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Chapter 45
“Sorry I’m late!”
Sam, who hadn’t been seen all day, finally reappeared around dinner time.
“W-what is that, Your Highness?”
Brody, setting the table, looked at the basket in Sam’s hands wrapped in a cloth, utterly bewildered.
“This? It’s my masterpiece, made with my invention.”
When Sam lifted the cloth, eight large bottles filled with clear liquid were revealed inside the basket.
“Now that I think about it, you all must have had a hard time coming here. I realized I never properly offered you a decent cup of tea.”
Hey, anyone would think you were the host.
“So I brought these. Look—these four are green grape wine, these two are peach wine, and this one is…”
Watching Sam excitedly pull out the bottles, Nana suddenly felt a twinge of suspicion. She had tried the alcohol-making device Sam had created the last time.
The wine made with it had been surprisingly good—better than even some expensive wine she’d randomly tried in her previous world.
But there was one problem.
“Where did you get the ingredients for this?”
To make just one bottle of alcohol, it took about ten boxes of special apples. The wastage of resources was enormous.
Even on a farm without food shortages, wasting crops was a terrible idea—especially now, when half the fields had already been destroyed.
So the wine made back then had been stored for special occasions…
“Oh, I just used what was lying around in the field!”
While Sam said this cheerfully, the room fell into tense silence.
“Y-your Highness, you didn’t…”
Before Brody could even ask if Sam had taken the crops without permission, Nana’s hectopascal kick came first.
“Not only did you ruin the fields, now you’re stealing too?! You have no conscience, do you hear me calling you a thief?! Hey! Just because you’re a prince doesn’t mean you can take other people’s property however you want!”
“W-what?! Why are you suddenly like this?!”
“No! Nana, please! Just avoid my face!”
“Let go! Let me go! I can tolerate other things, but I cannot tolerate theft!”
“You never tolerated anything in the first place!”
“Shut up!”
“Your Highness, please! If you just stay still, we can reach a middle ground. Please be quiet!”
Nana happily pounded on Sam, Sam scrambled trying to defend himself, Brody sweated trying to calm Nana, and…
“Ah, so the ‘Your Highness’ here is someone who causes accidents and can’t work. Haha.”
Wina, observing the scene, seemed to misinterpret the meaning of “Your Highness.”
“Even if he’s the crown prince, doing something this atrocious…”
Lucas, having worked under the blazing sun for several days, had already sided with Nana, while Ishanka calmly brought food from the oven and placed it on the table.
It was genuinely an enjoyable evening.
The farm crew began dinner after the chaos had somewhat subsided.
Of course, not everyone ate calmly. Brody had worked up a sweat trying to restrain an excited, thrashing Nana. Sam… well, as you can see.
“I’ve never even been hit like this by Mama before… Hey, do you know this counts as royal desecration?”
“What’s the most meaningless thing when the world is in chaos? It’s your status. And as I said before, your past rank means nothing on my farm. If you insist on clinging to being royalty, leave. I won’t stop you.”
Sam looked confused, unsure of what he had done wrong.
In his lifelong learned worldview, everything in this land belonged to royalty. Despite spending much of his life outside as an Academy student and living incognito as Brody’s nephew, he had never managed to completely change his inherent mindset.
Absolute authority instilled since childhood doesn’t just disappear because of some external experiences.
Nana understood this, but she had no intention of cutting him slack.
To Nana, crops were more than just plants—they held profound significance.
When the world was invaded by corruption and death seemed inevitable, crops had nurtured Nana’s will to survive and her hope. They were more than mere food.
So, no matter what god might appear in this world, Nana’s crops were untouchable.
Anyone who messed with the humble farmer’s crops would face dire consequences. Really dire consequences.
“Try going back to the capital. Brody said the royal family is still intact.”
“What are you muttering about? Speak up loud instead of crying.”
“You… really…”
“Is the crown prince an idiot?”
Wina, who had been observing quietly, suddenly spoke up.
“Or is it just that being stuck here has fried his brain? Do you really think his country is fine? The whole continent is ruined. Before I met Uncle Brody, I traveled around, and there wasn’t a single place untouched. The people alive were fighting each other… killing each other, in fact.”
“Wi-Wina…”
Brody tried desperately to stop her, but Wina spoke faster than he could.
“And do you know why they did that?”
The usually innocent Wina’s eyes had taken on a serious tone.
“It was for food. There wasn’t enough, so they stole from others and fought, even killing friends, lovers, and family alike.”
“……”
“You should consider yourself lucky that Nana just got mad at Your Highness and left it at that. If you did the same elsewhere, it wouldn’t end with just getting stabbed.”
Sam could say nothing, beaten by the truth in her words.
Of course, even a clueless prince could recognize that Wina wasn’t lying.
This world was suffering from two major disasters: zombies and soil contamination, leaving crops unable to grow and food extremely scarce.
It was natural for survivors to fight fiercely over limited resources.
Even a little thought could reach this conclusion, yet living on fertile land under a clear sky, with plenty of food on the farm, had clouded Sam’s perception of reality.
Even so, Sam’s lack of common sense is extreme.
The weight of this truth seemed to settle over everyone, and the table fell silent except for the clinking of dishes.
The mood was intense… almost begging for alcohol.
And conveniently, the wine was right there. Nana didn’t hesitate to take a bottle from the nearby basket and twist off the cork.
With a pop, the cork flew, releasing the sharp aroma of alcohol and the fresh scent of fruit into the dining room.
Everyone quietly eating couldn’t help but look up at the bottle.
“Smells good. I’m glad you didn’t make anything weird out of my crops.”
“Then who made it? Hm-hm.”
“Yes. Good thing. If you had made food waste out of my crops, you’d have had to deal with it. Like shoving a funnel in your mouth and pouring it in.”
“…Sigh. How did I end up like this?”
Sam sighed at his situation and poured himself a glass of wine.
Brody filled his cup, Lucas filled his, and soon every cup on the table was full.
“Hold on a second—stop there.”
“Wina, put the cup down.”
Wina was pouring her drink so naturally that Nana nearly let it slide. She was quite the trickster.
“But I want to drink too!”
“Children don’t drink alcohol.”
“I’m not a child. In my continent, I’m considered an adult.”
“How old are you now?”
“Twelve!”
Nana was momentarily speechless at Wina’s confident answer.
“Even if twelve counts as an adult on your continent, here you have to be eighteen. If you’re here, you follow the law here.”
“But…”
“Eventually, you’ll have to drink alcohol whether you like it or not. Better to save your liver for that day.”
“Wow, that sounded just like my dad.”
“So your father drank so much it became tiresome?”
“Yes! He drank so much that he didn’t even want to see it for a while, but all his friends loved alcohol, so it was annoying!”
“…Be nice to him if you meet him later.”
He didn’t drink for pleasure, after all. Anyway, back to the present.
“Alright, we’ll skip the toast. Just drink happily, and if you want more, grab it from the basket. We have plenty of wine and plenty of night ahead.”
Nana gave a toast that wasn’t really a toast, and everyone laughed and drank.
Except for Ishanka, everyone spectacularly collapsed onto the table.
