Raising the Grand Duke of the North as a Farmer Behind Dad’s Back - Chapter 18

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 18
“No, I just have to prove I’m useful to this territory!”
I resumed my pace with renewed vigor, my heart considerably lighter.
‘Perfect! That’s settled!’
I’d purify the pillar completely, and work hard to help the territory!
‘Keep becoming a benefactor, keep going!!’
And I’d spend my Holy Power strategically.
‘From now on, I’ll save fifty percent of what I earn for Father, and invest the other fifty percent in the pillar!’
Of course, I had no intention of spending my own Life Force for the pillar again.
If I died carelessly, I wouldn’t be able to save Father. And if that caused Muco Syndrome to emerge sooner, it would be even worse.
‘It’s the kind of sickness where your Life Force drains away and your body’s functions fail one by one.’
Before I knew it, my steps had turned into a run—thump-thump-thump!
Once I’d settled my thoughts, my spirits lifted again, and a rush of tasks I’d need to do swept through my mind like a cascade.
Basil, who’d noticed my presence long ago, was watching me with an unmistakably displeased expression. Ruden threw down his shovel and ran over, saying he’d fall.
Beautiful muscles laboring beneath the brilliant sun!
I broke into the brightest smile and spread both arms wide.
“Good morning, everyone! It’s a beautiful day!”
Bound-bound-bound!
Bedel Village farmland reclamation!
Currently in full swing!
* * *
Afternoon.
“Camilla.”
Basil lifted his head.
“Should I write my will?”
“By all means.”
“Good. The name of the criminal who killed me is that vicious little hippopotamus…”
“Isn’t that a Dying Message?”
Camilla dumped fertilizer with a shovel and scattered it evenly, her tone flat.
“Ah… I suppose so…”
Basil, still holding the massive shovel, looked up at the sky.
Clear. Perfectly clear and bright.
Really beautiful weather.
But…
‘Why do I feel like I’m going to die so soon?’
Ugh.
‘I swear, this is harder than the Mad Dragon Subjugation Battle…’
But there was no rest to be had.
“Your Highness! Your arm movements are slower than they were before! Keep up the pace—two shovelfuls per second!”
That clear, ringing voice lashed against his back like a whip.
Ugh.
“If we keep going like this, we won’t finish this section today! And then think how disappointed Your Highness will be tomorrow!”
Uuugh!
“Huh? Ruden? Why are you… resting? Sion! Diana! Carlos! Should we… rotate? Is it time to bring Haniel in?”
“I-I’m working! Stay where you are!”
Ruden cried out in alarm.
The other Supply Unit knights were no different.
Honestly… they ought to have been under confinement as punishment for deceiving Basil.
‘Confinement? Not a chance.’
Here, being pushed around by that little hippopotamus was punishment of the highest order.
Over the past few days.
They’d squeezed water from their mouths until their breath turned sour, overturned soil with shovels, spread lime to adjust acidity, and dug channels to divide the fields into plots.
It was basic reclamation work to transform land that had slumbered for so long into farmland.
And beyond that, there were mountains of other tasks.
1. Harvest barley and secure seeds
2. Repair abandoned houses in the village
3. Maintain the main roads
And so on and so forth…
A hundred bodies wouldn’t have been enough.
In fact, a few days ago, when Basil saw the carts laden with bundle after bundle of barley rolling in, his mind had gone rather distant.
“Barley farming…… how did you do it again?”
Of course, Ruden, who’d once dreamed of debuting as a professional farmer, had studied the basics well enough, but he was still a man who’d spent his whole life as a knight. Faced with the real thing, he floundered just the same.
Only Haniel remained calm.
“Hmm, you bought bundled barley instead of seeds. Actually, that works out better! There’s so much we can do with the leftover straw. So then, what we need to do now is…….”
The child held out a flail, her face shy.
“Do you like threshing?”
“…….”
Plump grains clinging to the end of the straw.
They beat the bundled barley eagerly to separate the grain.
Haniel bounced around like a clumsy puppy, busily gathering and hauling the scattered kernels that fell in every direction.
The grain they’d secured then had to dry in the Grand Duke’s Residence courtyard for about three days. Some process about letting the moisture evaporate, or whatever.
“It’s dry now. Can we plant it as is?”
“N-no! It has to be stored in a place with no moisture! At least a month! That’s when it gets into the perfect state to sprout!”
“How in the world do you know all that.”
“W-well…… next door to the Slums where I lived, there was a b-barley farming expert who lived there…….”
“Hm.”
“Anyway, let’s pick a storage room quickly!”
