Taming a Munchkin

The retainers gaped, failing to hide their regrettable expressions. She felt a surge of shame coursing from head to toe.

‘… Should I just die now and get reincarnated again?’

Her knees stung so much that the tears welling up in her eyes were threatening to fall. Not only did she fall, but she also couldn’t even stand up or say a word, with tears welling up in her eyes. And so the retainers started to frantically shake their arms and heads.

“No, it’s okay! My Lady…!”

“That’s right. We never saw a thing, My Lady!”

“It’s true. We really didn’t see anything!”

To ensure that the child who would grow into a true Grand Duke wouldn’t lose spirit, the retainers did their best to negate what happened earlier. Kynemeia wiped her tears with the back of her hand.

“… Is that true?”

“Y-Yes.”

Should I try anew?

She felt as if she would succeed this time around. The corners of Kynemeia’s lips lifted stealthily.

‘Gosh, being in power is…!’

As she was intoxicated with self-assurance and about to stand up, Eian sneakily approached her with none the wiser, positioned his hands beneath her arms and easily hoisted her up.

“…?!”

Her eyes widened. Eian didn’t care whether other people were surprised or not, he just softly deposited her onto her chair. And then he stated with a clueless expression,

“Since it seems like you can’t go up by yourself.”

“Ah…”

The retainers once again let out a collective regrettable sigh among themselves. Kynemeia hid her face behind her hands. Noticing her despair, the retainers began to berate Eian without fear.

“The Lady could’ve sat down by herself!”

“The Lady did not trip! She was simply sitting down!”

“That’s right! It was only because her legs are a bit on the shorter end!”

“You rascal! Insolent scoundrel! Fiendish knave! The Lady might just be as small as rat dung right now, but if she drinks more milk she’ll grow even bigger than you are!”

“Rat dung! What sort of ridiculous slur is that against the Lady?! The Lady is simply a faaaairy! She hasn’t completed her transformation into a human yet, that’s why she is smaller than average!”

“No matter how dainty and adorable the Lady is, what’s up with ‘faaaaairy’?! How indecent!”

“Don’t you know that only those who possess a kind heart can perceive the faaaaaairy’s wings?!”

“Hey, then are you saying I have a wicked heart?!”

“Isn’t that a given?! You can’t even see the faaaaaairy’s wings!”

Of course, it just escalated into a far more embarrassing situation. As the retainers were mired in an uproar, Kynemeia shed a tiny tear.

* * *

“… Onto the next matter. We’ve discovered three unidentified aerial creatures that appear to be monsters off the coast.”

It was only after 15 minutes had passed that Kynemeia and the retainers finally calmed down. During that interval, Kynemeia kept on thinking along the lines of ‘I wanna die.’, ‘Should I jump out of here?’, ‘Am I that short?’ and having collected herself after some time, she told the retainers to sit down in a stern manner. The meeting started at long last after the retainers were seated.

“Really?”

“Yes. The aerial creatures were shot to death by the archers who were on standby as soon as they found them. That’s why, fortunately, no one got injured and the village also didn’t suffer any damage. Right now, they are investigating whether a new dungeon is popping up nearby or not.”

Monsters… Kynemeia became absorbed in her own thoughts. Monsters were creatures that mutated from spirits or mystical animals. Their natural instincts were to pillage villages and harm the people. However, to the people with power, monsters made for good prey. That was because one could obtain money, weapons, and armour as a by-product of the monsters.

‘Now that I think about it, I think they haven’t started to use monsters as raw materials for production. In the original work, they only began to do so after a few years…’

Seeing Kynemeia immersed in her thoughts, Count Dennis shot Baron Romeo a fierce look. Baron Romeo nodded his head.

“The aerial creatures flew like this, My Lady.”

Baron Romeo spread his arms and began flapping them as if they were wings with a serious expression.

“…?”

“Flap, flap. You’ve seen a lot of birds, haven’t you? They’re like birds but much bigger and very bad.”

He started flapping his arms even harder as he studied her, but when he noticed her lack of reaction, he beckoned for help from the other retainers. And so everyone flapped their arms. They were all handsome middle-aged men, but seeing four mature men flapping their arms like some avant-gardists wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience.

A vacant look entered a flustered Kynemeia’s eyes, and Eian who had been watching over quietly next to her whispered.

“I think they’re all crazy. Should I kill them?”

“I-It’s a misunderstanding.”

The retainer uncles weren’t crazy, they were just earnest in their work. Maybe…

“Then those… captured flapping stuff, what happens to them?”

“The carcasses of those monsters will be sold among the merchant soldiers.”

“Romeo, you can stop flying now.”

“Understood, I shall descend.”

Baron Romeo put down his arms.

“Speaking of, isn’t it time to switch out the weaponry?”

At Count Dennis’s question, Baron Romeo nodded.

“Yes, that is true. I’ll put up the budget proposal soon.”

“The funding will most likely shoot up because of the monsters’ poison.”

“There’s nothing we can do. It’s a poison that can even melt iron, after all.”

Count Brunn shook his head. The blood of the monsters that constantly invaded villages is entirely poisonous. And because that poison could easily dissolve iron, weapons and armours must be replaced every so often.

Hmm, as Kynemeia watched the retainers mutter among themselves, her eyes wandered. Her late father did accumulate quite a lot of money—but if the funds started soaring gradually like this, the fief would soon be on the breadline, and they wouldn’t be able to adorn new weaponry and deal with the monsters. Dark clouds pervaded her mind.

‘Angry villagers.’

‘Evil Lady of Lyonne.’

‘Resentment.’

‘The guillotine.’

SLIC—

Agh! Kynemeia clenched her fist.

‘I need to ameliorate the state of affairs…!’

What they needed was not just any weapon, but weaponry that could capture monsters. But according to the original work in her memories, the people who possessed the strength and ability to process the monsters’ carcass only appeared much later.

‘We need Aura to chop monsters after all.’

Even if one managed to create Aura after putting in hard labour, usually they would walk the path of knighthood instead of the blacksmith. Moreover, to create quality goods, they would need to own a technique of their own.

However.

‘If we have Behemoth…!’

Behemoth referred to the two arms dealers that would pass by the battlefield in the north two years in the future. In the story, Behemoth was the best among the skilled artisans to the extent that people said there were no minerals in this world they couldn’t ply. Those ladies were also the ones who forged a sword for the protagonist’s party.

The reason why Behemoth had to personally wander into the battlefield as arms dealers, despite having acclaimed technical skills, was because they were under false charges. They were barely scraping by with commissions in the mouth of the countryside, but then they were falsely accused of murder. They ran away before settling down in the snowy fields in the northern borders of the Empire, but…

‘I should use this chance to bring them over.’

If she could bring Behemoth over before they were falsely accused, with good weaponry, the fief would be secure and the funds wouldn’t skyrocket either.

‘I can also bid adieu to the revenge killing future!’

Kynemeia soon made up her mind and met the eyes of the retainers with a broad grin on her face.

“… Uhm.”

Only

Then her eyes wandered off again.

‘I wonder what I should say.

‘That I’m bringing over two unknown ladies to construct weapons? If they ask how I found out about them, replying with ‘You see, they’re the ladies that appeared in the book I read in my previous life,’ is definitely no good.’

“Uhmm…”

As Kynemeia deliberated on whether she should say it or not, her mouth agape, the retainers clenched their fist as a way to support her.

‘Agh! No! You don’t have to do that! It’s so burdensome!’

But the retainers, their expression evincing they couldn’t comprehend her feelings, started to shake their two fists in support of her.

‘… It’s driving me crazy so stop it!’