Some time passed without the question about Ruben being resolved. Now it was time to prepare for rice farming in earnest.
I brought the Black Hawk to the mountain a little further down from Duke Shiaster’s residence.
Because it was in the middle of the mountain, the open space was not as large as a plain, but it was an appropriate size for experimenting with rice farming.
It is said that originally, during the days of the previous Duke, there were plans to build something like a villa here. So, the foundation of the land was well established.
Above all, there was a large lake on a nearby mountain peak, and a valley was formed from there, with water flowing down.
That valley is right next to it.
It was truly the perfect land for making rice paddies.
I stood looking out at the entrance and gave orders to the workers.
“Ok, let’s make a ridge first!”
“Yes!”
The workers, entranced by garaetteok, shouted at the tops of their voices while holding their shovels in a militant manner.
And then they ran and came to a screeching halt.
They asked me with puzzled faces:
“Nunim, but what is a ridge….?”
“Ah.”
I realized that I had not explained the rice fields sufficiently to them.
I called them together, and we squatted down in a circle.
Although the sight of huge men sitting around me, each holding a shovel, was very burdensome.
I said with a serious face:
“You have to farm rice to make rice. And you need rice paddies to farm rice!”
“Oh, oh.”
“Rice paddies are also called water fields; they are filled with water, and rice is grown there. There is a valley nearby, right? We are going to let the water flow from there to here and let it pool on one side. It will then flow into the rice paddies.”
“Oh, oh, oh.”
“Before that, we need to find a place to store it. Then, we will pile up the soil around the land that will become the rice paddies and create a ridge. That way, the water that flows in won’t escape.”
“That accumulated dirt is a ridge!”
I pointed my forefinger at the baldy, who suddenly raised his hand and shouted, and nodded as if he had done a good job.
“That’s right.”
A blush appeared on the baldy’s cheeks. He seemed embarrassed by the compliment.
Since it wasn’t a pretty sight, I quickly turned my head and continued speaking.
“That’s why I gave you the shovel. Half of you will dig from the valley, and the other half will make rice paddies here.”
“Yes!”
They were definitely knights.
Although I occasionally saw people stumbling around due to hangovers, most of them dug the ground without difficulty.
They were much better than Carl who’d drunk 10 carp juice packets!
That fact was enough to heighten my expectations for them, which had hit rock bottom.
‘Oh, they are more worth using than I’d thought.’
There are around 20 Black Falcon members.
Seeing as there are 10 people who are making a ridge in front of me.
‘Do they not have squires?’
I know that knights usually keep squires.
Well, come to think of it, the Shiaster duchy was a very closed-off place, considering it is located deep in the mountain.
It is said that almost no external manpower is used.
Even in the original novel, the Black Hawk were treated as a somewhat special group, so it was understandable that they had no squires.
While I was supervising their work for a while, I suddenly heard a familiar voice behind me.
“You looked so similar from the back, so I was wondering if it was possible. As expected, it’s Celia, right?”
“!”
“So the person developing food at the Shiaster residence is Celia! Wow, such a coincidence!”
I turned my stiff neck creakily.
There was the man I had met at the mill last time.
Fluffy pink hair, a good-looking face, and round glasses.
A man who seemed to have the words ‘No matter how much you bully me, I don’t hate you.’ written on his face was smiling at me.
“I am the person sent by the imperial family to receive training. Cedric Eihartz. Long time no see, Celia.”
Right. His name was Cedric.
I awkwardly lifted the corner of my mouth.
“Long time no see.”
I feel like I could hear the sound of him crying when I broke his glasses when I was young.
* * *
“Wow, last time when I met you at the mill in Sui, I was wondering if it was Celia. You rarely leave the house.”
Is Sui the name of the city I went to last time?
Instead of answering, I just laughed.
“Haha.”
“This is our first time meeting since graduation from the Academy, right? Has it been almost 7 years? I guess you’ve changed too.”
The pink-haired boy in my memories has now become an adult.
Well, it’s the memory of the body I transmigrated into. It’s not my memory.
Cedric carefully observed and recorded me making the rice paddies.
