Pen and Paper Translations

“Has he really not worked for that long?”

“Yeah! When did Xion stop working again? Let’s see… was it a few months ago?”

“Right, it was before the season changed. I even went to check on him because I thought he was sick.”

“He practically took a whole month off back then. And ‘a month’ is putting it lightly—if you leave a field idle for a month, you might as well say you’ve given up on that season’s harvest, don’t you think?”

“W-well, that’s true.”

If it was a few months ago, that was when Xion brought Reinhild to the village of Root.

I was out for an entire month?

He hadn’t known that Xion had stayed by his side the whole month without going out to work.

To give up work just to watch over an unconscious Demon King… it was moving.

No, this wasn’t the time to be moved.

Reinhild focused even more on the humans’ conversation.

“If he rested that much, once he’d pulled himself together, he should’ve worked the fields as much as he could… but even after that he kept taking time off.”

“Now that you mention it, yeah. For a while it looked like he was working hard like before, but just recently he stopped going out again, didn’t he?”

“Just recently,” huh.

That was when Reinhild had fallen ill because of his mana issues.

In other words, what the humans meant by “the times Xion took off work” were the times he couldn’t leave the house because he was caring for Reinhild.

Xion had put even going out to the fields behind him and put Reinhild first.

“If it were just a day or two, fine. But taking that long a break—those seeds he worked so hard to plant must’ve all rotted. He’s blown two whole seasons.”

Reinhild wanted to run over and ask what that had to do with Xion getting his fields taken away.

If you don’t work, you just get poorer, right?

Even if you starve, why would the fields be confiscated?

“Exactly. The time to pay the tenant rent isn’t far off… Will what he saved at the start of the year be enough?”

“When you work, you have to scrape up everything you earned and hand it all to the lord, so how much can you really set aside?”

“Eh. That’s how it is. All the fields here belong to the lord, and there’s the taxes on top of that, and the tenant rent on top of that. It’s always us tenant farmers who end up dying.”

Now the situation made a little more sense.

The fields Xion and the people of Root worked belonged to the Lord of Audrit.

The villagers of Root, who rented the land to farm, had to turn over a set amount of their harvest each year to the land’s owner, the lord.

There had been something similar among the demonfolk.

Long ago, a powerful demon claimed a region thick with monsters as his own and made the demonfolk who hunted there hand over a portion of their take.

It hadn’t gone over well.

Not even three days after claiming ownership, that demon was brutally smashed by the other demonfolk.

That such a law should work among humans… It was truly astonishing.

“To think you work your bones year-round and have to hand over half. It’s really too much, but what can you do.”

“Sure, you can’t help it, but the problem is that if you take even a short break, you get a hole in your quota.”

Half of what you work year-round counts as the quota?

Reinhild was startled.

They only have to hand over half?

The Lord of Audrit must be quite a conscientious human.

If a demon were the one lending the land, the quota would be ninety percent of the harvest.

No, he’d set the quota so high that even if you harvested diligently all year it wouldn’t be enough, and on top of that he’d sabotage the crops to plunge the humans into despair.

Compared to that, the fact that if you work diligently all year you get to keep half. What a profitable deal.

The humans here were living a rewarding life where they reaped as much as they worked.

“But look here—judging from how much Xion’s harvested this year, even if he doesn’t take a single day off for the rest of the season, he still won’t meet his quota.”

“Good heavens, really? What are we going to do?”

Then Xion can’t meet his quota no matter what?

Just listening to the humans made Reinhild’s heart lurch.

He wanted to grab one of them and bark at them to tell him immediately what happens if you don’t meet the quota.

“If he can’t meet it, they’ll take the land away. What are we going to do?”

Luckily, there was no need to grab anyone by the collar.

The villagers were so talkative they answered on their own before he could even ask.

So that’s why they said he’d lose the land.

If a farmer has no land to farm, he won’t be able to earn money the following year and will starve to death.

Reinhild’s face went pale as he imagined Xion losing his fields and starving.

“What if we help him meet the quota?”

“Oh, come on. Don’t you remember how we all struggled through the winter the last time we did that?”

“I do. But think about it, back then it was Xion who stepped up and covered more than half of the shortfall, and when everyone in the village was having a hard time, it was Xion who shared what he had.”

