Chapter 73: 73

There were eight elven chiefs that came to request an audience with Siegfried, and if there were eight elven villages in the Proatine Territory, then it was safe to assume that every single elven chief had come to meet him.

“It is an honor to meet you, King of the Humans. I am the chief of the Sunset Village, Alexandro,” the eldest chief among the elves stepped forward and introduced himself as he greeted Siegfried.

The elf named Alexandro was an old yet beautiful elf.

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Chief Alexandro. My name is Siegfried van Proa, and I am the new ruler of the Proatine Province,” Siegfried greeted in response, and then he followed up with a question, “What brings you here today?”

“We are here today as representatives of our respective villages to express our gratitude to you,” Alexandro said.

“What do you mean by gratitude?” Siegfried shook his head and then continued, “I only righted a wrong, so I do not think that I did something deserving of gratitude.”

“Haha,” Alexandro laughed before he said, “You are quite humble, Lord Siegfried.”

“I am not being humble at all. I was just cleaning up the shit the previous lord shat. Ah, did you perhaps see it?” Siegfried asked. He was referring to Baron Verbon’s head that was hung on the castle walls.

“Yes, it is quite a handsome decoration,” Alexandro replied with a smile.

“That is my stand on the matter, so I hope that you would be able to forget the things that happened in the past. I am hoping to maintain a good relationship with the elves.”

“We understand what you mean. Things were already at a breaking point, but who knew things would turn out this way?”

“Huh? What do you mean by breaking point…?”

“Actually, we elves.. we were already fed up with how things were, and we could no longer just stand around and watch. That was why we requested help from our kingdom, and our king promised to send us an army by next week.”

“What you mean by that is…”

“Yes, it is what you are thinking. We had been preparing for war, and our kingdom was planning to send three orders of knights, one squadron of magicians, and five hundred warriors here to the Proatine Province.”

Alexandro’s words came as a huge shock.

“O-Oh my god!”

“The knight order of the elven kingdom!”

“Those soldiers will be more than enough to…”

Siegfried’s officials anxiously murmured amongst themselves. It was an understandable reaction since the territory would be burned down in an instant if the army that Alexandro had just mentioned waged war against them.

“You suddenly ascended the throne in the midst of it all, and you were the first to offer peace,” Alexandro said.

“I see…” Siegfried muttered in response.

“That is why we now think that there is no reason for war anymore. Do you agree?”

“That is correct. We do not wish to shed unnecessary blood.”

“I have decided to trust you, King of the Humans.”

“You will not regret your decision.”

“And this is a gift from us elves to you. This is in return for saving our daughters,” Alexandro said as he ordered a group of elves to bring a large chest into the hall and placed it in front of Siegfried.

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The chest was filled to the brim with gold and many specialty products of the elves.

‘Wow… how much are all of these worth…?’ 

Siegfried was surprised at the gift the elves had prepared for him, and he could roughly tell from the size of the chest that there had to be more than ten thousand gold in it.

Surprisingly, Siegfried didn’t instantly devour the present. “No, I cannot accept this.”

“Why? Is it not to your liking, or is it not enough?” Alexandro asked, seemingly taken aback by his response.

“I cannot receive monetary compensation for doing what is right.”

“Please do not think like that. Think of it this way then, you are blatantly ignoring the gratitude and sincerity of us elves if you refuse to accept this.”

“If you insist that I accept this…”

“…?”

“Then, please use these gold and treasures to improve the relationship between the elves and humans from now on.”

“Hmm?!”

“I heard that the lands we inhabit aren’t very secure. What do you think of creating a security force with humans and elves with this money? We can subjugate monsters and criminals together.”

Alexandro and the rest of the elven chiefs were so shocked that they couldn’t say anything in response to Siegfried’s words.

They had never imagined—even in their wildest dreams—that the human king would be the first to offer to cooperate and coexist with the elves!

The elven chiefs weren’t the only ones who were shocked.

‘H-How did he think of something so wise?!’

‘To think that he didn’t get blinded by greed and chose to put the security of the territory before anything else!’

‘Ah!’

The officials were surprised. After all, Siegfried’s decision would not only prevent a war from breaking out with the elven kingdom and establish an alliance with the elves, but it would also improve the stability and security of the territory.

‘My workload will be reduced if I do this, right?’

However, Siegfried had actually proposed that idea so that he wouldn’t have to work so hard in managing the territory and that he would have some degree of freedom.

