Breaking the Balance (1)
"No, where do you think you're going? It's in the records, isn't it? Even the mercenary groups that scouted it with the blacksmiths swore they’d never go back!"
It was a closed-down mine, discovered just a while ago while searching for labor sites for the prisoners.
It produced low-grade iron ore, and its location was so treacherous that it was deemed commercially unviable. It had been buried in the earth, never to be properly developed—and that was exactly where he had gone.
I hate to admit it, but he was one of the only two high-level administrators in the North who actually knew how to do their jobs.
"If he runs into trouble, you're the one who has to take over his workload. Why didn't you stop him?"
Don't tell me it was Kalisa.
Wait, is she one of my own kind?
"Do you, by any chance, find work to be too enjoyable—?"
"Absolutely not. I aim for a strict on-time departure."
"Tch."
I was briefly moved by the thought that I’d found a colleague who spoke my language, but she denied it immediately.
How cold.
"I wanted to stop him too, but is he the type of person to listen to reason?"
"That's true."
"And it wasn't just one or two people."
"Huh?"
"Haven't you noticed the decrease in servants?"
"What? Then, don't tell me...?"
"Yes. To prove their worth, they’ve all gone out on hunts across various regions. The problem is..."
"The problem is?"
"Similar things are happening in many other villages as well."
"Oh no, then what about the farming!"
A look of dismay washed over Aiden's face.
If they missed the window, who would sow the seeds? Who would plant the seedlings?
"Fortunately, when the rules for the hunting competition were set, wasn't there a clause stating that it must not interfere with primary occupations, including farming? I heard the village heads used this as grounds to stop the reckless departures for 'proving one's ability.' The report says that in each village, only a handful—at most five or six candidates—have set out. Here."
"Hmm."
Well, come to think of it, even if they were people addicted to dopamine, they wouldn't just abandon their crops during sowing season to show off their skills.
If they did, they’d be lucky to get beaten up by the locals instead of being called candidates.
'The village elders must have tried their best to keep the number of people leaving to a minimum. Well done.'
The elders were quite capable.
They weren't leaders of a village for nothing.
'I guess their experience is fundamentally different from the people who serve as apartment complex board presidents back in South Korea.'
The weight of deciding the color of an apartment's exterior paint is bound to be different from deciding the sowing schedule that determines the livelihood of the villagers for an entire year.
In the end, prioritizing the greater good is a trait carved into them by decades of knowing it’s better for survival.
"...No, but why is it only our Lord's Castle that's like this? Other villages only sent the bare minimum to prove themselves, so why is our Lord's Castle—."
"...The person in charge is Jamie."
"What?"
"Jamie is in charge of approving leave, and he was the first one to bolt."
"......"
You're dead when you get back.
"But is this really okay? You said the Administrative Officer might kill us if he finds out..."
"The water is already spilled. Oh, behind you!"
CRACK!
"Kreeeeeeee!"
The head of a one-eyed spider was smashed to pieces by the side of the ridiculously large axe Jamie swung.
Hiss, hiss, hiss.
They moved in packs.
In terms of numbers, there were only two humans, but the spiders seemed to hesitate in the face of such overwhelming force.
"There's no other way now. To soften the Administrative Officer's anger even a little, we have to bring back results that will make his eyes pop out! Hup!"
Crack, thud, thud!
Sounds more suited for a club than an axe echoed through the valley repeatedly.
The lower-ranking ones mourned the spiders and hid themselves, avoiding the noise little by little.
"Is the mine still far?"
"We're almost there, but... is this really okay? I'm really anxious..."
"Even if I get scolded by the Administrative Officer, I'll make sure no harm comes to you, so don't worry too much and just open the path."
"If you say so... you must keep that promise, okay?"
"Come on, man. Have you only ever been lied to? In the Lord's Castle, Jamie is the symbol of trust!"
"...Ah, yes."
The man holding a single wooden stick in front of Jamie, busily clearing the path through the bushes, was a local herbalist.
Even if the mine was abandoned, the mountain couldn't be.
The deep, secluded mountain valley had become the domain of beasts and monsters, not humans, but as the master of the mountain changed, all sorts of medicinal herbs had survived for a long time without human interference.
Because of this, the herbalist had painstakingly developed methods to avoid beasts and monsters passed down from his father's father's father, and recently, he had managed to find a safe path almost to the point where the mine was visible.
Well, because of that, he had been caught by a giant knight—no, an adjutant—from the Lord's Castle and ended up guiding the way.
"Huff, huff... a little slower..."
"The combat is too fast! Huff... huff."
There were others following Jamie.
They were the ones who had chased after him to prove their skills from the Lord's Castle.
"So who told you to follow me? The monsters here are all mine, so why do you keep following? Go back down!"