“That’s true. Maybe we should talk it over with the village chief?”

“Let’s at least bring it up and decide from there.”

“Even if he can’t meet this year’s quota, he can pay it next year with interest—do we really have to go this far?”

“You can’t call that ‘interest.’ Once the quota goes up even once, from the next year on you have to pay at that permanently higher quota.”

Oh. So among humans, even if you fail to meet the quota, it seems they give you one more chance.

Truly spineless.

“Truth is, we’re just barely making our quota at my house too. Who doesn’t want to help Xion? It’s fine that he brought someone into his home, but if he keeps slacking off from work because of that, he might get kicked out of the village. That’s what I’m trying to say.”

“Xion will work hard. If you miss the quota two years in a row, you get expelled from the village. He has to work.”

The humans’ conversation ended there.

They actually started talking about something else, but it no longer held Reinhild’s interest.

Reinhild stood there blankly, lost in thought.

Xion will be expelled from the village?

He couldn’t picture Xion not living in Root.

They’d just barely protected Xion and the house from the Hero’s wicked clutches, only for him to be driven out like this?

Unacceptable.

And on top of that, it’s my fault.

This was what shocked Reinhild most.

Xion hadn’t been able to go out to work because he was caring for a sick Reinhild.

Even though he knew that if he didn’t meet the quota, he might be driven out!

Xion had carved out a place in Root and lived diligently all his life, while since coming to Xion’s house Reinhild had done nothing but get sick, throw tantrums, and get in the way of Xion’s work.

Everything Xion had built up was collapsing because of him.

I’m a hindrance to Xion.

Reinhild was devastated by that fact.

No, it’s not too late yet.

There was still time.

The deadline was the end of the year.

If they spent the remaining time working straight through, they could meet the quota.

But as the humans had said, it would be impossible for Xion alone.

If I help with the work, we can harvest twice as much.

A miraculous calculus: since the number of working hands doubles, the harvest doubles regardless of the field’s size!

Knowing nothing of farmwork beyond the fact that it paid Xion’s way, Reinhild seized hope through this ridiculous math.

If worst comes to worst, I can just steal a jewel or two from the Demon King’s Castle.

In truth, you couldn’t even call it “stealing.”

All the treasures of the Demon King’s Castle belong to the Demon King.

Therefore, at present, those jewels belong to Reinhild, the only Demon King.

Granted, having been driven out of the castle makes the ownership a bit fuzzy now, but they were still undeniably Reinhild’s.

The demonfolk won’t blame me if I take as much as I like.

On the premise, of course, that he took them secretly without being caught.

I’ll bring back enough jewels to cover the tenant rent even if Xion takes ten years off!

Having found a solution, his mood brightened again.

Just thinking he could be of help to Xion made him excited.

Among the nobles, the harder a jewel is to obtain, the higher its value, so he’d heard.

Among the Demon King’s jewels, quite a few were imbued with demonic energy.

Those would be the sort of rare jewels humans would never see in their lifetime.

They would surely fetch a very high price.

As for the chaos and confusion that would ensue if demonic-tinged jewels seeped into the human world, that was none of Reinhild’s concern.

If Xion ends up with a few more years to relax, I should ask him to go on longer outings.

Reinhild was simply overjoyed.

“Rein, did you wait long?”

Just as Reinhild finished sorting out his thoughts, Xion emerged from the fisherman’s house.

In his hand was a tub holding the fish.

He got that because I said I wanted it, too.

He must have had no money or crops to trade, since he’d been taking time off yet he’d gone out of his way to get fish for Reinhild.

This un-demon-like kindness of Xion’s kept needling at him.

But it was fine.

He’d found a way now.

Reinhild answered with a bright smile toward Xion.

“No. I didn’t wait. Let’s go home.”

“Already?”

“Yeah. There’s something I need to do.”

“Very well.”

Smiling back, Xion firmly took Reinhild’s hand with the one not holding the fish tub.

From far off, the humans who’d been chattering started up with “oh my, oh my” and a buzz of voices, but Reinhild didn’t care.

There was something else he needed to care about right now.

As they retraced their steps home, Reinhild began fleshing out the plan in his head.

A grand plan to save Xion!