***

The elven chiefs pondered for a bit, but they accepted Siegfried’s proposal in the end. It wasn’t that difficult for them to make a decision since the human king was the one who personally led his troops to rescue the captured elves.

After the elven chiefs left, Siegfried ordered...

“I shall bestow all rights and authorities to Dame Oscar concerning this issue, so please focus on improving the stability and security of our territory for the time being.”

“Yes, Your Majesty!”

“And I would like to ask each official to submit a report regarding the current affairs of our territory,” Siegfried added. He thought that he needed to have a rough idea of how things were going in his territory. After all, if he wanted to rule the territory properly, he had to know its current affairs, no matter how inconsequential it was.

“Your grace is overflowing, Your Majesty!” the officials bowed and exclaimed in response to his words.

The way they looked at him changed from wary to respectful in the proverbial blink of an eye.

***

The next morning, Tae-Sung woke up and took a shower just like any other day before eating a triangle kimbap and cup noodles for breakfast.

“Hoo…”

He had a jaw-dropping 1.1 billion won in his bank account, but his meal was still the usual convenience store food.

“Isn’t this going to end up holding me back…?” Tae-Sung grumbled with an anxious look while eating his triangle kimbap. He further grumbled, “Forget about leveling up… I might really end up playing SimCity at this rate if I continue to focus on running Proa…”

He had quite the dilemma as his priority had always been his own growth. However, he felt that it would be difficult for him to focus entirely on his own growth since he had already ascended the throne. He was sure that he would encounter more shit that Verbon shat while he was running the territory for the past decade.

Yes, forget about leveling up; he was even racking his brain about how he would manage his time from now on.

“Ah… what should I do? I wonder if there’s a talented individual out there who can help me with administrative work…? I want nothing more than to leave all responsibilities to them and disappear to level up…”

The real work hadn’t even started yet, but Tae-Sung was already thinking of ways to pass the responsibilities onto someone else.

Bzzt!

His phone suddenly vibrated and notified him of an incoming call. It was none other than the mysterious Ranker, Cheon Woo-Jin.

“What do you want?” Tae-Sung glared at the hologram image of Cheon Woo-Jin.

The way he glared at Cheon Woo-Jin couldn’t be considered amicable or friendly at all.

‘This is all that bastard’s fault…’ 

Tae-Sung grumbled inwardly. He believed that Cheon Woo-Jin was the main reason why he had inherited the bag full of shit called Proatine.

Things wouldn’t have turned out this way if it weren’t for Cheon Woo-Jin’s suggestion about how he should win the World’s Greatest Survival Tournament…

— Why are you looking at me like that?

“What are you talking about?”

— The way you’re glaring at me feels quite offensive, you know?

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“So what if you’re offended? What are you gonna do? Tell the Genesis Guild about me?”

— What if I do?

“Go ahead,” Tae-Sung nonchalantly said before saying, “If you do, you better be careful at night. I’ll bring a knife with me to stab you.”

— Why don’t you just tell me why you’re so upset?

“Do you know in what state Proatine Province is in?”

— I do.

“You know?”

— In a shitty state?

“You knew about it, but you asked me to win the damned tournament?”

— It’s shit right now, but it will be pretty lucrative if you were to care for it and nurture it properly. What kind of a first-world problem are you talking about when others are desperate to have a small parcel of land under their name?

The countries on the Nürburg Continent enforced a strict law that prevented Adventurers from legally possessing lands. In short, Tae-Sung had not only received an entire country, but he was also the one and only player on the entire continent with land under his name.

“I’d understand it if I had a guild backing me up, but you do know that I’m alone, right? What do you expect me to do alone? Hole up in the castle and play house with the NPCs?”

— Well, that does make sense since you don’t have any friends.

“Yeah, I have no friends. So what?” Tae-Sung grumbled in response, and then he added with a shrug, “I don’t need friends.”

— What about subordinates?

“Subordinates…?”

— Yeah, subordinates. You know, those people who you can order around.

“Of course, I—”

— You need them for sure.

“Isn’t that obvious? I don’t need friends, but I will definitely need subordinates.”

— See you later at night in the game.

“Why?”

— I will tell you later when we meet. See ya.

Cheon Woo-Jin’s hologram image disappeared afterward. The former ended the call before Tae-Sung could even respond.

“I swear I will smash that bastard’s head in one day… Damn it…” Tae-Sung gnashed his teeth and swore to himself.

He was actually serious about it because he steeled his resolve to accomplish it one day.

