Chapter 154: A better solution

Phield was stunned—but not frightened. He rolled up the map and asked, "Right, what about their territory and cities? Were they all destroyed?"

"They lived underground. Humans don’t exactly fancy subterranean cities," Rosalia said with a shake of her head, covering her mouth as she giggled. "Those places have long since been taken over by monsters and insect creatures. And those bugs? They love capturing females to lay eggs in."

"...Alright, still a degenerate game world after all. Nothing to worry about then."

Phield wiped the cold sweat from his brow. So much for taking it seriously for a moment.

The three of them lugged their spoils back with great effort and finally returned to the grand manor. Not long after they entered, someone came knocking.

"We’ve killed the number you asked for. Can you let us in now?"

Ophelia’s human subordinates called out, panting heavily. At their feet were piles of severed, round rotting heads. Clearly, they had no idea Ophelia had already been defeated.

"I almost forgot about them. Pretty efficient, not bad." Phield pondered briefly, then spoke bluntly to the two outside. "That’s enough, gentlemen. I already know you’re spies sent by corrupted creatures."

The mage, Quida, trembled uncontrollably. "W-What are you talking about?"

Phield snapped, "Don’t play dumb. You’re spies sent by corrupted creatures. Don’t think such petty tricks can fool me. I’ll give you a chance—to break free from their control."

"Damn it!" Lek roared in anger, drawing his sword. "He knew all along and still toyed with us. Let’s just kill our way in. I don’t believe those useless things are a match for our master!"

"Calm down. Do you think you can defeat an army, you brute?" Quida said coldly. "Better to play along. We get inside first, then poison their food and water. Heh... then offer them all up as food for the corpses."

"Right. I’ll make that bastard pay."

The two quickly reached an agreement and approached slowly. "We surrender. We admit it—we were sent by corrupted creatures. But please, give us a chance. We had no choice."

Phield glanced at the minimap. Their markers were still bright red exclamation points—hostile.

"Tell me—what does your master look like? What abilities does he have?" Phield lowered his gaze.

"H-He’s a heavily armored male creature, with—"

Before he could finish, Phield waved his hand in disappointment. "Fire. Send these fools who insist on dying on their way."

As much as he wanted a mage, someone harboring ill intent posed an immeasurable threat to the territory.

With the sharp clatter of mechanisms, their curses and insults were cut short—soon fading into silence.

Over the next few days, the territory returned to normal operations.

Reorganizing military supplies, clearing out corpses, restoring production—before they knew it, the end of the month had arrived.

The other half of the manor had been reclaimed. The people were busy farming, planting trees, and repairing damaged walls.

Phield had already moved into Starnight Fortress.

The first floor of the former grand estate had its furniture cleared out, replaced by uniform wooden tables arranged in neat rows—serving as the territory’s administrative office, as well as its finance and statistics department.

Phield nodded in satisfaction. "Finally, something that feels a bit modern."

Kaor was currently leading a group of kids, teaching them how to track the territory’s resources.

After this period of study, only nine children remained in class. Two of them couldn’t even write their own names or count from one to ten. Left with no choice, Phield sent them off to learn trades from masons and carpenters.

Ironically, that made others in the territory envious—craftsmen were among the highest-paid in Nightfall Domain, with no worries about food or marriage.

"Lumi, why do you look so miserable?"

Phield leaned toward the little cat-girl, who was clutching her ears with a tearful expression.

"My head hurts... statistics are so hard." Lumi pointed at the messy mix of words, numbers, and drawings on the paper, then at the counting board beside her.

"You can’t complain like that. This is a blessing from the Goddess of Wisdom—you must approach it with reverence." Kaor, who had been teaching, stood up sharply, clearly offended. "Did you wash your hands and pray before doing your work?"

"I—I did... I’ll go do it again." Seeing how serious he was, Lumi resolutely decided to redo everything.

"Is it really that mystical? Let me see."

Phield wasn’t one to attribute everything to the gods.

After just two glances, he felt dizzy. The statistics system in this world wasn’t organized into clear tables—it was a chaotic mix like "30 arrows" written in text and numbers. Unknown words were replaced with crude drawings. With enough entries, it looked like advanced mathematics gone wrong.

Pointing at the chaotic scribbles, Phield said in disbelief, "This is how you usually do statistics?"

"Yes. Like a beautiful aria," Kaor said proudly, stroking his mustache. "This is a gift from the Goddess of Wisdom. Even in Ross Territory, no one did it better than me."

"That part, I don’t doubt."

Kaor was indeed meticulous in his work.

"But what if I told you—I can give you a better method?"

Kaor immediately bristled. "Impossible. Absolutely impossible. My lord, you may seem blessed by the Goddess of Wisdom, full of innovative ideas—but there is no better method."

"I do."

Phield raised his brows, dipped his quill in ink, and began to write.

Everyone gathered around to watch.

"Hah, you’re quite humorous, my lord." Kaor scoffed. "If you can come up with something better, I’ll eat all the manure in the territory."

Without another word, Phield grabbed another piece of parchment as a ruler and drew a straight horizontal line, then a vertical one.

"My lord, are you... drawing?"

Kaor looked amused, convinced Phield was just entertaining the children.

But then Phield wrote headers across the top: Category, Name, Quantity, Outgoing, Incoming.

"...T-This isn’t right, is it?" Kaor froze.

Then, one by one, Phield neatly filled in rows of data.

"This is how we’ll track resources from now on."

Phield tossed the quill aside.

"My lord... are you... the Divine Chosen of the Goddess of Wisdom?" The steward was utterly stunned. "If Divine Chosen weren’t all women, I would be certain of it."

"This is just the beginning. I’ll write out a multiplication table next—it’ll definitely help with your calculations."