༺ Marie, an ever-so-normal Countryside Girl (1) ༻
“Please enjoy the feast, young lady! This is what we have wholeheartedly prepared!”
A feature of the Dunareff… or rather the feature of the people living in the south, was that they tended to eat a lot.
Due to the nature of having numerous people involved in the primary industry like farming, mining, and rearing animals that required manual labor, every family tended to be heavy-eaters and that became a cultural habit of the south.
That was one of the reasons why potatoes, easily gatherable yet filling products, became a staple, and why animal blood was also used as an ingredient for dishes.
Even aside from that, considering how the Dunareff was like a whole empire of the south, it was obvious that they had to set a big feast for the eldest daughter of that family.
“Wow! Thank you so much for the food!”
Marie was likewise a heavy-eater, and she started to eat even more after becoming a vampire.
“Huah~. That was amazing. The chefs in the Merkarva Branch are excellent!”
“Of course. It’s all thanks to His Highness the Duke providing us with the best ingredients and staff.”
She placed the cutleries down after the meal, as the servants quickly walked up and took them away before setting up a tea set and a dessert. This was the normal treatment she received no matter where she went throughout the continent.
“How are the opening sales? You were all working hard, so I hope we got some good results.”
“We are still in the red because of all the preparation we put in for the opening event, but it is certain that we will be able to start earning money within 3 months once we begin forming supply chains inside the city, and change the items we send to the Academy. Until now, we have been sending them to the Academy at a loss, after all.”
Since it was the Academy that Marie was going to, the Dunareff Family had been supplying them with ingredients at a very cheap price to commemorate that. Even though Marie had told Korin that they weren’t suffering a loss from it, sending fresh meat and a bunch of livestock alive was something that required a load of money.
It was because the daughter-loving duke had been willing to send the ingredients at a loss to feed Marie the best dishes available throughout her time at the Academy.
But now that the Dunareff had created an official store in Merkarva and were forming new supply chains, it also became Marie Dunareff’s job to choose the places to supply to as well as the prices, including the Academy.
“Hmm~. I don’t think we should bother increasing the price of the supplies we send to the Academy. It’s not too big of a loss anyway!”
Although they were losing about 1,700 gold coins every year, that was less than a month’s worth of Doggo’s allowance, so she decided to think of that as treating the juniors of the Academy to a meal.
“And in regards to what you said, young lady, His Highness was infuriated once he saw the report.”
“Ah~. You mean the Tower of Mages, right?”
“How dare they even think about kidnapping our miss as a test subject…!? That’s unacceptable!”
“They didn’t actually do it, though.”
“Even just thinking about it is a heavy crime!”
They already had the testimony; it was very clear that they were guilty.
“Please wait a bit before you take action. I need to discuss the plan with Korin beforehand.”
“Hmm. I see. But what about the mages from before… Do you have any commands?”
“I’ll go to them shortly, so please just do what you have been doing!”
After finishing the discussion about the Tower of Mages, Marie moved on to a topic that was even more important, at least to her.
“More importantly, what’s happening to the bank account that we made under Korin’s name?”
“We have been regularly putting in gold coins and land rights to the account that we have made for Young Master Korin for the past 8 months! It will be possible to take out 80,000 gold coins from anywhere in the world through the gold coin storage of the New Faith!”
“It’s not much, but that should be okay for Korin’s emergency funds! Hehe, I hope he likes it.”
“He will be very glad to hear about it, young lady.”
“Really?”
“Of course.”
“Hopefully he won’t be too surprised…”
“Even if he is, we still must do it. He is, after all, the benefactor of our great Dunareff family!”
“Y, you’re right! This is just paying back for what he did for us! But now that I think about it that way… it feels a bit too little, right?”
“Hmm… It certainly does!”
The store manager of Merkarva, Baron Bolton, knew exactly what feelings Marie had for Korin. Although Duke Marde had commanded him to separate the two, how impossible would it be to separate two young passionate teenagers?
