The Coin Mine
“...The panties you’re wearing...”
My voice trailed off from the sheer absurdity of the situation.
“Yes?”
Asking a woman—especially a virgin—for her panties. Ahem. No. This was the moment to be bold.
“I need your panties.”
What kind of batshit crazy nonsense was that?! Even after saying it myself, I wanted to bite my tongue off. No matter how much this third-rate erotic anime Chronicles of the Fall of the Empire had thrown probability to the dogs, for a life-or-death situation to drop a quest like this of all things...
Sighing, I steadied my wavering gaze and put on a solemn, pious expression like some holy saint.
“...Yes?”
Ria’s pretty brows furrowed. It was incomprehensible. Even I didn’t understand it. The lord who had just been grandly declaring he would save the world and endure a broken engagement was suddenly demanding her underwear. Her brain circuits must have completely frozen.
Her fingertips reflexively drifted toward the dagger at her waist. The look in her eyes said she suspected me of being a pervert or a madman lost in delirium.
“Wait! You still don’t trust me?”
I broke off another piece of chocolate and slipped it into her mouth. Her mood completely lifted. I couldn’t lose momentum here. I plastered a double layer of shameless audacity across my face.
If I didn’t want my neck sliced by that damn hero tomorrow, I needed coins. From the system’s structure, a heroine’s virgin panties were worth 25 coins each. It looked like I could collect up to ten per heroine. That was because there were exactly ten slots in the heroine panties category.
In other words, from Ria alone I could immediately farm 250 coins!
Subtracting what I already had, I needed 225 coins right away.
“It’s not just any panties. Ria, you’re special.”
“......”
“You are one of those destined to pull this world out of the swamp of destruction. Underwear steeped in the scent and mana of someone with such immense potential is the most perfect catalyst for my alchemy.”
The eldest son of a count family. Even if I was a scoundrel, the title carried weight. When the eldest son of a count shamelessly spouted nonsense with that authority behind him, it became philosophy.
“If there is even a shred of falsehood in my words, I will abandon my position as successor of the Balderck Count family and become your slave for life! I am staking my life—no, my very soul—to desperately fight against the coming ruin!”
At my desperate cry, Ria’s pupils shook helplessly. She was hooked again. The gamble had worked. Whew.
“Ahh......”
Ria bit her red lower lip tightly, torn by conflict.
“I... I failed to understand the depth of Young Master’s burden... I will go to my room right now and bring ten clean new undergarments.”
Not Master but Young Master again. She was still wavering.
“W-wait.”
As she turned to leave the room, I unconsciously reached out and grabbed her wrist. The hot, soft skin beneath my fingertips. Why had I done that? Or had the atmosphere of this erotic anime world melted my brain and eroded it with raw male instinct?
Ah, whatever. I might die tomorrow anyway. This much curiosity was...
“I need... the ones you’re wearing right now.”
“...Ah.”
Was it too provocative? Or pure embarrassment? Her white nape flushed bright red in an instant.
I had made quite the shameless demand.
“The freshest heroic life force is necessary. To save the Count family on the brink of crisis and prevent the world from falling into ruin. Do not doubt me.”
Even I had to admit it was an excellent line. There wasn’t a single lie in it. She truly was a heroine capable of saving the world from destruction. As someone who knew the future, I was simply igniting her fighting spirit. The method was just unexpectedly unorthodox.
A brief, breathless silence fell. Ha, I hated atmospheres like this. But Ria’s chest was heaving. Her large breasts were especially noticeable.
With trembling hands she gripped the hem of her maid skirt tightly. Then, accompanied by the soft rustle of fabric, her hand cautiously slipped beneath it.
I swallowed hard without realizing it. Damn, was the sound of me gulping too loud? This was far more stimulating than I expected. Good thing I asked directly.
Swish—.
Looking at her expression, it seemed incredibly sacred rather than lewd. Head bowed low, Ria held out her red panties, still warm with her body heat and carrying the faint scent of soap.
Oh, nice. Yeah. This was it.
Acquired underwear imbued with the pure scent of heroine Ria!
Reward: 25 coins granted.
Acquisition limit for this heroine's underwear is 10. (Remaining: 8/10)
Success! It was a shame the limit was only ten. If I could keep doing this forever it would be perfect, but at least the immediate crisis was handled.
I cheered like a madman inside while keeping a solemn expression on the outside and tucked the panties away.
“Your judgment was excellent. However, this alone is not enough. The more catalysts the better. Bring new underwear, wear each pair for ten minutes, then remove and give them to me. I need a total of ten.”
“T-ten pairs...?”
“Yes. And... one more thing.”
I wrapped my arms around Ria’s slender waist—her face flushed so deeply it looked ready to burst—and pulled her firmly into my embrace.
“Eek?!”
“I also require alchemical synthesis through ‘mucous membrane contact’ with mana. This too... is for saving the world.”
Without giving her time to resist, I pressed my lips onto her flushed red ones.
“......!!”
Soft. Dizzyingly sweet. Ria’s shoulders twitched in surprise and her body went limp.
For someone who had grown up as a servant in the count family, training only in maid work and swordsmanship, this level of skinship must have been brain-melting stimulation.
But she didn’t push me away. Instead, her trembling hands that had been hovering uncertainly in the air slowly came to rest on my broad shoulders. It felt like a very subtle but clear sign of permission.
First kiss with heroine Ria achieved!
