"Have you lost your mind......? When you had that magic power deficiency, something must have gone wrong with your head—"
Leaving behind the village chief, who was unleashing some harsh words at me.
I moved elsewhere with Freyja.
On the way to the manor.
Hesitation was written all over Freyja's face.
Well, I had asked her out of the blue whether she had any money, after all.
If anything, it was a natural reaction.
"Hmm......."
Freyja let out a low groan.
I wondered if she was indirectly expressing her displeasure with me.
But the truth was a little different.
Creak.
Freyja opened the door to the treasury.
......It was completely empty.
"I am sorry, my lord husband......."
Freyja spoke in a voice that trailed off to nothing.
Like a child being punished.
"We used all of our money on relief for the territory residents."
Relief, huh.
That judgment was right.
After all, this was the North, where troublesome problems were erupting all at once.
Emptying one's private coffers for the people who were suffering was a ruler's natural duty.
But.
'She used up even the Grand Duke's fortune....... And it's still at that level?'
Hadn't I seen the state of the North with my own eyes?
There wasn't a single corner of it in one piece.
The Northerners didn't even have the strength to wail, and they were sleeping with snow for blankets.
"......Freyja, by any chance, how did you go about the relief?"
I asked, scratching my head.
The answer I got was a sight to behold.
To sum up Freyja's very, very long answer in a single line.
She lacked long-term vision.
So many people were starving to death right then that she bought up food blindly, then handed out the food she had obtained to people with no plan.
She rebuilt collapsed buildings, only for monster raids to knock the hard-built buildings right back to square one before long.
Beyond that, a vicious cycle repeating itself.
In other words, the current North was the result of being too busy putting out the urgent fires in front of her without any blueprint.
Being played for a sucker by the merchants in the process was a bonus.
'Just because they're descendants of the Barbarians doesn't mean they have to inherit short-sighted thinking too.......'
Harben's words suddenly came to mind.
If your body is strong, your noggin never has to suffer.
And Freyja's body was damn strong.
Goddammit.
What was the previous Grand Duke doing? Not even giving his child an education in economics!
And Freyja was an only child, too!
"Hmm....... Ah, now that I think of it."
Freyja, who had been watching my expression, stepped into the treasury.
And she began rummaging through a closet set in the corner.
Dust billowed up for only a moment.
She brought back a worn-out pouch.
"This...... is all the money I have."
Freyja handed me the pouch, fidgeting.
[800G]
Golden numbers appeared above the pouch.
Could there be such a coincidence?
Incredibly, it looked like it would bring me to exactly 1,000G.
"......Are you really okay giving this to me?"
This money would surely help in protecting the North.
When I ought to be snatching it right up and pocketing it with a 'Just what I wanted,' here I was saying something like this.
But my conscience pricked me.
The last handful of wealth left to the Berg Grand Ducal House.
When I thought of it evaporating with a single touch from me, my chest throbbed for some reason.
The feel of the worn-out pouch needlessly aggravated that pain even more.
"It is all right."
If anything, Freyja was the calm one.
"After all, money is something one can simply earn again."
That was true.
If you didn't have money, you could just earn it.
The problem was that it was coming from Freyja, whose sense of economics was severely lacking.
"......How?"
I asked, just in case.
"I will sell off the goblins that raided us today."
"Ah, now that you mention it......."
I remembered how the North made money.
There was also selling specialties found only in cold regions.
But the North's main product was monsters.
To be precise, all sorts of by-products that came from their carcasses.
'They were worth quite a lot.'
Monster organs, magic stones or mana stones, magic cores, and so on.
There were plenty of things with all kinds of uses.
'And today the goblins came in droves, so.......'
The supply itself would be enormous.
Well, it looked like Freyja had wiped about half of them out of existence entirely, though.
'So she wasn't completely without a plan.'
I breathed a sigh of relief.
I'd like the place I'm going to live from now on not to be gasping for money.
"My lord husband?"
Freyja was looking up at me.
Beneath her long eyelashes, her large eyes were trembling.
"Hm, thanks. I won't spend it on anything frivolous."
"Yes."
Freyja nodded, as if a decade-old case of indigestion had finally cleared.
It was strange.
Why was she so worried about how I was reacting?
I had been the one wondering how to persuade her.
'She doesn't even ask what I'll spend the money on.'
Judging by the North's current state, there was no way anything like a working shop existed.
Yet Freyja didn't doubt me.
'It's convenient for me, though.'
I somehow felt like I had become a lousy husband.
***
"I thought His Highness the Prince had suddenly gone mad."
The village chief gave me a very grand welcome.
"You're still here?"
"I somehow had a feeling you would come back."
The village chief looked me over.
"By any chance, did the Grand Duke give you a scolding or something?"
"What?"
"Since the two of you had stepped away, I wondered whether you had actually gotten the money......."
Aha.
Since I wasn't carrying any money, he'd jumped to that conclusion.
But what can you do?
[Balance: 1,000G]
I was a man who didn't need to carry gold coins around one by one.
"It's not like that."
"You may be honest with me."
"And who are you to me?"
"Someone who rolled around in the jaws of death with Your Highness."
The village chief was a surprisingly playful person.
"I told you it's not like that. ......Ah, right. Where's Harben? Do you know where he is?"
"By now, he must be hugging his granddaughter tight. And it is obvious Layla will be kicking him away, saying he is a nuisance."
