The Isolated Marchioness Just Wants to Make a Living
Chapter 40
The high sky and a refreshing breeze swept over us.
“Where on earth are we?”
Just as Alpheus scooped me up into his arms and took up a defensive stance—
“……What is going on here?”
A voice filled with utter bewilderment rang out.
Cradled in Alpheus’s arms, I blinked slowly.
Standing in the tomato field with a dumbfounded expression was Leopold. Clad in full armor, he appeared to have brought a knight order with him.
Looking around, I saw fields stretching endlessly beyond the warp gate.
One thing was certain.
This was not Baron Forman’s estate. It was a rather secluded farmland.
“What…… are you doing here? And where on earth is this?”
Baron Forman asked, glancing around.
Leopold replied slowly.
“The East.”
Good grief, it wasn’t even the West.
We were all thrown off by this completely unexpected turn of events.
‘Did the warp gates really go haywire? Already, and all the way to the West?’
Still, looking around, something was clearly strange.
The tomatoes planted in neat rows across the vast field were withering. It was harvest season, so they ought to have been ripe and red.
Leopold let out a sigh and explained.
“There was a problem with the fields, and they requested reinforcement claiming monsters had appeared…… Though upon checking, there don’t seem to be any monsters.”
Looking at us, he added with a suspicious expression:
“This is quite an intriguing situation once again. For all of us to meet in the East.”
Baron Forman explained the whole story—that he had invited us to his manor, but the warp gate had brought us here instead.
“Could you have entered the coordinates incorrectly? The coordinate values of this warp gate are similar to the one in the cave in front of the Nozen Magic Library.”
Having heard the circumstances, Leopold narrowed his eyes.
“After all, this is the East.”
To be precise, this land belonged to the Divostan Duchy in the East.
“Those are coordinates I’ve entered hundreds of times over my lifetime.”
Baron Forman protested, feeling wronged.
“I have never once made such a mistake.”
Wendy whispered softly to me.
“I heard he’s a bit senile to begin with…… We shouldn’t have left entering the coordinates to him.”
She had now become my escort knight. Not only was she skilled, but above all, she was fiercely loyal to me.
“Wendy yields immediately to anyone she recognizes as superior, but getting her to yield in the first place is no easy task. Even I only brought her under my wing after a duel. Just how did our Brisa win Wendy’s loyalty? Hmm? Did you coax her with gentle warmth, like the sun stripping the traveler’s coat rather than the wind?”
“I didn’t coax her.”
I answered Alpheus’s question honestly.
“I starved her.”
A potato ban had proved just as effective as a duel. No one was invincible before hunger.
“What strips a traveler of their coat isn’t the sun or a gentle breeze—it’s just a stronger gale.”
Alpheus had been utterly shocked by a child’s reinterpretation of the fable.
“Alpheus, put me down.”
I whispered to Alpheus, and after glancing at my face to gauge my mood, he set me down.
I narrowed my eyes and looked around. The sprawling tomato field was devoid of people, even though it was midsummer and peak harvest season.
“Leo, why did you come here?”
When Baron Forman asked, Leopold sighed with an exhausted expression.
“Gillab requested assistance quite urgently.”
Gillab was the third son of the Divostan Duchy in the East. He was also our classmate from the Academy.
For Leopold to say ‘urgently’…… meant the boy had thrown a massive, hysterical fuss.
“Claiming that the tomato field suddenly went strange and wondering if it might be monsters from the West.”
“What nonsense is that?”
Baron Forman scoffed in disbelief.
“Why ask the West about eastern affairs, and call upon the Grand Duke’s heir of the West over something like that?”
Just then, the warp gate we had arrived through flared with light, and soon a pale-faced boy appeared.
“Because it’s not just an eastern problem, is it?”
A boy with silver hair and violet eyes strode forward with an arrogant expression, accompanied by a servant.
It was Gillab Divostan.
“Monsters do not usually appear in the plains of the East. The only monsters that appear on plains are those of the West.”
Dressed in extravagant clothing, the boy marched right up and stopped in front of Baron Forman.
“If a tomato field turns like this overnight, there’s a high probability monsters are involved. And if monsters have appeared now, in the dead of summer, the very premise that the Monster Wave has stopped could be wrong. Wasn’t that an unprecedented phenomenon to begin with anyway?”
Gillab raised an eyebrow and arrogantly crossed his arms.
“Therefore, it is a matter worthy of the Young Grand Duke of Nozen—who has handled western monsters the most in the West—taking a look.”
“What the……”
I sighed and muttered under my breath.
“Gillab is just being Gillab.”
Since we were all Academy classmates, I knew Gillab very well too.
