Chapter 64

Pons chuckled as he said it.

What mattered most at the start was getting the crops in front of people.

Pons and a few of the staff would handle that.

Once one piece was decided, the rest fell into place quickly.

---

It was sales in name only — at those prices, they were practically giving the food away.

But the moment people heard the crops had been grown on Lecashe land, they recoiled and backed away.

The slums were no different.

With everyone giving them a wide berth, even the children couldn't bring themselves to come close.

You couldn't fill a stomach with the first bite, sure, but no one was stepping up to buy either.

The territory residents kept reporting them, and they'd been chased off more than a few times.

If this kept up, word would absolutely reach Viscount Alketa.

That wasn't necessarily off-limits, but the reception was even worse than they'd expected.

"We got turned away right at the gate today."

Iberin muttered, frustrated.

"If just one person would try it."

I feel sorry for you, not knowing what eggs taste like.

She couldn't bring herself to sell the Cheongyangs, so they'd been hauling nothing but eggs.

The eggs weren't exactly easy on the eyes either, but if someone tried a Cheongyang and got the wrong impression, they'd grumble that of course this was the kind of thing that grew on cursed land — so they'd left them out.

"Maybe things aren't bad enough yet?"

"Maybe."

A month or two of awful territorial management couldn't change the fact that people who could eat still ate.

It almost never happened that everyone went down at once.

In the end, the only ones who got worse off were the ones who'd already been struggling.

The slum kids, for instance.

"Those kids are the target, after all."

"They're not coming up to you?"

"…They did come, but with everyone shunning us, all they did was watch from a distance and run."

"That's a problem."

"What do we do?"

If they offered the food free at this point, people would just assume there was some catch.

"Word's already out everywhere that Lecashe sent people in to sell crops, so even buying it would be a problem for the kids."

"…You're worried that being slum kids on top of it, they'd be ostracized even more."

"Exactly. It's a shame, but we can't do anything about it."

"…If I'd known, I'd have just slipped it in for them like we planned at the start."

"Wait — Pons, you're giving up?"

Iberin asked, blinking in genuine surprise.

The deflated Pons blinked back and asked,

"Do you have something up your sleeve?"

"The people shunning us are a small group of well-off types. They're not the hungry ones."

"…You're right. It's mostly merchants, or people who clearly have money."

"Lure them in with the smell!"

"What?"

"They're the ones loudly calling our crops dirty, so even people who are hungry feel uneasy. So what if we cook it right in front of everyone and eat it ourselves?"

"…There's an idea…!"

Pons shouted and shot out of his seat.

It wouldn't completely erase people's wariness, but it would at least plant a what if in their heads.

Pons was back to fired-up in a flash.

The key here was cook it, so he needed to talk to the head chef about how to actually do it.

"Think it'll work?"

Iberin murmured, watching Pons's back as he sprinted off in search of the head chef.

"You said it like you were certain — were you not?"

"Well, people are weak to sight and smell, so I'm hoping a little, sure, but who knows. I can't promise anything."

"It'll work. Whose idea was it."

"You're not putting too much faith in me?"

"After what you've done up to now? No."

"…What have I done?"

She honestly couldn't think of anything in particular and asked, baffled.

If anything, it felt like she'd done more damage than good.

"You're seriously asking?"

"…Yes?"

Even Lyssel, who'd brought it up, looked like he couldn't quite believe it; then he gave a soft laugh.

"The Lecashe estate used to be still. There was no laughter, and the place was dark."

"Oh."

"You're the one who changed that. Pons and Rotte will tell you anything you say is brilliant, brilliant — and they'd mean it."

She didn't seem to think it was anything special, but to them, the very fact that Lyssel was now laughing and mixing with other people was nothing short of a miracle.

---

Iberin had been living a healthy life ever since Rozelia's first transfer of holy power.

It hadn't been all that long, but the time when she'd been ill already felt like ancient history.

She swung her arms around, feeling oddly novel about it.

"What are you doing?"

Lyssel, looking over a document, watched her with a deadpan expression.

"Want to go for a walk? It's been a while."

"…Out of nowhere?"

"I just feel like going. We haven't been able to lately."

The Alketa territory issue had eaten up her time, and they hadn't gotten to take a walk together.

"To the forest?"

"Yes. To look around some more."

"So it's really work."

"…Is it?"

"You seem to love work more than I do."

"It's not exactly that — I just enjoy it more when I actually find something good."

"That's a good thing. If you can't enjoy your work, it just becomes painful."

Lyssel spent hours in the forest hunting monsters from before dawn most days, so for him this wasn't really in a while.

Still, he held out his hand.

"Let's go."

So the walk began.

Eggs were tasty, but eating them constantly, she was starting to hit her limit.

For Iberin's incurably Korean palate, Cheongyangs weren't something she could ever get tired of, but she still wanted something new.

She slipped her hand into Lyssel's, easy and familiar now, and they headed into the forest.

