When I finally woke up last year in autumn after a full month of sleeping, I had a lot of work to catch up on even though I was still recovering. Now that six months have pa.s.sed since then, things have finally settled down.

Also, because of the battle at Fort Jugfena and me being asleep an entire month, the refugee acceptance plan has gone way off track. Originally, starting in summer, we were supposed to start by accepting 50 refugees in the first month. In the end, we were supposed to receive around 1200 new citizens, but because most of the refugees at Fort Jugfena had been killed, in the end Kaldia is only going to gain about 300 new citizens from the refugees.

Also, as for the Shiru tribe, they were much more in number than what I had a.s.sumed. At first I had heard that there would be about 40 of them, but even if there were three times that number, with 120 of them, integration should still be reasonably achievable.

However, in the end there had still been 300 of them hiding in the Bandishia Plateau that ended up joining me, a much larger number than expected. It’s quite impressive that so many of them were able to shake off such a large pursuing Densel force for over a month.

Together, it’s 600 new citizens, but it’s still only half the original number of new citizens that were supposed to have joined. They were supposed to help in constructing the new village as well, but with this I’m going to have to redo my plans from scratch.

After all, half of them are the Shiru tribe, who are nomadic, meaning they roam often and don’t stay in one location for very long, so they have very little knowledge in construction. And on top of that, they’re also not very well versed in agriculture and farming.

Having come west of the Bandishia Plateau to Kaldia, they’re going to have to adjust their lifestyles and construct homes for themselves. Usually it seems that they construct homes from the earth and stone rather than wood. Unfortunately, stone as a building material in Kaldia…… is almost nonexistent.

Since I don’t have the time or money, for now all I can do is supply wood as building materials. Also, I’m having clay prepared, to be made into bricks.

Although I also hope to attract people to immigrate to my domain, it’s only a slight hope, first I still have to work my way through this current problem.

What’s more, because the person in charge of overseeing the village construction was Kamil who pa.s.sed away, there’s the issue of who to put in charge from now on. Finding someone from here that knows how to speak the Artolan language, so that mutual understanding can be easily achieved for everyone to work together, seems very difficult to do.

There had also been 30 soldiers originally helping with the village construction, but 20 had been recalled to go to Fort Jugfena’s battle and there were only 10 working there still. Although I had mentally prepared myself that this may happen, due to the casualties suffered in that battle, now we no longer have enough surplus troops to send soldiers to help aid the construction again.

In the end, I decided to move the village construction farther west, much closer to the area under my direct control in the Kaldia domain. It’s become that things are now moving ahead of schedule.

Also, just because I was asleep for a month doesn’t mean that there was no paperwork to be done during that time, after the battle I had to repeatedly go back and forth between Kaldia and the royal capital, with no time to rest because too much work had piled up.

– The above just took me about thirty minutes to explain to Ratoka who was glaring at me. Finally, he spoke up with a sulk.

“So, you’re saying you were so busy that you completely forgot about me.”

His voice, while calm, definitely sounded angry and cold. I feel like it might almost be better if he were screaming and yelling at me instead.

“No, it’s just that I had a lot of work to finish before I could meet up with you, that’s what I just explained.”

“Is that something you say to someone you’ve barely talked to and left alone for almost a year?”

While I haven’t talked to him much lately, his education has still been continuing, so his words have gotten more eloquent. His red eyes and even gestures are so similar to mine, it’s definitely caught my interest.

“……Even if you say I left you alone, I don’t have a use for you right now.”

When those words left my mouth, a vein started bulging on his forehead.

“Or maybe, could it be, you wanted attention from me even though I’m younger?”

“Do you want to get beaten up!!”

“Whoops, be careful not to let disrespectful words slip out there.”

As I watched Ratoka, also known as “Elise,” I couldn’t help but let out a laugh at his face turning red in anger and frustration. Being snarky towards him as a form of stress release, why did I develop this kind of habit, I wonder.

I dodged his fist that was aimed at my shoulder, and I felt a nostalgic feeling like I was in the barracks, exchanging banter with the soldiers.