Show Me Your Stats!

“Just to be sure—do we have 300 Cell?”
“No, my lord. I recently sent everything we had to our estate’s merchant, but they have yet to return.”

Ayra closed her eyes tightly. Reality was simply too much to believe. When she reopened them, she glanced back at the principal debt amount.
Ten thousand Cell.
Still, since the money had been borrowed, it must have been used for something important. Clutching at straws, Ayra turned to Jinas.

“What in the world did my father do with 10,000 Cell?”
“I was curious about that myself, so I stayed up for several nights investigating… He invested it. And lost everything.”
Jinas smiled brightly. It seemed like he had finally lost his mind. Ayra wanted to let go of her sanity, too. But instead, she simply stared silently at the collection notice.

Seeing this, Jinas got up from his seat.
“If you have no further questions, I will be going to sleep now.”
“What?”

“There’s nothing more I can do at this point, so I might as well get some sleep.”
As if he would collapse if he stayed awake any longer, Jinas turned to leave—and then, quite literally, fell over right where he stood.
“……It’s just exhaustion. If he gets some rest, eats well, and recovers, he’ll be fine.”

The physician, who had rushed over upon hearing that the chief steward had collapsed, examined Jinas and spoke politely.
Ayra sighed. Leaving the groaning, unconscious Jinas behind, she exited the room.
As she stood in the hallway, a notification popped up. The Territory Window had been updated.

Ayra opened the window immediately. Sure enough, a new section had been added.
It was debt.
 

[Territory Information: Solar Estate]
Lord: Solar Sing Ayra
Area: Approx. 2,300 Jenta
Population: 156,335 residents
Debt: 10,300 Cell (Monthly Interest: 50 Cell)
Special Note: 233 days until complete ruin.
One-line Review: “Have you considered immigrating to a neighboring estate before everything collapses? We recommend Bolni or Sobletz!”
+ New Feature Upgrade: Territory Development Required
 
The one-line review was so infuriating that Ayra stomped a small rock nearby, flattening it with a sharp beep sound.

Then, with a worried expression, she turned to the head attendant waiting outside the room.
“Botello, did you know about this?”
“……Yes, my lord. That is, the former lord confessed everything to me one night when he was utterly drunk.”

The old, faithful attendant’s eyes reddened, and his voice trembled.
“On the day of the terrible carriage accident… The lord was on his way to Prataris, desperate to secure funds by arranging your elder brother’s political marriage. I knew he was in debt, but I never imagined it was this severe.”
Botello hurriedly turned away, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief as he apologized. But even that wasn’t enough—soon, his face turned pale, and beads of cold sweat formed on his forehead.

Ayra couldn’t afford to let the head attendant collapse, too. Making an excuse for Botello to tend to Jinas instead, Ayra successfully got him out of the way.
Left with no choice, Ayra returned to the study.
With a deep sigh, he began to carefully review the documents that Jinas had painstakingly organized over the past few days. Now that he read them more thoroughly, he noticed problems that had previously gone unseen.

Originally, Solar Estate had been poor, but peaceful. Or rather, it was precisely because it was poor that it had remained peaceful.
Unlike other estates, which waged wars over fertile plains or mineral-rich mines, Solar had no resources worth fighting over. While neighboring lands spent over a decade locked in violent struggles, Solar had remained untouched—there simply wasn’t anything worth spending soldiers on.
But for some reason, starting two years ago, Sobletz and Bolni had begun making subtle but undeniable moves to swallow Solar whole.

They interfered with trade, finding petty reasons to detain merchants. They sent disguised bandits to harass Solar’s outer residents. They even used money to poach Solar’s most capable retainers.
And in the end, Ayra’s father—the former lord—had been pushed to borrow money as a last resort.
Faced with starving people, he had taken a desperate gamble.

And he had lost. Completely.
Now, the estate had been left with 10,000 Cell in debt—and, as if that wasn’t enough, the earthquake had destroyed Solar’s defensive walls.
“Haha……”

Ayra laughed momentarily, sounding almost insane. But he quickly shook off the hysteria and smacked both of his cheeks with a loud slap.
If he lost his mind, too, this estate would truly shatter beyond repair.
And worse, there was less than a week left to pay the interest.

