The Harvest Festival

— — — — — — 

Just before lunch, Ryo made his way toward the [No Name] conference hall and spotted a young girl carrying a stack of documents.

"Lily! Are Black Rabbit and Leticia inside right now?"

The girl he called out to had golden hair, fox ears, and two fluffy fox tails. Petite and pretty, she was one of the many children living at [No Name.]

In fact, she was the daughter of one of the group's former senior members and a descendant of the Japanese Inari god Ukanomitama—essentially a divine beast bloodline.

Kids like her weren't rare around here. Ryo had even joked to Black Rabbit once that their community was basically a "Child care." She didn't deny it.

"Ah! Ryo-nii!"

Even with her arms full of papers almost as tall as she was, Lily flustered a little and gave him a sweet smile.

"I was just on my way to deliver these to Black Rabbit and Lady Leticia!"

"Documents?"

Ryo raised an eyebrow and randomly pulled one from her stack.

It was a land ownership report. On the brownish-yellow page were details about the lot size, current status, and what crops it could support.

Honestly, it reminded him of the farm interface from that old game he used to play.

"Huh… it says the land is 'barren'?"

[No Name] actually owned a huge amount of land—over three thousand square kilometers. That's more than the size of Tokyo. But most of it was in a completely unusable state.

The reason, of course, was because their land's fertility had been drained by the Demon Lord.

Lily nodded and explained,

"Yeah. About 90% of our land has lost its fertility."

"The remaining usable farmland is the part you reclaimed from the White Shark. It's scattered across a few parts of the city. Black Rabbit's been trying to figure out how to manage it."

Ryo raised an eyebrow and glanced at her.

"If I remember right, your family is in charge of agriculture around here, isn't it?"

Lily smiled fondly, her tone tinged with nostalgia.

"That's right. My mother, and her mother before her, we Inari descendants have always been responsible for the community's farming and resource work."

"A four-digit Inari overseeing farmland… No wonder Arcadia used to be so powerful," Ryo thought, giving Lily an amused look before taking the rest of the papers from her.

"I'll take these to them. You go take care of your own tasks."

"Okay! Thank you!" Lily bowed, her cheeks slightly red, and then skipped away.

"Seriously, these kids are way too mature for their age..."

Shaking his head, Ryo pushed open the conference hall doors.

"Lily, just put those on the—oh?" Black Rabbit, standing by the table, waved cheerfully at first, but blinked in surprise when she saw who it was.

"Ryo? You're the one delivering the documents?"

"Ran into her on the way. Figured I'd help out," he replied, walking in and glancing at Leticia, who was seated nearby, sorting through another batch of paperwork.

"You two planning for the Harvest Festival?"

Leticia gave a small nod and looked up.

"Has the Roc Princess left already?"

Ryo shrugged helplessly.

"She taught me how to elevate fire divinity to 'blazing light'… then took off right after."

"I see… I kinda understand how she feels," Leticia said, offering a moment of silence for Karyou.

She knew firsthand how fast Ryo could learn. If someone picked up a technique you spent centuries refining—in just one session—well, that kind of soul-crushing despair was hard to endure.

Leticia smiled and offered, "I specialize in shadows, but I've fought a few 'blazing light' types before. Need my help?"

"Let's talk about that after the festival's done," Ryo replied, giving the papers a shake.

"Between the 90% of barren farmland and the 10% reserved for livestock, our community's finances are deep in the red."

"We're the ones hosting the Harvest Festival, yet we're struggling just to get by. Isn't that gonna be a problem?"

"That's not the issue," Leticia said, shaking her head.

She motioned for Ryo to take the lead chair, gently pushing him into it.

"Just because a community is good at farming doesn't mean they're good at running it. Plenty of agriculture-based communities barely scrape by."

"What's more pressing right now is the lack of prizes."

Black Rabbit handed Ryo a document, her expression serious.

"As the hosts, we're expected to hold a major Gift Game."

"Even though it's a seven-digit-tier event, the prizes need to be at least six-digit level. And we'll need enough for over a hundred communities."

"Most importantly, the prizes have to match the theme of the Harvest Festival. We can't just give out random Gifts as substitutes."

"Unfortunately… we just don't have enough six-digit Gifts to go around. That's the real bottleneck."

Ryo took the file and skimmed through it. His eyebrow twitched.

"Most of these are super limited-use or species-specific four-digit Gifts… or just plain old supplies that don't even count as Gifts. Are we really that short on inventory?"

"If we had more time, we could ask Shirayuki-hime to make something like Dragon Rice—production-type Gifts."

"But we're officially taking over the city tomorrow, and the festival announcement has to go out immediately. There's no time left."

Leticia was now flipping through the land reports Ryo had brought in.

"Our territory's a wasteland," she said with a sigh. "If we want to start growing anything at all, we'll need to go out and buy seeds and fruit trees in bulk."

"If we leave cleared land sitting idle in the East Area, we'll get fined."

"Lack of production-type Gifts for the games and for ourselves… it's a double whammy."

At this point, Ryo fully understood the mess they were in.

He narrowed his eyes and muttered dryly,

"So basically… not only do we need to come up with proper prizes for the Gift Game, but we also need to gather high-quality seeds and grains for planting?"

"For now, that's exactly it…"

Black Rabbit gave him a watery-eyed look, then suddenly leaned over and wrapped her arm around his neck, full-on clinging to him like a child.

"Which is why, oh brilliant and all-powerful Leader~ won't you please use that big brain of yours and come up with a genius idea to save us~?"

.

.

.