Reassignment
“For someone like you, mandrake leather would be a luxury. So you should be grateful we’re even covering you with goblin hide. Pick out the clumps of fur yourself.”
Shrakhim’s piggish face flushed crimson.
“You’re really set on taking this to the end, are you? Fine. Let’s do it by the book! First of all, you don’t even have command authority over the dispatch unit! Why? Because you’re not the mayor! Besides, I’m from another fief, so whether you’re a Byeonbangbaek or a border count, you can’t just do as you please with me!”
He shouted, snorting hot breath through his nose.
“You keep going on about the law. You seem a lot more interested in bread than in law.”
“If you really think you can lock me up over that absurd, half-assed excuse for touching one little orphan maid, you can forget it. My uncle won’t sit by and do nothing!”
“Hmm. Seeing this, he might just kneel on a mat and beg forgiveness.”
Ho-yeong held something out.
“What the hell is that?!”
“The law.”
“What?!”
“The law. The thing you like so much.”
The only investiture charter for a Byeonbangbaek on the continent unfurled before them.
...Joren Tamer shall inherit ownership of all movable and immovable property belonging to Auphocalypse City....
Duonoraong took off his glasses and read as though he meant to rub his nose against the paper.
He inherits all powers and responsibilities held by the mayor. Accordingly, all contracts and agreements Auphocalypse City has concluded with other fiefs or administrative districts shall be transferred and applied under the name of Tamer Territory.
“Wha—what?!“
Shrakhim lunged for the charter and seized it in both hands.
“I—It can’t be.”
“Ahem, would you kindly take your filthy hands off it? You’ll crumple the investiture charter personally written by Her Majesty.”
Ho-yeong snatched it back.
“Minister of Finance. You clearly said kingdom law takes precedence over the ordinances of any territory or city, didn’t you?”
“That is correct.”
“Then the queen’s edict goes without saying, doesn’t it?”
“Naturally. His Majesty—Her Majesty—is the symbol of the country and a being beyond the law.”
“Eternal glory to Daisyares Marie Kain, guardian of the western continent and the steadfast will made manifest!”
The border count led the cry for the queen’s long live.
Duonoraong acted with remarkable speed on the follow-up measures.
“By order of Her Majesty, command of the dispatch guard unit is hereby lawfully transferred from Guard Captain Shrakhim to Joren Tamer, the Byeonbangbaek and lord of Tamer Territory. Hmm. Sir Shrakhim, do you have anything further to say? Any continued resistance may be deemed defiance of the queen’s command and treated as treason.”
Shrakhim dropped to his knees, trembling.
“P-please, show mercy and spare me the order to imprison me.”
“Haha. I was just scaring you. You were terrified, weren’t you? You really thought I was going to lock you up?”
Ho-yeong snorted with laughter.
“T-then th—”
“Why would I lock you up? So I can waste valuable manpower keeping an eye on you?”
And then he added,
“Besides, I’ve got a lot of work for you.”
* * *
“Ugh. I can’t believe I have to clean up shit....”
Shrakhim was holding a broom instead of a sword. Not as a metaphor—he was literally shoveling filth.
“Are you really going to just let this stand, Captain?!”
About a dozen guards, who had eagerly followed him in causing trouble, were doing the same.
“Hey, you can’t call me that anymore.”
“Ah, right. That’s true.”
The men murmured to one another with great care.
Shrakhim had lost his seat as guard captain and gained a new post instead.
“Are you really going to just let this stand, Chief?!”
The so-called Monster Management Chief.
“Shut your mouth! I’ll shove this broom down your throat before long!”
“S-sorry.”
They were cleaning the mandrake boar stables.
“Hahaha, look at that pompous fool now.”
“Can’t they just throw those guys into the same pen and make them sleep with the mandrakes?”
The territory residents passing by all pointed and laughed.
He could bear the menial labor, perhaps, but humiliation was harder to swallow.
“The lord is making a very clear example of him!”