“In that case…… I think it would be best to keep it on the second floor of the Grand Duke’s Residence. There’s less moisture there, at least.”
Before Camilla finished speaking, Basil lost his bedroom.
‘Is there any Grand Duke out there who lost his bed to barley?’
Well…… there must be somewhere.
In any case, this afternoon Ruden was supposed to bring another cartload of leftover barley from the external storage, and they’d have to thresh and dry all of that too.
Basil trembled with dread.
“I never thought I’d have to work this hard.”
Fourteen hours a day of labor—is this really right?
But he couldn’t stop, not when the child would pick up a hoe as big as her own body and try to work if he took a rest.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
For all his complaining, his well-developed muscles betrayed him as they always did.
His body moved at a frenzied pace.
Though he’d have been embarrassed to admit it, there was something stirring about it.
The fact that he could still do something like this.
Thanks to the Dragon Vein, the land regenerated quickly. Pooled water evaporated rapidly or seeped down into the earth below.
For ground that had frozen and thawed, the foundation was surprisingly solid.
He’d worried a landslide might sweep down the mountain, but fortunately nothing of the sort occurred.
Had he thawed the land any other way, it would have been impossible.
‘……It’s all because of that child, though.’
“…….”
Basil glanced toward Haniel, sitting quietly on the field ridge.
Over the past few days.
Basil had learned several things about the child.
First of all.
No family.
“Now that I think about it, your family—”
“I don’t have one…….”
“You don’t? Then that ‘Papa’ in your sketchbook…….”
Basil closed his mouth at once.
‘Dead……then.’
There was no grief quite like this in the world.
It was an ordinary story. A father and daughter living in the Slums…… a baby left behind alone…….
‘Papa Hippopotamus…… may you find peace…….’
At least she turned out wonderfully, so maybe that was some comfort.
Second.
The way she used Holy Power was unusual.
“Well, I can…… imbue Holy Power into objects and use it like this.”
Haniel, holding Thumbs Up Stickers in both hands—absurdly cute ones at that.
The way she used Holy Power really was just like her.
‘No matter what, it’s clearly different from how ordinary priests use Holy Power.’
He finally understood why the child had clung so desperately to avoiding the temple.
‘Those obsessed old fools at the temple might take her as a research subject and haul her off to some laboratory.’
And then there was the matter of how she had to “accumulate” Holy Power, though the method of accumulation remained unclear.
But this could be something the child simply didn’t want to reveal.
Either way, to protect the child’s ability, it would be best to avoid exposing it to the outside.
For that, I’d need to keep her close and watch over her carefully.
Third point.
Behavior unbefitting a six-year-old.
‘Yes, this is the real problem.’
In truth, he’d found it remarkable that a child from the Slums had picked up reading and writing at all.
But then again…….
There could have been a literate adult living nearby by chance. He’d heard of eccentrics who occasionally wandered into the Slums to teach children their letters.
So he could overlook that much.
“You saw barley grains stuck to Ruden’s trousers and thought he’d bought barley bundles? And that suspicion alone made you start questioning him?”
“Yes!”
……
“Of course, it could be because he stopped by the stables……but those were barley grains! In the north, people feed horses or use oat straw for insulation, not barley!”
……
Did an ordinary six-year-old know such things?
‘Could she even tell the difference at a glance?’
The unexpected agricultural knowledge was another matter entirely.
“I—I just saw and heard a lot of things in the Slums…….”
‘What does it even mean to be six years old?’
Basil drove his spade into the earth with rhythmic thrusts, lost in fundamental philosophical questions. It seemed labor turned a man into a philosopher.
‘And what does it mean to act like a six-year-old anyway?’
What had he been doing at that age…….
Hmm.
If memory served, he’d probably been prowling the back alleys with a stone knife, stabbing rat bellies. Out of hunger.
……
Right, let him overlook the intelligence as well.
The world held six-year-olds living vastly different lives, each shaped by their own circumstances.
‘Besides, it’s said that children who awaken Holy Power tend to be unusually sharp anyway.’
Yet even so…….
There remained things he couldn’t make sense of.
A clever little thing. A little thing who wielded Holy Power.
All that could be forgiven. But what was truly hard to overlook was…….
“Wow! Soon it’ll be time for bread!”
The contradiction in that child.
Haniel stood up from where she’d been sitting at the edge of the field, brushing dust from her clothes.
Basil watched her with an expressionless gaze—sharp and cold, utterly piercing.
Did she not realize?
‘At first glance, she looks like an endlessly innocent commoner child.’
Yet she carried a strangely aristocratic manner of speech and bearing.

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