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“Ah?” Ashina hadn’t registered what was happening.
Field threw himself onto her, burying his face in the curve of her neck.
The delicate fragrance unique to a Chosen One seeped into his senses and settled there.
Then he pressed down, hard.
Her waist was soft and slender beneath his hands.
Barely a handful.
“My Lord, don’t!” Ashina felt the hot damp breath against her neck and looked around in a panic.
Her mouth said no.
Her hands didn’t push him away.
She even had to concentrate on suppressing the divine power surging inside her.
If it ran wild, it might hurt her Lord.
Field’s breath grazed her skin.
A tingling numbness shot down Ashina’s spine and her legs went soft.
The next moment, his hand reached toward the mosaic.
“How did things get to this?!”
Ashina didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
She needed to resist the pleasure building in her body while simultaneously keeping her divine power from going berserk.
Splitting her focus like that only made everything worse.
“You can’t do this.”
She bit the tip of her tongue, forced a sliver of clarity into her head, and stepped sharply backward.
“Mm, though it’s inexplicably…
no!
Thinking that is absolutely not okay!” After all, no one enjoys content that goes too far.
“That plant is the problem.” Ashina was already regretting it.
“In the gray fog, you’d only find things the devil left behind.”
She should’ve just burned the suspicious thing when she had the chance.
“Lord Field!
Where are you?” The guards had noticed Field wasn’t in the village center.
They were closing in fast, voices tight with anxiety.
“Good heavens.” The flush on Ashina’s face gave way to outright panic.
In her panic, she stopped holding back.
She tapped a pulse of divine power onto Field’s brow.
The pure energy dispersed the magical plant’s effects immediately.
“Ugh.
Everything’s spinning.”
Field held his head as his mind slowly cleared, reason reasserting itself over whatever had gotten loose inside him.
He looked up.
Ashina’s face was so red it looked like it might drip, and she was staring fixedly at the middle distance, very deliberately pretending to admire the scenery.
“I’m fine.”
The guards found him.
Field waved them off and told them to wait outside.
“I don’t think I’ve examined that little cabbage yet.” He frowned, shook out his arm, oddly stiff and sore, then bent down to pick one of the plants as a sample. This chapter is updated first at novelping.com.
“So it’s a magical plant, is it?”
“Don’t.
By the Goddess of Winter.” Ashina nearly went blank.
If it happened again, she genuinely wasn’t sure she could hold herself together.
She’d have to change her dress when they got back.
There was no way she was letting Field put her through that again.
“You already examined it.
This plant is extremely dangerous.”
Helpless, she leaned close to his ear and told him exactly what had happened.
“What a perverted plant.” Field blinked, then sighed.
“What a pity.
I don’t remember any of it.”
“What do you mean, ‘what a pity’!
I was terrified.
If this thing devours souls, what happens to the territory?” Ashina huffed and wagged her finger at him.
“Even if you want me, you don’t need to rely on something like this — uh, ahem.”
She stopped.
Her mouth had gotten ahead of her.
Ashina fell silent.
“Right.
Burn it!” She gritted her teeth, red pupils blazing like a torchlit villager at a witch-hunt.
“Burn it and the devil’s plan falls apart.”
Field watched her flustered scrambling and barely held in a laugh.
“Easy.
Treat new things with patience.
Think about it, what would happen if we gave this to horses and cattle?”
Ashina’s eyes went wide.
She crossed her hands in a sharp X.
“So perverted!
No crossbreeding!
Uh — I mean, cattle and horses obviously can’t, but humans and demi-humans — ”
“Pfft.” Field burst out laughing.
Clearly, whatever Ashina had experienced earlier had knocked her brain thoroughly offline.
“Livestock breeding.
With a herb like this, getting cattle and sheep to breed becomes a lot simpler.”
“Once our herds grow, we’ll have more meat than we can eat.” He snapped his fingers, cheerful.
On a related note: Chosen Ones had exceptional magic resistance.
Imperial scholars had studied it.
An ordinary Chosen One could shrug off 35 to 70 percent of magical damage, while one specialized in defense could achieve full immunity, or even reflect spells back at the caster.
Field handed Ashina a jar and had her collect three samples, soil and all.
The financial haul was a different story.
The guards combed every corner of Rum Village and turned up 21 silver coins and 87 copper.
We’re not the first ones to come through here.” Field pinched one of the old coins, brushed the dirt off with his thumb, and watched the faint patterns emerge in the metal.
“Every time the Empire went to war with the Beastmen, both sides would swing through Rum Village and strip it clean.
The empty pockets aren’t surprising.”
The rest of the spoils: one barely functional chair, one chest, a dozen broken pottery jars, a pile of firewood pried from the furniture inside the houses.
The return trip was smooth, at least.
No monster ambushes.
The moment he crossed into Nightfall Fief’s borders, Field felt something loosen in his chest.
The farmland was clear, no writhing tentacles, no mounds of flesh.
It was as refreshing as scrubbing down a filthy back and rinsing it clean.
Nothing left in the fields but toxin-laced soil and the grey ash of burned Corrupted creatures.
“My Lord, we’ve cleared all corruption within the territory and put it to the torch.” The slaves dipped their heads, faces pulled into hopeful smiles.
Field surveyed the land from his horse and nodded.
“Well done.
Everyone gets paid.”
The slaves lit up.
“Your next job is repairing the estate.
Clear out the corrupted remnants, rip out the rotten wood, and patch every collapse and hole you find.” Field had thought this through already.
Living in a place that let in drafts from every direction and still smelled faintly of monster urine was a slow punishment, even if his residence was technically the best building in all of Nightfall Fief.
“But, my Lord…
I don’t know carpentry.”
Field paused.
He’d overlooked that.
He raised his voice.
“Anyone here know carpentry?
Masonry?
Blacksmithing?”
Silence.
Carl, his steward, said it plainly: “My Lord, skilled tradespeople are freemen.
Slaves are useless.”
“Then we recruit some.
I was already planning a trip outside the gray fog.
What’s the nearest city, right, Maple Leaf City in Highcastle Province.
They’ll have what we need.”
Carl’s expression turned regretful.
“Every city’s craftsmen belong to a dedicated guild under the direct jurisdiction of their local lord.
Money alone won’t get them.
And frankly, I can’t imagine any craftsman willingly coming to Nightfall Fief.”
“Then I’ll go myself.” Field shrugged.
Carl only ever listed the reasons something wouldn’t work.
He never bothered thinking about how to make it work.
Field had gotten used to that.
➤ Next: Awakening the Lord Talent