Reward: 100 coins granted.
Heroine Ria's affection has risen explosively!
[-125 → +10]
Acquired 85 coins as affection increase reward.
The moment our lips parted, the system window went wild with alerts. Nice. What a pleasant sound. I could listen to that every day.
Between the confession of being an alchemist and the secret of the world’s impending destruction, the title of hero given to her, and the sudden skinship, her affection had flipped from negative to positive in an instant.
But then—
‘...Huh? Wait. Why only 85 coins?’
If it went from -125 to +10, that was a total increase of 135 points. Shouldn’t it have given 135 coins?
After thinking for a moment, the answer came immediately. When I first met Ria, her fixed initial affection toward me had been -75. Then my panty-grabbing earlier had made it plummet to -125.
In other words, the system used the initial affection at first meeting as the baseline to prevent infinite coin farming through lowering and raising affection repeatedly.
‘Ha, you rotten evil system bastard. So no infinite coin mine by dropping affection and raising it again, huh?’
There really was no such thing as a free lunch. But my attention was already elsewhere.
First kiss reward: 100 coins.
This was it. A virgin heroine’s first kiss gave a whopping 100 coins. As expected of an erotic anime possession—the returns on skinship were overwhelming.
If I could kiss the other heroines too, I could gather enough coins to save my life in one go!
“Haa... haa...”
Ria, having escaped my arms, staggered as if her legs might give out, breathing hard. Her eyes were filled with terrible confusion.
The scoundrel young master she had despised for so long was actually a noble man bearing all the stigma alone to save the world. It must have been hard to tell whether those words were true or false even now.
Yet the fact that hope had appeared for the crumbling Balderck family—and that the very person who caused its ruin was that hope—left her in chaos. The man who had stolen her first kiss. Her pupils shook violently for reasons she herself couldn’t understand.
But I had no time to enjoy the romance.
“Ria. How many maids are there in our mansion total?”
“Yes...? Ah, excluding the guards and knights, the maids who purely manage the interior of the mansion—including myself—total eleven.”
“Eleven?”
They said the family was buried in debt and collapsing, yet they were burning money like crazy on maintenance costs! No wonder the family head had coughed up blood after losing 2,300 gold.
At the same time, the corner of my mouth twitched upward.
‘Eleven. What if there are hidden heroines among them that I don’t know about?’
I immediately put on a strict expression.
“My alchemy requires more varied samples of mana. Go right now and collect the underwear of every maid in the mansion. I entrust you with this task.”
“Ehh?!”
“It is to save the world.”
Was this too far? But at my serious gaze, Ria opened and closed her mouth like a mute who had eaten honey, then eventually nodded with a solemn expression.
“...Understood. If that is my lord’s will.”
Not Master but lord now. When had her way of addressing me changed? Still, the blind loyalty in Ria’s eyes felt quite reassuring.
About an hour later, a mountain of fabric pieces in all sizes and colors was piled on the desk in my room.
How the hell did she collect these? I had struggled just to get one pair from Ria. As expected, you really needed competent subordinates. I’ll take responsibility for you until the end.
‘Haa, fuck. I never thought I’d live to become a pervert who rummages through other people’s worn panties.’
A wave of self-loathing crashed over me. But when I touched the soft, fragrant panties... hmm. This might actually be a good job. As expected of the art style in an erotic anime—even the maids’ panties were high-class.
But what mattered right now was my neck.
“This one’s a dud. This one too...”
I checked the panties one by one against the system window. As expected, underwear from non-heroine extras didn’t convert into coins.
What a shame. I could have sucked up so much honey. If they weren’t heroines, they were useless.
Was there no one? No one at all?
Just as my expectations were cooling, I casually picked up a particularly luxurious light-pink silk pair. The moment my fingertips touched it, a tingling current ran through me and a golden system window flashed before my eyes.
This. This is it.
Confirmed as underwear of virgin heroine Silvia!
Reward: 25 coins acquired.
“...What?!”
My eyes widened. Silvia? There was no character named Silvia among the main heroines of Chronicles of the Fall of the Empire that I knew.
What was going on?
“Ria! This light-pink one with the lace. Whose is this?”
Ria, who had been handing me panties one by one, jumped in surprise.
“T-that... belongs to Young Master’s half-sister... Lady Silvia von Balderck.”
‘...What?’
‘Half-sister?’
I stared blankly down at the light-pink panties in my hand. That girl who looked at Evan like he was a bug... she was a heroine too? And a system-certified ‘virgin heroine’ at that?
Did they all have to be virgins? Why did every single one have to be labeled a virgin? Well, if they weren’t, the coins dropped to only five. I needed to conquer the heroines quickly.
‘Half-sister... but she’s not actually related to me.’
I wasn’t the owner of this possessed body. I was a Korean university student from K University. It hadn’t even been a full day, yet something like this had already become a matter from another world.
Besides, if I could flip the affection of a younger sister who hated me and even take her first kiss? I would have two heroines right inside the house.
A coin mine indeed.
“Ria.”
“Y-yes! My lord.”
“Secure Silvia’s panties!”
“Pardon? She’s your half-sister?”
“It’s material to save the world from destruction!”
But after that, it wasn’t easy to obtain. This was something that would resolve with time.
First, I needed to write the breakup letter for Iliana. I had no idea how the hero would react tomorrow, so I would have to use the coins depending on the situation.
And then morning came. It was time to head to the academy.