The Money-Sweeping Machines
Late afternoon. The valley floor, which had until recently been the Blue Fang habitat, was now packed with their corpses. Yet the air here reeked far more of money than the metallic tang of blood. Veronica had already materialized and was scribbling across a ledger with her quill as if possessed. Before her lay mountains of wolf teeth and pelts, meticulously sorted by grade.
“Fifty A-rank teeth, one hundred twenty B-rank hides…. Oh my goodness! Rodin! Our daily profit has exceeded two platinum coins!”
Veronica shrieked and hurled herself at him. Any trace of imperial dignity had long been discarded; she looked exactly like a greedy lady of the house who wanted nothing more than to sleep buried in a pile of money.
“Our princess is awfully excited…. Is it really that impressive? My wrist is the only thing killing me,” Rodin muttered from his perch on a rock, knocking dirt from his boots with a bored expression.
Two platinum coins could buy a decent mansion in the imperial capital. They had earned that much in only a few hours.
“How can you even ask if it’s impressive, Rodin? This is beyond impressive! With this sum we can build a hot spring at the stronghold and install that automatic watering system you keep singing about!”
Rodin’s eyes flew open.
“Automatic… watering system?”
The endless labor of lugging heavy water buckets across the fields every morning and evening flashed through his mind like a nightmare reel. If a machine could simply water the crops for him? That would be… heaven.
“For real? Carrying water twice a day was such a hassle I thought I’d drop dead. That sounds fantastic. Hey, want to hit one more spot?”
At the mere mention of an automatic watering system, Rodin’s attitude flipped one hundred eighty degrees. The magical beasts no longer looked like monsters to him; they looked like walking farm equipment.
“Ohohoho! I knew our Rodin would understand the taste of money. Perfect. Then let’s ride this wave and sweep the next valley clean! Ready?”
Veronica took the lead, jingling gold coins in rhythmic delight. Lize shook the bottle of extracted mana cores with a satisfied smile, while Ivona was already humming nonstop at the thought of boiling meat in the dinner cauldron. It was an expedition that left everyone perfectly satisfied, each brimming with their own private happiness.
“Mmm…. The smell of money is always so wonderful…. We should expand the stronghold warehouse while we’re at it. Hehehe.”
Veronica’s laughter as she counted the coins grew increasingly unhinged.
Rodin shivered slightly at the sound.
“Hey, Veronica! Your laugh is seriously creepy. You sure you used to be a princess?”
“Quiet! When money’s on the line, princess or not doesn’t matter one bit!”
At the same moment, late afternoon at the valley entrance. Members of the Steel Fang mercenary band crouched behind a cluster of boulders. Yet every last one of them was frozen solid, unable to move a muscle.
The Steel Fang mercenaries were veterans originally dispatched to this region on a Blue Fang extermination request. But the scene unfolding before their eyes completely shattered human common sense.
“C-Captain… what exactly am I looking at? Is… is this an illusion spell?”
The subordinate’s voice shook violently. The captain swallowed hard and shook his head.
“No…. It’s real. Four people are massacring hundreds of Blue Fangs. And they’re doing it so… casually. Almost happily.”
The mercenaries’ gazes locked onto the party dominating the battlefield. The silver-haired beauty freezing the sky with violet magic and the man crushing monster skulls like walnuts with a single rusty pickaxe were visions of pure terror.
“Is that guy a Sword Master or something?”
“Would a Sword Master wander around swinging a pickaxe like a lunatic?”
The mercenaries’ stunned sighs echoed quietly through the valley as they watched Rodin’s bizarre, horrifying swings.
“The scarier one is that blonde woman! The second a monster corpse hits the ground she’s already checking the liver and heart for freshness! She’s not human—she’s a man-eating demon!”
The mercenaries were speechless at Ivona’s lightning-fast “freshness inspection.” To them, this group didn’t look like mercenaries on a quest; they looked like the Demon King’s army come to annihilate the continent.
“Shh! If they notice us we might end up as ingredients! The woman clicking away on that calculator must be the leader… Her eyes are pure devil. A money-crazed demon!”
Just then Rodin turned his head and glanced toward the mercenaries’ hiding spot.
“Hey, Veronica. What are those idiots just standing there for? They’re in the way—should I clear them out?”
