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Chapter 09
“About a hundred thousand gold is left in this year’s budget, right?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
LeBlanc, resting her chin in her hand, sank into deep thought. The end of winter meant spring was approaching—and spring was the time of year when the most money was spent.
At this time of year, the remaining budget is supposed to be used to buy seeds for next year’s planting. But we’re short on people to farm the land, and there are countless other things that need attention—military matters, estate management, and more. This money isn’t nearly enough.
Of course, she could ask Gate for help and increase the budget, but reaching out to him now, when she had nothing to show for herself yet, would be no different from belittling herself.
“What crops are usually planted in the Peronto territory?”
“It varies every year, but this year and last year we planted a lot of ruaba. Ruaba is popular wherever you go these days. Most of the other eastern territories are planting it as well.”
“Ruaba, huh…”
Ruaba was one of the most common root vegetables in the Empire. It tasted good, grew large, and was easy to cook, making it widely used in all kinds of dishes. A few years ago, a roasted preparation method began to spread by word of mouth, sparking yet another boom in its popularity. At that moment, a memory flashed through LeBlanc’s mind.
“How many years has it been since we started planting ruaba?”
“This year makes the third year.”
“Ah…”
Once, the eastern regions had suffered a major food crisis. It was a year with particularly little rainfall in the east. As a root crop, ruaba required a great deal of moisture to grow, but with so little rain, the soil lacked water.
Unable to grow properly, the ruaba plants ended up sucking even the last remaining moisture from the land, leaving the fields dry and cracked. In the end, the eastern territories, which had all jumped on the ruaba trend, found themselves short on food and barely managed to survive the crisis by relying on other regions.
And the one who profited the most back then was Arnetio. If it’s been three years since ruaba became popular, then this year must be that year.
Arnetio, which owned a vast territory not far from the east and possessed large reserves of agricultural produce, seized the opportunity to sell enormous quantities of crops to the eastern lords at exorbitant prices, reaping huge profits.
“How much land is currently being cultivated in the territory?”
“This year, we used about seventy percent of the land. However, since many people left over the winter, it’s uncertain whether we’ll even be able to use sixty percent next year.”
After pondering for a moment, LeBlanc wrote out a check and handed it to Peln.
“Peln, go down to the southern city and use this to buy seeds of a plant called ‘Yubon.’”
“How much should I buy?”
“All one hundred thousand gold. Yubon seeds are more expensive than ruaba seeds, so the quantity will probably be smaller.”
“What? Even so, with one hundred thousand gold, wouldn’t that be enough to plant the entire territory and still have some left over?”
A look of panic spread across Peln’s face. Being told to buy seeds of a plant he had never even heard of was shocking enough—but to pour the entire remaining budget into it? As if reading his thoughts, LeBlanc offered an explanation.
“Yubon is a plant that grows in the royal desert of Iubon. Its cultivation method is similar to ruaba, and the taste isn’t much different either. More importantly, since it grows in the desert, it requires very little water. I noticed yesterday that the river level has dropped slightly, and the soil in our territory seems to be lacking moisture. We don’t know when it will rain again—if we plant ruaba now, the land will dry out completely.”
“Oh, I see!”
Peln nodded in admiration. The lowered river level was something most of the mansion’s staff had noticed, but they had only vaguely attributed it to a lack of rain, never strongly connecting it to ruaba farming.
The only downside is that it’s rather expensive.
A few years from now, the imperial family and the royal family of Iubon would begin full-scale exchanges, and yubon would spread widely throughout the Empire—but that time had not yet come. The only reason yubon could be obtained in the southern city was because Iubon merchants quietly traded there, as the southern region bordered their lands. With both demand and supply low, the price was undoubtedly set quite high.
If only we could trade directly with Iubon someday. But we don’t have that kind of capacity yet.
If they stockpiled water in advance and planted yubon instead of ruaba, they could store far more food than expected. The problem, however, was the shortage of people to work the fields.
“How many more laborers would we need to use all the land? About thirty, would that be enough?”