He was an exceedingly arrogant and haughty boy who believed everything in the world should revolve around him.
On top of that, he was a massive drama queen and a total coward. That was why he had panicked over this phenomenon and summoned Leopold all the way out here.
And from the West’s perspective, having proposed a conference to gather intelligence, they couldn’t simply ignore such a request.
“Yeah, exactly. That’s all it is.”
Leopold calmly agreed.
“Gillab being Gillab.”
“What does that mean!?”
When Gillab glared daggers at us, we both shrugged in unison.
As Gillab began huffing and puffing, I blinked and asked:
“Then is Gillab not Gillab?”
“…….”
At any rate, shutting him up was easy.
Leopold and I carried on our conversation leisurely.
“I mean, at the entrance banquet, he claimed the green soup was poison……”
“That was broccoli soup.”
“One day during class, he dashed to the infirmary screaming that an unfamiliar bee had flown in……”
“Claiming he needed to prepare for a potential unknown pollen allergy the bee might have brought.”
“Ah, and when he scraped his knee during physical education, he tested for tetanus……”
“On a lush lawn that didn’t have a single scrap of metal.”
Unable to take it anymore, Gillab bellowed:
“What are you talking about! That lawn was under construction three years ago! There could have been stray metal left behind in the grass!”
“Sure, Gillab.”
Leopold sighed.
“Just like those times…… you decided there might be some hypothetical monster here.”
“But it’s weird!”
Gillab gestured wildly at the tomato field, stomping his feet.
Arms crossed, I surveyed the problematic tomato field. The coloring was indeed uneven, with patches still greenish.
“These tomatoes were ripening into a perfectly fine red! Then they turned like this overnight!”
Gillab pointed at the discoloration on the nearest tomato and said:
“You’re saying this isn’t serious? What if monsters make it all the way to the plains!?”
I replied with utmost gravity.
“Then the tomatoes will be ruined.”
“Are the tomatoes the issue right now!?”
As Gillab flared up, Leopold chimed in with a sigh.
“Your head is an issue, too.”
I deadpanned, refuting his words.
“But that’s always been broken. It’s a pointless observation at this point.”
Ignoring our banter, Gillab shouted shrilly:
“They could march straight to the ducal estate! It means the precedent that monsters outside the West only appear on hills would be broken!”
Gillab yelled shrilly.
In his imagination, a horde of monsters had already breached his bedroom ten times over.
I looked around the deserted tomato field and asked:
“Then what about the farmers of this field? Where did they all go?”
“I evacuated them the second I got the report! How could I leave our territory’s people here? This is the land Father promised to pass down to me!”
There was indeed a reason Gillab had come in person.
As the third son, he would not inherit the title. Instead, he was slated to receive a portion of eastern territory, which appeared to be this very place.
“How are we supposed to know what kind of monster might appear and how? This is completely, undeniably a crisis!”
Hearing that, Leopold retorted smoothly.
“You’ll make a truly wonderful lord who looks after your people, Gillab.”
It was an elegant jab meaning ‘you don’t care about outsiders at all.’ He then glanced around and added calmly:
“For starters, there are no monsters around here. And to say it once more, unless monsters have suddenly developed human-level intelligence and are riding warp gates on their own, western monsters cannot come to the East.”
At that, Gillab eyed Leopold with deep suspicion.
“Are you sure? You didn’t just investigate half-heartedly because it’s not your land, did you?”
Only then did he turn toward me as if suddenly remembering.
“By the way, why are you here, Brisa?”
I answered unenthusiastically.
“I’d rather not say.”
“I know very well you’re not the type of rude kid to set foot on someone else’s land without an invitation.”
As Gillab said, this was the East. Now that we were here, it meant I had to explain why I had come, whether I wanted to or not.
“Answer me. I asked why you came to the East, Brisa.”
It couldn’t be helped.
In the end, I let out a sigh and said:
“The warp gate malfunctioned. I didn’t set the coordinates for this warp gate.”
At that, Gillab jumped out of his skin in absolute horror.
“Look! See! I told you so! I knew this would happen!”
Panic had completely overtaken his face.
“Even when the Magic Tower said it was all over, I didn’t believe them! How could even the Magic Tower properly understand something that’s happened for the first time in imperial history? The disaster isn’t over! Even the warp gates are a mess, so of course there’s a problem with the monsters too……!”
“Just the reaction I imagined.”
I shrugged.
“This is why I didn’t want to tell you.”
It truly was a case of Gillab being Gillab.
I trudged into the middle of the field. Bending at the waist, I took hold of a tomato and examined it slowly.
‘Turned bad overnight, huh……’