Rising Prices (1)
Rising Prices (1)
Mage Brigadier General Rodiel.
He was gazing contentedly at the sight of children playing in the vacant lot.
The northern winter is very cold even during the day.
But the children, undeterred by the cold, were happily bunching up snow and throwing it at each other.
All thanks to their thickly layered clothing.
'All of this is thanks to Colonel Marshall.'
Piel had squeezed 100,000 gold from the Noble Council as a reward for vanquishing the kingdom's Plant Legion.
And earned an enormous sum of over 100 million gold from the Wyvern & Elf Forest timber auction.
But Piel had spread that money around without reservation.
He didn't distribute it directly to the residents or soldiers.
Instead, through the Lokos Trading Company, he bought up all sorts of winter survival items in bulk.
The cold-weather gear the children were wearing now was a result of that.
Also, the Tactical Sleeping Bags distributed to each household had such high insulation that, so far, not a single death by freezing had occurred.
'Ruth....'
Rodiel's eyes turned to a girl sitting quietly to one side.
She had a calm and taciturn air unbefitting her age.
Concealing her body with thick cold-weather gear, yet her outstanding beauty captivated everyone's gaze, even before her petals had bloomed.
The refugee girl became an instant topic of gossip in Hildea's territory.
Not just her peers, but even children a few years older wanted to become friends with Ruth, and were always hovering around her.
But Ruth consistently responded to their approaches with only short answers.
She showed absolutely no interest in the things children her age would normally care about.
Even now, she had only followed because Rodiel had coaxed her outside; she hadn't joined the play, just silently watching.
"Ruth? We're just short one person so...."
"I don't want to move."
"I-is that so? A-ah, okay. I'm really, really sorry for bothering you...."
Rodiel, if he had his way, wanted to tell her to jump in and play.
He held back and just watched because he knew pushing her like that would be useless.
Before long, the sun began to set.
Rodiel brought Ruth back home.
'She seems to have suffered an immense psychological shock from losing her family. There's nothing to do but wait for her to recover slowly.'
Rodiel took Ruth everywhere he went.
He had seen too many human scum try to sneak into Ruth's tent during the march, so he absolutely couldn't relax like a child left by the waterside.
Not long ago, a boy several years older and much larger had even attempted to play a nasty prank on Ruth.
Rodiel, who had been secretly watching, was astonished and quickly beat him up to teach him a lesson, but still....
'But can I even call that just a prank? If I hadn't been there, what would have happened to Ruth?'
He thought this as he watched Ruth follow him, the end of his magic staff clutched in her tiny hand.
'Colonel Marshall needs to become this child's guardian so she has no troubles going forward.'
Even now, as he cared for her like a foster daughter, no one dared to try anything with Ruth.
But he was old.
He didn't have many years left to look after her.
What worried him most of all were his sons.
'I tried to introduce her to Colonel Marshall as naturally as possible, but he just shuts himself up in the Daeoncheon hot springs saying it's too cold and won't come out....'
Take her to the Daeoncheon hot springs out of the blue?
He couldn't guarantee what kind of feelings Hildea and Rebecca, who were there together, would harbor towards Ruth.
Because while they are excellent people of character as commanders, as women they are different.
Piel would look at Ruth with pure eyes, but the two women might not.
The age gap of over ten years could be a serious threat to the two women.
Rodiel had decades of experience as a married man, so he knew this well.
'The only way for this child to become happy is to receive Colonel Marshall's care until she comes of age and then become his second wife...!'
***
I spotted signs of scurvy among the residents.
It was because they had been unable to eat almost any vegetables during the winter.
'I should have taken care of this.'
The soldiers are fed daily with Corn Soup, coffee, Snack Bars, rebate beer, Rye Bread (squeezed from the Noble Council), and Unit Pizza Beer Stew, made by boiling Combat Rations pizzas and beer together.
On top of that, since I had regularly supplied multivitamins, there was no nutritional imbalance, but that wasn't the case for the residents.
"Head Butler Andrea, please distribute this to the residents. It's a treatment for scurvy."
"Can this be! Was it truly treatable? I thought it was a trial sent by the God of Severe Cold."
"It's simply a disease caused by not eating vegetables for a long time."
Just as sailors considered scurvy a curse of the sea god, the northerners believed it to be a punishment from the God of Severe Cold.