That morning, Ho-yeong had gathered all the territory residents, announced the founding of Tamer Territory, and carried out a sweeping reorganization of the administrative districts and organizational chart. The punishment of the dispatch guards from Kihara Territory was one part of that.
“If that’s what he was going to do, he should’ve just locked them in prison....”
After collecting reports from the residents, Ho-yeong had singled out the guards with especially rotten conduct and was now making them do every kind of dirty work. Thanks to that, the residents’ level of conversion had risen significantly.
“You’ll regret making me like this. I’m going to overturn this pathetic little territory, grind your bones to dust, and scatter them as fertilizer, you bastard!”
“Who are you talking about?”
Someone who happened to pass by asked.
“Who else! That ridiculous border count—a nobody who got a noble title out of nowhere and now doesn’t know his place! Who else would it be?”
Shrakhim had taken the bait.
“Jore—”
He turned his head without thinking, then froze. Lilian was glaring at him with a razor-sharp look.
“Go on.”
Shrakhim lowered his eyes.
“...I was just talking to myself.”
“I’d advise you not to toss your head or your tongue around so carelessly, Shrakhim.”
Lilian spoke in a low voice.
“Otherwise, both of them may end up rolling across the ground.”
Shrakhim, his massive frame trembling, couldn’t hold it in any longer and shouted,
“Listen to yourself! You’re only a mere officer, and you dare threaten me, a lesser knight?!”
A lesser knight was one rank above a sergeant as an officer. Of course, because a lesser knight was largely an honorary post, there was seldom any friction with noncommissioned officers in actual fieldwork.
“I may have laid down my post as guard captain, but I did not lay down my knightly rank! And you dare call me by name like that! Can’t you at least attach ‘sir’ to it?”
Unless it was a special case like this.
“Hmm, what are you talking about, Chief? You’re the one who should be using honorifics, hmm.”
Duonoraong, who had come over after hearing the shouting, quietly pointed this out. He had been appointed chief butler of Tamer Territory in recognition of his ability and accomplishments, and had been deeply moved by the lord’s banner of rebuilding a place where people could live their lives in peace.
“Honorifics? To whom?!”
“To Sir Lilian, of course.”
“W-what did you say?! Sir Lilian?”
“Oh dear, it seems you haven’t heard the news yet, Chief. Hmm. The lord has appointed Sir Lilian as a lesser knight. Ah, and of course the other six sergeants as well. So there are only a few people left whom you can look down on, hmm.”
Shrakhim reeled in shock. In his surprise, he didn’t even notice that Duonoraong had copied his own speech pattern.
“S-seven of them?!”
“Hmm. Tamer Territory is a county, after all. Unlike a barony, where only two can be appointed as lesser knights, hmm.”
“Y-you—! So what if it is! Lesser knights are equal in rank—”
“Hmm, and Sir Lilian also now serves as Guard Captain of Tamer Territory. With the reorganization, the dispatch guard unit from Kihara Territory has been incorporated under Tamer Territory’s guard command as well.”
The butler interrupted him and explained in an almost painfully patient tone.
“In other words, you are to obey Sir Lilian’s orders.”
“...Grr. Damn it!”
He grabbed a hammer in a fit of frustration and tried to drive a nail into place, but the nail was too small and the job went badly.
Then a spearhead came down and struck the tiny nail head dead on.
“Hiiik.”
Shrakhim jumped as though someone had driven the nail into his backside.
“I’ll overlook the fact that a fake knight who’s never had a drop of monster blood on his hands is trying to talk about rank. I don’t care how you evaluate me.”
Lilian lifted her spear, her voice low and level.
“But I will not overlook insults directed at the lord.”
Her aura was sharper than the spear tip.
“Y-yes, understood. I’ll keep that in mind.”
As the former guard captain shivered and paid the price for his misdeeds, the rest of the unit was working happily away.
“Just doing patrol rounds and then getting thrown into manual labor is rough.”
“Tell me about it. Ugh, my back.”
They had mostly been assigned to reconstruction in the ruined city districts.
“Still, that border count guy isn’t stingy, so that’s something.”
