Chapter 5
Chapter 5 (Map)
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"So you people have to pay this debt right now!"
The atmosphere in the drawing room was a mess.
"If you won't hand over the land, then hand over your corpse!"
The person dealing with the guild leader was Alpheus's adjutant, Rangsi.
He first sternly warned him to stop shouting.
"Even if you did, you'd never get full value out of my corpse. My eardrums just went bad, so...."
In truth, Rangsi's manner of speaking was excessively polite. His personality was not suited to this kind of verbal fight.
When Alpheus had led the mercenary company, Rangsi had handled all manner of administration and finances. So the various administrative work and household management at the marquess's residence naturally fell to Rangsi.
The problem was that he was now on his third day in this post.
There wasn't even a butler to hand things over to him.
"The repayment date written in the contract has long since passed! If you cannot pay right now, I will take the land in the Erenta Region listed here as collateral!"
There was no way to refute the guild leader. The repayment date really had passed.
"Why are you being like this, really? That's just a contract, and you usually received payment in winter!"
The head maid came out and shouted.
Rangsi was furious at the words "that's just a contract." He demanded of the head maid whether that made any sense.
"Then did you write the contract just to practice your signatures?"
Only after the words left his mouth did he realize the head maid was on his side. For the past three days, he had been thinking of her as "the opposing side that only talks nonsense."
Because she had again spoken nonsense, he had momentarily and naturally judged her to be on the opposing side.
Fortunately, Rangsi's angry rebuke had no effect, as always. It was immediately drowned out by the head maid's shouting.
"It was the same last year, and two years ago, and three years ago! We wrote the same contract every year, so we ought to follow precedent the same way!"
Rangsi desperately held himself back from pointing out the error.
But the other side did not hold back.
"That was us cutting you slack all this time! The situation has changed now, hasn't it? Because of the western Monster Wave, we're dying too!"
Rangsi was in agony as he became certain. Having a secret surrounding his lord's birth had not been something to celebrate.
'If I'd known it would be like this, we should have kept it a secret.'
House Sears was a family honored for its service to the Empire, but it had grown poorer day by day until it reached its present state.
Three days ago, after the funeral of the Marquess Sears. Before the coffin had even been buried, the creditors came.
"Beron is our land now. Here is the loan agreement in which Marquess Sears put up the Beron Region as collateral."
"Wh-what did you say?"
"Refer to this as well. If you look at the contract here, the marquess put up Jejel Street as a penalty for contract termination."
And so the lands in the Sears Marquisate were swept away all at once.
Because the contract contained the phrase: "Should either party die, the contract shall be terminated as the fault of the deceased."
On top of that, the late Marchioness Sears had owed a large debt to the Central Bank.
The marchioness's extravagance had been severe from the start, but two years ago, when she sent Brisa to Capital Academy, she took out another enormous loan.
"This debt isn't a personal contract; it gets passed down to the children. The interest is enormous, so it would be best to pay this right away too."
"First, can't it be managed somehow with my private funds?"
"It can, but then you'd have to pour in nearly all of it."
"So in the end I'd have to go back to being penniless. That's fine. I'm still young."
In any case, Alpheus had amassed quite a lot of money during his successful career as a mercenary.
But as Rangsi said, after paying off that debt, there was little cash left.
"We've put out the most urgent fire, but the funding shortage remains, right?"
"This is no ordinary funding shortage. Now that we have the knights to feed too, we don't have a moment to spare. You'd best hurry to the imperial palace and bring back whatever you can get."
Originally, Alpheus had participated in the Northern Civil War as a mercenary.
But he became comrades-in-arms with the Second Imperial Prince, ended the civil war together, and even received the title of "war hero."
The Second Imperial Prince thought highly of Alpheus's merits and said he would petition the emperor for a barony for him. They had been on their way to the capital together for that purpose.
