Favorability Farming Complete
General’s favorability farming: complete!
She’d said she was confident she could grant me any request I made. I was going to make her regret those words.
I snickered inwardly even as I put on the most pitiful face I could manage and turned to Rien.
“General Rien, as you’ve seen for yourself, our Termin Territory is desperately poor. We poured nearly every soldier and resource the family had into subjugating the Abyss of the Army, and in doing so we lost the very engine that might have let us rebuild. There are no people here, no wealth, no resources.”
Termin Territory really was a complete dump.
No people, no fortune, no raw materials—no matter how hard you tried to turn the place around, you couldn’t even get started.
Turning one into a hundred was hard but possible. Turning zero into one was simply impossible.
Of course, if I squeezed every last drop of talent out of each remaining villager, slotted them into the perfect jobs, and worked them to the absolute brink of death, the territory could grow—very, very slowly.
That would be turning 0.001 into one.
But that wasn’t the way of a veteran like me.
The real veteran way was to take the most efficient route and grow at maximum speed.
And the most efficient route available to me right now was the Rien bus standing right in front of me.
“Indeed. That would be the case. When I first arrived in Termin Territory, only women and the elderly remained.”
Rien nodded, accepting the grim picture I had painted.
“However… Baron Offen. I apologize for saying this right after promising to grant you anything, but if what you want is financial support, I must decline in advance. I’m sorry, but I simply do not possess the wealth needed to revive this territory.”
Agreement or not, the words that left her mouth were an apology that she could not fulfill the request.
“You may wonder how a General of the Ten Swords of the Kingdom could say such a thing… yet it is the truth. I keep only what I need for daily life and pour every remaining coin of my salary into supporting the subjugation forces.”
She was telling the truth.
Rien was funneling nearly all of her personal fortune and most of her pay into the Great Rift subjugation corps that were being organized to defend their homeland.
It was a deed worthy of universal respect, and she herself took pride in it.
“I truly am sorry, Baron Offen.”
Yet here she was, sincerely apologizing for an achievement she ought to have been proud of—simply because she could no longer keep a promise she had just made.
She was pure. She was upright.
People like her were the ones who deserved to be called heroes.
I had already liked Rien, but living through this moment made me like her even more.
“Ah—General Rien. Forgive me, but I never intended to ask you for patronage in the first place.”
“H-huh?”
Being moved by the situation was one thing; what I actually wanted had never been money.
“What I want is General Rien’s labor.”
“Labor… you say?”
“Yes. I was hoping to ask you to dismantle the monster corpses lying out there.”
That was the request I had planned from the start—dismantling the monster carcasses.
I was a veteran of Crack Kingdom; I already knew the state of Rien’s purse. There was no way I would be after her pocket change.
“Our territory has no craftsmen capable of breaking down those massive, rock-hard corpses. If we could just dismantle them, we would have the foundation to rebuild. Alone, I can’t manage it, so I wanted to ask you, General.”
“Ah… aha. S-so that was it.”
Rien looked away, a little flustered at having assumed I was after money, and her words stumbled slightly.
“Certainly… thinking back to the scene I witnessed when I first arrived, it does seem you desperately need someone who can dismantle those corpses.”
When Rien had first come to Termin Territory, I had ordered the Five Soldiers to dismantle the monster bodies.
Those guys had never butchered anything bigger than a chicken in their lives, and they had, of course, turned the carcasses into pure garbage with all their might.
Rien had seen that spectacle with her own eyes, which was why she accepted my request so readily now.
Every last bit of it had been by design.
The moment she heard the Abyss of the Army had been destroyed, Rien was certain to come to the nearest territory—Termin. I had timed the absurd dismantling order perfectly.
I showed her the corpses from the Abyss of the Army to catch her eye, then let her watch them get butchered into trash so she would grasp, at least roughly, how dire things were here.
After that I melted every wall around her heart with endless praise, then capped it off by confessing that I was the one who had destroyed the Abyss of the Army.
All of it had been a plan I laid out in advance to conquer Rien.
“Mm! If that’s all, I can do as much as you like!”
The plan had succeeded without a single deviation.
Perfect. With this, the foundation for rebuilding the territory was secured.
The Rien bus was ridiculously overpowered.
“I won’t be able to finish everything, though. I must return to the capital by the day after tomorrow. That leaves me only about eight hours. Will that still be all right?”
“Even that much is more than enough. Whatever corpses remain, I can sell the parts you dismantle, hire craftsmen with the proceeds, and finish the rest.”
“Hearing you say that puts my mind at ease. Then let’s begin at once. There will be a great deal of wind from now on, so rest inside, Baron Offen.”
Whoooosh—!
Rien once more shaped the wind in her hand into a blade of gale, then walked lightly toward the mountain of corpses.