Because whether stuck on a long voyage or in a prolonged winter, the lack of vegetables was the same.
The elderly head butler bowed politely and left the hot spring.
"I didn't expect the Head Butler to personally rush all the way here. You must be busy."
"If we're distributing a scurvy cure, of course I should come running, shouldn't I? I was actually surprised too, Governor. I had only thought of it as the curse of the severe cold...."
Once they were alone again, Hildea removed the large shawl she had wrapped around her body.
She was in a cute bikini.
Her chest was still staying at a B cup.
'When will she hit her peerless national breasts? Ah, wait, was that Xiang Yu? Or Han Xin?'
Setting the shawl aside, she subtly clung to me.
Since the kiss breakthrough, she kept attempting lovers' skinship whenever they were alone.
Before, I had often held her in my arms and fed her, but that felt more like an older brother and little sister than a man and woman.
'What should I call our relationship?'
Could it be defined as about a deeply nuanced flirting relationship?
But Hildea made no demands about defining the relationship.
She was just satisfied being together, satisfied receiving mana massages.
And immensely satisfied with the daily kisses.
However, occasionally, a sharp desire would flash from deep within her eyes.
Whenever that happened, I remembered the Law of Skinship Costs and snapped back to my senses.
'Lately, she's been showing signs of wanting to kiss other places besides my lips....'
It's not easy to regulate my line-stalling within the bounds that won't make her sulk.
"I am resentful and wronged."
"In what way?"
"While I'm completely bedridden, unable to move during my period, hasn't Carlton Marquis monopolized you?"
"...."
"Is it just me? Or are all female Sword Masters like this?"
"Well, I don't really know about that either."
I mean, there hasn't been a woman besides Hildea to reach Sword Master in her teens for the last few hundred years.
"Ah, a messenger came from the capital. They said the Military Register Administrative Reform is scheduled to be complete by spring."
"Getting a star really is hard. It's been months since we vanquished the Ancient Tree Legion."
"What are you talking about? Creating a general's position within a few months is extraordinarily fast, you know?"
Ah, I guess I was too steeped in a modern Korean-style administrative mindset.
We dipped our bodies back into the hot spring.
Hildea, leaning her chest against me and hugging my neck, silently made a demand.
After softening her mind into a gooey mess with a sweet kiss, I brought out the question I had been holding back.
'By now, nothing bad should happen if I ask this.'
"Hildea-nim, have you ever thought about founding a country?"
"Founding a country?"
"What would you think about securing sovereignty by establishing a principality...?"
It wasn't because I wanted real independence.
The grand strategy of Marshall Plan 2.0 was to take control of the entire Leodis Kingdom in the long term, after all.
Only that way could I fill the Staff Officer's troop ceiling of two million.
The real reason for asking this was....
'I need to gauge Hildea's ambition. If she's interested in founding a principality, the possibility that she'll seriously aim for the queen's seat later increases significantly.'
"Hmm? Everything runs perfectly fine as is, so is there any need to crave a principality? Ah, I am, of course, very interested in getting promoted to the Duchy rank."
What a shame. It's still too early to probe about being queen.
"Shall we get out now?"
"Huh? We j-just got into the hot spring, didn't we?"
"I want to take a nap."
"Ah, you haven't kissed me enough yet...!"
"Sorry, I'm tired."
"...Colonel Piel?"
I wiped off the water and lay on the mattress, closing my eyes.
Hildea fidgeted anxiously, then carefully climbed on top of me and gave me a mana massage.
"Colonel Piel, have I been a bit neglectful with the mana massages lately? I'm reflecting deeply on it...."
"No, it's not that. I'm just really tired."
'I, the Colonel, am merely disappointed that the General's ambition is too small.'
I'm absolutely not sulking.
***
I adjusted the rotation.
Hildea, Rebecca, Luna. I decided to take turns receiving their hot spring escort, one day each.
Today was the day to be alone with Luna.
It was a day of liberation from the two Masters who kept subtly wanting more than just kisses.
"Luna, it's so comfortable and nice being with just you."
"The kids try too hard to wring you out, so it's a big physical burden, right? Shall I use the duke's authority to give them a telling-off?"
"Stop reading so much romance fantasy."
"Ehehe...."
