Chapter 112

About two weeks after the peace agreement was concluded.

Three ships came from Roran.

Two were loaded with the large quantity of materials we had ordered for purchase, and the other carried the group of specialists Frost had arranged for us.

I had assumed that a small team would be dispatched, but the people who came down from the ship were an enormous group.

They seemed to be mainly people connected to the Bax Company, and starting with the secretary who had accompanied Frost, there was a full lineup of professional legal experts, document specialists, and accounting specialists.

That much was as expected, since we had asked for them, but there was something I had forgotten.

This was a world with a strict status order, and people with status had attendants.

The specialists each brought several assistants, and on top of that, they came with errand boys and servants to take care of their daily needs, so all together, there were quite a lot of people.

Furthermore, each of them had brought a large amount of reference documents, so I came to physically understand what it meant to operate a country.

Also, while Frost had been under house arrest, he seemed to have understood that Iiria knew nothing about lordly duties, so he thoughtfully sent people from Roran’s chancellery as well.

In my previous world, the chancellery would be a department specializing in documents at the level of national administration.

The people Frost sent apparently understood the formal document formats used when the provincial capital Roran officially communicated with the center of the empire and other provinces, as well as diplomatic etiquette in general.

If we did not know such things, then when we dealt with powers other than Roran in the future, we might be looked down on or lose their trust, so this gift was very much appreciated.

When Iiria had gone to Roran, she had mistaken the stool that nobles placed their feet on when putting on shoes for a chair and sat down on it. If malicious nobles saw that, they would immediately laugh cruelly.

However, when Iiria learned that she had to study diplomatic etiquette, she made a face as though she hated it enough to die.

Once those bureaucratic people had finished disembarking, another group of people of a different sort came down.

They were said to be the person in charge of the shipyard, the masters of shipwright workshops, timber merchants, and ingot merchants.

The shipyard itself was apparently a government-run shipyard operated by Roran as a city, but each of the shipwrights who worked there had their own workshop, and the city’s merchants were also responsible for supplying materials.

The reason they had arrived in such large numbers seemed to be that we were going to build one of the largest ships, the kind rarely built even in Roran, so they wanted to conduct various sales talks and hear the customer’s requests in advance.

I had no particular attachment to ships, and Gerario was not a specialist in ships either, so we had decided to leave shipbuilding to Cole to some extent, but Iiria wanted to have a say only in the interior of the guest cabin on the deck.

Apparently, after boarding a ship during the incident with Roran, she had thought about various things.

“There is a limit to the budget, all right?”

I warned her in advance, but she showed me the deliberately sweet smile of a soft and fluffy lord, so I also had to make sure to tell Cole, who would be in charge of negotiations, firmly.

That said, I was worried about whether Cole could take a strict approach if Iiria asked him with a smile.

“Lord Iiria. Please make full use of the knowledge we have brought from Roran.”

In any case, the main people among those who had come from Roran in large numbers gathered at Iiria’s mansion and had an audience with Iiria.

Behind the scenes, Kururu, Clover, the other church members, and I hurriedly ran around preparing to receive them.

Because we had never expected so many to come, we had to arrange additional lodgings and meals, of course, and also secure workplaces so that their work could proceed smoothly.

Since there were no large-scale hotels or convention centers like in my previous world, we somehow made do by borrowing guild halls used as bases by various merchants and craft guilds.

Then, once the specialists actually began giving advice and holding consultations about building the court, this too was a serious ordeal.

We had to reconcile Roran’s laws with Jirenu’s customs, protect vested interests to some extent, invite representatives of each guild, and record and organize the results of the meetings.

I experienced a mountain of muddy, practical work that could never be tasted in a domestic affairs simulation game.

At night, we had to secure tavern seats for them, and since they were people from Roran, where the beastfolk slave trade was still active, we also had the troublesome job of coordinating that area through Dodol so that encounters with beastfolk would not be awkward for both sides.

Moreover, alongside all of that, there was the normal work of the company and the magic stone workshop, as well as the operation of the abandoned mine, so for a while, every day felt as if an explosive roar kept ringing right next to my ears.

Calling it a makeshift approach would have been too generous. In any case, it was completely improvised, but the discussions on establishing the governing structure proceeded smoothly.

Of course, that was not thanks to an ordinary office worker like me, but largely because of the presence of Kengo, who had worked at a major foreign consulting firm.

His performance was so versatile that it was practically like he had a cheat ability. He easily pulled two or three all-nighters in a row, and whether consciously or not, he would take the specialists who were trying to construct legal systems favorable to Roran out drinking at night, hit it off with them, and win them over. During the day, he used his overwhelming eloquence to coordinate all over the place with vested-interest holders who tended to cause disputes.

Of course, Iiria’s approval was necessary at important moments, so Iiria also spent every day in meetings from morning until night.

The lord who had possessed a fluffy puppy-like cuteness grew more irritable each morning she woke up, and gradually began to resemble a bulldog.

Because her role as lord involved many banquets, her face was probably puffy from drinking and eating too much.

Her fluffy hair also grew larger with each passing day, and Kururu seemed to have a hard time fixing her bed hair, but even so, as the lord of Jirenu, Iiria properly carried out her work.

In this way, once the various matters that had been in great chaos eventually settled onto their respective tracks, and the flow became one where each only had to be processed without incident…

I had some business related to magic circles, so I was riding in a small boat headed for the offshore mine.

When we reached the open sea with no one around, the combination of the wide field of view and the quiet sound of the waves made me let out such a long, deep sigh that even I was surprised.

Realizing that I had been tense, I felt a little nostalgic for my previous world, thinking that I wanted to soak in a hot spring.

“You seem tired.”

