Ingrad? Is That Something You Eat? A Noble… Me?! (8)

I finally learned what the phrase “inquiries are pouring in!” really meant.

The Beastkin were capable at gathering, hunting, and combat, but outside of that they had so little talent with their hands that it felt right to say they were almost untalented.

‘With those clumsy hands, how do they even live by gathering…?’

But from what I heard, most of their hunting and gathering was done bare-handed, and when it came to weapons, they said they hunted using only carved claws or knuckles and clubs, which left me bewildered.

Some Beastkin even said their own claws and nails were more powerful than weapons, but I wondered if the reason they fell behind humans might simply be “tools.”

Before they were my territory’s people, they were folks living alongside a forest where monsters appeared.

There were children, and there were elders.

Well, in this world there’s no need to treat “women” as the weaker sex, so setting that aside, I saw plenty of room to improve their quality of life.

“So you’re saying you can build us a house… is that it?”

“I can’t make anything too complex or huge, but I can build simple structures. It’s just that, since I’m closer to a mage, when I use my power I end up using ‘magic power.’”

“I didn’t feel anything just now…?”

Hearing the female Beastkin’s words surprised me. Normally it’s hard to sense magic power. Last time, they felt “fear” because I blatantly flared magic power, but Beastkin seemed a bit different.

“Are you fine even if you sense magic power?”

“Mm, not always, but we’re used to it.”

Hearing that they were used to magic power, I spoke up to run a test.

“First come, first served! It won’t be fancy, but I’ll build a decent house for one person!”

I thought someone would jump out the moment I finished, but they only glanced around. That wouldn’t do.

“It’s free, free! Just one!”

Only then did a Beastkin raise a hand, and though I was dumbfounded, I asked the fox Beastkin who raised her hand first.

“How many people live with you, and where would you like the house built?”

Without hesitation, the fox Beastkin pointed to one side and replied.

“Near the manor gate would be nice! There are six in my family! Two sons and two daughters!”

“Oh? That’s a perfect number. Let’s go.”

I took the lead, and Beastkin who’d begun to show interest followed us. We checked along the wall beside the manor gate, then stopped by a big tree just in front of the wall, and I asked,

“About here should be right—what do you think?”

“Anywhere’s fine! No—this looks good!”

I was curious why people who had lived as if walled off from humans wanted to settle near the manor, but I let it slide—clearly they had their reasons. I lowered my hand, touched the ground, and focused on Construction.

I could raise a suitably sized temporary structure, but making a complex layout at once seemed hard. So I first imagined a square box for a living room, set one door to the outside that people could pass through, then set two more doors where future rooms would be added, and immediately used Construction.

Mana and magic power drained straight out of me, and the building began to surge upward.

Even though I released a considerable amount of magic power, the Beastkin only looked a little amazed and didn’t seem afraid. The problem was the exterior of the building.

‘It’s too stiff… No, maybe “shabby” is more accurate…?’

There was no exterior finishing—just a smooth wall standing there—so it looked a bit plain. Worse, I’d thought about doors but forgot the windows.

Feeling the mood, I quickly began adding the children’s room and the couple’s room in order.

For now I only raised the exterior walls, but this time I didn’t forget the windows. After circling inside and out, I asked the fox Beastkin,

“What else do you need? Should I level the floor?”

“Th… this alone is too much already… How could we ever repay such grace…?”

It wasn’t “grace.” Roughly speaking, it looked about 30 pyeong in size, but calling it a “house” was generous—in my eyes?

It looked like a plain square box, basically a container. And I had no idea about its structural strength.

If it collapsed, that would be a problem; I couldn’t just tell them to tinker with it. I realized I’d rushed the job.

So I told the fox Beastkin,

“Today is just the groundwork. Let’s finish it tomorrow. If there’s anything you want added, think it over and tell me tomorrow.”

“Understood. We’re just… incredibly grateful!”

She looked around with a very satisfied face. That made me oddly more apologetic, but since she liked it, I decided to treat this as groundwork and kept looking around, adding to my ideas.

After that, new requests from the Beastkin began.

They wanted houses of their own, plain and simple. When they asked what I needed to do, I deferred the “payment” as something we’d work out later and returned to the manor.

“I definitely got their attention, but it’s quite a drain on my power. I can patch up mana with a recovery potion, but is magic power going to be the problem…?”

I figured I could make a magic-power recovery potion too, but there was one side effect.

“They say magic-power addiction can happen… and I don’t know what that even is…”

If there were a mage nearby, at least I could ask—but there wasn’t, which made it hard. Still, I couldn’t take back what I’d promised, and building houses and collecting payment was an important part of my plan.