Luna kept getting cuter.
The desolation on her face when we first met, like she'd been abandoned by the world, had completely vanished.
It was rewarding to have fed her lots of delicious things during that time.
For reference....
"Sol's Eye is tasty, and this thing called red ginseng extract is really delicious, too. How on earth does the Marshall family make things like this? It's so mysterious."
While Hildea and Rebecca only loved Cola,
Luna also quite enjoyed other drinks besides Cola.
I hadn't revealed other fruit drinks yet.
If I show too many varieties, I get tired.
Suddenly, a trauma from ordering food in my previous life came to mind.
What I went through on every date.
「A large pizza, thin crust dough but not too crispy, somewhere in the middle, please.
Instead of a regular tomato sauce, change it to a garlic cream sauce, and for the cheese, half mozzarella half cheddar, but with a bit more mozzarella on top.
For the edge, not cheese crust but butter garlic....
Toppings are... instead of that, bacon and grilled onions and black olives....
Only yellow paprika....
Just a little bit of sweet potato mousse, apply just a little around the rim, and when you take it out of the oven, just spin a little bit of olive oil around once.」
There's no law saying the experience from my previous life won't repeat itself.
And there are three of them, even.
There's a reason I only selectively take out a very small portion of the food varieties.
"There's been no news at all from Yujel."
"Right. Should I have given her a walkie-talkie, if I knew this would happen?"
"Somehow, I feel like she's on a hunger strike, don't you? The imperial food wouldn't suit her taste anyway, so it'd be good if she got permission for an outing through a hunger strike."
"But Luna, it's confirmed you reached 8th Class, right?"
"Yes, that's right! I'm now the continent's only 8-Class Wind Mage!"
"What's different from the 7th Class?"
Luna put her index finger on her chin and looked up at the sky, thinking for a moment before answering.
"I told you, didn't I, that the difference between the 6th and 7th Class is whether you can fly or not?"
"Yeah, I remember."
"The 7th and 8th Class are distinguished by whether you can channel lightning, you see?"
"Ah, really? Then breaking through to the 8th Class must indeed be hell."
"Right. A Wind Mage and lightning? It's utter nonsense, really.
But the ancient Wind Mages who broke through to the 8th Class clearly used that as the standard."
Those Wind Mages must have mastered the concept of vacuum in some way.
But it seems they couldn't properly explain it.
"Then what about the 9th Class?"
"It's said they can drop lightning bolts precisely on targets. Of course, only when there are thunderclouds in the sky."
A Wind Mage and lightning; at a glance, they seem unrelated.
But under the premise that thunderclouds exist, one could artificially form a plasma channel in the atmosphere to guide the lightning bolt to the target.
When I explained that part to her, Luna listened intently with sparkling eyes.
"I feel like I'm vaguely starting to get it. Still, it's different from when I achieved the 7th Class and felt so lost. Having you by my side, Colonel, gives me hope that maybe I can reach the 9th Class someday."
"I hope it goes well. But is there a 10th Class, too?"
"There's no record of that. Actually, there isn't even a real record of anyone achieving the 9th Class; it's just that 8-Class Wind Mages speculated, 'Wouldn't the 9th Class be like this?'"
"Wouldn't the 10th Class be able to create thunderclouds out of a clear sky and drop lightning bolts? Or maybe summon a giant typhoon the size of the kingdom."
"Hehe, that's the realm of gods, not people."
As I was peacefully chatting away with Luna, the radio rang.
-Piel, it's noona. Are you doing well?
"Yes, noona. I'm planning to visit our hometown again in a few days."
-I debated whether or not to tell you, but I figured it was better to let you know in advance, so I called.
"What is it?"
-The price of rye has risen sharply.
"Didn't the overall harvest fail somewhat last year? The Elf Legion kept penetrating inland, you know."
-It failed, but more than that, all the mouths to feed have vanished, right?
Ah, right.
I had scraped and gathered up hundreds of thousands of territorial residents from the kingdom, and they had kept streaming in until just before winter.
-I thought it was temporary, but it keeps rising. It's already up 20%, and I don't know the cause.
"Will it perhaps become a problem for managing our territory?"
-Our territory is fine, but the Piel fief I'm managing now might have problems next year.
She meant the former Marquis Hapscorten Territory.