It was a day of truly fine weather.
The timing was good, too, since we were just about to plant crops in several fields whose clearing had recently been completed.
Just as I thought today would pass peacefully as well, the news came to me.
“‘Red Mage Sharen’ has come to see you, my lord.”
“…I slept poorly last night, so I think my ears may be malfunctioning. Hart, who did you say came?”
“‘Red Mage Sharen,’ famous as a candidate for Sage and the successor to the Red Magic Tower, has come to see you, my lord.”
“Red Mage Sharen.”
The moment I heard that name, the knowledge of my past life and my current life collided and screamed.
That name existed in Calix’s memories as well.
A free-spirited half-elf mage who traveled the Empire and served no lord.
According to rumor, she could do the work of a hundred mages by herself, annihilate an orc legion, and heal a plague-stricken village with a single healing spell—rumors that said she possessed the power of an Archmage, no, of Sage-class.
No, since it was true that she was one of the successor candidates of the Red Magic Tower, it was probably less rumor and more fact.
And the Sharen in the memories from my past life was one of the must-have characters known as one of the Three Divine Artifacts of World Archive.
The evaluations of Sharen I’d seen on strategy sites went like this.
“If you don’t take off with Sharen, hell will unfold in the large-scale battle sections.”
“No. You’ll see hell in the territory sections too.”
“I am in hell right now, you sons of bitches.”
She was one of the strongest SSR mages to receive that sort of evaluation.
One might think that since a mage like that had come to visit, I ought to be delighted.
The problem was that World Archive also had something called fame.
This fame did not simply include what I did well, but also what my subordinates did well.
Just as Liu Bei’s fame rose along with him when Guan Yu returned to him after taking the heads of Yan Liang and Wen Chou, if I were to gain a top-class mage like Sharen, my fame would skyrocket like mad.
If that happened, I could evolve from “he’s beloved but incompetent, so let’s leave him alive” to “he’s beloved and even has capable subordinates, so we should kill him.”
In other words, Sharen’s visit was extremely terrifying news to me.
“This is an opportunity! Let’s invite Lady Sharen to become our exclusive mage! My lord!”
“I am of the same opinion as Lady Noah. If someone like Lady Sharen were to become the Cron family’s exclusive mage, it would be a great strength to us.”
Whether they knew my feelings or not, Noah and Hart raised their voices, saying we should recruit Sharen.
Sharen was one of the characters extremely difficult to recruit if you failed to obtain her through spending money.
Since I had only spent a little and hadn’t studied the strategy sites in detail, I never obtained Sharen or even met her by the time I finished the game.
“Where shall we escort Lady Sharen?”
The guardsman who had brought the news spoke.
Hart answered as if it were only natural.
“Isn’t that obvious? Escort her to a guest room for honored guests. The finest guest room in the southern castle happens to be available, so take her there!”
“Yes! Understood.”
Hart ordered, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, that she be escorted to a VIP guest room.
Well, considering the mages I’d seen in World Archive, taking her there would be the correct answer.
Mages were basically proud people, after all.
The problem was that right now, I absolutely could not press that correct answer.
If I recruited Sharen, my life might be in danger, so I spoke.
“Wait!”
“My lord?”
“Escort Mage Sharen to an inn in the residents’ district.”
“Yes!?”
“My lord!!”
“My lord! That isn’t a good idea. If proud mages receive that kind of treatment, they’ll leave immediately.”
I know. That’s what I want.
I desperately held back the urge to answer Noah that way and replied.
“I have my reasons. Do as I say.”
“My lord… Understood. Escort Lady Sharen to the inn.”
“Yes! Understood.”
At my words, Hart spoke as though he had no choice, and the guardsman left.
This time, even Noah did not smile brightly, instead staring at me sulkily as though she could not understand what I was saying.
I’m sorry, but it can’t be helped.
With Noah’s fame alone, I already felt that I had climbed to an extremely dangerous point.
If Sharen became my vassal as well, it would truly become a situation I could not handle.
And so, I sent Sharen to the inn.
* * *
“You may stay here.”
“Thank you.”
