A maid came running from behind, clearly panicked.
“Miss, there’s dirt on your shoes!”
It was inevitable that dirt would get on my shoes while inspecting various crops in the estate.
The maids accepted this with resigned cries. They knew that otherwise, they wouldn’t get to eat the potatoes.
But apparently, seeing dirt on my shoes in front of other nobles was unbearable.
“Brisa? Do you want to see something? What should we look at?”
Alphius, who had approached me, picked me up in his arms.
I said slowly,
“I think we should dig a little. Is there a shovel nearby?”
“Maybe at a nearby farmhouse? Wait a moment!”
Alphius quickly set me down and dashed off like the wind.
Normally, he could have sent a servant, but Alphius wasn’t used to delegating yet. Even now, he had a habit of moving himself whenever I suggested something.
‘My mistake,’ I thought with a sigh.
‘I should have taught the marquis that even if his little sister mutters about needing a shovel, he shouldn’t fetch it himself.’
Even after teaching him how to handle a hundred situations, it still wasn’t enough.
A leader who sets an example might be admired in the mercenary guild, but a marquis running to fetch a shovel would earn complaints.
The maid looked away with a “Well, she’s not our lady” expression, and Wendy didn’t even seem to know what was wrong.
Only Gilav seemed to understand and gave a small snicker. He must have heard rumors about Alphius suddenly becoming the Marquis of Sears.
Soon, Alphius returned with a shovel.
“Phew, the owners weren’t around! I left a coin just in case. Good job, right? I mean, it could be a very precious shovel, you know?”
I’m sure the only noble who actually saw the coin was Alphius himself.
Gilav’s mouth dropped in shock. “A coin… you carry it around?”
Alphius cheerfully shouted,
“Now, let’s dig!”
It would have been even funnier if I had told Wendy to dig instead.
Alphius scooped up a pile of dirt with the shovel.
Leopold and Gilav muttered, “What are they doing…,” but Baron Foreman raised his hand decisively.
“Watch closely.”
The Baron warned sharply,
“Trust the lady.”
Gilav frowned and asked, “What?”
I didn’t hesitate and touched the dirt Alphius had scooped up. As I expected…
I turned to Gilav immediately and said,
“First of all, the tomatoes didn’t get like this because of monsters.”
“Huh?”
“Come here and touch it.”
“…Touch the dirt? What if microbes in it get into my body?”
Gilav panicked.
“Step aside, then.”
Leopold came forward and touched the dirt on the shovel. He was silent for a moment, then said,
“It’s cold.”
“Yes, it’s cold. Even though it’s mid-summer.”
The dirt was extremely cold, almost like ice.
I looked at Gilav and explained,
“Tomatoes are very sensitive to soil temperature. Even if the air is warm, cold roots cause immediate physiological problems. And the soil here is extremely cold.”
As soon as Gilav heard that the tomatoes had changed color, he immediately issued an evacuation order. No wonder the farmers didn’t have time to examine them carefully.
If the farmers who tended the tomatoes had looked closely, they might have realized it was cold damage.
But since Gilav only thought about monsters, he never considered checking the tomatoes directly.
Of course, Leopold and the other Western knights had no knowledge of crops either.
“That’s even worse!”
Gilav stomped his feet.
“It’s mid-summer! How can the soil suddenly be cold overnight? That’s too strange!”
“Right, it’s strange,” I nodded calmly.
“And luckily, there’s one unusual clue.”
Gilav jumped around nervously.
“What? Why is that lucky? Are you saying this isn’t your land?”
“The more clues we have, the better. Don’t ask if we have to explain this—at the academy, you were the kind of student who understood one thing if taught one.”
I pointed to the warp and explained,
“The warp malfunctioned. Warps are heavily affected by magical fields… which means the magical field around here is very unusual.”
“Hmm?”
“Something that can suddenly distort the magical field and make the soil cold overnight… what else could it be?”
“Mana stone.”
Leopold answered faster than Gilav.
“Of course.”
I shrugged.
“A student who knows two things when taught one is different.”
“You don’t see much, Brisa.”
Leopold replied casually.
“I know about three things if taught one. Watch carefully.”
He signaled his knights.
“Dig up the soil around the areas where the tomatoes’ colors are especially strange. Mana stones must be buried there.”
The knights followed his order, went to empty farmhouses, fetched shovels, and began digging.
Alphius looked on with a worried expression. He even declared he would leave coins at each farmhouse.
“What if it’s a shovel someone promised to use only a hundred times in their life?”
The literary-minded young man had quite an imagination.
“Maybe it’s someone’s precious keepsake, or contains irreplaceable memories…”
“Then just leave a silver coin instead.”
“That won’t do. We need to make a living too.”
Fortunately, he could compromise with reality.
Leopold and Gilav watched this together. Alphius probably didn’t know it, but the boys were judging his every move.
He was the new heir of the five major families. A young man who would represent Sears.
‘Wow.’
I sighed inwardly.
‘We’re doomed.’
I had taught him the proper etiquette for visiting estates, but I never imagined this situation.
Suddenly falling into a field…
I shook my head and muttered,
“It’s impossible for Alphius to pretend to be a nobleborn given his background.”
The maid whispered,
“Miss… that was impossible from the start… if you really wanted that, your dream was too big…”
In the original story, darkened Alphius was somewhat fine.
But without the dark turn, his full self-esteem made it difficult to heal the protagonist syndrome.
“Ah, really! It’s a mana stone!”
Soon, the knights began lifting blue stones from the soil with their shovels.
“Mana stones!”
“Congratulations, Gilav.”
I shrugged at him.
“Finding so many of those rare mana stones… if you sell them at the Mage Tower, you could make a lot of money.”
“Oh? Uh…”
Gilav looked stunned.
Earlier, he had been stomping around angrily, but now he just stared blankly.
“But… how did the tomato field become a mana stone field in just one day? Is that even possible?”
“Do you think it’s possible? Mana stones don’t have seeds that scatter like dandelions.”
I shrugged.
“Someone buried them. They’re all processed already.”
Gilav’s eyes widened as if he realized something.
“Ah! You didn’t know tomatoes are sensitive to cold?”
“No.”
I said firmly,
“I just didn’t know you’d panic so much.”
The tomatoes had wilted slightly, but not turned completely green. It could have been ignored as just frost damage.
But scaredy-cat Gilav immediately treated it as a full-blown emergency.
“Who… who buried them?”
“The Mage Tower stopped the warp while the dark mages were operating illegal warps. When the tower restored the warp faster than expected, they got stuck. So they probably buried them in the nearest field. If they hadn’t buried them, the cold would spread in the air and be discovered quickly.”
Leopold said, crossing his arms.
