Base Expansion

The next morning.

It was somehow noisy outside, and that woke me up.

I raised my body from the bed and looked at the window right beside me.

At the outdoor cooking area, students dressed as cooks were busily coming and going.

The members of Class 1-16, no, now the Leopin Royal Guard, seemed to be making breakfast.

I was about to get out of bed just like that when I noticed someone was in the room.

“Good morning, Lord Leopin!”

They were Monaka and Kotone, and the two of them were sitting formally on the floor below the bed, apparently waiting for me to wake up.

“We have come to attend to your morning needs!”

The two of them stood up with refreshing smiles.

Monaka wiped my face for me with a warm wet towel.

Kotone took a comb from the front fold of her Miko outfit, went around behind me, and combed my hair.

Then Monaka fixed the collar of my dress shirt for me.

Kotone took my only good coat from where it hung on the wall and put it on me.

It was full-service treatment, but it somehow felt like treatment far beyond my station, so it made me uncomfortable.

“Please come, Lord Leopin! Everyone in the village is waiting!”

The two of them went so far as to open the door and escort me outside.

When I went outside the gate, several wooden tables had been set up, and all the members of the Leopin Royal Guard except the cooks were seated there.

“Good morning! Lord Leopin! We finished all the fieldwork and livestock care!”

“Ah… yeah, thanks.”

The seat of honor I was guided to was a chair like a long bench.

When I sat down, the cooks brought out freshly made breakfast one after another.

What had been distributed to the members was the normal Western Pioneer Breakfast Set, but only mine was a large serving.

“Let us give thanks to Lord Leopin, who granted us this food, and partake.”

“Thank you for the meal! Lord Leopin!”

Together with a ticklish chorus, a lively breakfast began.

Well, I suppose this kind of thing is fine once in a while… I thought as I tried to eat, but there were no knives or forks on the table.

Before I knew it, Monaka and Kotone had nestled up on either side of me.

“Here, Lord Leopin, please say ahh.”

Monaka brought a salad speared on a fork to my mouth.

I finally could not take it anymore, so I said to everyone,

“Um, I don’t mean to spoil the mood, but… could you stop doing this kind of thing?”

“No way!?” came shocked voices from both sides.

Monaka and Kotone looked like they wanted to argue, but I stopped them with my gaze.

“As far as I’m concerned, I want everyone to treat me normally, just like before.”

After a silence, the lively dining table was wrapped in murmuring.

It was only natural for everyone to be surprised.

A village chief was considered a person of authority, so in society, it was taken for granted that they would receive treatment about this courteous.

Even between higher jobs and lower jobs, there was a large gap in status, so the difference between village chief and villager could be said to be almost equal to the difference between god and human.

But I had no intention of becoming a god.

“To me, all of you are comrades. I don’t mind if you respect me, but please keep it moderate. Let’s see… could you keep it to about the treatment of a student council president at most?”

I did not know.

I had no idea that a third party besides us had been listening to this exchange.

Nor that my casual remark had greatly wounded that person.

This morning, Weiss had noticed through the magical surveillance device in the student council president’s office that many people had gathered at Leopin’s house.

Leaving breakfast half-finished, he rushed out of the school building and headed for Leopin’s forest.

When he peered at the dining table from the shade of the trees at the entrance to the forest…

There, the scene he had dreamed of was spread out.

The village chief was the last to take a seat, and the villagers watched that scene with eyes of envy.

A report that the morning work had been finished, and freshly made warm food.

And he was surrounded by two beautiful girls and being fed with “ahh”…!

Weiss was so envious that he scratched the tree trunk with his nails, tearing at it.

“Guh… gigigi! O-originally, I should have been the one sitting in that place…! Having the lower-job students obey me, making them work, and having the Saint and Miko attend to my personal needs…! Why is that jobless trash receiving treatment that only I, the Sage, deserve…!”

Then, at Leopin’s suddenly spoken words, he almost screamed.

“St-student council president at most, you say…!? How much hardship do you think I went through to obtain my current position…!? Does that jobless trash intend to stand in the same position as me, the Sage…!? I… I will not allow that…!”

At my student council president declaration, Monaka and Kotone looked dejected.

It seemed that being unable to attend to my personal needs was quite a shock to them.

The two of them were so depressed that I ended up saying,

“Basically, it’s fine as long as it isn’t as exaggerated as treating me like a king. If it’s something like wiping my sweat, I’ll ask you to do it as before.”

Then Monaka and Kotone perked up as if wilted flowers had come back to life.

“Yes, understood! Ah, Leo-kun, your mouth is dirty, so I will wipe it for you! Also, I will massage your shoulders!”

“Yes, certainly! I shall clean your teeth with a toothpick! Also, please allow me to massage your feet!”

I felt like I had lit an even greater fire under the beautiful-girl secretaries’ motivation.

“Also, Master, what will you do after breakfast? I will arrange the preparations in advance!”

I answered while receiving a massage.

“Starting today, for a while, I plan to begin expanding the base.”

The trigger was that the ranch had become cramped, but if everyone had become villagers, that meant I needed to build residences here.

In that case, I had been thinking since last night that it would be better to fundamentally remodel this base.

Using as many as seventy people, I immediately got to work.

“First, cut down all the trees at the entrance to the forest and turn it into vacant land. That will connect it to the grassland outside, so we’ll make the four-hundred-meter square area into the village grounds. Then we’ll relocate the fields and ranch outside the village. I’ll cut down the forest and build everyone’s houses, so could everyone handle moving the fields and ranch?”

“Yes!”

To make the work more efficient, I first made something using Gisu wood.

There were currently fourteen horses on the ranch, so I paired them up two by two and had them pull the seven wagons.

Until now, our means of transport had been human-powered handcarts, but as expected, the power of wagons was on a completely different level.

They finished carrying the ranch fences and the field crops all at once.

While my comrades were building the ranch fences and cultivating the new fields, I proceeded with my own work.

I changed jobs to Woodcutter and cut down the trees at the entrance to the forest at full power, pulling out even the stumps and bushes.

Until now, my house had been hard to see from the residential district because of the trees in the forest, but since the land had been cleared, it was now completely exposed.

Monaka and Kotone came over and wiped my sweat for me.

The two of them had completely become my personal secretaries and had begun acting separately from everyone else.

While looking over the now-open grounds, I took a breath and thought about what came next.

“Now then, after this, I have to use this wood to build houses here. One house each for Monaka and Kotone, and then…”

Then, like a repeat of breakfast, shocked voices cried, “No way!?”

“We were going to, um, live together with you, Leo-kun…!”

Monaka was fidgeting, but Kotone was firm.

“We intended to attend to you in your residence from good morning until good night, Master…!?”

“No, no, that’s definitely not okay.”

I gently patted the two of them on the head.