***

Tae-Sung took the subway to Gangnam after the phone call with Cheon Woo-Jin. He got off at Gangnam City Hall Station and went to a nearby real estate office.

“It will be better for you to look for an expensive rental unit since you have already registered yourself as a sole proprietor. The rent can be shaved off of your tax bill, so… hmm… I think getting a unit with a rental of three to five million won will suffice.”

Tae-Sung decided to listen to the accountant’s advice about spending money, so he visited a real estate office to look for a house to move into first thing in the morning.

‘I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing, though…’ 

Tae-Sung wondered, seemingly troubled since he couldn’t even begin to believe that he was about to rent a unit with a monthly rental of millions. After all, he was surviving off of cheap convenience store meals.

However, Tae-Sung decided to muster up his courage.

Reducing his tax bill was more important than anything else! He would be slapped with a hefty tax bill in the hundreds of millions if he sat around and did nothing. As such, he had to spend his hard-earned money.

“Hello, I want to take a look at some available units,” Tae-Sung said after entering the real estate office.

“Ah, welcome. Please, have a seat. Hmm… do you have a budget in mind?” asked the realtor.

“I’m thinking of around five hundred million won in deposit and three to five million for the monthly rental?”

“Hmm…” the realtor pondered for a moment before saying, “You can get a luxurious unit with three bedrooms with that budget.”

“It will be better if you could provide one with a room ready to have a capsule installed,” Tae-Sung said with his hyper capsule, the Ogre in mind.

“Ah, are you a gamer?”

“Yes…”

“Hmm? Now that I take a closer look… I feel like I have seen you somewhere…” said the realtor after squinting his eyes and taking a closer look at him, “Are you perhaps… the winner of the World’s Greatest Survival Tournament…?”

“Ah…” Tae-Sung hesitated while thinking, ‘What the hell? Somebody can recognize me?’

However, Tae-Sung seemed to have completely misunderstood something. In fact, he was quite off the mark. The video of his fight against Raptor had already garnered more than five hundred million views online. This meant that anyone remotely interested in BNW should have come across the video at least once.

That was how the realtor managed to recognize him.

“Wow, you really are that person. My son adores you.”

“Huh? I do not understand what you mean…”

“My son just entered high school, but the kid does not study and just watches G-Tube the entire day, but… ah, excuse me, but what is your name?”

“It is Han Tae-Sung.”

“Ah, Mr. Tae-Sung, my son really looks up to you. He keeps going on about how awesome your control is or something… but I could also tell that you have pretty good control! Haha!”

“Ah… y-yes…”

“So… about that… is it possible for you to give me an autograph?” the realtor carefully asked.

Tae-Sung signed an autograph for the first time thanks to the clip from Raptor’s livestream channel.

***

That evening, Tae-Sung signed a quite luxurious rental unit at a discounted rate thanks to the realtor whose son was a fan of his. The rent was discounted, but most people could only dream of paying such a figure for rent alone.

Tae-Sung entered his VR capsule and connected to the BNW client. Once again, he descended on the Nürburg Continent as Adventurer Siegfried.

At the lord’s office of Casein Castle…

“Your Majesty, these are the reports from the officials. Please have a look,” Elize, Siegfried’s exclusive maid, said while pointing at the stack of documents on top of the table.

“…”

Siegfried was speechless.

‘Why is there a mountain here…?’ he thought while looking at the mountain of documents that were just a few papers shy of touching the ceiling.

“Then, I wish you a pleasant evening,” Elize said before leaving the office.

“Sigh…”

Siegfried let out a sigh as he despaired at the thought of when he would be able to go through all of these documents. After all, he desperately wanted to level up, so every single second was valuable for him.

“You’re quite blessed when it comes to your workload,” Cheon Woo-Jin said. He suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

“Ah! You surprised me!” Siegfried jumped up in surprise after seeing Cheon Woo-Jin, and then he grumbled, “Let me know you’re here, will you? What kind of class do you have that your presence can’t even be felt at all? Are you an assassin or something?”

“No way,” Cheon Woo-Jin replied with a smug smile while shaking his head.

“Then what is it?”

“Are you curious about my class?”

“What do you think?”

“Let me tell you...”

“What?”

“I said I’ll tell you.”

“Really?”

“Quest Maker,” Cheon Woo-Jin said, revealing his class to Siegfried, “That is my class.”

It was a class Siegfried had never heard before in his entire life.

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