Ingrad? Is That Something You Eat? A Noble… Me?! (7)

“What brings you all here? And what are all those?”

At the late hour when the sun was about to set, the tense knights stood behind me, and in front of me were Beastkin in a hurry.

One representative of the Beastkin stepped forward, pointing at the large pile of herbs stacked between us, and said,

“We need the lord’s medicine. With this much, how much could you spare for us? They may be low-grade herbs, but we worked hard to gather them, so we’d like fair compensation.”

Even in this situation, the Beastkin asserted their rights confidently. Fair enough; they hadn’t spared their labor to pick herbs, so I intended to treat them accordingly.

From the balcony I gauged the amount and had already prepared an approximate supply.

I had one of the maids behind me hold it; I gestured for her to bring the box and said,

“This is all the medicine I personally prepared today for sale tomorrow. Let’s see… Blood-Replenishing Pills: 80. Fatigue Recovery Tonics: 120. And what may be most important to you—Invigorators: 90. You might call it meager, but this is the quantity I can produce right now with every effort. Let’s settle with this.”

“Th-that much…?”

“Huh…? Was that a lot?”

I couldn’t tell how many they had expected, but the female Beastkin’s words made me feel oddly shortchanged. Still, the heap of herbs before me was easily ten times what the maids and I had gathered on the mountain.

“If I use all this up, I might be making medicine nonstop for half a month…?”

Honestly, just looking at it was reassuring. But the schedule promised grueling labor—worrying, to say the least.

All the same, I couldn’t show it on my face. I composed myself and said,

“If you think it’s a lot, then please show more sincerity next time. That’ll motivate the laborer—me—to work harder, won’t it?”

“Th… thank you. Truly, thank you!”

A Beastkin snatched the box from my hands with astonishing speed. Then, each of them bowed in thanks before leaving. The looks on the maids’ and Vincent’s faces were quite a sight.

The knights looked indifferent, but for Vincent and the maids who had lived here a long time, it was an unbelievable scene.

“Who would’ve thought the day would come when Beastkin bow voluntarily to humans…”

Vincent’s mutter showed just how rare this was, but I said,

“You’ll be seeing this often. The relationship of ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ won’t change.”

He didn’t know the Korean terms “top/bottom,” but a quick-witted man like Vincent would grasp the nuance. After that, I had the off-duty maids haul in all the herbs to the manor; feeling bad about it, I committed the atrocity of handing out more Fatigue Recovery Tonics to them.

The next day, I woke to the subtle fragrance of herbs filling the manor, and, worried by the heavy dark circles under the maids’ eyes, I asked today’s attendant maid, who was waiting on me,

“Did something happen? You all don’t look well.”

“…We didn’t sleep. We… didn’t.”

“Didn’t sleep…? Why?”

“We don’t know. We just… don’t.”

“Well, being a maid isn’t exactly easy.”

So I decided to distribute more Fatigue Recovery Tonics. After today’s attendant maid took one and looked a little brighter, I asked with relief,

“Where can I find Vincent?”

“Pull the cord and he will come.”

She pointed to a rope installed on one side of my room. I’d been told to pull it if I needed anything; I’d thought it summoned a maid, but apparently it summoned Vincent. How odd.

As for the staff here…

It felt like Vincent handled almost all the miscellaneous tasks.

Come to think of it, before I arrived, Vincent had served as acting lord. I’d heard he was a quasi-noble.

“If he’s a sub-baron, he could order maids around… What a peculiar man.”

It wasn’t something I needed to worry about right now. After a simple breakfast of morning bread and soup, I headed to the workshop.

I glanced past the balcony and saw even more Beastkin peeking over the manor wall than yesterday.

“I can’t just end this as simple medicine sales. I need a breakthrough way to make use of them…”

You could say I’d already improved my image. In most matters, targeting women over men adds momentum.

The Beastkin society felt closer to matrilineal than patriarchal, and in practice, women seemed to take the lead.

It couldn’t be helped; it was the flow set by the Demon God—and the way of this world.

I didn’t think it was bad. I just wondered if, someday, I’d end up living under someone’s thumb.

“No need to worry about the far future yet.”

So, to make them impatient, I opened the balcony door and began roasting herbs.

I worked in order of the strongest aromas, letting the scent drift naturally beyond the balcony. I occasionally wiped sweat theatrically and stepped out for air, letting myself be seen. Curious about why, today’s attendant maid asked,

“You don’t look that tired. Why act that way on purpose?”

“Well, it’s simple. I want the value of my medicine to look as high as possible to them. It’s a con.”

