Toward Spring

After eating, Azu fell asleep, as if the tension had finally broken.

I could hear her soft breathing.

I wrapped her in a blanket to keep her body temperature from dropping.

Alexia was conscious but visibly drained.

She must have used that much magic.

She needed to rest.

I left the cleanup to the others and decided to head home for now.

I left Alexia to Elza and carried Azu on my back.

(She's so light…)

I'd heard from Elza that she'd worked hard and done well again this time.

No matter how strong she'd become from whatever mysterious power or monster hunting, it must still be hard on her.

After returning home, I removed her clothes, wiped her cold body with a towel, and changed her into warm clothes.

Then I laid her in her bed.

She'd wake up once her stamina recovered.

"Alexia-chan is asleep too."

"I see. Elza, why don't you lie down as well? You must be tired."

"I'm not really. I was mostly in a support role this time."

Elza said that and sat down beside me.

I threw more firewood into the hearth.

The small fire grew larger and warmed the room.

"Do monsters like that come often?"

"No way. You know the quality of adventurers here better than I do. If monsters like that came frequently, there'd be higher-ranked adventurers stationed here."

"That's true. I've never seen a monster like that."

The stronger the monster, the larger its magic stone, and the more there is to gain from it.

This monster surely had an enormous magic stone.

The Adventurer's Guild would probably buy it at a discount and distribute the proceeds among the participants.

With this many people, the payout probably wouldn't be worth it, but their trust score would increase instead.

Since I hadn't had Azu and the others do much guild work, their score had stagnated, but after this they might reach upper-intermediate rank.

Trust score greatly affects the quests the Adventurer's Guild assigns.

It also opens up more labyrinths they can enter, so it pays off in the long run.

If Finn started participating too, things would be even more stable.

As we talked for a bit, Elza started to doze off.

I took her hand and led her to bed, then tucked her in.

I wanted to change her clothes like I had with Azu, but doing that to Elza would inevitably lead to impure thoughts.

I quickly wiped off her sweat instead.

I left the room, switching with Finn.

If anything happened, someone would contact me.

I went outside again and headed to the plaza, now sparse with people.

The guild master had finished talking with the guard patrol and was preparing to withdraw.

When I asked about the situation, an ice crystal and a large magic stone had apparently been found where the monster was defeated.

Strangely, fire had been trapped inside the ice.

They speculated that this had influenced what was otherwise an ordinary Ice Golem, creating that variant.

Whether it was artificially created or a coincidence remained unknown.

Sometimes weak monsters acquire such powerful abilities through mutation.

There's even an old wives' tale about how the terrifying Vorpal Rabbit started as a weak Rabbit monster that suddenly mutated.

When I was shown the frozen fire, the shape of the flame was round.

Just like the sun. Staring at it too long felt like it would pull you in.

From outside, parts of the wall were damaged, and traces of battle were visible everywhere.

It must have been a fierce fight.

Adventurers who had fallen were being carried away wrapped in cloth.

I prayed for their peaceful rest while also feeling relieved that Azu and the others hadn't ended up like that.

The frozen fire was collected as well.

Morning was approaching, but it was freezing cold outside.

I decided to return home.

When I happened to look up at the sun illuminating the earth, whether from the angle of the light or the position of the clouds, it eerily looked like a human face.

Azu and Alexia slept for about two full days, but afterward they recovered without any lingering effects, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

When I made rice porridge with egg for easy eating, they asked for seconds so many times they emptied the pot, so their appetites were fine.

After that, the magic stone and frozen fire were auctioned off and sold.

The frozen fire apparently went to the Empire.

After that, monster attacks settled down to sporadic, everyday levels, and we were finally able to spend the winter quietly.

To keep their bodies from getting rusty, Azu and the others exercised energetically outside.

There were no particular quests, and the shop continued as usual.

Kazusa and the others came by occasionally to discuss layouts and such.

According to the craftsmen, the furniture delivery would be toward the end of spring.

The inn's opening would aim for around that time.

Before the year ended, I took Elza and Alexia to Luido once to check on the land we'd been entrusted with by Princess Tianis.

… It really was vast.

There was no way Yohane and the others alone could manage it.

"The Earth Elemental Stone's blessing should reach across this area."

"Really?"

"Yes. The effect will be small at first, but at this scale, it should gradually recover its power."

"I see. You're quite knowledgeable."

"Spirits and the Church of the Creator King have deep ties, so I know a bit about this."

She'd mentioned before that dragons were created by the Creator King's apostles.

Perhaps spirits were created the same way.

The sharecropper managing the land responded with obvious annoyance, but when he realized Yohane was the new administrator, he hastily changed his attitude.

His attitude irritated Alexia.

After the sharecropper suddenly became deferential, I received various explanations from him.

It seemed the previous owners had been completely hands-off and hadn't even shown their faces since the changeover.

No ledgers had been kept, and when I asked about taxes, he said they'd been paying the set amount.

But without ledgers, anything could be falsified.

And indeed, the sharecropper's eyes were darting around.

I was too appalled to speak.

And yet they weren't making enough money, so they'd tried to get into drugs. What terrible people.

"We'll work hard, so please continue to leave things to us."

The sharecropper said that while bowing repeatedly.

But it was transparent that it was just for show.

Still, for now we had no choice but to rely on them.

Besides, if they only fudged the numbers a little, depending on how they were treated, there was a good chance they'd eventually work honestly.

Regarding their treatment, I promised to maintain current conditions for all sharecroppers for the coming year and asked him to pass this on to the others.

They said they were planting beets and wheat during winter, so I told them to continue their work and left.

"Was that okay? They're probably skimming."

"It's not okay, but it's fine for now. I'd be more troubled if they ruined the farmland out of spite. I need their cooperation for surveying and other things too. I'll make my move after convincing them that cooperating with me is more rewarding than skimming."

"Will it really work out that well?"

"Who knows. But I can produce better results than those people who never even showed their faces. We have the Earth Elemental Stone too."

The Earth Elemental Stone was still kept in the backyard.

Once we built a small shrine and added anti-theft measures, we'd move it there.