On My First Day Undercover, the Organization Collapsed - Chapter 431

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

First Day of Infiltration, The Organization Was Destroyed — Episode 431
Borrowing Land (1)
Berte set to work immediately. The Steelheart Territory had no shortage of empty ground.
For accessibility, he chose a location near where the territorial residents lived, and began selecting the site and preparing the land.
“What construction project is it this time?”
“They say the lord is building a school?”
“A school? What kind of school? A knight order? Or a security guard post?”
“I hear it’s supposed to be a place for educating the people of our territory.”
“What, is it going to teach us how to farm better?”
Just as Berte had initially thought, the territorial residents refused to believe such a facility could possibly be for them.
Reasonably so. What lord in the world would commission an educational facility of such scale, claiming he meant to teach his own people?
“He must be preparing for when our territory grows enormous—then he’ll use it to train knights or guards.”
“Our lord has plenty of money. He can throw something like this together without blinking.”
“You don’t think he’ll come after us later to pay back debts, do you?”
“Our lord would never do such a thing! He’s the kind who worries about us—catching wild cats at night to help, fixing our wells. That kind of man!”
“But… well, there was that one failure. Oliver’s first love.”
“Ah. That was obviously impossible. Who in the world gets rejected on the spot for not being able to stop saying ‘I like you’ for ten whole minutes?”
Unfortunate tales aside, the territorial residents’ reaction was decidedly positive.
But that shifted to astonishment when Ziel’s next declaration came.
“The subject matter is irrelevant. We are recruiting instructors for the facility once construction is complete. Those selected will receive salary and bonuses.”
Naturally, applications surged.
Most of the Steelheart Territory’s people had spent their entire lives farming and living as commoners under various lords, but there were certainly exceptions among them.
“You said the subject didn’t matter, right? Then maybe I’ll do… writing? I wrote a bit of fiction when I was younger. Got driven out for botching the satire, but that’s another story.”
“Then maybe I’ll take tailoring…”
True to Ziel’s word, subject matter was irrelevant.
If someone possessed knowledge worth teaching, they qualified.
“But you teach in the Capital, don’t you? Do they do this sort of thing there too?”
“I’d think not. The Capital is for teaching swordsmanship and magic, right? Doubt they teach just anything…”
The residents harbored doubts. Understandably.
An Academy typically meant an institution educating nobles and a tiny fraction of commoners or the poor in swordsmanship and magic, at best adding unrelated subjects like the arts or military strategy.
“Boss, wouldn’t it be better to divide things into swordsmanship and magic from the start? At this rate, it seems like we’ll end up teaching everything under the sun…”
Even Gilbert ventured a cautious suggestion, but Ziel’s thinking ran differently.
“Swordsmanship and magic matter, but what these people need is systematic education. They must learn to read and master practical knowledge for their daily lives. Teaching anything and everything—that’s what matters.”
Ziel understood this well, for he was an educator himself.
He knew how vital education truly was.
“If I hadn’t taught them, the junior year students wouldn’t have grown so much.”
“Ah!”
Gilbert understood at once and nodded vigorously.
“I grasp it completely, Boss!”
In any case, for these reasons, a variety of subjects would be offered. Beginning with the Empire’s common language, then agriculture, commerce, and of course swordsmanship and magic as well.
After all, talent in swordsmanship and magic knows no station.
‘So he means to gather talented people regardless of birth, I see!’
This time too, it was only half a misunderstanding.
Ziel harbored no intention of dismantling class hierarchy.
His purpose was simply to teach them and put them to efficient use.
‘If I teach them properly, they all become subordinates of this territory.’
With the family’s restoration, his subordinates kept multiplying.
And they were subordinates he could put to efficient use!
Immediately available as active forces were ten survivors—Rob and the security guards among them—and the Mystics who’d agreed to work for life in exchange for avoiding execution.
But that wasn’t all.
Support personnel even arrived from each family!
“Gibson.”
“Yes, Master!”
