The Lord's Reward
The sunlight pouring across the bed was fierce.
Mmm...
Late afternoon, more or less. Later than I usually woke.
There's a current of mana moving...
It wasn't morning light that had pulled me out of sleep. It was a flow of mana — the kind that came with a skill being used. Nothing about it felt like a threat, but it was close enough that I couldn't stay under.
I sat up. The fatigue hadn't fully left my body, and after last night, that was hardly a surprise.
The moment I'd released the technique that held my desire in check, I'd gone through with it knowing full well there would be a price. And to make sure her first time went as well as it possibly could, I had thrown every technique I had at her. Of course I was tired.
Beside me, Joo Ha-yeon slept with nothing but a blanket drawn over her bare skin.
......
I looked down at her, and her face grew steadily redder. She was awake, then.
She didn't react, so I kept watching. Eventually she couldn't take it anymore and opened her eyes.
"...Good morning."
"...Yeah. Good morning."
"Why were you pretending to be asleep?"
"Th-that's..."
She still looked mortified. Fair enough. This was a first for her in more ways than one.
"How's your body?"
"...I was so sore everywhere I had to heal myself with a skill..."
So that was what had woken me. Her holy magic.
"Hmm. We should get up. It's later than I thought."
The others would already know, anyway.
This wasn't some inn with proper soundproofing, and we had slept in this late — the two of us, together. For all practical purposes, we had been caught.
Joo Ha-yeon had accepted that she couldn't have me to herself. I had no idea how the rest of the party would take it.
They might be a little awkward about it.
Joo Ha-yeon sat up in a rustle of blankets and started pulling on her clothes. I watched her quietly, taking in the bare lines of her body.
It felt different from before. New, somehow. Not that it mattered — I would be in sage mode for about a month, so all I had was a clean, uncomplicated appreciation of how beautiful she was.
She felt my gaze and glanced back at me, her face flushed.
"Come to think of it... you said you wouldn't be able to, because of the side effects..."
"...I really can't now."
"...For how long?"
"About a month? I forced it, so you can figure the duration tripled."
There wasn't a trace of regret on her face. I had no complaints about the night either.
She had said she wanted to go with me, so I had used mana to force myself over the edge. Physically, I had been a little less satisfied for it — but I had been more than satisfied where it counted, so it hardly mattered. More importantly, I hadn't ruined her first time, and I was in sage mode besides. No lingering physical frustration to deal with.
"...I see. I'm a little sorry..."
"You don't need to be. I was satisfied too. I got to see a lot of cute faces."
I said it a little wickedly, and she protested, her face going redder still.
"That was all you, Shin-hoo. What even was that technique that lights up every circuit? You only ever invent the strangest things, I swear. I'm not usually like that."
I hadn't invented them. I had simply brought over techniques developed in my first life. But they didn't exist in this one, so it was a fair assumption. I couldn't exactly tell her where they had come from, so I looked away.
"You don't need to be embarrassed. There's nothing wrong with enjoying yourself..."
"...Excuse me?"
She glared at me, all sulky pout, and I smiled as if she were the cutest thing in the world before I started dressing myself.
Joo Ha-yeon immediately looked away, as if seeing me bare in the daylight was more than she could handle.
She really was awfully cute.
She hadn't been this kind of character before.
We finished changing and headed to the dining hall. Sure enough, the rest of the party had already nearly finished eating.
They waved when we appeared, looking a little awkward about it. All except Ha Yoo-jin, of course.
"Did you sleep well, hyung!"
"Yeah. You sleep okay?"
"Yep. Weird seeing you up so late, though."
He grinned, all bright and easy, and I was more glad of him than I cared to admit.
"...You're late, oppa."
"Yeah. Guess I was a little tired."
"...Right. Of course you were."
Na Seoyun fixed Joo Ha-yeon with a look that could have drawn blood. There was a sheen of moisture in her eyes even so.
Joo Ha-yeon only shrugged under that glare.
Then she looked at me and shaped the words silently with her mouth.
I'll handle it?
Something like that.
I nodded. If I stepped in, I would only make myself look like garbage.
Well. I was already garbage at this point.
I smiled a bitter little smile.
Na-yeon had an awkward air about her. Nam Eun-ju, thanks to Ha Yoo-jin loosening the atmosphere, seemed to have shaken off most of the discomfort — she looked surprisingly unbothered.
Because Joo Ha-yeon and I had come down so late, the others had already finished their meals.
They stared at us. At me, more precisely.
They wanted to hear what came next.
I laid out the schedule while I ate.