Iberin scanned the underbrush with sharp focus, looking for anything she recognized.

Lyssel asked her now and then how about this one, but no.

There wasn't anything she could point to and say that's it.

The forest was so dense it was dim, and the plants were crowded together — that part of it made identification hard.

Iberin pushed leaves aside between trees, trying to get deeper in.

"Ow!"

Something sharp pricked her and she let out a small yelp.

"Are you all right?!"

A startled Lyssel was at her side in one step, checking where she'd been pricked. It hadn't really hurt so much as caught her off guard.

"I'm fine."

"Let me see."

"Right here, but it's not even bleeding…"

"Whew. Still, you never know what's where or what'll happen, so be careful."

He cut off the leaf as he spoke and tucked it into his pocket.

"Why are you taking that?"

"It might have poison."

"Ah…"

That was when something new caught her eye.

Visible between the very branches she'd been pricked by and Lyssel had cut down.

When she pushed the branches blocking her view aside, what came into sight was a cave.

Its entrance had been cleverly screened by the trees — it wouldn't have been easy to find.

"A cave."

"Want to go in?"

"We found it, so let's."

Lyssel led the way, hacking down every branch in front and stepping inside.

The forest had a slightly cool edge to it already, but inside the cave it wasn't just cool — it was clammy.

Iberin shivered before she could help it.

"Cold?"

"I'm fine."

The temperature shift had just been sudden enough that her body had reacted first.

But Lyssel stopped, peeled off his outer coat, and draped it over her.

"I really am fine…"

"If you catch a cold, everyone'll go ballistic."

Only then did Iberin quietly pull the coat a bit tighter.

She'd wondered if there might be monsters, but Lyssel hadn't said a word, so apparently not.

A little further in, the cave widened sharply. And the sight that opened up made Iberin's mouth fall open.

"Hah. What is all this."

"…They're gems."

"They're — glowing."

In a forest steeped in gloom and shadow top to bottom, she'd never imagined gems giving off light this bright.

"I've never seen them either, but I've heard of them. Long ago, there used to be a luminous mineral. Ijet."

"Ijet?"

"That's the name of this mineral. Cut and polished, it becomes a gem. The mines were exhausted, though, so they're whatever price you can name. I had no idea any of it was left."

"Whoa."

A jackpot.

Iberin marveled silently.

---

To show the others, they pried a single piece off the cluster on the wall.

"My goodness…"

"A gem that actually glows! I've never seen anything like it!"

Everyone was stunned.

A gem mine for something that didn't come out of the ground anywhere on the continent anymore — not just Aleta — had turned up in Lecashe.

Iberin's hand trembled slightly.

This was a place that hadn't been touched by human hands for thousands of years.

The Forest of the World Tree was vast.

"…The odds that places like this keep turning up…"

"Are very high."

"…Right?"

"You really are amazing, Iberin."

"Sorry? Where did that come from?"

"You were the one who said we should try developing Lecashe first."

"Really. You're amazing."

Iberin waved her hands, her face going red.

"That was just something I threw out off the top of my head…!"

"You didn't think it was hopeless, though."

"…No, I didn't."

The estate was in an uproar.

The whole place had been wild when they'd brought back the Cheongyangs and eggs, but this was on a different scale entirely.

"If we use this…"

Iberin's read on it matched theirs: this was the jackpot.

She had the feeling this could bring even the nobles working against Lecashe to their knees in one stroke.

Nobles wanted what was special.

The newest, the rarest, the most beautiful.

And a mineral that had gone extinct in legend, suddenly rediscovered?

"We might be able to extend our reach."

"Sorry?"

"And maybe even solve the problem of the starving kids."

"What? How?"

"By using human greed."

They had more than enough force to defend a mine.

What Lecashe lacked was influence.

The moment word got out that a mineral from legend had reappeared, there'd be people willing to spend a fortune just to own a piece.

Iberin smiled.

---

Once everyone agreed they were certain it was ijet, they went back to the cave and pried off a few more.

They'd gone looking for crops and found a mine instead — at this rate she was curious what they'd discover next.

With this much sitting out here unused, it left a bitter taste that the place had been written off for so long.

All because of that demonic energy.

"Lady Iberin, could you go into a bit more detail about what you said earlier?"

"Right."

Even if they sold to nobles, the nobles would just be racing to line their own pockets.

"We're going to put limits on who can buy."

"Buying limits?"

"Yes. Ideally, sell to whoever's going to help Lecashe and let everyone live better."

The mineral was growing all over the cave walls, but there was no need to flood the market with it all at once.

"Why don't we try selling to whoever bows their head and comes to us first?"

"What? For a single gem, would they really?"

"Not impossible at all."

Rotte looked skeptical, but Pons, who'd lived in the capital for a long time, saw it differently.

Iberin gave the ijet — glowing with what looked almost like sacred light — a small wave.