Chương 71: The Key to the Estate

The moment Evan selected yes, a large, glowing golden key appeared in front of him, floating in the air, spinning around itself.

"Woah!" was all Luca had to say. Oliver grinned.

"That looks impressive. Grab it before the Celestial Guardians changes their mind."

"It's an actual key. I thought 'key' was meant metaphorically, but it's an actual big ass key." Evan reached out to take it. The moment his fingers touched the key, it dissolved into golden light that seemed to flow into his outstretched hand. [You bound Vason Estate Key] [Congratulations! You are now the owner of the Vason Estate and its associated demesne. Your ledger has been updated.]"Oh, that's interesting. It says I get a new addition to my ledger." Benedict nodded.

"Victor had that. That's how you control the defenses. And a lot more." With growing excitement, Evan accessed his menus and found a new tab titled [Estate]. He opened it and found a new stat screen and several submenus. [Overview], [Edit Details], [Manage Inhabitants], [Manage Employees], [Manage Demise Population], [Arrays] Before he dove deeper, Evan took a closer look at the overview screen.

[Estate Name: Vason Estate (edit)] [Designated Successor: None (set)] [Inhabitants: 1] [Employees: 0] [Demesne Population: 11] The number next to [Demesne Population] made him furrow his brows. What was included in this demesne anyway? How much land belonged to the estate? He would have to ask Benedict about that later, after he'd solved the more urgent matter of the people still imprisoned in the dungeon of his brand new house. [Arrays] sounded like the option he needed.

Catriona had told him that the defensive magic of the buildings was controlled by large magical arrays. He accessed the [Arrays] submenu and was greeted by an overwhelmingly long list. Some of the entries were familiar to him, like [Stone Statues Garden] or [Hallway Trap Bats], but there were at least two dozen more entries referencing different rooms and hallways or outside spaces that were new to him. Many of them were grayed out and had an [Insufficient Mana Supply] warning next to the entry.

Others were displayed in green for [active] or red [inactive]. He could see [Teleport Ward], with a red [inactive] status, thanks to Benedict. Evan read through the list until he finally found what he was looking for. [Dunegon Gate Ward 1] and [Dungeon Gate Ward 2]. Below the two [Dungeon Gates] were a dozen numbered entries for [Cell Door Ward]. Evan focused and deactivated them all. Both gates and all the cell doors. He blew out air.

"Okay, that should do it. Oliver and I will go check, the rest of you stay here. I don't trust this Professor guy. I don't want him to sneak back in here while we're distracted." His friends agreed to his plan, so Oliver and Evan went back up the stairs alone. They reached the guardroom just as the first batch of prisoners pushed the gate open from the inside. They looked emaciated, pale, and ragged, but none of them showed any signs of mutations. A skinny, dark-haired boy was at the front of the group.

It took Evan a moment to recognize him because he had lost so much weight and his hair had grown out so much that it covered his eyes, but Oliver spotted his brother in a heartbeat.

"Felix!" The boy lifted his head and rushed forward.

"Olly!" The two Detreyo brothers fell into each other's arms. Felix was tall for his age, but in Oliver's arms he looked small and fragile.

"You came," he sobbed.

"You saved us. I told everyone you would come. I told them my brother was a mana warrior and that he would come and find us and save us." Oliver patted his brother's back.

"Of course I came," he said quietly, his voice sounding choked.

"I would never give up on you." Evan watched the reunion and felt a pang of pain somewhere deep in his chest. Felix was a few years younger than his own little brother, but he reminded him of Conner. Due to their age difference and his father's descent into alcoholism, Evan had always been more of a father figure than a brother to Conner. Now he was gone, displaced to a whole different world, and Conner had to fend for himself. This story has been stolen from Royal Road.

If you read it on Amazon, please report it The painful thoughts were quickly pushed to the back of his mind by the task that presented itself in front of him. Oliver only had eyes for his brother, so it was Evan's responsibility to care for the rest of the prisoners. They stumbled through the gate, one by one, blinking and squinting, blinded by the lights of the guardroom. Some of them looked like they could barely keep themselves upright.

These people needed to be nursed back to health before they could even think about sending them back to their home villages. Fortunately, Evan was now the owner of a house with about two billion bedrooms. With the help of Benedict, and after deactivating most of the still active defenses, they led the freed prisoners upstairs. Benedict showed them where they could wash themselves, while Evan and Oliver went down to the storage rooms.

They weren't as full as they used to be when the estate still housed hundreds of people, but they were stocked well enough to provide fresh water and food for all of them. Luca was the one who prepared the food. He cooked up a huge pot of soup with vegetables and a white meat that reminded Evan of chicken. After everyone, including Evan and his team, had been assigned a bedroom, those who were strong enough to leave the bed gathered in one of the dining rooms of the estate.