The beastman was not Badadam, but he was an acquaintance who rowed the boat between the harbor and the offshore mine, and he said that with a slight laugh.

“Yes… It seems I haven’t trained enough.”

The beastman, whom I probably could not match no matter how much strength training I did, laughed with his shoulders shaking.

“Thanks to you people, we are able to eat our fill. It also seems that our companions can obtain honorable work in this land. Please take care of your health.”

Around the time I gratefully thanked the beastman for his concern, the boat arrived at the revived abandoned mine.

When I visited it for the first time in a while, it had completely become a proper ice platform.

A splendid dock had been built, and there were even three buildings made by stacking ice blocks.

Furthermore, because ice blocks had been piled up around the mining site to serve as a breakwater, it even looked like a small offshore fortress.

And at the center of that ice island, the mine had been dug forward in the form of a gigantic spiral staircase descending underground.

Work such as ore sorting was also mostly done here, and apparently, there were now beastfolk living on-site.

Looking at it like this, it somehow resembled an extremely modern mining site.

“Oh, Yorinobu-dono.”

“Well, well, if it isn’t the dragon slayer-dono.”

“Yorinobu-dono, when will you slay the fourth dragon!?”

Perhaps humans stood out here, because beastfolk immediately gathered around me.

Because the surroundings were ice, the breath and heat from the rugged beastfolk made the air hazy, and I felt as if I were being swarmed by a pack of sled dogs.

As I was dealing with them in confusion, my hand was pulled from between the crowd of people.

“You lot, get back to work!”

At Kururu’s voice, the beastfolk laughed and returned to their work.

“Honestly, what’s so unusual about Yorinobu at this point?”

Kururu, who said that, was dressed in a very bundled-up, fluffy outfit.

Unlike them, whose entire bodies were covered in fur, Kururu only had ears and a tail, so it was probably cold for her on the ice.

Since she was originally slender, wearing so many layers actually emphasized how small her body was, making her cute like a mascot character. It was probably the rule that people looked fifty percent more beautiful at ski resorts.

If I said that out loud, she would probably bite me, so I kept quiet.

“I’m happy that everyone is being friendly with me.”

“…”

Kururu looked at me and shrugged.

“So, what did you come here for? We’re busy here too, expanding the vein.”

She sounded quite curt, but from the movements of her ears and tail, I had become able to tell that it did not mean she was in a bad mood.

“I brought something for testing.”

Like someone who had come to a construction site to deliver lunch, I showed her the bundle I was carrying.

Kururu jerked her chin in annoyance.

“Let’s test it over there.”

Every day had been chaos because of the delegation from Roran, but Kururu had been alternating with Gerario, coming here to fire ice magic in order to maintain and develop the mining site. Apparently, while they were digging, they often accidentally broke out into the sea and sent up a pillar of water, so a magician had to be stationed here.

Kururu walked across the ice with practiced ease.

“Is work still busy?”

Gerario and Kururu had been taking turns staying here for several days at a time. And even when Kururu returned to the island, she had various things to do there too. As the person in charge of cooking at Iiria’s mansion, she was handling food-related work such as maintaining the fish farm and expanding the fields.

Because of that, we had not been able to see each other much lately.

“There is still a mountain of things to do, but it has calmed down quite a bit. So Falone-san and the others pressed me to run the tests.”

What I had in my hand were new magic circle candidates.

Since the method of confirming the activation of giant magic circles was a secret, when I was busy, it inevitably got pushed back.

I wondered if I should just reveal the secret to them too… but it was also frightening to increase the number of people who knew the secret too much.

“Iiria-san was also saying she wanted to see you, Kururu-san.”

Kururu had a composed face, but her nostrils flared slightly.

She was probably happy that Iiria relied on her.

“I’m also happy to see you again after so long.”

Perhaps because of the rebound from having been tense for so long, those words slipped out.

Then, soon after, just when I realized what I had said and was about to hurriedly cover it up…

Kururu let out a large white sigh, so big it seemed as though it might hide her whole body.

“Um…?”

As I shrank back at her reaction, she kicked my leg.

“Don’t suddenly startle me.”

The fact that her sulking face was a little red was probably not because of the cold.

“It’s the same today too. If you’re coming, say you’re coming.”

I shrank my neck and apologized, but now that she said that, when she had pulled my hand while I was surrounded by the beastfolk, Kururu did seem strangely out of breath.

Could it be that she had noticed me and ran over happily?

“You really do have that kind of thing about you…”

Kururu made a displeased face, deliberately showing off her fangs.

“And the fact that it feels strangely natural makes it even more annoying.”

It was hard to tell whether she was praising me or not, but it seemed Kururu was not angry either.

It felt as though she was frustrated at having been caught off guard.

Like a common scene in a manga where a catgirl is shown a toy and feels frustrated that she unintentionally chased after it.

As I was thinking that, the silent Kururu bumped her shoulder into me.

“Whoa.”

She bumped me a second time, then a third time. Since my feet were on ice where I could not brace myself properly, I staggered.

On the fourth time, Kururu was smiling mischievously.

And on the fifth time, I somehow managed to catch her in my arms.

Kururu’s face was pressed against my chest.

From deep in her throat, something like a rumbling sound, or perhaps a vibration, was transmitted to me.

She was exactly like a cat in a good mood.

“Your chest is as thin as ever.”

“Once this busyness ends, I plan to start training.”

It was the typical excuse of someone who would not do it, but whether Kururu knew that or not, she lightly pulled herself away.

“You don’t have to grow a beard, though.”

As if she wanted to say that training would not make everyone become like Kengo.

“I’ll do my best.”

Kururu smiled as if tickled.

After that, we tested all the new magic circles proposed by Falone and the others, and as expected, none of them activated.