The Wicked Lord of Seorigol (1)

Even with the academy cadet special discount, the portal toll stations still cost a fortune — and I had to pass through two of them.

Then came six hours of arguing with a coachman while climbing a brutal mountain road. Only then did Seorigol finally come into view in the distance.

The aftermath of the Eclipse still lingered. Stretches of the road were wrecked, and some patches were coated in a sticky, unidentifiable slime.

"…We're almost there."

At the coachman's words, I opened my eyes.

The terror and exhaustion from the black market the night before must have caught up with me. I'd drifted off without meaning to.

Rattle. Rattle.

A desolate hill dotted with skeletal trees. A shabby, crumbling earthen wall.

My fief. Seorigol.

But something was off. The entrance to the territory, which should have been quiet as a grave, was swarming with people.

"…Why are there so many people in a place like this?"

The coachman stared ahead, eyes wide.

As the carriage drew closer to the gate, the situation became painfully clear.

Ragged figures stood in a long, winding line. A child's crying. The weary sighs of adults. Anxious murmuring.

Every last one of them looked desperate and worn down to the bone.

Refugees?

And in front of that crowd, a small figure was frantically trying to hold them back.

"W-wait! The lord will be here soon!"

Anya. She was throwing her tiny body in their path with everything she had, but it was nowhere near enough.

"My lord!"

The moment she spotted me climbing down from the carriage, Anya's face lit up. She bolted over and seized the hem of my coat.

"Where the hell have you been?! You irresponsible bastard of a lord!"

Ah.

Not lit up, then. She'd been winding up to grab me by the collar.

The way she looked just then somehow overlapped with Grandma Elara. Surely that was just my eyes playing tricks on me.

"You've worked hard, Anya."

"Tsk—!"

I reached out to ruffle her hair after she clicked her tongue, and nearly got bitten for the trouble.

Not quite there yet, huh.

"Then just a little longer. One more hour."

"…What?"

She'd held out this long. Another hour shouldn't break her.

If she blew up, I'd smooth it over with the snacks I'd bought at the academy.

Forgiveness was always easier to get than permission, after all.

I left Anya to it and stepped into my shabby office-slash-bedroom.

The room was still a disaster. Junk piled up in preparation for the Eclipse, and the scars of battle, all left exactly where they'd been.

I shoved everything on the desk to one side and pulled out an item.

One of the things I'd gotten from the Bizarre Cash ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Shop.

A small box bound in black cloth.

That was the description, more or less.

Not exactly what I'd wanted.

On paper, it sounded like a universal wish-granter that spat out whatever the opener desired. But that wasn't the real point of the description.

The real point was that Aberrations and humans measured the world by different rules.

Say I wished for world peace. The box might decide, Well, wouldn't the world be peaceful if everyone just ceased to exist? — and cough up a seed of annihilation.

That was the kind of random box this was.

Though looking at the size, it probably doesn't pack that kind of punch.

The bigger the box, the bigger the scale of the reward. Something the size of a small parcel should spit out something manageable.

"That changes things."

Either way, boxes like this were gacha. Pure gacha.

How was I supposed to just leave it unopened?

I'd already gotten the item I wanted most — the seed. This box was nothing more than a bonus pull.

So I set my hand on it without much hesitation.

"Please… just give me something I can use right now."

I opened the box like a man saying a prayer.

With a creak, the lid lifted. Inside was…

"…That's it?"

One battered old notebook and a perfectly ordinary-looking quill. That was the entire haul.

Disappointment washed over me.

What kind of grotesque function could a plain pen possibly have? Poisoned ink, maybe?

Of course, you could never judge items like these by appearances.

Hoping against hope, I picked up the quill.

And in that instant—

Shhk—

My hand began to move on its own, completely against my will.

As if it were alive, the quill started writing across the first page of the notebook by itself.

"…What… what the hell is this."

I recoiled even though I'd written it myself.

Breeding? Feed?

The content was grotesque, but the format of what was written in the notebook matched something I'd seen countless times before.

This was— yeah.

A territory management status window.

The territory management status window. The UI element from the game that showed you everything happening in your fief at a glance.

What was written in the notebook was definitely a territory status screen… except the entire thing had been composed from an Aberration's point of view.