Besides, considering how the duke was going to retire soon, Marie was the future duke that was going to be in power. For the glory of his children and grandchildren, the person that he had to be loyal to was not Duke Marde but his daughter.
Bolton nonchalantly ignored the duke’s command and instead chose to be more favorable in the eyes of Duchess Elencia and the future duke.
“Aren’t we talking about the future consort of our dukedom? 10,000 gold coins a month does feel a bit too little.”
“C, consort? N, no! We… we are not in that kind of relationship yet…!”
“Apologies… It seems that this old man had been too excited.”
That reaction just then confirmed it even more – Baron Bolton decided that he needed to leave a good impression on Korin as well.
“After entering Merkarva, we have started creating a few stores in nearby towns and carriage platforms. How about we select a few of those with better sales and name him as the honorary manager of those stores?”
“Sounds good! It’ll allow him to feel like a CEO when he wants to, so I think he’ll love the idea!”
“Haha. I have heard that our future consort is a very busy and active person. So perhaps we should start off with just a few stores under his name.”
“Also, I think he’s interested in becoming a Justice of the Peace as well, looking at the subjects he is taking right now…”
“Hoh~! A Justice of the Peace. What a remarkable gentleman he is, with a strong sense of justice on top of his ability!”
“Hehe, right? Korin is a very good person.”
He was complimenting Korin and yet Marie was put in a good mood. Looking at the bashful reaction of the girl also put Baron Bolton in a good mood.
“Haah…”
It was then. Marie suddenly heaved out a sigh in the middle of the positive flow of the conversation. Surprised by the sudden sigh of his future lord, Bolton said with beads of sweat dripping down his cheeks.
“M, may I ask if there was something you were unhappy with?”
“Ah~ sorry. It’s just… something personal.”
“I see. If possible, could you please tell me about your concerns? Perhaps I might be able to provide some help with something.”
Strictly speaking, the only reason the Merkarva store was suddenly put in was to look after Marie and be her hands and feet. Rather than an expert manager to earn a lot of money, Bolton’s job was to act as Marie’s butler.
“Please count on this Bolton. I will do my very best to resolve your concerns, young lady!”
“Hmm… This is a story about my friend, but…”
So it’s about Master Korin and Lady Marie, huh.
After immediately understanding who the story was going to be about, Bolton carefully listened to the details of the story.
“Hoho…”
“So they want to cheer them up somehow. Do you have any ideas?”
It was certainly a possible story. Wanting to cheer up a man who’s feeling down from a small failure, huh. In that case…
“Please don’t fret, young lady. This Bolton has a great strategy that will immediately get rid of the concerns of the consor… I mean young lady’s friend.”
“W, what is it?”
Marie lent a close ear to Baron Bolton’s words with a much brighter look on her face.
After he whispered the plan for about 3 minutes, Marie asked back after tilting her head with a skeptical look on her face.
“Are you sure that will work?”
“It will, young lady. Men will surely love it.”
“Hmm… that costs 20,000 gold coins these days, right?”
“How could I possibly sell that to you, young lady. You can simply choose a good one and take it for yourself.”
“It’s okay! I’ll give you a blank cheque. You can use that for the payment!”
“Thank you very much, miss.”
That day, Marie’s feet were lighter than usual on her way back to the Academy.
****
Battle against Valtazar and his defeat.
The Chairman was dead, and Korin started spending even more time every day on training ever since that defeat.
Of course, he was aware that the Chairman, Eriu Casarr, wasn’t the real body and that it was just a puppet, as well as how behind that was one of the gods of the ancient times, a Danann.
However, he seemed to have put a lot of meaning to that defeat and was depressed for several days without an end.
“Huu, huu…”
Looking at him doing his very best at training once again, Marie had a feeling that maybe she, who was extremely distant from the word ‘lazy’, might still be lazy compared to him.
“Korin! Great work! Do you want some water?”
“Ah, thank you.”