But at that time, it came to light that Alpheus was the hidden son of the Marquess Sears. So he hurriedly attended the funeral and inherited the marquess title.
"What? I had a twelve-year-old little sister? Then has that child become an orphan with no one in the world? I must quickly receive the marquess title, then warmly shelter and protect her like a mother hen."
It soon became clear that this, too, was a commoner's way of thinking.
Because all the existing servants of the marquess's residence assessed him as "the commoner's son who stole Lady Brisa's marquess title."
Before he could even feel that disregard, Alpheus headed for the capital.
"Now that I don't have to accept the title, I can just ask for compensation money instead. The Second Imperial Prince would never be stingy toward a comrade with whom he shared life and death on the battlefield."
"Then go quickly. The sooner you beg, the better."
And so that night, Alpheus led his elite unit and headed for the Warp.
Of course, even on his way out, he worried about his newfound little sister.
"Is there perhaps another way? Brisa lost her father today. I'm not sure it's right to leave her alone and go like this."
"There is one way: our knights could switch careers, become bandits, and clean out the Central Bank. Since you just handed over a large sum, the vault should be nice and full tonight."
"I'll go and come back quickly."
After sending Alpheus off like that, Rangsi remained at the marquess's residence and began examining the documents.
'Only two parcels of land remain.'
The late Marquess Sears had managed to hold on to exactly two parcels of land to the end.
'The Olive Plain, where the first Marquess Sears personally planted olive trees, and... the Erenta Region by the river, where Marang Fish can be caught.'
The olives were not very profitable because the quality of the harvested fruit was mediocre.
Only catching Marang Fish brought in any real money.
From the look of it, from spring to winter they had been getting grain on credit from the western grain merchants, then paying for it with Marang Fish in early winter. That seemed to be how their food supply had been managed.
'No, then why did they write the contract like this?'
Rangsi wanted to cry.
'They should have said from the start that payment would be made in early winter. Why did they write immediate payment?'
The guild leader spoke as if he were being very generous.
"Fine. You seem to feel somewhat wronged... Then let's do this. Last winter's grain payment, plus the price of one month's grain going forward.... Add it all together, and you can settle it with five years of fishing rights to Erenta."
His vision went dark.
Now that the war was over, their valiant knight order could no longer earn money either. The stored food was not plentiful, either. It had not been for nothing that they had hurriedly sent Alpheus off to bring back money.
'But if it goes on like this, the territory's only meaningful source of income will disappear entirely for five years....'
That was when it happened.
A girl with flowing platinum-blond hair entered the drawing room with confident steps.
"From now on, you'll be dealing with me."
It was Brisa, with a cold yet composed expression. By Rangsi's standards, she was 'the spiritual pillar of the nonsense-spouting maids.'
While Rangsi froze in surprise, the maid beside Brisa kicked his foot hard.
"Agh!"
When he glared to protest, the maid gestured with her chin. She was telling him to move aside.
H-how dare... a maid... treat the marquess's adjutant... like this....
Rangsi fiercely protested that he could not tolerate this kind of kicking.
"Are you a foot volleyball player?"
At that, the maid glared and began warming up in earnest, rotating her ankle.
In the end, Rangsi staggered up from the seat across from the merchant.
Brisa sat down gracefully in that spot.
"Oh my."
The maid murmured.
"She even went out to the back garden, and still not a single wrinkle formed in her skirt.... You're amazing, my lady."
As expected.
Rangsi realized once again that his judgment of the maids in this residence had been correct.
'They come with a free built-in function that produces situationally clueless remarks the moment they open their mouths....'
The leader they praised in an endless refrain was none other than Brisa.
So it was only natural that her appearance in this crisis was unwelcome.
But Brisa calmly looked at the guild leader and asked,
"I'd like to know the market price of lumber."
......Why lumber all of a sudden?
"Wouldn't the western forests also be suffering immense damage from the Monster Wave?"
But there were no forests in the marquisate?