"Oh, Adjutant! Don't say such things. With how many beasts and monsters are in this mountain, why tell us all to go down? If you keep doing this, I can't go any further either! I know your strength, Adjutant, but there are times when sheer numbers are necessary, aren't there?"
As Jamie berated those following him, the herbalist immediately turned around and groaned.
"Ugh."
In truth, Jamie didn't mean it either.
No matter how strong he was, he wasn't a professional hunter, so it was difficult to keep hunting alone in the deep mountains.
"What about the others?"
"They'll be catching up soon."
"Then let's take a short break. Hey, Mr. Herbalist. We're going to rest here for a moment, is that okay?"
"Yes. This is the domain of beasts, but it's a place where plants that red-blooded creatures loathe grow in colonies, so it's hard to even find a single roe deer, so it should be fine."
"Oh, good. That's good."
"Oh, I'm saved!"
The advance party, including Jamie, finally relaxed at the herbalist's words and began to take a rest.
"I didn't know such plants existed. That's amazing."
"My family has been herbalists for generations, so this much is basic."
"A family business, huh."
"Even back in my grandfather's time, they said our village made more money from herbs than from furs and monster byproducts. Well, now, there's no comparison."
"Did the herbs suddenly disappear or something?"
"The opposite."
The herbalist recalled the face of his late grandfather.
And the words of his grandfather, who would lament whenever he drank.
"At some point, beasts and monsters suddenly started increasing in this mountain, and the radius for ordinary herbalists like us kept shrinking."
"That must have been hard. The Lord's Castle should have sent a subjugation force..."
"Oh, no. Thanks to that, the villagers were able to hunt beasts and monsters to survive the spring famine, so overall, you can't really say it was a bad thing. Isn't that how human life goes?"
Jamie's expression became complicated at the herbalist's somewhat enlightened appearance.
The resident who suffered because beasts and monsters increased was right in front of him.
But since the overall lives of the villagers had actually improved, it was awkward to tell them to go back to the old days.
'What would the Administrative Officer have said in a situation like this?'
His head, which had been heated by the hunt, cooled down little by little.
Emotion was pushed aside, and reason began to find its place again.
"Wait a minute."
"Yes?"
"Wasn't this place originally a place where both beasts and monsters appeared?"
"The valley is deep, so how could there have been no beasts and monsters at all? But they weren't as sharply divided in their territories as they are now."
"So since when was that?"
"Uh... I heard it's been since my grandfather reached middle age, so maybe about forty years ago?"
"Forty years."
Forty years was only ten years before the time they had come to inspect the closed mine.
"It is strange, though. Both the beasts and the monsters. They don't usually move their territories that easily."
The stable keeper, who had come as part of the advance party and was resting with Jamie, spoke up quietly.
"So you're saying it wasn't like that from the beginning?"
"Yes, sir."
The herbalist asked back if that was anything strange, but Jamie remained lost in thought and didn't answer.
The slower servants from the Lord's Castle were arriving one by one.
But no one made a loud noise.
Jamie's face was no longer that of a colleague doing something pathetic with them, but that of an administrator responsible for the region.
"Administrative Officer!"
The next day.
Jamie returned.
"Did the hunt fail? Why are you back so early?"
Aiden asked, not getting annoyed but sounding genuinely curious.
'It's a place with no civil servant welfare as it is, so he should at least use the vacation he took. It's a waste otherwise.'
Even if he was going to scold him, he hadn't intended to touch the vacation he’d already taken.
But Jamie, as if that wasn't what was important, puffed his nose and stepped close to Aiden's desk.
"There is something I need to confirm."
"?"
"The closed mine. There, something is strange. They say beasts and monsters started flocking there suddenly forty years ago."
"We already checked all of that before."
It was a new fact that it had been forty years, but did it make a difference?
"The beasts and monsters don't even clash with each other."
"Huh?"
"Right at the border of that mine."
"Is that strange?"
Aiden was certainly the ultimate expert in the North when it came to administration, but his knowledge of the habits of beasts and monsters was limited to a few books he had read.
"They should have clashed by now. The fact that their territories have been maintained without changing for decades means there is definitely something there."
Ah, now that was a different story.
"Tell me in detail."
Aiden's expression became serious as well.
If the things blocking the mine were not due to the laws of nature but for a specific reason,
'I have to find out.'
Once he knew the cause.
Perhaps that mine,
'I might be able to develop it.'
If that happened, he might be able to start something properly.
He already had enough free labor in that semi-basement prison.
'I should get the prisoners out of their unemployment status, too.'
No matter how much they were criminals locked up for their sins,
'It’s no good if people don't work.'
Aiden began to get excited at the thought that he could scrape together the last remaining surplus labor locked in the prison and provide them with new jobs.