Chapter 5: 5: Visiting the Village

Kotori had been living with her new family for months now and the days were beginning to blend together.

Wake up.

Work on the field.

Go home and eat.

The only brief moments of respite were when her father taught her the flute during their breaks and when he played for the family at night.

Her father on Kotori's birthday had given her a hand-carved reed flute much like his.

Consequently, she picked up the flute rather quickly and was able to play simple tunes. Of course, her skills were quite literally "child's play" in comparison to her father but it made her proud to know she was learning something.

Every week or so they would visit the village and go to the market to pick up supplies. The people of the village were relatively nice and would sometimes pat Kotori's head when they saw her.

She had also met the count. Her father was right when he said that the Baron was a difficult person. If he could be described in one word it would be "eccentric". The Baron was an old man with wispy hair who rarely left the house. Apparently, he spent most of his time researching local history and other things that caught his fancy.

And despite sounding like an interesting person with many stories to tell, the Baron was a rather dry person. He spent most of his time talking about his research and rarely cared about whether the listener cared to hear it.

As a person who was once also a science researcher in her past life Kotori was sympathetic to him. She herself, had often gotten caught up in rambling about her research for long periods without noticing the other person had long since stopped paying attention.

The Baron was rather amicable to them. He even gave Kotori a small honey-sweet when they met.

Kotori had also learned quite a bit about how karma generation worked.

Karma worked on a utilitarian system that would modify the amount of karma you gained in relation to how much of a direct impact you had on a good deed happening. In other words, it would reward her based on the total "good" that her actions did and would also "modify" the reward based on how directly she caused the action.

It took her several tests to do this.

The utilitarian system was figured out when she had tried to help her father start the fire and ended up burning the straw mat they slept on accident. When she later checked her karma value, she found that she actually lost karma in that incident.

The attribution mechanic was found out when she had Shu dig help holes for her. If he did it on his own, she would not gain karma, but if she directly ordered the spirit to do it, she would gain karma.

Unfortunately, all this testing meant that over this time period she had gained very little karma.

[Not that it would be possible for me to do this alone.] Kotori thought grimly

The massive negative karma number still loomed over her head and She wracked her brain every night to think of ways to resolve it.

At the very least, it was impossible for her to do it on her own. The attribution system gave her some way of envisioning how to surpass her negative value through having other people do the work for her.

If it was possible for her to get a lot of subordinates to do good deeds, then it may be possible to overcome the negative karma number.

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Kotori finally had a plan

Step 1. Get a lot of subordinates

Step 2. Do a lot of good deeds.

Unfortunately, step one was the hard part.

Today, Kotori was accompanying her father to the village. She needed to meet people and convince them to follow her. But even she was aware that it was unlikely that anyone would want to follow a young girl.

[It should be easy right!] She was a human with over 30 years of part experience it should be a simple matter to charm these villagers, right?

As they walked along the rough dirt road towards the village, Kotori saw a small pile of dirt moving with them. This was Shu, he had grown a little bit under Kotori and now looked more akin to a rat than the field mouse shape he used to be. He seemed quite proud of this fact and regularly told his "mother" Kotori about it.

[I can't believe this thing is still following me] Kotori would often think.

Although, she couldn't complain much since the little spirit often helped her with her work.

The visage of the village was soon approaching. The village itself was small, essentially a few buildings huddled around a clearing. Most of them were rather simple. The village had a general store, a blacksmith, and of course, the Baron’s house, which was larger than all the other buildings there.

There seemed to be something going on in the clearing, so she and her father ended up going to investigate. The villagers seemed to be huddled around a pole with a piece of paper on it.

Kotori herself had no clue how to read the text of the world. Although, speaking seemed to be done automatically for her, the letters of this world made no sense and didn't look anything like the words in her past life, and thus she could not read them.

This rarely became an issue for her, since most of the villagers couldn't read either, and it was not like reading was something she needed to do often as a farmer.

Her father was asking around and she learned why there was such a commotion.

In short, the old Baron was going on a long trip and his grandson was coming to take over the responsibility of the village for the time being.

According to the villagers, the son of Baron Derkin had left home the moment he came of age and traveled to the capital to seek his fortunes by courting royalty. He was a big shot in the capital and was an advisor to the royal family and now one of those kids was coming down to manage the village.

The news made Kotori excited.

Since he would be coming from the capital, making good relations with him would give her an inroad into the wider political sphere of the world.

[All according to plan] Kotori thought

Although, she was unsure whether he would be willing to listen to a small little village girl. If he was anything like his grandfather, he would likely be willing to hear her out or at least humor her.

If she got on his good side, she would likely be able to use him as a connection in the capital.

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