Kicking her grandfather, huh.
She'd splendidly inherited the blood and spirit of the Barbarians, then.
At the same time, I realized that Harben had lied.
He'd said his granddaughter was as meek as a lamb.
'Or his doting has put blinders on him.'
If he was a doting grandpa, that was possible too.
"I should go see them once I'm done with my work."
"By work, what do you mean?"
The village chief naturally followed me.
"You'll know when you see it."
It was the moment we were walking toward the fragments that had once boasted the name of the Black Tiger Wall.
"Now that I think of it."
I turned my gaze toward the village chief.
"I still haven't heard your name."
Now that he had left his village.
It felt strange to keep calling him village chief.
So I asked him his name.
"Hm....... Had I not told you?"
But his reaction was odd.
Telling someone your name shouldn't be all that hard.
Yet the village chief only scratched his side sheepishly.
It was where the village chief's horrible scar was.
"I am called Graive."
Having done all that, he anticlimactically revealed his name.
"It's a good name."
"Do you know what it means?"
"No."
Graive and I both chuckled as we moved on.
'Graive......?'
But why was that?
His name bothered me.
A name I had heard somewhere....... No, a name I had seen.
Just as I was puzzling over the sense of déjà vu, we arrived at our destination before I knew it.
One of the knights standing guard came over to us.
"Hey, it's dangerous over here. Go back to somewhere sa....... Huh?"
The foul-tempered-looking knight frowned.
His gaze was fixed on Graive.
The knight tilted his head, but only for a moment.
"Bar— Kasi—!"
He expressed the highest respect.
The other knights who turned their heads to see what was going on also understood the situation and offered the 'Barkasi.'
As I watched the scene, a light bulb flashed in my head.
'Ah, that's it!'
I had seen it in the Imperial Library.
50 years ago.
When the demons' invasion had grown fierce, a man had been dispatched from the capital to the North and performed brilliantly.
"First Commander of the Imperial Knights, Graive."
Muttering, I stared at his face.
Graive avoided my gaze.
"Hahaha....... I was a bit of a famous person."
A bit famous, my ass.
To exaggerate a little, he was practically the Empire's Admiral Yi Sun-sin.
***
It was a huge shock, but I decided to put off the details for later.
"Please look around at your leisure!"
Thanks to Graive, who was treated as a hero even in the North, I too could roam the front line at my ease.
It was a relief.
After all, enormous hostility showed in the knights' eyes.
'Well, I'm the guy who snatched their master right out from under them.'
Ignoring the hostility prickling my skin, I surveyed the front line.
For some reason, a certain saying came to mind.
Seen from afar, a comedy. Seen up close, a tragedy.
That saying didn't hold on the Northern front.
'Seen from afar, a tragedy. Seen up close, a horror show.'
Knights hauling mountains of goblin carcasses.
Beyond them was a field where the snow bulged out bluntly at regular intervals.
I approached it.
"A communal graveyard, it seems."
Graive said bitterly.
The places where the snow bulged out were the graves of the fallen.
Weapons of cold steel were stuck in the ground before them.
Swords, spears, axes, and so on.
Warriors who had returned to the earth with their own weapons as their tombstones.
The North had no tradition of using a warrior's weapon from life as their tombstone.
There simply hadn't been enough time to make proper tombstones.
'If Freyja hadn't pushed herself today, there'd have been several more graves.'
Setting aside clearing the quest.
The wall had to be rebuilt so as not to add any more needless victims.
Just as there was no particular reason needed to save people.
"His Highness the Prince truly is different."
Graive murmured.
"Unlike the arrogant Imperial Household, you take each individual life to heart."
"Huh?"
"Haha! You will brush it off and say that is not so, will you not?"
Graive was moved all on his own and kept nodding.
......I hadn't actually been looking around with such heavy thoughts, though.
I didn't bother clearing up the misunderstanding.
After all, winning Graive's goodwill would help with my life from here on.
"Are you heading back now?"
"No. I told you I had work to do."
"Were you not inspecting the front line?"
"I told you, you'll know when you see it."
Even if I explained, it wasn't as though he would understand anyway.
So I brought up the [Shop].
Graive stood quietly by my side.
The moment the corners of my lips rose at the sight.
Ta-da-da~!!!
A cheap-sounding fanfare smacked my eardrums.
"......What is wrong all of a sudden? You flinched."
"It's nothing......."
"Ahem....... As expected, your head—"
Leaving Graive to his harsh words once again, I glared at the [Shop].
If it had pulled a stunt like this over nothing, I was thinking of punching it again.
[You sense the presence of a Legendary Artisan!]
[You may construct 'Frontline Wall (E)' upon the remains left behind by the Legendary Artisan 'Edemrov'!]
[Special effects will be granted at random!]
What do you know?
Wasn't it suddenly throwing in a bonus?
Since it mentioned a legendary artisan, the effects were bound to be outstanding.
As befitted a man from a people who got excited over buy-one-get-one-free deals, I squared my shoulders proudly.
But the [Shop]'s fanfare wasn't over yet.
Ding!
[Excellent materials are available!]
[The price of 'Frontline Wall (E)' drops by 50%!]
"Oh, wow!"
A dumbstruck exclamation popped out of me on its own.
Today, the four syllables of 'capitalism' were starting to look awfully lovable.
Long live capitalism, long, long live.