TUHWKM 13

Chapter 13

“Wait, what do you mean by that?”

I urgently pressed Kaierus.

Standing with his legs crossed and looking down at me, his expression was extremely arrogant.

“Did you think an exclusive mage who has even signed a contract could go around playing as freely as before?”

“No, that’s not it.”

The problem is that a desk and chair are coming into this room…

I appealed to him with my eyes.

“Isn’t this Your Highness the Grand Duke’s office?”

“Yes, and from now on, it will also be your workplace.”

“Why?”

“So I can keep you nearby and observe you.”

Am I some kind of lab mold?

Keep me nearby and observe me?

I gaped in bewilderment. But there wasn’t a trace of humor on Kaierus’s face. I could feel one hundred percent pure sincerity.

“Don’t worry, as you can see, my office is very large, so you coming in won’t interfere with my work.”

Why does he look strangely pleased? It’s infuriating.

“What about my opinion?”

“There isn’t one.”

“This is unreasonable.”

“Why? It’ll be good for you too.”

“Where exactly do you see that?”

“In my face.”

“…I’ll pass.”

What am I supposed to do with this narcissism?

Just as I was about to argue that I have rights and privacy, servants poured in.

They ignored my dumbfounded face and, following Kaierus’s instructions, placed a desk and chair in an empty space on one side of the office before quietly disappearing.

“It’s become a fine workplace.”

Where exactly is it fine…

I was left speechless. They say when you’re too dumbfounded, you lose your words—that was exactly the situation.

“From now on, come to work every day at a set time. Ten in the morning should be sufficient.”

Kaierus rose from his seat and returned to his own desk as he spoke. I couldn’t believe reality and just blankly followed his movements.

Suddenly, he turned and smiled.

“You’d better keep your work hours. Unless you want to be dismissed on the first day.”

His hand pointed to clause 7 of the contract.

I wanted to cry.

—

***

Was it during my second year of university?

A professor in a liberal arts course said this.

Don’t stamp contracts carelessly. That’s how so many young people in their twenties and thirties get scammed.

I should have taken that advice to heart.

“…What is all this?”

The next day, having arrived at Kaierus’s office in tears, I was faced with an unbelievable sight.

The desk that had been completely empty until yesterday was piled with documents like a mountain.

And that wasn’t all—during the thirty minutes I sat at my desk, servants endlessly pushed more documents toward me. Eventually, they even brought a trolley and began setting down documents in boxes beside my desk.

I wanted to faint.

“Accept them. They’re matters you need to handle.”

“All of… this?”

“Did you think the Grand Duke’s territory was an easy place?”

No matter how I looked at it, this was workplace harassment. Violence through hierarchy.

I shouldn’t have signed so hastily, dazzled by the promise not to kill me. If I had known he intended to kill me not physically but through overwork, I would have been more careful.

“Oh, my fate…”

Since Kaierus seemed to have no intention of engaging with me further, I gave up on protesting and rifled through the documents.

And within a few minutes, I realized that the documents pouring in weren’t just a means to torment me. These were genuinely necessary matters for the Grand Duke’s territory.

Most were status reports on damage within the territory related to black mages, and they were packed with territory residents’ welfare issues and various problems that required magical solutions.

As I read, I arrived at a fundamental question.

“But what on earth has Your Highness been doing while the territory got to this state? Haven’t you employed a mage all this time?”

At this level, shouldn’t he have hired at least one mage?

Even if he despised black mages, he could have at least brought in white mages.

Although I’m the author, the Lucifenia territory wasn’t the central backdrop of the story. I didn’t know these fine details. I had never even thought about them.

Kaierus raised his head and looked at me.

For a moment, our gazes tangled in the air without words.

“They say every black mage was originally a white mage.”

That was his entire answer.

But I didn’t need to hear more.

In a word, I understood everything.

Kaierus lost his family overnight without knowing why. And on top of that, he couldn’t even find a trace of the culprit. It happened when he was only fifteen.

To him, the existence of black mages was beyond a simple enemy—it was an object of ideological hatred.

Every mage was, to Kaierus, nothing short of a potential risk factor harboring the possibility of becoming a black mage. I could understand not wanting to take that risk.

As I thought about it, my conscience pricked me for some reason, so I shut my mouth tightly and buried myself in the documents.

“It seems you’ve finally found the will to work.”

“I suppose I had to.”

If things go largely the same as the original work, one year later the Lucifenia Grand Duchy will be half-destroyed by the emergence of the mastermind.

Because that bastard will smash everything to find the final divine artifact.

Strictly speaking, that’s my fault too.

The more I thought about it, the more I felt like I had done something terrible to Kaierus, and I grew solemn.

It can’t be helped.

Since it’s come to this, I have no choice but to prevent what I can from my end.

I’m going to claim the divine artifact anyway, so there’s no reason to just sit back and watch the mastermind turn the territory into a wasteland.

I’ve really made a big decision.

I’ve resolved myself, I tell you.

“Your Highness, you’re going to thank me.”

Kaierus didn’t even look my way and just let out a small laugh.

He’s ignoring me.

I know he’ll be bowing deeply in gratitude later anyway.

Does he think an author’s buff is easy to get?

Suddenly motivated, I combed through the documents like a soldier.

A list of things that needed to be handled to prevent the predicted wasteland unfurled in my mind like a scroll.

Among them, there were a few priorities.

“Ah, here it is.”

I picked up a document I found in the pile and headed toward Kaierus’s desk.

He tilted his head and looked up at me.

That expression said he wouldn’t let me off if it was something trivial.

“Did you deliberately leave this castle wall unbuilt?”

His indifferent gaze shifted to the map I was pointing at.

“Other areas have sturdy castle walls surrounding them, but there’s no wall in the direction leading to this mountain range.”

“The snow mountain beyond that is the second-highest mountain range on the continent. The marshland behind it is golem habitat. The natural environment itself serves as a wall, so there’s no need to waste resources building one.”

Kaierus’s words made sense.

With the towering snow mountain and golem habitat, it was practically a perfect block against artificial invasion. That is, if you only considered artificial invasion.

But in a few months, there will be a landslide in this mountain range.

For the sake of Leonie and Fabian’s dramatic love line development, I had constructed an episode where the two, visiting near the Lucifenia territory, get stranded in the snow mountain.

That’s great for the protagonists, but I didn’t think about the people living in the Lucifenia territory.

“Still, wouldn’t it be better to build a wall around here just in case?”

“Just in case?”

“Look here, the boundary of this mountain range is steep. Assuming a landslide occurs here, without a wall, the residents on the outskirts of the territory would be directly affected.”

“Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a landslide in the past few years. The ground here is solid, so something like that happens maybe once every hundred years.”

That’s right.

But it does happen.

“…When was the last landslide?”

“That would be.”

Kaierus, who had spoken that far, narrowed his eyes. He paused for a moment, then pulled a book from the bookshelf and flipped through it.

“…Ninety-two years ago.”

“See?”

I shrugged.

“Something that happens maybe once every hundred years means a landslide could occur within the next ten years.”

Kaierus was silent.

He just stared at me intently, as if lost in thought.

“Come out.”

“Pardon?”

I just did something, and now we’re going where?

Kaierus closed the document he was reading and stood up, looking down at me.

“Didn’t you say we need to build a wall? Let’s go see it ourselves.”

“Couldn’t we… just have the knights do that?”

I just told you about it.

Physical labor is something you have other people do.

Kaierus smiled brightly.

“No.”

Bastard.