugged.
“This is why I didn’t want to say it.”
It really was Gilav being Gilav.
I walked step by step into the middle of the field. Then I bent down, grabbed a tomato, and examined it slowly.
‘It suddenly went bad overnight, huh…….’