“For the hero who saved our kingdom… allow me to dance a merry sword dance.”
Her grass-green hair streaming in the wind, Rien began to swing her gale blade.
“Whoa.”
◈ Use the activation phrase Subspace Check to view detailed material composition.
Looking at the simplified notification window—there were simply too many types of materials—an involuntary gasp of admiration left my lips.
Out of thirty-five thousand monster corpses, Rien had perfectly dismantled more than ten thousand in a mere eight hours.
I had never used her for dismantling before, so I hadn’t known… her efficiency was insane. This was far beyond anything I had expected.
I had figured three thousand would be plenty. Instead I now had more than triple that as starting capital.
More capital meant more options. I couldn’t have been happier.
“Hah… I boasted I would grant you anything, yet I couldn’t even finish a third of them. I’m too ashamed to lift my head.”
“Not at all, General Rien! To dismantle this many corpses in only eight hours—I am truly grateful! With this, we can develop Termin Territory far more quickly!”
“I-is that so? Ahem! If Baron Offen says so, then I shall raise my head again.”
When I offered my sincere thanks, Rien wiped the shame from her face and lifted her slightly bowed head with pride.
A superhuman who had just dismantled over ten thousand monster corpses without a single drop of blood on her, swinging her mood back and forth over one word from a lowly baron…
The more I watched her, the purer and cuter she seemed.
And the way she threw herself completely into whatever task she was given was beautiful as well.
“Well then, the hour has come. I shall return to the capital.”
Perhaps because she commanded the wind itself, Rien looked as fresh as if she had just stepped out of a bath even after eight unbroken hours of swinging her gale blade.
“Baron Offen, I shall never forget you. I pray that when we meet again, I may see you smiling.”
She was about to leave exactly as she had arrived—without a moment’s rest.
“General Rien, wait a moment.”
“Hm? What is it?”
I stopped her.
There was something I still needed to say.
“May I ask just two more favors?”
“Of course. Anything within my power. Speak freely.”
The words I was about to speak were the single greatest reason I had planned this entire favorability route and farmed her affection without rest from the moment she arrived.
I looked straight into her lively, leaf-green eyes and spoke.
“When you return to the capital… would you tell them our family’s story? What the Termin family sacrificed for the Benos Kingdom… for humanity… and what we achieved.”
“······!”
Rien’s eyes went round with surprise for an instant.
Then her expression hardened again. She struck the white armor covering her chest with a fist and answered.
“Baron Offen, I already intended to carry word of the Termin family’s sacrifice and achievements even without being asked. The tale of a hero like you must never be buried.”
“Thank you, General Rien.”
“Mm. And the second request?”
The most important first request was something she would have done even if I had never spoken.
Using Rien as a loudspeaker, my story would reach the person it needed to reach.
First goal accomplished. I voiced the second request.
“When our family has risen again and can once more stand for humanity… please allow me to fight at General Rien’s side.”
The second request was pretty words that would deepen her favorability even further while also laying the groundwork for our reunion.
“Ugh…! Damn it, Baron Offen—where in the world do you learn such beautiful words!”
Deeply moved, Rien bit her lower lip, threw her arms wide, and rushed forward to pull me into a fierce embrace.
I was a head and a half taller, so her face naturally buried itself against my chest.
“If there were anyone else who could take charge of Termin Territory, I would have kidnapped you and dragged you away!”
She nuzzled her cheek against my chest while saying something terrifying about kidnapping me.
Knowing just how perilous a life Rien would lead in the story to come, I could only feel dread.
“I am still far from enough. But one day I will become a man worthy of standing at General Rien’s side.”
“Uuuugh! Damn it, Baron Offen! I like you!”
That was why I emphasized “one day” and spoke of meeting again. The words made her tremble with emotion once more.
“I shall look forward to your growth, Baron Offen! I will wait for the day we meet again!”
And so Rien, who had appeared like a gale, left Termin Territory on a refreshing breeze as light as a spring wind.
“······Ugh. I’m exhausted.”
Only after she had completely vanished from sight could I finally let the tension drain from my shoulders.
My body was still that of an ordinary person; keeping up with Rien’s pace through an all-nighter had taken a heavy toll.
“I need to get inside and sleep.”
I had done everything I needed to do and gained far more than I expected. Time to rest, I thought, turning around—
“I have never seen Young Master look so happy before.”
—only to find Rina standing at the castle gate, staring at me with extremely cold eyes.
“Incarnation of Destruction… so you were hiding such a power. And you told someone else about it first—not me, your closest confidante. I see. Young Master trusts a complete stranger he met today more than he trusts his own head maid.”
Rina regarded me with eyes that held not a single trace of warmth, then whipped her head away.
“Hmph.”
Sleep, it seemed, would have to wait.