"As I said before, the commission is complete. Over-complete, actually."
They nodded.
It would have been more comfortable to talk after I had finished eating, but we were the ones who had come down late.
I went on.
"Word will make its way to the castle lord — the territorial lord, that is. The village chief said he would pass it along."
"...So what happens then?"
"They'll send an investigation team to verify our story. We might even be included. That'll take a little time, though. A day or two at the fastest. Until then, just rest."
"I see... Well, after everything we went through..."
Na-yeon gave a small shiver, as if the memory of those isolated days had brushed her again.
It had only been a short stretch, in the end. More than half a year had already passed. I felt the need to check whether any other trainees had climbed up after us.
A year at the fastest, realistically — but you never knew. My actions had changed a great deal about the situation in the Labyrinth, and if that was the case, people might start arriving sooner than they had in my first life.
Which meant I needed to stop by Monus Village.
Not that I could move an inch right now, not with this investigation team hanging over us.
We talked through the days ahead while I finished eating, and then I sent everyone off to rest.
Joo Ha-yeon took the other women with her and headed for her room.
She was going to talk to them about not having me to herself, from the look of it.
I felt a little sorry. It felt like I was dumping it on her. I had meant to wait and let them adapt to the Tower in their own time.
I shook my head.
After the late morning, I finished the light training I had missed and washed up.
Na Seoyun appeared as if she had been waiting for exactly that.
"...What is it?"
"I heard, oppa."
......
An awkward subject.
"I like you too."
"...Seoyun."
"I-I'm not giving up. Ever."
I let out a short breath.
"...Come back when you're twenty."
"...I'll be seventeen soon, you know?"
"You're still sixteen. And even if I counted you as seventeen, that's three years."
"...It's not even Earth anymore. What does it matter..."
"I said no."
I made my voice final.
Anything more than this with Na Seoyun would be a problem. She wasn't the only one in the party, and she and Na-yeon were blood sisters. Things with Na-yeon were already ambiguous enough — we were maintaining something closer to friendship than anything else — and under the circumstances, going any deeper was impossible.
Faced with that look, Na Seoyun bit her lip, told me I would see, and left.
...Honestly, I wasn't scared in the slightest.
She seemed to have some kind of seduction in mind, but I was a sage right now. Not particularly threatening. I had a technique for suppressing desire, and there was no one around who looked likely to take her side. It didn't bother me at all.
After that I went to see the village chief and asked about the timeline. He had already sent a messenger to the lord, and he would let us know the moment word came back.
The chief was also moving to send his own investigation team, to confirm the battlefield I had described — black, gold, and brown gnolls tangled together in the wreckage.
With time on their hands, the party seemed determined to collect on every rest they had been denied. Aside from the bare minimum of training, they sprawled. Properly, thoroughly, without apology.
Rest when you rest. I didn't quite sprawl myself, but I was able to recover properly, and I spent more time with Joo Ha-yeon — who had drawn that much closer — and let the bond between us settle a little deeper.
I was told the talk with the others had gone well. In practice they treated me no differently than before, which I was more than glad of, so I didn't press.
Na Seoyun was the only one whose attitude had shifted. With Joo Ha-yeon's tacit permission she made the occasional move, as if she were trying to work some angle — but Joo Ha-yeon knew I was in sage mode, and she only smiled as Na Seoyun threw herself at me, got nowhere, and retreated looking thoroughly deflated.
About three days. A short rest, and then it was over. We received an invitation from the lord.
"It is an honor to meet you, my lord. I am Yoo Shin-hoo."
"So you are Yoo Shin-hoo. Well met. I am the lord of these lands. Torfen Tidrind."
Torfen Tidrind. In my first life he had survived — but only to preside, to the very end, over a Tidrind Territory that was nothing but a hollowed-out husk.
Lord of a backward holding on the empire's fringe, and a descendant of criminals besides, he had been ignored by the empire at every turn. The appearance of the Gnoll Hero had cost him every village he had, and the countless concessions within his lands had been stripped away. A wretched lord.
Mining rights. Land development rights. Even the concessions on the territory's specialty goods — all of it sold off just to keep the land standing. An unlucky man.
That unlucky lord was Torfen Tidrind.
Unlucky past or not, his house had been more than capable, and he himself was no fool.
From the previous generation on, House Tidrind had kept from provoking the five gnoll tribes and had protected human lives in the gaps between them. His grandfather had all but cleaned out the underworld organizations that had once made a wreck of the region, shrinking their power, their influence, and their numbers down to the barest minimum. Considering that this lordship had begun with criminals, that was no small achievement.
