Published: September 9, 2025
Correction of typos made on 10/5.
This is Satou. Long ago, when my aunt and her husband were moving into the detached house at my grandfather’s place, I helped with the cleaning. Replacing tatami mats and papering shoji screens was a rare experience.
â—‡
Behind the stables where the three of us were led, about five children aged roughly between 10 and 13 were sitting.
Now, I carefully checked the details. The default map display only showed race and level. Even in range search mode, the normal display only shows name, race, age, gender, and level. Offenders or criminals are marked in red, while unknown skills or level 50 and above are marked in blue for distinction. Too much information clutters the view, so it’s adjusted carefully.
The children there matched the information exactly. However, they appeared dangerously weak, likely from not having eaten for a long time. Judging by the well earlier, they probably haven’t been drinking much water either. Their consciousness seemed hazy; only one of them reacted when we showed ourselves, but even that one didn’t move.
I administered the nutritional supplement that I had also used in Puta Town to the children. Then, using magic power healing, I treated their wounds one by one. Each child had fractures, some were on the verge of gangrene due to those fractures, and others had severe purulent lacerations.
One child had oddly fused fractured bones, but with careful magic power healing, I was able to restore them to a normal shape.
“How’s it looking?”
“Ah, for now, their lives are not in danger. The medicine forced recovery, so they’re tired and sleeping now. After some time, give them water and another dose of the supplement. Tomorrow morning, we can feed them some thin porridge.”
“As expected from Master. Endless praise is due!”
“Thank goodness~” “Indeed!”
I left the nursing of these children to Nana.
It was too cruel to leave them lying directly on the ground, so I brought out the soft felt mats we use for camping and laid them down comfortably.
â—‡
“Spider webs~?”
“It’s all sticky, you know.”
“Satou!”
Mia, covered in spider webs, and Pochi, also tangled in webs with ears flattened, came crying to me.
I told them I’d go ahead first.
After inspecting the mansion, aside from a partially rotten floor, it seemed manageable with just dusting and removing spider webs.
There was lots of junk left behind, including broken chairs, so I stored everything in the trash folder of the storage and cleaned up. The combined use of “magic hand” made it easy.
The main house is two stories with an attic and basement. The floor area, excluding attic and basement, is about 60 tsubo—roughly twice the size of an average Japanese house. The basement was disguised as a wine cellar but had a cleverly hidden door leading to a room full of equipment for satisfying some unusual tastes. Since this was bad for the younger children’s upbringing, I destroyed it quickly and made it just an empty room. Later, I plan to turn it into a dummy laboratory.
On the property, besides the main house, there is a guest annex and a servant’s detached house. The guest annex is also two stories, while the servant’s house is single-story. Each has about 45 tsubo of floor space. The guest annex has only six rooms, but despite the same area, the servant’s house has ten large rooms and five smaller rooms.
Only the main house has a dining hall. There seems to be no bath, probably because water is precious. We’ll convert one first-floor room into a bathroom. The kiln in the kitchen had black fragments and ash that looked like coal.
“That was quite spacious. I wonder how long it’ll take to make this livable?”
“If it’s just us, maybe five days?”
Lulu responded to Arisa’s weary comment with a slight tilt of her head.
“Lulu, five days is surely impossible for this size. Master, why don’t we have the children you fed this morning help out? Tasks like mowing and mopping won’t require much strength or skill.”