“But if I ask them to become official territory citizens as payment… will they agree?”

That too was a question. From talking with the Beastkin women, I learned there were about two thousand Beastkin living near the manor; two-thirds were paired, and the rest were their children or siblings.

They mostly moved here after leaving their parents and marrying a partner they liked, but I didn’t know enough about Beastkin lifestyles to be sure, which left me pondering.

Among food, clothing, and shelter, the only thing Beastkin could solve neatly on their own was “food.” Clothing was either roughly stitched from animal hides or barely obtained by traveling to distant border fiefs and trading hides to soldiers or slash-and-burn farmers for clothes—so the future would be important.

First, accept an appropriate number of Beastkin. Next, build roads to other territories to activate exchange, then sell medicine and various monster by-products.

Then bring in necessary goods to activate a market and develop the fief into a more livable place… That was the plan I could think of for now.

Additionally, I planned to implement a policy to accept immigrants.

It wouldn’t be big money, but if I could create a living environment where one could get by, perhaps I could draw in those who hated their current fiefs and had fled to live as slash-and-burn farmers deep in the mountains.

Clap!

I clapped my hands to draw the manor household’s attention to my return, then called out.

“Starting tomorrow, we’ll be much busier, so turn in early today. Anyone who’s tired, come here!”

I intended to hand out Fatigue Recovery Tonics.

“Guuuuuh… what a pleasant morning.”

I stretched luxuriously and stepped lightly out of bed—just then a maid came into my room at the perfect moment, looking even worse than yesterday’s attendant maid.

Since it wasn’t Seria, I asked the maid who had just entered,

“Where did Ms. Seria go?”

There was nowhere she could have gone. In this uncooperative fief, where would a human go?

It was a silly question, but I got an answer.

“She seemed terribly exhausted, groaning all night and unable to get up, so I was assigned in her place. My name is Ariana.”

Unlike Seria, Ariana had a rather mature charm. In any case she looked tired, which worried me just the same, so I asked on a hunch.

“Did you not take the Fatigue Recovery Tonic?”

“No… I did. And it worked. But… does that tonic by any chance have a function that drives away sleep?”

“Mm, no, not as such. It merely clears away accumulated fatigue… completely…?”

Mid-sentence, I realized it. Right, it clears fatigue completely. If that kept people who should have been worn out and asleep at night from sleeping…?

If they lay awake until the small hours for several nights in a row before finally dozing off…?

“Aaaaaah!!!”

I cursed my stupidity inside. What on earth had I done?

I’d committed an act of trash beyond imagination. I thought I was being considerate—my way of rewarding maids who had worked all day—but in reality it was torture.

“The Fatigue Recovery Tonic… I should have made them take it in the morning…”

The effect was too dramatic. Giving it out in the morning must have helped—letting them shed the fatigue sleep hadn’t cleared. But at night… unless they had something to do after taking it, the fatigue of a normal evening or hobby time wouldn’t have amounted to much.

Their surplus stamina ended up “rotting on the vine,” turning into a kind of torture, and in the end we had victims like Seria.

“This must never get out…”

No one could be allowed to know. So I forced an awkward smile and said,

“I can make more medicine, but starting today I also have ‘house’ work, so I think we should distribute the Fatigue Recovery Tonic only in the morning… I’m… sorry, what should we do?”

By the end, my acting turned into a robot voice.

But Ariana, not sensing anything amiss, forced as bright a smile as she could under her dark circles and said,

“That alone is something we’ll be grateful for. Thank you for your consideration, my lord.”

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I was sorry.’

I could only apologize in my heart. After that, I handed Ariana twenty Fatigue Recovery Tonics and asked her to relay exactly what I’d said to everyone else, then headed to the apothecary workshop for my morning routine.

With a simple sandwich Ariana brought clenched between my teeth, I considered what to make today. The three usual medicines were well stocked, so I thought I’d make something related to “magic-power” recovery.

“What recipe has the fewest side effects?”

Since I didn’t know what magic-power addiction was, I planned to make a potion that would avoid it as much as possible.

And in case magic-power addiction did occur, I checked if there was a detox recipe. I wrote down the two medicines I would make this morning exactly as the recipes read on a stack of papers on the desk, limbered up my hands, and resolved,

“Medicine… in the right place at the right time!”

Thanks to the “sacrifice” of one person, I had learned what could happen if I handed it out carelessly, so I figured I’d be careful from now on.