“Yes, that should be about right.”
Ideally, the population of the territory would increase, but that wasn’t something that could happen overnight. Hiring laborers was the only option, and the cost of workers for an entire year of farming was higher than expected.
Thirty laborers, plus the cost of expanding the knight order… I’d need around one million gold. I’ll have to look for another solution.
On top of that, LeBlanc knew she would soon have to spend a large sum of money. After thinking for a moment, she dismissed Peln and asked him to send Lily in. Not long after Peln left the room, Lily entered the office with a bright expression.
“Miss—no, Countess. You called for me?”
“Lily, you know the jewels I brought from the ducal house, right? Bring all of them here.”
“Yes, understood!”
Lily nodded energetically and left the room.
“Y-young miss—no, Countess. Are you really selling all of these…?”
Ten minutes later, Lily stared at LeBlanc with a pitiful expression, on the verge of tears. LeBlanc, however, nodded calmly, her expression completely unchanged.
“Yes. Sell them all. I don’t need them anymore anyway.”
The jewelry box placed in front of LeBlanc was filled with glittering gems. No matter how much she had been disliked by her stepmother and neglected by her father, she was still the only daughter of Arnetio.
The allowance that fell into LeBlanc’s hands was comparable to a knight’s monthly salary. The problem was that the young LeBlanc had nowhere to spend that money. She wasn’t allowed to go out, and she had no interest in dressing herself up.
Then one day, she happened to obtain a single gemstone. After that, she spent all the allowance she had saved on buying gems—and continued to buy them whenever she had money.
What she bought were not finished pieces of jewelry, but the raw gemstones themselves. She didn’t collect them because she liked them or found them interesting, but simply because they took up far less space than heavy piles of gold coins.
As a child, LeBlanc loathed items that served no purpose. She thought it was utterly foolish for gold coins—things she had no immediate use for—to take up space in her room.
When I was dragged off to the convent, I didn’t even think to take these with me. They probably all ended up in Father’s hands. Disgusting bastard. Still, I never thought they’d turn out to be useful like this.
The gems in the box, sparkling in every color as they caught the light, drew her gaze. There were far more of them than she had expected. Since she never bothered to look through them after buying them, she barely even remembered what she owned.
“This is…”
LeBlanc picked up a necklace from the jewelry box. It was set with a red diamond about the size of her thumbnail, wrapped in a gold setting. Her face was reflected in the surface of the red diamond. The necklace had belonged to her mother, Reiana.
No! Please don’t touch that!
Do you think wrapping it up tightly will bring your dead mother back to life? Hand it over!
LeBlanc vividly remembered the day in her childhood when Regasian threw her necklace into the fireplace. After tossing it into the flames, he grabbed her by the hair and forced her to watch. In the end, LeBlanc reached into the blazing fire to retrieve it, badly injuring her hand and earning Berthy’s scolding as a result.
Recalling those memories, LeBlanc let out a quiet, hollow laugh.
“I should’ve torn out his throat, just like you said.”
“Huh?”
Lily tilted her head, having not quite caught the muttered words. LeBlanc calmly closed the jewelry box as if nothing were wrong.
“It’s nothing. And while you’re in the city, could you also place a request with the guild?”
“A request? What kind?”
“I’m looking for someone. Her name is Siesha—no family name. She has silver hair and blue eyes, and she should be under seventeen. There’s a high chance she’s being held in a shelter or a slave market.”
“A slave market?”
Lily had many questions she wanted to ask, but instead of pressing further, she nodded resolutely. LeBlanc had clearly changed. At times, that change felt unfamiliar—but it was hundreds of times better than her former dejected self. Knowing that LeBlanc’s actions always had meaning, Lily chose to follow her will without question.
“Yes. I’ll be back soon.”
Carrying the jewelry box, Lily left the office. Left alone, LeBlanc ran her fingers over the diamond set in the necklace for a long while, then hung it around her neck.
“I wonder what that ruffian was like when he was young…”
For some reason, memories of the past seemed to surface more vividly than ever today.
