THFN | Chapter 2

Lamia. A legendary extinct creature, or a cruel demon from a thousand years ago.

Among the many strange monsters, those with snake tails naturally existed.

So, those who engraved this always showed suspicious and uncomfortable looks. Well, if a foreigner with no ties settled in a cursed land and created his own kingdom with suspicious money, asking to hang something like this on the ceiling, he’d be seen as crazy.

The completed building, perhaps because of this, was not only more majestic than initially requested but also beautiful and elegant, resembling a temple. Who knows, if you dig into the walls, you might find a few symbols of the goddess Regina?

Somehow, he avoided being reported as a crazy cultist worshiping evil demons, but until the day of completion, everyone said in unison:

Lamia is not beautiful.

‘A legendary monster that sings with a big tongue and lures humans to eat them.’

Clara, enjoying the sunlight with his eyes closed, thought once again about how all this happened and every dog-like moment of his life.

After a brief personal reflection, even the lost strength seemed to return.

“…Who cares.”

He lay dangerously on the railing. It seemed like he might fall, but Clara rested his neck in a stable position, like lying on a branch.

Clara didn’t even know what a Lamia was. He just wanted to draw something that resembled that person.

“Yeah. I can’t just give up like this.”

He folded the paper scraps with nonsense written on them and tossed them into the sky. Though not shaped like airplanes, they flew far, then changed direction and fell onto the fourth-floor terrace with a thud.

There’s no one to clean it up now, but he figured he could do it later. Not entirely free from anxiety, he muttered to himself. It was a habit formed from spending so much time alone.

“Things will get busy.”

Clara Sinclair.

A great landowner of a vast farm, having boldly purchased thousands of acres of land next to the troublesome Greenbelt, a place with unsettling rumors of demons rising and hiding long ago, and where the Empire never allowed development.

Clara traded a sword for a hoe and sickle. Instead of leather boots, he embraced tightly tied rubber boots and headed to the garden.

⏾⋆ ⏾⋆ ⏾⋆

Looking at the neglected garden, Clara muttered bitterly.

“It’s a mess.”

Despite being harvest season, the tomatoes were withered and small due to weeds. The figs were in worse condition, not even suitable for drying. Maybe they could be made into jam.

The berries, known for their resilience, were at least okay….

‘But without hands to pick them, it’s pointless.’

Clara sighed, rolling a shriveled tomato, half its normal size, in his hand.

“…Clever and nasty.”

These wicked things. Shaking with frustration, he sat down and gently piled up the collapsed soil of the canal. Though the pests were consistently controlled with pesticides and the weeds seemed clean at a glance, a closer look revealed severely damaged canals kicked down in places, and weeds not properly uprooted would sprout again in a week.

Clara, with a disgusted expression at the radish-sized weed roots that came out with a hoe, meticulously removed and tossed them aside.

It wasn’t a complete disaster, but nothing was in good shape. Restoring it would require a lot of labor. …A whole lot.

But how could he find people to work in this remote land, a day’s ride from the nearest village?

“Phew. And they expect to get paid for this?”

It wasn’t like this last year.

Sighing, Clara stood up with a grunt, dusted off his pants, and began picking the tomatoes hanging everywhere.

Tap, tap.

Though he seemed to pick them casually, claiming to be a high-level martial artist, the well-grown tomatoes quickly filled the basket with each movement of his hand.

It didn’t take long to fill a basket. Struggling to lift the basket piled high, Clara supported it with his chest, gently stroking the straw basket with his index finger as he moved to the storage.

Thinking optimistically that hard work would somehow make things right, Clara’s moment of peace was shattered when he looked down at the storage in worse condition than the garden, causing the basket to slip from his hands.

Even after hurriedly picking them up, the already poor-condition tomatoes were crushed and mixed with the dirt.

Clara’s hands, which had been quick at first, gradually slowed. His eyes trembled as they scanned the storage.

Seeing the sauce soaking into the cork tops, he ground his teeth with a dangerous sound.

“……These guys, really.”

A tomato rolled into the chaos of the storage. Even if it rolled in, it wouldn’t be noticeable among the shattered glass bottles that looked like a collapsed tower.

It was fine just two days ago!

Even considering the broken stock that filled more than two-thirds of the storage, only a few scattered spots remained visible.

And that wasn’t the only problem. The tower, carelessly pulled from the bottom, had collapsed, and the glass jars for storage rolled on the floor, breaking and spilling into the cork tops of other products, ruining even the intact ones.

Trying to clean up the broken jars, Clara inevitably cut his hand on the glass. The cut was deep, and blood dripped. His head grew hotter with anger. The tomato jars inside were this year’s harvest. They were the profit and result of this large farm.

But with the sauce soaking into the cork tops, they were all defective. They’d rot in less than a week. Before the bacteria spread to the storage, everything had to be thrown away.

A brief chuckle escaped before Clara, whose nerves had snapped, exploded in frustration. The towel he threw landed with a satisfying smack on the bottles. Glass dust fluttered and stuck to it.

“If you’re going to steal, at least do it properly!”

A note, like pouring oil on his already boiling anger, was visible on the storage floor. Unlike the countless notes deliberately stuck inside the house, this one was filled with insults.

A greedy and lazy bastard. This is what happens when you don’t contribute to local development and just hoard. You should share and live together.

“What the….”

Reading the last sentence, Clara’s shoulders shook with rage. Finally exploding, he threw the note and stomped the ground.

“Damn it, what did you contribute to demand anything from me?”

Though it was an employer-employee relationship, the farmers and Clara didn’t get along. This was precisely why.

The land Clara purchased was right next to the Greenbelt Mountains, a development-restricted area designated by the Empire.

Monsters roamed, and there was no usable water source. Development was impossible. The land, avoided by everyone, was bought cheaply because of the monsters.

Afterward, Clara built a luxurious mansion on that land, installed all sorts of modern facilities, and created a massive farm. Even the storage buildings were as large as government offices, and the rugged mountains and rocky land became flat farmland.

…That’s where the problem started.

As Clara developed such a vast land and poured money into it, people who initially dismissed it as a rich person’s eccentric hobby began to change their attitudes one by one. Not in a good way.

Like any small village, the government offices were wide open, and distant neighbors, who had never even spoken to Clara, learned all the facts he had entered in the documents.

Realizing it was a farm intended for actual operation and that its owner was merely a naturalized commoner from abroad, people naturally began to covet the fertile land.

“Hey, have you thought about leasing this land?”

“Come on, good things are good! Instead of hiring day laborers like that, how about selling a small piece of land….”

“Who’s backing you? …No one?”

Having never built good relations with the high-ups in Clorentine, Clara was thoroughly beaten from all sides.

Near the land with ominous rumors. Most people wouldn’t come near, so the older folks here were often those who had committed some crimes in the past.

The old farmers, with greed stuck to them like tumors, were persistent. Those tied to the nobility were even more troublesome.

Nevertheless, Clara didn’t budge.

After all, this land was purchased directly from the state, with both land and rights, making it close to state-owned land currently operated by proxy. It has a similar effect to a grand duchy that the state can’t interfere with.

Even though it’s a remote area far from infrastructure, Clara had the right to name the land or even raise an army as if founding a new country.