Accepting the water that she personally made with magic, Korin chugged it down his throat. Meanwhile, Marie used a dry towel to wipe his sweat.
The towel soon became drenched due to the downpour of sweat, but it did not feel unpleasant in the slightest. In fact, she had pride in herself for being the only one that was helping Korin wipe his sweat.
“Sorry, for making you do things like this all the time.”
“Nnn? No! Don’t be! I know how hard you’re working all the time, Korin! But… I still do want you to take some rest.”
She knew why Korin was pushing himself to his limits. It must be because he couldn’t forget the defeat back then.
The powerlessness they felt at the face of the unimaginable powerhouse, Valtazar, was something shared by everyone that had been there at that time.
“Sorry, but… there are too many things I have to do right now.”
“Nn… I know. It’s normal for men to be busy sometimes when they have something big to do!”
“Sorry. Even though you were saying that out of goodwill…”
“No no no! Don’t worry about it! I’m here to support you in whatever you do, Korin!”
Perhaps thanks to having a strong supporter like her, his rigid expression eased a little after seeing her face that seemed to be shouting, ‘Good luck!’
“Anyway, shall we go get some dinner now?”
“S, shall we? What about Hua Ran…?”
“Apparently she got called by the New Faith for something. And Alicia still hasn’t recovered enough to move around so… Did you want to call your friends?”
“Noooo…?! They’re all busy! We have exams soon after all!”
“Ah~ right. There’s the interim exams as well.”
There were too many things up his sleeve that Korin had forgotten all about the interims. He wondered if he should start studying even if it’s a bit late but…
“Ehew, whatever. Tests are there to test you on your usual knowledge after all.”
“Right~. I’m sure you’ll be able to do it just fine, Korin!”
“I don’t think you’ll be able to say that if you knew about my marks from last year, haha.”
“Anyway, how about we go to a restaurant in the city for dinner? There’s something I want to show you as well.”
“Something to show me?”
Marie stayed faithful to Bolton’s advice.
The only problem… was that their standards were in the standards of the Dunareff family, who had hectares of land of potatoes.
****
Usually, there was a rule against flying in large cities.
Due to defensive measures against aerial attacks and as a way to prevent surprise attacks to the central area of the city, everyone was prohibited from raising flying beasts let alone riding them, except for very few people.
One of those few people was the Dunareff family. To be exact, it was a special exception made for all high ranking nobles above dukes and members of the royal family.
Marie had never made use of those arrangements for high-ranked nobles until now, but recently, she started using a few of them one by one. It was obvious who the cause of that change was.
Getting permission to fly in a city was what activated fast travel. It was a feature that was only accessible towards the mid to late portion of the game, ❰Heroic Legends of Arhan❱.
And by using the rights of Marie as a young lady of a dukedom, Korin aimed to get a quicker activation of that said feature.
The official foundation of the guild, ‘Korin Guardians’, followed by a fast travel to missions outside the Academy.
In order to construct the guild office, Korin had to spend all the money he earned from his freshman year as initial investment. At least that was how it was on the outside, and most of the funds had in fact come from the money laundered by Renya Claire, the high executive officer of the intelligence guild, who was acting as the sponsor of Korin Guardians.
‘About 2,000 gold coins is the budget. Huu… About 2 million in terms of dollars, huh. That’s after selling items and borrowing money for guild construction.’
That was a surreal amount of money that players could never even dream of during this stage in time. It was impossible to gather so much money unless they were to cheat or something.
2 million dollars. It was by no means a small amount of money that he was investing in the guild, but Korin was confident that he could multiply that by several-fold.
He knew a gist about the events that would happen in the future, which he could make use of by investing money. Most importantly, there were also the items and cash he could gain by resolving the key, crucial events.
2 million dollars was something he could make up for with enough time. All he had to do was think of it as a big investment.
And with an investment that big, building a new fresh office for Korin Guardians was also nothing difficult!
