Translator: Nox

44 - Marquis Maron

Episode 44

Oh my god. I asked with a face that felt like I was about to faint.

“You eat more? You’ve been hiding that all this time? You call me Lord all the time, but why didn’t you report something so important! Do you know how much I’ve suffered to feed you all!”

“Lord.”

“You freeloading parasites! How much more scarce is the food now!”

“It was a joke.”

The lumberjack laughed heartily. Reikart chuckled. The other lumberjacks laughed too.

I was more relieved that my food supply wasn’t in danger than embarrassed about being teased.

Reikart took a huge two-handed axe from one of the lumberjacks, sent me far back, and said.

“Hayley, watch carefully.”

Watch what.

“Ugh!”

Reikart chopped down a tree. He swung the axe around like an executioner and cut down a thick tree in one blow.

It wasn’t as easy as he made it look, as he was breathing a little heavily, but still, the fact that a human could cut down such a big tree like that was a bit…

“I don’t know why, but I felt a sense of kinship with you from the first time you appeared in our Maron Keep. You made a good impression, I guess?”

It was scary.

“Want some potatoes?”

Just then, Fatima’s shout came from the kitchen, telling us to eat potatoes and work.

She sure has a loud voice.

From that day on, my upgraded Omnivore cut down trees to make fields, and the strong lumberjacks reinforced the bridge with the wood.

Surprisingly, the part they cared about the most was making ropes. Because the bridge had to be strong enough for wagons to pass, they went through many trials and errors, from how to twist the ropes to their thickness and shape.

I never knew that so much scientific knowledge was needed for a wooden bridge. I, who had fallen into this world and lived like a primitive, shouldn’t have ignored the fact that scientific development was slow here.

The most ignorant person here was me.

“Want some potatoes?”

I handed out well-steamed potatoes to the lumberjacks one by one. I also sprinkled sugar on them.

Fatima pointed to the stables and said with a proud face.

“We now have three wagons and six horses. We even hatched duck eggs last time. It’s a bit of a shame that we don’t have chickens, pigs, cows, or sheep….”

“Is it livestock this time?”

“Pardon?”

“Never mind. How do we even buy those?”

“Do we need to buy them? The children said they saw wild pigs over there.”

“Huh?”

“South of Floodwood. I’ve told them several times not to go because it’s dangerous… but they’re just kids. At first, they listened when I said the Lord would catch them, but that doesn’t work anymore.”

“Why would I catch the kids?”

“Anyway, the children said they saw wild pigs at the southern border. I told them not to go near them again because they’re dangerous, like boars.”

“You want me to catch them?”

“If you Purify them… Reikart will.”

He’ll catch them, right? Fatima laughed.

I trudged to the entrance of the southern Floodwood, with the burdensome gazes of the women sparkling behind my head.

On the way, I met the children and greeted them, and I had to chase away the ducks that kept following me.

“Lord, hello!”

“Hello.”

“Where are you going?”

“To Purify. It’s dangerous, so go away! If anyone smaller than me is caught wandering around in a dangerous place, I’ll make them clean duck poop every morning.”

“Wow! We’ll grow up fast!”

“Be quiet!”

The children laughed and ran away. They see Reikart every day, so they think they’ll grow as tall as him and tease me, but do they know how hard it is to grow as tall as me?

Hayley is quite tall, you know.

Maron Keep had undergone many changes in the meantime. My Omnivores worked day and night during the summer. No matter how much I told them to rest, they wouldn’t listen.

Sometimes, the sound of hammering at night kept me from sleeping, and I even shouted at them to get out of my house.

Of course, each time, the stables were fixed or the castle gate was built, so I ended up shutting my mouth.

There might be a problem with the dignity of the Lord.

I thought as I came to the entrance of the southern Floodwood that Fatima had mentioned.

Then, I stood with my arms wide open and shouted to the sky.

“I’ve arrived!”

Magical Energy swirled and gathered around me.

Anyone who saw it would think it was funny. Thanks to Hayley, I had long hair that reached below my waist for the first time in my life, and I walked around without tying up my dark, curly hair.

I only ate Magical Energy every day, so my skin became pale, my body became thin like a stick, and my voice gained a slight resonance.

The clothes that Fatima had chosen for me weren’t uncomfortable, but they looked like something the overage daughter of a Demon King would wear, so I even heard the insulting remark from my Doraji, whom I met in the hallway, that they suited her terribly well.

“Purification!”

Did the real Hayley know?

That I would come into her body and live so well.

No matter how I thought about it, it seemed like Hayley had intended for this body to grow by eating Magical Energy.

Even in the moment when she was captured and tortured, losing her magic, Hayley didn’t cry or scream. Wasn’t it because she knew this would happen?

They called her a genius Wizard.

Then she must have planned for the aftermath.

Eating Magical Energy instead of Mana, using Magical Energy instead of Mana, wielding Magical Energy instead of Mana.

Surely that plan doesn’t include me, does it?

“Purification!”

The black Magical Energy rejoiced and reached out to me. Every time I Purified Magical Energy all at once like this, I felt like they were like doctor fish rushing towards dead skin cells.

I don’t know if they’re rushing to me because they like me, or if it’s because I look delicious. I can’t figure it out at all.

Whatever it is, it’s good if it develops. As Doraji said, growth is always good.

Just as Reikart was getting stronger little by little, there were some changes in me as well.

Now I could Purify an area of over two hundred square meters at once. Sometimes, when I was in good condition, I could do twice that.

If I only Purified like this all day, a fairly vast hunting ground would be Purified.

The speed at which nature, which had been stopped by Magical Energy, recovered was also amazing. Centered on Maron Keep, all the way to Dark Lake. And the backyard, the stone wall path, and the Floodwood to the south. Quite a large area regained its original appearance.

Now rabbits were running around in the bushes, and birds of prey were often flying in to catch the rabbits.

Is this enough? I’m getting tired.

After Purifying the southern border for a while, where the children had secretly come out without their mothers’ permission and been scolded and caught, I understood why people called it the Floodwood.

It was a forest, but there were no mountains.

The canyon behind Maron Keep, the north beyond Dark Lake, and even the road to Selbon were all close to mountain roads.

This was because Maron Keep was located in a fairly high area, and this land was partially connected to the central mountain range that the three kingdoms used to divide their borders.

But the southern Floodwood was just a forest. There were gentle hills and a river flowing far away, but it was all a paradise of trees.

A forest of black trees tainted with Magical Energy.

That’s why Demons come out.

“Wouldn’t it be strange if they didn’t come out at this level?”

Magical Energy is like fog and is heavier than air. So, in such a dense forest, it flows like mist along the paths between the trees, meeting, colliding, and clumping together.

That is repeated thousands, tens of thousands of times to create a core.

I kept thinking about the Magical Energy that I had extracted from the heart of the Holy Knight who had become a monster in Selbon after I had killed him.

It was similar to the Magical Energy that I had always eaten, but it was slightly different in that it was swirling and condensed in a clumsy way.

The Holy Knight’s heart, that space that someone had intentionally twisted and widened, contained an incomplete core, and a monster was created.

That was a Demon.