108. House Visit
Conclusion—
I ended up going to Aien’s house~! Yay~!
There were a little too many people in our group, so everyone except me decided to travel separately.
I rode together with Aien in the carriage she had been using.
I could barely remember riding in a carriage other than Mister Coachman’s cargo wagon, so being inside something this luxurious felt pretty new.
Hmm…
Mister Coachman was always working hard. Maybe I should buy him a really nice carriage someday.
But something like this had to be insanely expensive, right?
Judging from the way it looked, it definitely felt like one of those luxury items nobles liked to waste money on.
“Wow, it doesn’t even shake. This carriage is really nice. Where do nobles even get all the money to buy things like this?”
“From taxes paid by the people living in their territory, along with profits from various businesses. The Empire also gives nobles a little money under the name of ‘dignity maintenance expenses.’”
Hmm, I see.
So they were treated somewhat like government officials?
Since nobles collected taxes directly from their own territories, they probably didn’t receive a separate operating budget.
…Wait.
I literally just came back from looking around a cyberpunk world.
Why was I suddenly listening to something that sounded like it came straight out of a medieval territory-management novel?
Man, immersion really wasn’t easy.
Well, becoming too immersed in a game could also be dangerous, so maybe having all these messy and inconsistent elements was actually necessary.
Still, considering I knew this game was created based on the real world, I wished it would spare me from this nonsense.
Then something suddenly occurred to me.
“Wait. Aien, you were a noble?”
“A fallen noble. And not me—my father and mother. I’m basically just a commoner.”
The butler immediately shouted.
“Young Lady! How could you say such a thing?! Master Diaiare de Sitor Yustria is a magnificent Count of the Empire!”
“Dia… what now?”
Aien sighed.
“…Haah. When exactly was I supposed to tell you? Our family had already fallen before I was even born.”
Aien.
You really start by denying everything, don’t you?
She seemed convinced there wasn’t even the slightest possibility of her family recovering.
Personally, I didn’t think it was completely impossible.
Mostly because of me.
Sure, maybe that was a little self-centered.
It was an extremely unlikely possibility on top of another unlikely possibility.
But hey.
This was a game.
Until recently, they were fallen nobles. Even their own daughter didn’t think highly of them.
And suddenly, not only do they hire someone this loyal, but they also come to pick her up using a carriage that looks this expensive?
There was definitely something going on behind the scenes.
And there was a high chance the target wasn’t Aien.
It was me.
Among the heroes who had recently appeared, I was probably receiving the most attention.
After all, I had made my debut while being strongly supported by two—
No.
By the Great Hero of Foresight.
At the same time, I had been hated from the very beginning.
And because a Great Hero was openly supporting me, there were probably plenty of people who were jealous or felt that their positions were being threatened.
Not long ago, Heroson’s report had included a line suggesting that Aien played a fairly important role for me.
So if someone knew the contents of that report—
And if that someone wanted to drag me down—
Then there was an obvious possibility that they would try to target Aien.
I casually turned toward the butler.
“How long have you been serving the Yustria family?”
“My family originally served House Yustria for generations. I myself have worked for less than a month, but I inherited my loyalty from both my father and grandfather!”
“Oooh~ That sounds pretty impressive! But hearing about the job and actually doing it are different things, right? Isn’t it difficult?”
“Many others besides myself have also dedicated themselves to House Yustria. Whether it is difficult or not is irrelevant. We simply remain loyal.”
…
A man who gave unquestioning loyalty for no real reason.
In other words, the perfect type of person to fool.
And he had been hired less than a month ago.
On top of that, there were apparently already plenty of other employees.
It was reasonable to assume that people who had been watching Aien for some time had contacted her parents and made plans to use her.
And now, because Heroson’s report had clearly established Aien’s importance, their objective was probably to pull her away from me in order to properly bring me down.
Good thing I left Pie completely out of the report.
If Heroson’s report had included even the slightest mention of Pie, I could already imagine the ridiculous nonsense they might have started saying.
My head hurt just thinking about it.
Which meant I needed to figure out what was happening before they made their move.
I had already made a personal promise to avoid using the power of Madness whenever possible.
So I honestly wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do.
Still—
Let’s work hard!
“It’ll be nighttime when we arrive, right?”