“I have to at least pay the interest first.”
There was still one possible source for that 300 Cell.
The merchant they had sent away still hadn’t returned. That was the real issue.

“The chief steward is down, the head attendant is on the verge of collapse…”
Now, it was all on Ayra.
Ayra massaged her temples, pressing against them to ease the headache before ordering a servant to summon the estate’s administrator.

Before long, the administrator hurried into the study.
Even though Ayra had noticed it during breakfast, the man’s pink hair still stood out upon a second glance.
He looked to be in his late fifties, a rather aged man with a friendly smile. He wiped the sweat off his forehead—his face was flushed, suggesting he had been drinking.

“Did you summon me, my lord?”
“Yes, ……Sir Ran Graffni.”
Ayra checked the name through the Stat Window, pausing a beat before saying it out loud.

The administrator beamed in response, flashing his teeth brightly.
“Please, just call me Graffni.”
“Alright then, Sir Graffni. The chief steward mentioned that a merchant was sent out a few days ago—what route did they take exactly? Have we heard anything from them?”

Ayra flipped through some documents as she spoke, but after waiting for a while, no response came.
Looking up, she saw Graffni staring blankly, looking utterly lost.
“The merchant?”

“…Why do you look like you have no idea what I’m talking about? You’re the administrator.”
“Uh, um, yes! That’s right, I am the administrator. Ah, well, I don’t really know, but wouldn’t the chief steward have handled that?”
Hearing this utterly useless response, Ayra had a realization: Jinas’s exhaustion might have had a lot to do with this man.

It wasn’t that Graffni had ordered the merchant to leave, and Jinas had simply reported it.
No. Jinas had to handle everything himself—dispatching the merchant, overseeing the process, and even filing the report afterward—all because Graffni had been slacking off.
“…Anyway, we haven’t been able to contact the merchant, right?”
“Yes, yes, probably. They’ll come back eventually.”

“…Are they back or not? How do we normally communicate with them? Do we have a communication magic tool or something?”
Ayra immediately dismissed that thought—there was no way such a rare item, something even ancient mages or great lords in the Labyrinth would struggle to acquire, could be in Solar Estate.
If they had one, Ayra would sell it immediately to pay off the debt.

Graffni, looking unreasonably carefree for his age, responded with a bright smile.
“Well, we either send a messenger bird or dispatch soldiers. If we wait, they’ll return eventually. Hoho.”
That was enough to confirm something:

This administrator was completely useless.
“…Forget it. You can go.”
“Huh? No, my lord, surely there is much you still do not know! I must remain by your side to assist—”

Ayra didn’t even bother arguing.
Instead, she picked up a tiny rock that had been idly rolling around on the floor near her knee.
With a soft puff, she blew on it.

The rock flapped its tiny hands and floated up like a soap bubble.
“HIIIK—!!”
Graffni let out a disgraceful shriek, crossing himself in pure terror before bolting out of the study.

With that headache dealt with, Ayra resumed searching the mountain of documents with the rock still balanced on their head.
But no matter how much they searched, there was no additional information on the merchant.
One thing was clear: The merchant had not returned.

Otherwise, Jinas wouldn’t have been overworking himself to the point of collapse.
After a moment of consideration, Ayra decided to summon the knight commander.
If the merchant wouldn’t come back on their own, soldiers would have to be sent to investigate.

However, instead of the knight commander, Bloom, the vice-commander, arrived.
“…Why are you here instead of the knight commander?”
Bloom was silent for a moment before reaching into his coat and handing Ayra a document.

Something about this felt ominous.
Ayra slowly extended a hand, taking the envelope.
A letter…?

Just as they rustled open the envelope, Bloom spoke coldly, clearly furious.
“It’s the knight commander’s resignation letter.”
“…What?”

“The knight commander abandoned his post and fled this morning after leaving this resignation letter behind.”
…Wow.
An estate where the knight commander quits and runs away without even informing the lord.

The letter was as pathetic as expected.
It whined about how overworked the knight commander was, how low his wages were, and how the estate had no future, so he was returning to his hometown.
So, was Solar Estate just a black company, or was the knight commander just spineless?

Ayra could feel the stress boiling over.
Without hesitation, they ripped the resignation letter to shreds.
“Alright. You’re the knight commander now.”

“…Pardon?”
“Congrats, you got a promotion.”