To the mercenaries, the casual remark sounded exactly like “Should I kill them?”
“No, leave them. We’ll need porters to haul the spoils anyway.”
Veronica, who had been so focused on the Blue Fangs that she hadn’t spared the hidden mercenaries a single thought, whipped her head around and shouted.
“You lot! I’ll pay a daily wage. Want to earn it by moving these loads?”
At her words the mercenary captain burst from behind the rock and slammed his forehead to the ground.
“P-please spare our lives! We’ll carry anything! We’ll rip out the stronghold pillars and haul them if you want! Just don’t kill us!”
“Huh…? Why are they acting like that? I was just offering them work.”
Rodin scratched his head in confusion.
Today, as always, Rodin’s overwhelming power had planted colossal misunderstandings and terror in everyone around him.
The expedition party made their way back along the mountain path dyed crimson by the setting sun. Veronica, tension finally released, leaned her head against Rodin’s broad shoulder and dozed off.
Commanding the day’s operation seemed to have drained her completely.
Looking at the carts piled high with troll hides and ogre tusks, Rodin thought, Wow, our boss lady really pulled all this off.
He gazed down at the sleeping Veronica with a mixture of pity and pride.
“We ended up traveling together after all. Our coordination isn’t bad, is it?” Lize said, noticing the look in his eyes.
“How much is all this worth? Meat party tonight! Meat party!” Ivona sang, humming with satisfaction. She cradled a bonus wild boar carcass like a precious treasure instead of ordinary supplies.
“It’s bothersome… but not bad. You guys are actually pretty useful,” Rodin replied indifferently, subtly wrapping an arm around Veronica’s waist so she wouldn’t slip.
“Useful doesn’t even begin to cover it. There’s no other party like us on the entire continent. If we felt like it, we could found our own country,” Lize murmured, toying with the edge of Rodin’s sleeve. To her, Rodin himself was an enormous mystery and the ultimate research subject.
When they reached the stronghold entrance, the mood was anything but normal. The bandit subordinates who should have rushed out in celebration were standing guard with deathly pale faces.
Rodin, who had been dozing against the cart, woke and sat up. His instincts screamed a sharp warning.
“Boss…! We’ve got a huge problem!”
Dagan held out something with violently trembling hands. It was a black arrow embedded deep in the main gate pillar. A letter bearing a red seal dangled from the arrowhead.
Rodin silently snatched it. The moment he saw the crest engraved on the fletching, his eyes turned ice-cold.
“This crest… belongs to the imperial family’s direct ‘Black Shadow’ unit. Lize, are they after you?”
Lize stepped forward, checked the seal, and nearly collapsed.
“No…. This isn’t for me. It’s a direct order from the Empress herself.”
The traitor Veronica and the band of bandits who concealed her shall be executed at once. Their stronghold is to be burned to the ground and reduced to ash.
With each line Veronica read, the color drained further from her face.
“….?! This isn’t an invitation—it’s a death sentence!”
Her voice trembled. The empire’s regular army—and worse, the imperial family’s secret forces—moving against them was on an entirely different scale from mere monster hunting.
Yet Rodin set his pickaxe aside and lifted the massive greatsword that had been resting against the wall. All trace of his usual laziness had vanished.
“A death sentence? Who the hell decided that?”
Jet-black aura erupted from beneath his feet, crushing the entire stronghold beneath its pressure. The terrified mercenaries couldn’t even breathe; they flattened themselves against the ground.
“Sigh… They won’t even let me grow cabbages in peace. Should I just kill them all?”
“Rodin, if the Empress is moving personally, that means the imperial army is coming! This isn’t like hunting monsters!”
Veronica clutched his sleeve, trying to restrain him, but Rodin answered with crimson eyes glowing in the darkness.
“Doesn’t matter. Anyone who comes to trample my cabbage field—whether emperor or empress—is nothing but a pest.”
The machines that had been sweeping up money were now preparing to sweep away humans.
The price for disturbing a peaceful farmer’s daily life would be a bloody harvest even the empire could not withstand.
A chilling light settled deep in Rodin’s eyes. The enormous shadow threatening his tranquil life as a farmer was closing in, ready to devour the entire stronghold.