His father had been the one with the skill to hold that ground, and the one who had grown the walls and the villages as far as they could go without drawing the gnolls' ire. He was the man who had laid the foundation for producing essential goods in the first place — things like the herb fields of Britus Village.
After his father's death, Torfen Tidrind had inherited the seat and somehow drawn in more mercenaries than the territory had ever held, treating them decently and trying a policy of fair contracts. He was also the one who had taken a holding bled dry by imperial merchants and made sure it was bled at least a little less.
Which was why, after the Gnoll Hero appeared, the merchants had turned on him, and he had been subjected to a flood of crooked deals and stripped concessions.
For a man who had almost nothing to begin with, that had still been the best result available.
A lack of strength and influence. That had been Torfen Tidrind's only original sin.
Which was why he was, in his own way, a fair man — one who cared for his territory and thought reasonably. He also carried relatively little of a noble's usual pretension.
I had never thought badly of him, personally.
"I hear you did a great service for the territory this time."
"You flatter me."
"No. No, I do not. If we had simply held on as we were, and that Gnoll Hero had been born, and the five tribes had united... the territory would have been destroyed without ever knowing why. Even if we had held — even if we had lived — it would not have been living."
His face was heavy. He seemed to be blaming himself for having known nothing of any of it until we brought word back.
"But thanks to you, a crisis has become an opportunity. I am told the Golden Gnolls took a catastrophic blow, the Black Gnolls were cut to less than half their strength, and even the Brown Gnolls suffered considerable losses?"
"That's correct."
"Then we can afford to expand the territory. Especially regarding the Black Gnolls, who are the most likely to give birth to a Gnoll Hero..."
The look that crossed his face was downright chilling.
I didn't need to hear the rest to know what he meant.
I nodded, satisfied.
"A wise judgment, my lord."
It would not be easy, though.
"...But it will not be easy with our current forces. Which is why I wish to hire you. Your record, your skill, and what you have already done for this territory are no small things. I have also heard that you recently acquired considerable power."
I nodded without a word. We couldn't afford to look like an easy mark, so we had revealed a portion of what we had gained at the Holy Land.
Na Seoyun, Nam Eun-ju, Joo Ha-yeon, and I were each B-Rank — and at the very top of that rank.
Na Seoyun and Joo Ha-yeon, in particular, were a mage and a priest, both vanishingly rare. They could not be treated as ordinary B-Ranks.
And this was the empire's fringe. High-level mercenaries were rarer still.
"I will give you the finest terms. Will you contract with us?"
"We're mercenaries. If the job and the pay line up, we're yours."
"Don't trouble yourself over that. The fate of the territory hangs on this. I will not be stingy."
Thinking of my first life, he was a man worth trusting. I nodded quietly.
He looked us over and went on.
"That said — you have rendered a service to the territory, and it would sit poorly to leave it at that. There ought to be a reward..."
He spoke as if he were genuinely turning it over.
I offered a light demurral first.
"It was a commission. It feels a little much to demand extra payment just because we over-completed it. It was coincidence, nothing more."
We had gained plenty as it was.
But he was not the kind of man who would hear a little humility and then give nothing. There was no contractual issue — but out here on the fringe, there was nothing to be gained by losing the goodwill of mercenaries. And in the subjugation to come, we and the other mercenaries would be indispensable. No lord who wasn't a complete fool would wipe his mouth and walk away.
"I cannot allow that. Mercenaries or not — if I fail to reward those who have worked so hard for this territory, who will ever step forward to serve it again? Please. Do not refuse."
Torfen's face was open and unashamed. This, he was saying, was simply what we were owed.
I nodded.
"If you put it that way..."
"Hmm. Even so, I am not sure what to give you. Britus Village already saw to your equipment, and if we are talking money, I cannot even begin to put a figure on it."
He looked genuinely troubled.
"Which is why I wanted to ask... Yoo Shin-hoo. You strike me as a man of exceptional skill."
I didn't deny it.
As long as I was keeping my identity as a mercenary, I could inflate my ability — I could not do the idiot's work of sanding it down myself.
Of course, you didn't exaggerate past what you could actually handle. But you didn't undersell yourself either. For a mercenary, that was no different from calling yourself a pushover out loud.
"I can tell you it's nothing like what my current mercenary badge would suggest."
The rank on my badge was F. Torfen, who already knew that, let out a short laugh.
"Haha. Quite so. The feats you have accomplished, and the skill that was witnessed, are an entirely different matter. Hmm... which brings me to the reward. How about this?"
A somewhat sly smile touched his mouth as he spoke.