“Build roads and houses on the empty spaces throughout the territory. Make arrangements so the maximum number of people can settle here.”
“Understood! I will make it surpass the family’s ancient glory!”
The family’s ancient glory.
According to the records, the Steelheart Territory once extended to the southern coast where Ziel had traveled.
Originally founded there, the Steelheart Family had declined repeatedly until forced to this region.
So Ziel asked.
“Gibson, what would I need to do to expand the territory?”
“Territory……you say? Do you mean to expand the Steelheart Territory?”
Thump-thump!
At Ziel’s question, Gibson’s heart began to race.
‘Could the Master possibly……!’
Was he about to restore Steelheart to its former glory!
“Expanding the territory means engaging in a territorial duel.”
“A duel over land and family honor? Like in the Northern Region?”
“Precisely. In the North they call it a struggle, but in the Western Region, we call it a ‘duel.'”
“A duel.”
It sounded like a name that suited the Western Region.
“However, at present it is an almost forgotten tradition.”
“Why did it fade away?”
As Ziel asked with evident regret, Gibson’s response was equally tinged with disappointment.
“I confess, I find it most lamentable as well. At some point, the damage between families became so severe that everyone began to avoid it. When everyone is cautious, the most vital justifications rarely emerge.”
“Hmm. Is it a rule, then?”
“A rule……not quite, but rather an unwritten law.”
“Then it poses no obstacle.”
“Pardon?”
Ziel had already conceived of the most efficient approach.
“The Rim Family Territory is the closest neighboring estate to mine, is it not?”
“That is……wait. Surely you don’t intend to seize their territory?”
“No, I won’t seize it. The Rim Family has done nothing of late that would warrant losing their lands.”
He exhaled slowly.
A duel without justification was as dangerous as anything could be.
Even if one profited in the immediate moment, it would all return in the end!
“Then why the Rim Family……?”
“Since I cannot seize the land, I will ask to lease it.”
……
Lease the land?
Gibson’s unease was beginning to deepen.
* * *
The Rim Family Mansion had been cut away entirely.
In its place, a few small huts had been built.
This was where Rolte Rim, the Family Head, and his kin now resided.
He felt he might die of shame.
A noble family head—he had prided himself on his standing—yet here he was, reduced to this!
His wife wept daily, and the children, unable to bear the weight of so many stares, had shut themselves inside the huts.
The servants still attended to their duties, but he could read the hidden glances beneath their bowed heads.
Everything was in ruins.
One could say the family was on the verge of total collapse!
Yet something strange was stirring in this Rim Territory.
“Has our lord finally come to his senses?”
“I thought he’d squeeze us for every last copper, and instead he builds huts…….”
“Perhaps fear of that Ziel Steelheart fellow keeps him from doing whatever he pleases?”
“Bah, as if a Family Head concerns himself with the welfare of his own people. Let’s count it a blessing that he’s regained some reason at all. At least there’s hope in that, isn’t there?”
The people of this territory had been squeezed far more harshly than those who had once lived under the old Steelheart Territory during the Rim Family’s exploitation.
Yet since that day, the Rim Family had inflicted nothing further upon their subjects.
One would only occasionally catch sight of the Rim Family Head sitting blank-eyed by the roadside.
Some said it themselves.
That he had lost his mind.
In truth, he had nearly done so.
Though he had pledged cooperation to Steelheart, the moment he beheld the empty mansion grounds and their surroundings, his mind went utterly white.
‘I am finished.’
The mansion was gone, and while valuable items remained, they were insufficient to rebuild anything approaching his former grand estate.
And what use was building a mansion in any case?
There was nothing to fill it with.
So for now, he needed to survive—thus he built the huts.
That was all.
‘All I have left is the mining business……and even that’s exhausted its profitability now.’
His mind simply would not turn over.
At this rate, the Family will go bankrupt!
Like Steelheart Territory in the old days—completely gutted, torn to pieces, picked clean.