Sharen was guided to the inn together with the mother and daughter.
The inn room was very ordinary.
A bed made of wood, cloth, and straw, and a wooden table standing alone—by the standards of this era, it was a very ordinary inn room.
“Wow!! A bed!!!”
Perhaps Laila was happy just to be able to sleep in a bed after so long, because she immediately dove onto it.
Sharen was greatly surprised by the treatment she received.
For the past few years, whenever lords heard that she had come, they guided her to luxurious rooms.
Each time, the screams of the spirits she sensed in those lavish rooms kept her from sleeping.
But this place was ordinary and plain.
And it felt warmer than any room she had ever been guided to until now.
“We should air it out.”
Aila, Laila’s mother, began cleaning right away like the auntie she was, and opened the window.
When the window opened, the Cron territory came into view at a glance.
In the setting glow of the sunset, she could see the people of Cron living their lives.
Workers were laboring diligently in the salt fields that produced salt, and in the distance, she could see people clearing newly made land.
In the nearby market, merchants were selling fine goods, and mothers were haggling to buy them even a little cheaper.
Among them, officials guiding outsiders like herself were bustling about frantically.
It was not splendid, but everyone was working hard and wearing bright smiles.
Just like their radiant smiles, the spirits too smiled as they flew through Cron’s sky.
“Wow… It’s pretty, Lady Sharen.”
“It is… It’s truly beautiful.”
How long had it been since she had seen a territory this beautiful?
No, a territory where all the people looked this happy was a first in her life.
After spending a comfortable day at the inn like that, a guardsman came the next day.
“Lord Calix says there is something he would like to ask of Lady Sharen.”
“Yes… Please tell me.”
Sharen grew tense.
Because whenever a person in such a high position made a request like this, it was always a disgusting request for their own benefit.
To Sharen, who was tense like that, the guardsman spoke.
“My lord has asked that you treat the territory residents.”
“Yes?”
At present, the Cron territory had many large-scale migrants, so there was a severe shortage of doctors.
At the request of the Lord of Cron, who asked her to treat them, Sharen let out a sigh of relief and gladly accepted.
Guided by the guardsman, Sharen then began traveling around the territory and treating people.
In the midst of that, she witnessed an astonishing sight.
It was farmland being cleared.
At the very front stood a handsome young man with silver hair, and behind him were countless people.
And in time with the silver-haired young man’s shout, they began planting crops in the farmland together.
“Then, everyone, one!”
[ ““One!!!!”” ]
“Two!”
[ ““Two!!!!”” ]
In time with the silver-haired young man’s chant, the people planted crops in the farmland without leaving a single gap.
Feeling an undeniable nobility from him, Sharen asked the guardsman beside her.
“Who is that noble-looking gentleman with silver hair?”
“Ah! That is our Lord of Cron, Lord Calix Cron himself!!”
At the guardsman’s words, Sharen was surprised.
She could hardly believe that the astonishingly young lord was the lord of this paradise.
“That man is?… But why is the lord doing farm work like this personally?”
“Our lord says that farming is the most important work of all, because it fills people’s stomachs. That is why he participates in farming like that and sets an example.”
“I see…”
Agriculture is the great foundation of all under heaven (農者天下之大本).
There is a saying that agriculture is the great foundation by which the people of the world live.
Everyone knows it, and everyone understands it, but leaders who actually step forward to put it into practice are rare.
Sharen, too, had seen lords say that they regarded securing food through farming as important.
But she had never seen a lord take the lead himself like that.
Sharen became curious about Lord Calix.
* * *
After that, a week passed.
While staying in the territory, Sharen asked the people about their lord.
Then everyone told similar stories.
“Our lord? He’s a very good person! Thanks to him, there are no more days when we go hungry!”
“Our lord is someone sent by heaven! There’s no lord like him anywhere in the world.”
“Oh, there’s no need to even say it twice when it comes to our lord. If you badmouth the lord in our territory, you die. Truly.”
“We were able to survive because the lord accepted us. If we’d been dragged off to the Lion family as we were… I’m still so grateful even now when I think about it.”
Everyone liked, loved, and praised Lord Calix.