“Oh~. Pretty big. And looking fresh as well.”
Korin said in contentment as he gazed at the 5-storey building built at one of the lands that were buyable for the player even back in the game.
“It was built by one of your construction companies, right? This is much bigger than I thought.”
What he had initially asked for was a 4-storey building. Although he was going to place a landing zone for wyverns at the roof and include storerooms and a cafeteria, 4 floors still would have been enough.
“Nn! I told dad and he made it a lot cheaper for us.”
“Wow~. Having connections is amazing.”
Korin was very happy. It had been a 4-storey building in the previous iteration, so seeing the addition of another floor was, if anything, a source of joy.
“Let’s go in. But wow, seriously. Why are there so many constructions going on nearby? I guess someone made a big investment or something.”
“Korin, where are you going?”
“What do you mean? Of course I’m heading to the office.”
“That’s not the office, though?”
“Hmm?”
“Mhmm?”
It was evident that the two of them weren’t on the same page. Before long, Marie grabbed his hand and led him to a place next to them which was still in construction.
“Umm, Senior?”
“Last time, do you remember saying you wanted to build a shed for the wyverns?”
“Yeah.”
Korin was a Grade 1 Knight, and Marie was officially a Semi-Unique Grade, who was pretty much at the level of a Unique Grade Mage. Since all the members of Korin Guardians were extremely talented guardians with a bright future ahead of them, even the Alliance was paying attention to them and were very helpful.
High-tier guilds were given the right to purchase or rent wyverns at a cheaper price. Korin’s plan was to use that right to rent around 6 wyverns.
“We got the wyverns! They’re all nice and gentle kids from good breeds! We were given the permission quite fast – it must be because of how strong you are, Korin!”
“Ohh~. That quick? That’s amazing.”
Top-notch wyvern breeds weren’t easy to find on the market even for Grade 1 Knights like Korin. Even in the game, the player had to start all the way from the lowest breeds and gradually work their way up to gain access to the best wyverns.
To be frank, it was a way to force players into completing quests related to building nests and hatching eggs, but that feature of the game was also reflected in reality in a slightly different manner. The purchase rights of top-grade wyverns were restricted due to ‘qualifications’ and ‘credit’.
“Mhmm?”
It was most definitely good news, but Korin had a strange impression from her words. He had a feeling that it was ‘purchased’, rather than ‘rented’.
“Uhh, wait. 6 wyverns… You didn’t buy 6 top-grade wyverns, did you?”
We didn’t even have enough budget for that, did we?
“Now, we’re there! This is our ‘Wyvern Shed’!”
The doors were enormous. It was as tall as a 2-storey building, and was obviously way too big for normal humans to use.
“……Senior.”
“Uun?”
“What is this?”
“This is the backyard of our office… and our shed for the wyverns, and a test-flight area!”
It was humongous.
Actually, the correct expression would be to call it vast and empty.
Korin vividly remembered himself saying that he wanted to build an office at a corner of the undeveloped area, and yet it seemed that she had bought the entire plot of land.
“That over there is the office we are going to use, and that there is the warehouse.”
“Then… what was the 5-storey building that we just went past?”
“That one? That was Doggo’s house.”
“………”
That whole building was a doghouse?
Korin was looking at the absurdly upscaled version of what his office was going to look like, when the large gates of the ‘shed’ for wyverns that was still in construction were pushed open, and—
– Baran! Babang!
They were welcomed by a deafening fanfare and firecrackers.
“Welcome, Young Lady Marie! Young Master Korin!”
Behind the door, hundreds of people clapped out loud as if they had been waiting for Korin and Marie to arrive. In the middle of his stupor, Korin spotted what was written on the banner above them.
Congrats! Knight Korin Lork, a new Baron!
“Senior?”
“Hooray! Are you surprised? Congratulations, Korin! Actually, I should be calling you Baron Korin from now on!”
“…Sorry, what?”