‘First, I have to rebuild the mansion. No matter what!’
Others would point fingers, say he hadn’t come to his senses yet, but for Rolte, the mansion was pride itself—everything.
At least it had to look grand and imposing on the surface, or there was no saving face.
‘But the rumors have spread by now…… The Imperial Bank won’t lend to us anyway.’
The Rim Family’s finances had collapsed entirely.
No other noble house would help once word got out.
Ziel wouldn’t care, of course, but everyone else was watching the Steelheart Family’s every move, crawling on their bellies to stay in line!
And so the Rim Family had become a lonely outcast on a forgotten island.
Not a single noble house would lift a finger.
And then, into this exact situation, came a visitor.
“Family Head, Family Head! Z-Ziel Steelheart, the Family Head, has arrived!”
“What—what did you say? Why now?”
“I’m not entirely sure myself…….”
Rolte’s heart hammered in his chest.
He fumbled nervously.
“L-let’s go inside…… B-but we don’t have a mansion, do we?”
“Because Ziel Steelheart, the Family Head, cut it down and carried it off…….”
…….
The very man who’d destroyed the mansion had now arrived with nowhere to receive him.
In the end, Rolte found himself facing Ziel in front of a hut.
And steeling himself to take the blow head-on, he opened his mouth.
“As you can see, we have no proper dwelling at the moment, so I must ask you to the hut…….”
“Right. I took the mansion. Currently destroyed it and turned it into materials.”
Destroyed it?
The back of his neck prickled.
Was this what it felt like for blood to rush backward?
“Thanks to it, my own mansion construction is accelerating.”
Rolte, fortunately, lacked the courage to attack him.
“……What brings you here, then?”
Though he’d resolved to cooperate without limit, the bitterness in his chest couldn’t be entirely hidden; his voice came out low.
Ziel glanced around the surroundings and asked.
“I’ve come to rent land.”
“Pardon?”
“Do you have a hearing problem?”
…….
This was a problem that warranted questioning one’s own ears.
‘What did I just hear?’
Rent land?
“I’ve come to rent land from your territory.”
“Our land……? You’ve come to rent our land?”
“My territory has too many people and insufficient land.”
Ziel answered simply.
He’d responded to the question, but Rolte couldn’t take it at face value.
‘Could it be that this dog Ziel was aiming for this all along……!’
Now the blood truly rushed to the top of his head!
In the old days, even in the Western Region, “duels” had been rampant.
Conflicts between families erupted countless times daily, and defeated families lost their lands.
It was a savage era where no order existed.
The Rihart Family had ended that age.
They appeared suddenly one day, seized vast territories, and rose to dominance in the Western Region. After that, when the Valdrain Empire’s land confiscation policy took hold as well, duels ceased altogether.
There was no point fighting when all seized land would simply become the Empire’s property anyway.
The Steelheart Family’s restoration had only been possible because they were given back confiscated land by the Empire.
In any case, for those reasons, the practice of families seizing each other’s territories had at least disappeared.
But a far more devious method had emerged!
‘I should have seen it coming! Taking everything away, and then……was this his endgame all along!’
But it wasn’t.
Ziel had simply come because he genuinely needed land.
He really had come to rent it.
“Will you consent?”
“…….”
And if he refused here?
Then, backed by the Emperor’s favor and the willful blindness of every Western noble, they might well obliterate the Rim Family entirely.
“……I understand.”
A humiliating acceptance.
It was just as Rolte was steeling himself to repay this debt someday, to swear vengeance—
“I’ll pay five hundred thousand Sel as a one-month rental for the area I have in mind.”
“……I beg your pardon?”
Rolte doubted his own ears for a moment.
‘That’s… far too much.’
Could he possibly be asking to rent the entire Rim Family Territory?
“How, how large an area are we speaking of?”
Ziel raised his hand.
“From here to where that windmill is visible.”
“…….”
Rolte asked carefully.
“Are you certain you don’t need more land?”

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————