The City of Peach Fire - (5) Suitors Raining from All Directions
『Seira Hart-singer』 Reputation: 12,382
All day long. Waddling about. Crawling through the village with an innocent, crystal-clear smile. Yet, contrary to that pure demeanor, she was a girl equipped with an overwhelming, kingly aura of seduction that could trigger nonstop on its own, twenty-four hours a day. Puyol Hart-singer’s daughter. Ever since ‘Seira Hart-singer’ appeared, every man in the village felt a tsunami of tears—megatons, gigatons, teraton, exaton, zetaton—crashing down upon their hearts.
『Seira Hart-singer』 Reputation: 25,634
From a certain day onward, Seira Hart-singer stopped leaving the village entirely. On rainy days, if she happened to show her face by the window while worrying about the laundry, the men of the village would erupt like volcanoes of desire and despair. Every house overflowed with the scent of night flowers.
『Seira Hart-singer』 Reputation: 87,437
If Seira ever had to step outside even briefly to water the plants in Puyol’s flowerbed, the day would be filled with thunderous standing ovations, gasps, cheers, and waves of praise and admiration that sounded like a hurricane striking in triple and quadruple harmony.
“Whoa… damn, I’m losing my mind!”
“Guh, guh… How can a person… be like that?!”
“You expect us to calmly plow the fields while such a beautiful goddess exists? That’s not only a grave insult to the goddess herself, but an unbearable torment no human can endure.”
“Prison? Life sentence? That’s far too light a price. I’d sell my soul to the devil at a bargain if it meant spending just one night with her at some remote resort…”
“Kek, maybe I should kidnap her and sell her to some rich bastards? With that money I could found a kingdom… No, how could I even think of selling such a lovely woman for money? Should I just disappear with her, leaving no trace, carried away by the wind? I don’t care how high the bounty on my head gets!”
『Seira Hart-singer』 Reputation: 315,461
It had only been a few weeks since Seira appeared. The economic activity of Puran Village was on the verge of complete paralysis. Even the hill where the village chief’s house stood was constantly crowded with massive throngs of people, day and night, as if it were a world-star concert venue.
One early morning, the village youth Borus… finally finished meticulously reviewing the plan with his comrades and resolved to carry it out. His first step was to visit Marcus’s general store, known for its honest and kind owner.
“Oh my, welcome! This is the honest merchant Marcus’s general store!”
“Huh? You’re not Marcus?”
“Where did Mr. Marcus go? That’s strange. Even on days he was suffering from fever, he never left his post…”
Borus and his comrades, who had sworn to become Seira’s many fathers-in-law together, felt a strange and unsettling sensation.
“Mr. Marcus said he had urgent business and rushed off to Chief Puyol’s house. I don’t know why he took a halberd with him, though.”
“Then what is your relation to Mr. Marcus?”
“I’m his cousin Evergreen, from the neighboring village of Bellas.”
By evening, the owner had changed again.
“Ah, that Evergreen fellow? I’m his younger brother, Sunsetrich. By the way, where is Brother Evergreen? He said he’d just pop over to the chief’s house for a moment, but it’s already been four hours!”
“I’m looking for Sunsetrich, who said he’d be back in twenty minutes!”
“All the masks are gone now. Then how about a net? That’s gone too. A rope or a basket? Oh dear, those are gone as well…”
『I had urgent business and had to step away for a while.』
Day by day, as the store’s goods grew scarce and its owners kept disappearing, Borus and his group felt relieved.
“As expected of Borus. It was wise to secure the masks in advance!”
“Who would have thought so many would join the operation…”
Before the masks ran out at the village general store, Borus’s group had quickly bought up a hundred of them. After all, within just one week, over a hundred men had gathered, all determined to kidnap Seira and become her shared husbands.
『Seira Hart-singer』 Reputation: 802,702
Rumors about Seira had begun spreading uncontrollably throughout the entire kingdom. From distant cousins to the sixteenth cousin of the neighbor’s dog—everyone had heard. Countless people started pouring into Puran Village! The tens of thousands who gathered only fueled Seira’s soaring reputation further. Several changes swept through the region. Land prices skyrocketed, and houses near Puyol’s home, with their excellent views, became ultra-prime real estate that put even the most expensive districts of major cities to shame.
“Hahaha, Chief Puyol~ You remember me, don’t you? I’m Hamilton, heir to Count Selton, the lord of Puran Village.”
One day, a young man of noble bearing and expensive attire boldly knocked on the chief’s door.
『Swish.』
『Thud.』
『Shing.』
『Clang.』
『Thud, thud, thud, thud.』
『Hiss, hiss.』
『Buzzzzzzz.』
Without anyone needing to give orders, the villagers moved as one. Plows, hoes, sickles, pickaxes, and axes—tools they used in the fields—were joined by longer weapons like halberds, longswords, and long pikes. Even the so-called “neighborhood Robin Hoods” were summoned, loading their longbows and crossbows. Some even brought out rare execution-grade weapons like iron maidens and flamberges, weapons that could sentence a man to death with a single touch. They looked like an elite combat infantry unit assembled from farmers. If anyone so much as laid a finger on Seira… these villagers of Puran were watching with the fierce determination to show that arrogant landlord noble a taste of true peasant uprising.
“Haaah… I’m going insane!”
Before long, her reputation had surpassed one million. As a result, marriage proposals from all over the kingdom for the novel’s heroine kept arriving without end. Knights in silver armor began to appear. Yesterday, even the viscount of this village’s territory came and left empty-handed. But soon… someone truly terrifying would arrive. And that person was someone no one here could stop.
‘I need to come up with something…!’
Ah, that’s right! I have Dragonai—a very reliable… ultimate weapon, don’t I?
『Seira Hart-singer』 Reputation: 1,402,702
Those who came after hearing rumors of Seira’s appearance were increasingly people of high status and renown. Wealthy merchants from the capital arrived with hundreds of guards. People from count families. Even renowned scholars known throughout the academic world tried to visit Puyol’s house. Yet every single one of them left without even managing to grasp the doorknob, forced to swallow the bitter taste of failure.
‘If you carelessly touch the doorknob of that house, you won’t be alive tonight.’
So they changed their methods. They suddenly planted rare medicinal herbs in the vegetable garden and watered them every day with the finest floral nutrients, while buying up all the surrounding houses and transferring ownership to Puyol’s name. They expanded the fertile farmland widely around the area, and volunteers flooded in to harvest the crops themselves. Since staple crops took a long time to harvest, the “Seira Loving Association”—“Sesamo”—one day built a cowshed in Puyol’s name right next to the vegetable garden. Then they donated dozens of bulls so that the magnificent oxen would willingly walk inside on their own.
“Seira! Tonight’s dinner is an evening steak party!”
“Seira! Tonight’s dinner is also an all-you-can-eat meat buffet!”
They gazed out the window with warm, sentimental expressions at Seira, who had arrived in this world and was happily stuffing herself with domestic beef until her stomach was full.
“Ooooooh!! Seira has accepted our humble offerings!”
“Seira, Seira the goddess… has accepted the food we so earnestly harvested today!”