"Feed" seemed to mean the residents. The "feed pen" was apparently the housing count.

It even listed me as a "special management target feed." Unbelievable.

…So this thing wasn't made for humans.

Well. I'd bought it at an Aberration black market. Maybe that was only natural.

Cold sweat ran down my spine.

But at the same time, I could see exactly how useful this grotesque content could be.

The ability to grasp the state of the entire territory in a single glance.

As someone who had managed fiefs more times than I could count, I knew in my bones just how critical that was.

The black box really had given me what I needed.

In the most twisted way possible.

…I can't give this up.

I ripped out the page covered in that bizarre writing.

Then I picked up the quill again.

The pen tried to start moving on its own.

"I control my own arm, you miserable bastard."

I clenched the quill tight and, this time, forced it to write across the next page by my will alone.

The pen still fought to go its own way, but I resisted with everything I had and rewrote the terminology — leaving everything else to update however the quill pleased.

"…Hah."

I finished writing and worked the creaking muscles in my hand. Wrestling this grotesque pen burned through both willpower and muscle in equal measure.

And the result of all that effort was deeply satisfying.

"This is actually pretty damn useful."

No — it was borderline broken.

As long as I won the tug-of-war with the pen and wrote down the categories I wanted to know about, everything underneath updated automatically.

A full territory management UI, pure and simple.

Laid out like this, the most urgent problems jumped straight out at me.

"Raise the residents' mental contamination resistance and the territory's defenses, and expand facilities so we can take in more people."

None of it would be easy.

But solutions for every single one of them were already forming in my head.

And I've got just the item for it.

I stood up and headed back outside.

From inside my coat, I pulled out another prize from the black market — a single withered seed.

An open lot in the territory.

"This should be about the center, right?"

Seorigol's borders were a crooked mess, but the point that minimized the total distance to every boundary line was definitely around here.

I took a shovel, dug into the earth, and carefully planted the seed.

Press. Pat.

I covered it back over with soil and sprinkled water on top.

The moment I did, something astonishing happened.

A strange silver sprout burst from the ground in an instant, shooting up to ankle height before I could even blink.

The plant glowed with a soft, pale light, as if it had swallowed moonlight, and an indescribable aura of calm and stability began to spread through the air around it.

The grass that drives Aberrations away.

I didn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠know its official name, but that was what players called it.

One of the symbolic objects that emitted "something" Aberrations instinctively hated.

Most of those items came in a form you could carry on your person.

But I got something even better.

Seed-types couldn't be carried around, but raise them well and they delivered far superior effects over a wide area.

I had no idea how big this sprout would grow.

I'd just have to raise it carefully.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Not that I needed to wait — the effect was already unmistakable just from planting it.

"Ugh."

My arm gave out at the end and the pen seized control again.

I was going to have to add arm workouts to my routine.

"This place is disgustingly run-down. Whose idea was it to come here?"

"Yeah, but… it feels safer here than anywhere else we've been."

Off in the distance, the whispers drifting through the refugee crowd had taken on a slightly more hopeful edge.

Good. The seed worked.

Time for the next step.

Next up: those refugees.

I studied them with a calculating eye.

A territory only grew when it had residents.

Economies of scale. More labor meant more production, and more production meant direct territorial development.

The problem was that they were refugees.

They could become a massive drain on the budget.

This pathetic fief would struggle to feel like "home" to them. If the conditions weren't right, they'd leave.

In other words.

Seorigol was a buyer's market for labor — which meant hanging on to them might require giving up a lot. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠That was the problem.

It was also why I hadn't taken them in the moment I got back.

But things are different now.

Look at this quiet sense of stability settling over the territory!

And on top of that — the miracle of this ramshackle fief surviving the Eclipse!

Their lives.

Seorigol could present itself as a chance to guarantee them safety and survival!

These are people who fled all the way to Seorigol just to stay alive.

As long as they could keep breathing, they'd willingly endure hard labor.

Money didn't matter.

Which meant I could secure maximum labor at minimum cost.

In other words — if I stirred them up properly, I could get free slaves… no. Residents!

"Keheheheh!"

A laugh burst out of me on its own.

Maybe it sounded a little too much like a wicked lord.

"Eek!"

Anya, who had been walking toward me, flinched hard.