After that, he came to the annex with me and had tea time.
“It’s nice to see you too, Carl, after a long time.”
“Mr. Cedric, how long has it been since we met like this? How have you been?”
The two also seemed to know each other well, perhaps because we had been childhood friends.
They talked amicably without me.
Then Cedric suddenly looked at me and said:
“Even though it’s you, the Shiaster Duke family, are you not afraid?”
“Huh?”
Cedric’s face had a hint of worry.
“What are you talking about?”
“As expected. It’s not a big deal for you.”
“No, what does that mean…”
“You have been brave and strong since young, Celia.”
“…..”
Cedric’s pink eyes turned dim, putting aside me raising questions.
It was a hazy look that traced back to the distant past.
It felt like a very hard iron wall that couldn’t hear anything I said.
“I’m a crybaby and am easily afraid, so I always got help from you. Phew.”
“So,”
“You don’t have to worry. Even if Duke Shiaster is a murderer who brutally killed his father and brother.”
“….?”
“So, despite his elegant appearance, some people call him a monster duke.”
Gasp?
Excuse me. I think even I should be worried about that, right?
I thought Cedric was going to repeat what Elston said a few days ago!
‘This is a rumor that everyone in the know knows. It is said that among transcendentalists there are sometimes people who remember their past lives.’
I looked back and forth with my mouth wide open between Cedric, who still had a dim look in his eye, and Carl, who was reminiscing about the past next to him.
Even though my pupils were rolling faster and faster, they weren’t even paying attention to me.
‘What do you mean, Dazar killed the former duke and his brother?’
Ah. Is that the bloody storm Elston was talking about back then?
‘It’s because of the bloody storm that blew through the Shiaster duchy in the past.’
No matter how much I search my mind, I can’t remember anything, so I guess it happened when I was obsessed with farming or when I was young.
“Well, even excluding His Excellency the Duke, ‘that’ Shiaster is here.”
“Who is ‘that’ Shiaster,”
“Ohh, scary. So I freaked out when they told me to learn the work here.”
“No,”
“Even if I come here sometimes, Celia… As expected, you’re amazing. Phew.”
“……”
As I look at this pigheaded person… I began to sliigghtly understand Celia who cruelly tormented him.
‘By the way, he’s a person that the more you dig, the more strange things come out.’
Dazar Shiaster.
I tried to feel a bit of a sense of kinship since we both remember our past lives. But in an instant, a sense of distance appeared again.
* * *
An all-white room without a speck of dust.
The owner of the room, which was all white from the desk to the chair, floor, and ceiling, was holding a letter on a white sofa.
“Is that how it went?”
It was a reply to the letter sent the other day.
Elston, who read the reply from the first sentence to the last sentence again, slightly frowned.
Recalling someone who would have written a reply while smiling like a drawing. Elston muttered:
“Dazar must have betrayed God.”
Elston, with a cold face, placed the reply on the table. Then he leaned back comfortably on the table.
“Seeing as he probably recognized Ruben, but he kept him alive.”
Ruben.
It was the name of the being that Celia found in the study the other day.
Elston twisted his lips.
“Considering his abilities, there is no way he wouldn’t notice.”
The Shiaster family’s unique abilities were special among the transcendentalists. They were inseparable from Ruben from birth.
Elston burned the letter in front of him with magic to remove all traces of it and stood up.
“As you said back then, it was a good idea to send the demon to Dazar. Thanks to you, I learned that he may have betrayed God.”
Demon, you say.
It was a world that didn’t quite match Elston, the timid Wizardry Tower lord.
“Then, as Celia said, let’s do our work as a ‘dark curtain.’”
Elston hummed and took out another letter.
Unlike the previous ordinary letter, there was a symbol engraved on it that felt sacred. It was a special letter created for the purpose of communicating directly with the owner of the letter.
“I don’t really want to contact this strange woman, but I have no choice. This is my role.”
Elston suddenly thought about it and thought, I am the only normal person around me.
Without even thinking about the golden rattle in his arms.
💞💗❤️سلام خیلی ممنون الهی به خواسته قلب خودتون برسین