“We should arrive before twenty hundred hours. However, your visit was extremely sudden, Hero, so I’m afraid it will be difficult to prepare a grand welcome.”
“Yeah, sure. I wasn’t expecting one anyway.”
No matter how I looked at it, this guy wasn’t particularly smart.
He had told an obviously terrible lie in front of me about merely coming to escort Aien.
So how did he somehow conclude that bringing me along was the best way to maintain that lie?
Did Aien really look like such a timid girl that she would quietly obey whatever he said?
Within our team, she was probably second to none when it came to having strong opinions.
The way he kept calling her “Young Lady” and treating her like some fragile treasure made it seem like he really had misunderstood her personality.
Just what exactly had Aien’s parents told him?
If Aien playfully flicked him right now, she could probably break a bone.
Does he just not care?
Surely he at least knows what Aien does and where she works.
I looked toward Aien.
“…So when you say ‘fallen noble,’ does that mean your family fell into ruin but still kept its noble title?”
“That’s how it is with my family. I don’t know about other families. Maybe they also keep their appointment certificate hanging in a gold-covered frame inside their collapsing house.”
Aien…
You really dislike your family, huh?
It was a little difficult for me to relate.
I didn’t have much experience fighting with parents.
The people who took me in argued with me a few times at first.
Eventually, we just became distant and awkward with each other.
And right when it finally felt like we were getting closer—
They died.
Ha.
Wasn’t that also all the chairman’s doing?
The more I thought about it, the more disgusting it felt.
It was like my blood was boiling backward.
Suddenly, the butler pointed through the carriage window.
“Ah! Can you see it over there? That is House Yustria’s new territory!”
“Oooh, that… huh?”
Beyond the wide farmland stood a small village.
Even from this distance, I could see almost the entire settlement at once.
If I had to compare it to something, it was slightly smaller than Jageun Village, which was apparently still being rebuilt.
…What?
Even considering everything, wasn’t this way too small?
No, wait.
That large mansion over there looked shiny enough that it had probably been built recently.
Hmmmmmm!
How was I supposed to interpret this?
Did they rebuild their wealth using their own strength?
No.
Come on.
Was I so surprised that my brain had stopped working?
I had literally just heard that nobles made money through taxes and businesses.
If the residents were living like that, then how was the noble family living alone in a mansion like that?
The mansion had such an overwhelming sense of wrongness that calling it a simple display of wealth inequality didn’t feel sufficient.
It almost looked like that entire area had been cut out from another dimension and pasted here.
Whew.
Whatever.
I should judge after seeing it myself.
There was no way to understand everything from this distance.
“Please wait here for a moment.”
The butler stopped the carriage and quickly jumped outside.
He immediately began ordering around some villagers who had been wandering nearby, sending several of them toward the mansion.
At first, the villagers looked at the butler like—
What the hell do you want us to do?
But the moment he mentioned that a Hero had arrived, their expressions changed.
Curiosity filled their faces as they began gathering more people.
I turned toward Aien.
“…What kind of people are your parents?”
“Idiots who are obsessed with their past glory, refuse to face reality, and endlessly drown themselves in luxury. Their obsession with the title of ‘noble’ is especially ridiculous.”
“Enough insulting them. Where exactly are we?”
“I don’t know either.”
“You don’t have any guesses?”
Aien thought for a moment.
“…I heard my eldest sister married into a noble family. Maybe she helped them somehow.”
“You have a sister?”
“Two older brothers and two older sisters. All four left home when I was young, so aside from my eldest sister, I barely even remember their faces.”
When she lived at home, there were no adults she could rely on.
And when she entered the training institute, she somehow ended up getting involved with me.
What an unfortunate life.
No matter how much I thought about it, Aien didn’t seem to have any attachment to this family.
In that case…
Had she come to meet people she clearly didn’t want to see because of me?
For example—
What if that butler had somehow found one of my weaknesses and threatened Aien with it?
Maybe she had no choice but to come here.
…Whew.
If the people I was about to meet weren’t Aien’s parents, I might have already split that butler’s head in half.
Clatter!
The carriage moved again.
“We shall depart once more!”
“Do whatever you want.”
I looked through the carriage window.
The villagers were slowly walking toward us.
Some looked confused.