It was way too sudden and abrupt. Korin was baffled by the fact that he suddenly received an official title of a noble.
“You see, dukes have the special right to grant peerages to their vassals. I asked my dad and he decided to grant you the vassal peerage of a baron!”
But why? Before he could even ask that question, Baron Bolton, who was the store manager of Merkarva’s Dunareff Produce, walked up to him from the crowd. Instead of a high-ranking executive of a company, he looked more like a butler.
“Congratulations, Baron Lork. You have hereby been named a vassal family of the Dunareff. You have been granted 15,000 hectares of land, 200 pigs, 1,000 chickens, 30 cows, and one Auðumbla, a demon cow weighing 80 tonnes.”
“Wow! Congratulations, Korin!”
– Clap clap clap clap!!
– Clap clap clap clap!!
The sound of hundreds of people clapping at once was loud enough to shred someone’s eardrums. Despite the loud applause, Korin, who still couldn’t follow what was going on, stood there watching them with a blank look on his face.
“Wait, wait, wait. Hello? Am I the only one who’s not understanding what’s going on? Huh?”
“Umm… K, Korin? Do you need more? I can give you more.”
“Senior? Hello?!”
Marie looked puzzled, while Korin grabbed onto her shoulders and swung her back and forth. His face seemed to be asking her why she was doing this to him.
– Wow. Look at him do that to the young lady of the Dunareff family.
– As expected of the future Duke Consort. We have to leave a good impression on him.
– I guess I will have to send some presents to his land.
Unlike Korin, who was still confused and half-panicking from the sudden turn of events, those around him were calculating how much his value would be in the future.
“Hehe. It’s nothing that big so don’t feel too burdened by it. Most of the funds came from my pocket.”
Marie said with a bashful smile on her face. Right as Korin was about to say something to her smile, Baron Bolton, who was in charge of the conferment, spoke into the microphone.
『Now then, everyone! Behold, the highlight of the day! We will have the air show of the special air forces of the Dunareff Family, Sky Potato!!』
– Wahhhh!
– Kwaaang! Boom! Boom!
– Kieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!
Firecrackers exploded in the air, in disharmony with the screams of the wyverns. Soaring majestically into the heavens, the wyverns started leaving colorful trails behind them on the blue skies.
Sky Potato.
They were wyvern riders that had several trophies in the Royal Air Show, which was hosted by the royal family every year, that cost tens of thousands of gold coins to invite them for a single event.
The greatest wyvern riders of the kingdom that would generally only appear during the coronation or the birth of members of the royal family were here in the conferment of a random baron. It was up to the visitors to understand just how significant this was. What was fortunate for Korin at the very least, was that reporters hadn’t been invited to the event due to this being an unofficial one.
“Awesome, right? They are the best wyverns of one of our vassal families that raise and hatch wyverns for a living.”
“…”
“Ah, by the way, those are the 6 wyverns that we put into the shed this time around!”
“A thousand coins… each…”
“And look! That’s the final highlight of the show!”
『Ahh~ here it comes down! The origin of every wind! Master of the tempest! The large flying monster, named as the prettiest monster carrier of the entire continent!』
Its enormous wings were wide enough to cover the sun. The humongous beak glittered in gold and its eyes were sharp and bright.
『Hresvelgr…! The proof of the Dunareff Dukedom’s great trust in Baron Lork, and the treasure proving his right as the flag bearer of the golden potato flower!』
Six top-grade wyverns. Costing around 6,000 gold coins.
Humongous flying beast, Hresvelgr. Costing around 23,000 gold coins.
On top of that was the peerage of a baron, 15,000 hectares of land, and thousands of domestic animals.
Who in the entire continent would ever be able to guess that this was just a small present of a young girl, in hopes of earning the favor of a certain boy?
“How is it, Korin? Are you happy?”
“………I would like to ask for a refund.”
“Huh?”
That single sentence of the boy was enough to fill the face of the Potato Empire’s imperial princess with confusion.