“He said if we work hard for the rest of the contract, he’ll improve our treatment and even give us a bonus, so I’m not complaining.”
They had no special achievements, but they’d also committed no particular crimes, so Ho-yeong gathered them separately and cast a wide-scale conversion. Thanks to that, a fair number of the dispatched guards had turned at least faintly favorable toward him.
“Compared to the stable work crew, this place is a cakewalk. Tearing down collapsed houses beats cleaning shit and piss out of a monster stable, doesn’t it? They’re just getting punished for bullying people who have nothing.”
“The guys who followed the captain sure got the short end of the stick. Their road ahead is wide open in the worst way. They did dig their own graves, though.”
It wasn’t that no one felt sorry for their fellow men reduced to stable duty, but the prevailing opinion was that they had brought it on themselves.
“You look pretty relaxed. And who exactly did you say was unlucky?”
“Ah—no, Priestess. I meant their character is what’s unlucky.”
Rubia appeared with a pipe in her mouth.
“Unlucky, huh.... The truly unlucky ones are these guys.”
She was selecting the bones from a ruined house and performing a purification ritual over them.
“Their souls have been gone so long they can’t be resurrected anymore.”
The expensive, well-dried tobacco had, for some reason, a bitter taste.
“All we can do is hope nothing like this happens again. Hoooh. More importantly, are you lot working hard?!” - Gob-gob! (Yesss! Yes, yes!)
“Anyone slacking off will be sent to Hariad’s angel, so you’d better behave.”
In other words, she had decided to ease her worries by throwing herself into labor conversion for the goblins.
By the time the gray of her exhaled smoke had thinned,
“Yaaah!”
Meyril was pouring all her mana into the wind.
The thick black fog fluttered and tore apart as if it were dissolving, only for the empty spaces to be filled again a moment later.
“Hiiing. It’s still there. I’m sorry I’m not being helpful....”
- Lani, lani-lani-lani! (It’s okay. Cheer up!)
“It’s fine, Meyril. Don’t say you’re not being helpful! Your magic has made everything easier in so many ways.”
Ho-yeong and Mandragoni No. 8 comforted Meyril, who was on the verge of tears.
“You made the storage rooms cool and the work areas warm. That alone helps so much. And not only that—you even brought rain to the dried-out fields, and everyone was thrilled.”
- Lani, laaani-lani! (And on the other hand, you dried our hay nicely with sunlight. Thank you!)
Weather magic was extremely useful for managing the territory.
“T-thank you, Lord. I’ll keep trying hard!”
“Good. Keep at it. No. 8, take Meyril back with you. I’ve got other things to handle.”
After calming Meyril and sending her off, Ho-yeong let out the sigh he’d been holding back.
“Even magic can’t handle it. Tch. What am I supposed to do with that thing?”
As if mocking him, black fog billowed and rolled.
“Daliha. Show me the map.”
It was true that quite a bit had cleared when the first stage was cleared, but it still covered nearly forty percent of the territory.
Most of the vast uncharted lands to the west of the territory were still swallowed by black fog as well.
The uncharted lands are full of monsters, sure, but they’re also rich in dungeons and resources. At this rate, there’s no way we can manage it. We haven’t learned a single damned thing.
The reason he was paying so much attention to the black fog, which he had initially assumed was merely a device to unlock areas, was this:
Major Quest: The Hidden Hand
📍 Location: Find out what caused the black fog. (Completion: 0%)
🎁 Reward: Uncover the effect of the black fog. (Completion: 15%)
📍 Completion Condition: Achieve both objectives A and B, in any order, before the black fog completely disappears.
🎁 Reward: One legendary item.
Because a quest notification kept popping up now and then.
“At least I know for sure the fog goes away when I clear the stage... so the only answer is to beat the next one? Right. Instead of clutching at something impossible and grinding my teeth over it, I should deal with the urgent stuff first. Huh? What’s this now?”
He turned his head, and a message with a red border had arrived.
Collect your supplies. Time remaining: 3 hours.