Occasionally, there were lords who brainwashed their subjects with magic, drugs, or religion.
But in such cases, she would sense unnatural mana fluctuations from the spirits, and there was none of that at all.
They loved their lord sincerely.
And Sharen even met that family.
“Our lord is the benefactor of our family. He made it possible for us to eat and live in abundance, and he saved my son, who nearly died in the storm. Our family will repay that grace until the moment we die.”
“That’s right! The lord saved my life, so I’ll definitely repay that grace!!”
At those words, that the lord had saved his life, Sharen was surprised.
Had the minstrel’s song been true?
However, having grown suspicious while living in the human world, Sharen asked carefully.
“If it is all right with you, may I look at your memory of that time?”
“It’s possible to look at memories with magic?”
At Baron’s question, Sharen nodded.
Baron spoke boldly.
“Of course! Please look as much as you like. But, um… please only look at that memory. The next day, with Aron’s mother…”
“Dear!!”
At the sight of the affectionate married couple, Sharen laughed softly and said,
“I understand. Don’t worry. I will read exactly that memory and nothing else. Now… please recall the memory from that time.”
Sharen placed her hand on Baron’s head and used memory projection magic.
Amid the whirlpool of countless memories, that memory unfolded before Sharen’s eyes.
In the storm-tossed sea, there were the abandoned shoes of his son, and the sound of their wailing screams.
Within that memory filled with nothing but despair, his gaze turned toward the sea.
And there, the silver-haired lord she had seen was emerging from the sea while holding a child, placing a hand over the child’s heart and desperately beginning some kind of measure.
Whether that measure had an effect, the child vomited water and regained consciousness.
It was an ordinary struggle by an ordinary person, without any magic or blessing, but it was the most beautiful image of a lord Sharen had ever seen.
“It must have been painful… Thank you for showing me the memory.”
“Not at all, Lady Mage. We are the ones who should be thankful to have received treatment for free like this.”
After seeing that memory, Sharen felt her thoughts become clear.
Sharen made up her mind.
* * *
It was one week after Sharen arrived that I ended up meeting her.
The reason I had let this much time pass was to make Sharen’s feelings toward me cool.
To a mage who was respected and revered wherever she went, I had given an inn room and made her treat only the residents for a week. Sharen must surely be disappointed in this incompetent lord.
Honestly, if it were up to me, I would have liked to never see her like this forever, but Hart and Noah kept nagging me to at least make her an offer, so I called Sharen in order to make a token gesture as the lord.
“Hello, my lord. I am Sharen.”
“I am Calix Cron. It is a pleasure to meet you, Red Mage Sharen.”
Seeing Sharen in person, she was truly as beautiful as a goddess of flame.
The short elven ears unique to a half-elf, the shimmering red hair reaching down to her neck, and her goddess-like beauty—it truly made admiration rise on its own.
Feeling that my eyes had been blessed, I spoke.
“I apologize for not meeting you sooner. There has been much work in the territory.”
“It is all right, my lord. I understand.”
She looked at me with a somewhat strange gaze.
It felt different from Noah’s.
To make an analogy, it was like the gaze of an older sister cheering on her younger brother?
It had that sort of feeling.
“I’ll get straight to the point. The Cron family would like you to become the exclusive mage of our territory.”
Avoiding her gaze, I immediately dropped the main point.
Beating around the bush clumsily was not my style.
And there was no need to.
I had already heard that she had been going around investigating me and our family.
If so, she should know.
We had no money, because every coin we earned was invested into the residents, and there was a lot of work because of the migrants.
There was no way a high-ranking mage of her caliber would become the exclusive mage of a rural territory at the southern edge like this.
It was akin to Zhuge Liang entering service under Liu Bei when he had nothing, and there was no way such a thing could happen easily.
Thinking that, I spoke, and Sharen immediately answered.
“Yes.”
“I see, that is unfortu… Hm? What did you just say, Sharen?”
Lately, it seemed my ears were not good.
So when I asked again, she answered clearly.
“I will become the exclusive mage of your lordship… of the Cron family here.”
That day, I became Liu Bei.