Chapter 9: Double the Pay

I skillfully managed the workers with the Manager Scouter and safely moved the building materials to the church. The priest was very pleased, saying we had moved them faster than expected. But he was soliciting offerings so blatantly that I didn’t care for it. The workers handed over half their earnings as if it were completely normal.

Hans, a devout believer, tried to give away all his money until I smacked him upside the head.

Even devotion has its limits. The biggest reason Hans often went hungry was the offerings he gave to the church. It stemmed from his belief that by praying to God, he could overcome this desperate reality and marry Sabine off to a good family.

Since I had thrown him a lifeline, he shouldn’t need to rely on that anymore.

But all I could do was set an offering limit for him.

To them, I was the strange one for telling them to cut back on their religious contributions.

I hired Hans at 400 copper coins a month. With the work bonuses on top, he now had steady income, so these days he said life was manageable and always had a smile on his face. Recently, Hans had thanked me for being able to buy his sister delicious bratwurst.

I tried to hire Hans’s sister as a handmaid, but she said she wanted to help her aunt with the busy workload for a while before joining. I allowed it since she seemed responsible. The sister’s name was Sabine Flamm.

Since Sabine was helping with the textile shop run by her aunt’s family, Hans commuted daily. You can’t leave Sabine alone in this harsh world. So when he came to work, running was the baseline, and as I coached him through the various training exercises I was doing, his body was improving steadily.

But while I was checking the bulletin board in front of the government office for other work, a different bureaucrat approached me instead of Neumann. It was the bureaucrat I’d seen before in Beien. He came to me while Neumann was away.

"If you’re available, would you take on the position of logistics transport supervisor?" the bureaucrat asked.

"Logistics transport? Is that different from building materials?"

"Of course building materials fall under logistics transport. These days our office is in an uproar because of the financial audit, so we’re short-handed. Are you interested?"

"I see. So what’s the stipend?"

"I’ll set it at 200 copper coins."

[Repetitive Quest: Occupation]

[Logistics Transport Supervisor]

[Manage 20 workers flawlessly]

[Manager Scouter temporarily provided]

[Reward — 200 points, 200 copper coins]

When I had played the game, repetitive quests were pretty tedious content, but repetitive quests here were essentially my bread and butter. I still ate three meals with points (German-style breakfast, modern lunch, low-calorie dinner, vegetable-focused), but I also ate out sometimes.

Other than that, I used the rental service for entertainment.

Anyway, I accepted the Beien bureaucrat’s offer.

Neumann gave me work at 100 copper coins, but this side offered double that, so I had to make the switch. Neumann would be like a dog chasing its tail, but he’d profited plenty in the meantime. If he complained to me, I planned to show him what a noble could do. I had quite a temper myself.

I mellowed out with age, but in my twenties, I had clashed fiercely with other departments. Of course, it didn’t compare to medieval conflicts, but still, I wasn’t one to simply roll over.

"Oh, and this is my attendant, so give him a separate stipend too."

"What? For an attendant too? But..."

"If you don’t want to, forget it."

"N-no. I’ll set it at 40 copper coins," he said quickly.

If you can get it, you should get it all. Bureaucrats are creatures who try their hardest not to part with money. Regular workers got 20 copper coins, so getting double that wasn’t bad treatment, either. Hans seemed to be worrying lately that he was having too much good fortune.

"The workers at the dockyard are notorious for being rough," Hans warned.

"When have workers ever been easy to handle?"

"Still, I heard that side has a lot of people with ties to the slums."

"Slums? Hmm. Better be a bit careful about that."

Where there’s light, there’s shadow.

Especially in the capital, this tendency was even stronger.

Like Hans’s case, residents whose villages had been wiped out went to the capital with nothing but hope, or many people flocked there seeking their fortune. The capital was the premier city worthy of such ambitions. But most couldn’t find jobs and scraped by on day labor, or if they couldn’t even manage that, they formed pauper dens.

That’s how the slums were born.

Criminal organizations ran rampant, but since policing didn’t extend into the slums, it was essentially lawless. The duchy government turned a blind eye, because corralling all the troublesome paupers into the slums and monitoring them was cheaper than maintaining public order elsewhere.

So the slums were essentially a dumping ground.

The slum area was located at the southwestern edge of the districts divided by the four main boulevards, and it had started expanding until it had swallowed up half the southwest district.

"Do I really need to train?" Hans groaned.

Recently, I’d been bringing Hans home for physical training. He had good strength, but stamina was a different matter. Hans followed without complaint, but as I gradually increased the intensity, it was clearly getting harder for him to keep up. On top of that, his motivation was lacking.

"If we’re categorizing, you’re something like an attendant-slash-soldier."

"S-soldier? I’m confident in my strength, but I don’t know how to use weapons."

So I handed Hans the arming sword, shield, and leather armor set I’d picked up from the weapon shop recently. What the hell is this? Hans’s wide-eyed reaction was quite amusing. This was actually my surprise gift to Hans.

Wearing this transformed him from attendant to soldier.

Hans’s expression turned rather sour, but I was satisfied.

"After I receive my knighthood next year, when there’s a mobilization, I can go to the battlefield. You’ll have to fight as a soldier under me then, and you’ll need proper equipment and weapons, right?"

"What? M-me? But I can’t fight."

"That’s why I’m going to train you from now on. You said you wanted to marry Sabine off to a good family, right?"

"...Yes. I’ll work hard!"

The resolve of a family head who’d do anything for Sabine. If Hans truly risked his life to help me, I’d also work to marry Sabine into a good family, just as he wished. A contractual relationship is nothing complicated. You just need to be clear about give and take.

As a knight’s handmaid, finding a decent match would be within reach.