“I want to die…” I muttered six hours later.

{Merchant has increased to level 25.}

My head thudded against the desk. We had gathered all of the notes, bonds, letters, and promissory that had been collected in the treasurer’s office and then started to go through them to try to figure out the budget. I had thought we’d just add up a few pages of numbers and then be done, but it turned out running a kingdom was harder than I thought.

“Who runs our treasurer out of Chalm?” I asked using Slave Communication.

“That would be the Mayor,” Elaya responded.

“Oh? Can you send him to Alerith for me? Tell him I need him to work on some budgeting.”

“I spoke to him. He says he fell trying to paint his roof and broke his eyebrows and needs some time to rest.”

“Rats…”

My mind was such a mush, that excuse sounded reasonable enough. It wasn’t until I ended my conversation with Elaya regretfully I started to think there was something off about his words. That’s right, his house was made of stone. He didn’t need to paint it! Ah… whatever. It wasn’t his job anyway.

When I said I needed to build an army to protect Chalm, I didn’t think it’d mean I’d need to spend days calculating budgets so that I could hire an army. I had thought it would be like before, with people heroically volunteering before we rode out to do battle. Except, when that had happened, it had been a Demon Lord who was attacking, and I was depending on many separate factions to help. When it came to building the forces on my own, I had never thought too much about it.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Time had caused my enthusiasm to wane. Bernice had already taped out, and Alysia appeared to be asleep. She was a sword and didn’t need to sleep, but that was just how boring this all was. Bernice was leaning back in a chair, trying to balance a pen on her upper lip.

“I know.” I slapped my hands. “We promise Knighthood!”

Bernice flayed wildly before fixing herself and sitting up. “What is that?”

“You wanted to become a noble. You desired it so much you were willing to do all kinds of distasteful things to reach your goal.”

“That makes me sound like a deplorable!”

“I’m sure there are tons of others who also want to go somewhere in life. What if we replace wages with the promise of a knight token! The promise of a future stipend, the ability to buy land in the capital, and a better future.”

“I s-suppose that could work,” Bernice spoke thoughtfully. “However, how many knight tokens do you have?”

“16.” I explained. “2 as a Viscount, 8 as a Count, and 12 as an Earl. I’ve given 6 tokens away.”

I had given some tokens away after the battle with the Demon King, mostly to solidify my place with the Knights, Barons, and Viscounts that ruled southwest Aberis and had helped in the fight against the Demon Lord Aberis. I also hadn’t gathered the 12 I was supposed to get as an Earl yet, but that wasn’t important. Such debts could be honored when there was more time. That was also assuming I wasn’t promoted to Marquis or Duke soon. Well, technically, I enslaved the princess, so I no longer needed to be her a Duke to marry her. At some point, I’d need to discuss that with Prince Edward. I was lucky King Edward was gone, or he’d try to kill me again.

“That… just might be enough…” Bernice responded thoughtfully.