Seeing her puzzled face, I explained,

“For example, if they think a precious medicine is made trivially, they won’t want to pay a high price even if it’s important. I’m preventing that.”

“…So that’s why you called it a con…?”

“But there are also medicines that really are hard to make. Sometimes those get used for trivial purposes, so they’re valued low. There are cases like that too. So when there’s a chance to pull the price up, I plan to pull it up.”

The maid looked at me strangely.

To ordinary common sense, my behavior was hard to understand—especially in a stratified society of commoners and nobles.

To their eyes, I was a noble—someone they shouldn’t presume to guess at. Seeing such a person act oddly, they naturally couldn’t understand.

“By the way, what’s your name?”

“Ah, Seria. I’m sorry! I should have introduced myself first. Please forgive me!”

Seria bowed almost ninety degrees in apology. But I wasn’t overbearing, and I disliked this kind of relationship.

“It’s fine. No need to be so sorry. I only told you my family name ‘Ingrad,’ didn’t I?”

I hadn’t actually given my real name. I’d been here several days already; I’d been quite careless.

So I said to Seria,

“Let’s all get together for a meal and exchange names, shall we?”

At that, Seria wore a complicated expression. In any case, for lunch that day everyone gathered as I wished, and there I learned their names.

I didn’t memorize everyone precisely, but at least I made an impression on them.

Honestly, I figured it would be uncomfortable.

Still, I hoped they wouldn’t see me only as a noble and treat me stiffly. I might give up on this place or leave someday, but while I was here, couldn’t we live pleasantly?

With that in mind, I spoke for all to hear,

“Health first, safety first, and zero accidents in practice! Let’s make that our motto going forward!”

People looked at me as if I were spouting nonsense, but I figured they’d understand after spending time with me.

After that, I returned to making medicine, and before dinner I went to the manor gate with medicine to barter for a large quantity of herbs, stocking up plenty of inventory.

This time they were high-grade herbs from the Forest of the Demon Dragon.

“It’s truly astonishing that we can obtain herbs of this quality.”

Watching the trade, Vincent still wore a disbelieving face. He must have found relations with Beastkin so difficult that this seemed impossible—but for now I left room for improvement and simply thought I had to avoid carelessly piling herbs all over the manor.

“I need to come up with a method… What would be good…?”

Looking around, what we had in excess was land. And I had the power to make use of it.

“By the way, is there any restriction on using this land as I please? Anything illegal about it?”

“All this land is yours, my lord. This used to be a royal demesne, and Her Majesty the Empress granted it to you. From now on, you must recognize that everything here belongs to you. The Beastkin are also… your subjects, you could say.”

Mulling over Vincent’s words, I declared without further hesitation,

“We should plan to naturalize the Beastkin as territory citizens.”

“…I don’t know if it’s possible… but I’ll do my utmost to help.”

The Forest of the Demon Dragon was home to a gigantic “dragon” called the Demon Dragon—the sort of “Lord-class” being that even a Demon King wouldn’t trifle with. I heard this rumor from the Beastkin.

“So you’re saying that Demon Dragon despises humans and hates it when they so much as enter the forest? That about right?”

“Right. If it’s you, my lord, maybe… but safety first, no?”

I mingled among the talkative Beastkin women, flicking them pills one by one and chatting to gather information.

Frankly, you couldn’t afford not to gather intel on a dangerous place next door. Humans had limits to how much information they could collect—there were bound to be constraints.

But the Beastkin were free of those constraints.

“Looking at this map, where would the Demon Dragon be based?”

The Beastkin women pointed to several spots as they spoke.

“I’ve seen it here. It was eating an ogre.”

“Oh really? I saw it over here—tearing the wings off a manticore.”

“I saw it here, having just hunted a basilisk and about to eat it.”

Sightings of the Demon Dragon, dining on terrifying monsters as a mere “meal.” Honestly, it was daunting.

“So my neighbor is a monster like that… Is there no way to win it over…?”

I doubted the medicine I made could entice a Demon Dragon. It likely handled mana and magic; making something like medicine should be trivial for it.

Even so, I couldn’t help imagining—an estate backed by a Demon Dragon…

“Ha, just imagining it is cool… but way too dangerous.”

Shaking off the fantasy, I asked the Beastkin women,

“Besides the usual medicines I give you, if there’s anything else you need, tell me. I’m surprisingly good at making all sorts of things. And I can do this, too.”

I parted the women to either side, placed my hands on the ground, and this time attempted Construction using only “mana,” focusing on it.

Watching the structure surge upward, I said,

“A new home of your own? Not hard at all!”