The rest got a bowl of soup, and some bread delivered to their room. Despite what the prisoners had been through, the atmosphere was surprisingly light-hearted. They chatted and laughed and made plans about what they wanted to do when they got home. Everyone was visibly relieved to be alive and free, and that their ordeal was finally over. Nobody talked about the people who didn't make it. About the people they had to bury in the backyard or the people whose corpses the Whisperleaf Clan found in the Old Forest.

Evan didn't bring the topic up. He was sure the survivors would deal with a lot of trauma. He wanted to give them at least one night without thinking too much about the terrible fate they had narrowly escaped and the people who didn't. Oliver and Felix put together some dessert with what they found in the pantry, and after that Benedict brought wine from the wine cellar. Evan took a sip, but he never liked the taste of wine very much, so he put the glass down and leaned over to Benedict.

"Benedict, can I ask you a question? About this whole estate management thing."

"Sure, ask away. You know I'm not an expert, though."

"My new menu lists a demesne population of eleven people." Benedict's eyebrows shot up in surprise.

"Really? Huh… I'm surprised to hear that. I thought they all had packed up and left long ago."

"Who are these people?"

"Before the fall of my family, several flourishing villages belonged to our demesne. There was Springhollow, Bonehill, Heartkeep, and the largest, the one closest to the estate, Summerwell. After my family was eradicated, everyone left. There was no Lord anymore to protect them and maintain the wards, the roads, and things like that. At least I thought they'd all left, but apparently eleven people stayed." Catriona had listened in on the conversation.

"You should probably visit them. See if they need anything. That's your responsibility as the new lord." Evan nearly choked on his own spit. When he recovered from his coughing fit, he stared at Catriona in disbelief.

"I'm not a lord!" Benedict's lips twitched into a small smile.

"You are now. The holder of the key is also the lord of the demesne. That's how it works."

"That's how it works? I don't need noble blood or a king's decree or something?"

"We don't even have a king," Benedict said, looking amused.

"There's one up north, beyond the Black River, but here the owner of the estate is also the ruler of the land that belongs to it. Of course, you still need to adhere to the law. Otherwise, the guilds will intervene. Like they did with my family." Evan slumped back into his chair and ran a hand over his face. Nobody had warned him that his new real estate came with governance responsibilities.

"I'm responsible for 11 people now…"

"Maybe more will come," Benedict suggested in a chipper tone.

"If we fix the wards, clean up the roads, and repair some of the worst decay to the important buildings, we might attract settlers. The land out here isn't bad, you know. Pretty fertile. And there is an old Stargold mine to the north. It hasn't been worked since before I was born, but if you could convince some miners to relocate here, you could—" Evan raised both hands to stop Benedict's onslaught of plans.

"Fix the wards? Repair the buildings? That all sounds pretty expensive. I mean, my inventory is bursting with loot, but that's more like buy-a-shiny-new-armor money, not run-a-county money. How did your family finance all this? Do people pay taxes?"

"They do, but I doubt those 11 people will net you much in taxes. Even when the population numbers were booming, my family needed to send monster hunters and explorers out into the world to find valuable items to sell." Evan was feeling a headache starting to form behind his eyes. Taxes and estate management were not what he'd expected when he found out he'd been transported to a world where magic was real, but on the other hand, he now had a big-ass house with lots of land attached to it and a Lord title.

Figuring out the administrative side of things seemed like a fair price to pay, but he would start thinking about that tomorrow. With his wounds healing and his stomach filled, he was starting to feel the exhaustion catching up with him quickly. He leaned back and rested his head against the high, cushioned backrest of his chair. He was only planning to rest his eyes for a moment, but when he opened them next, he was looking into Oliver's face.

"Hey man, I think it's time to go to bed. Can you walk?" Evan blinked in confusion. The dining room was empty, the plates had been cleared, and the table was wiped down. The moon was shining through the windows. Evan pushed himself into a standing position.

"I'm not drunk, I just fell asleep. Where is everyone?"

"Gone to bed. Benedict provided everyone with clean clothes from the storage rooms below, and Catriona checked on the injured and sick before she went to bed herself. Everyone is taken care of." Evan let his gaze wander across the room with its high ceiling and wood-paneled walls. He turned to look out the windows, down from the second floor where the dining hall was, into the extensive garden below.

"I can't believe this is really all mine now," he whispered. Oliver put his arm around Evan's shoulder and grinned.

"We shouldn't have paid for that boardroom in Stormhaven in advance, I guess. But who would've thought you'd go from freshly crystal-bound to a landed Lord within… what? Two months? Three months?"

"Tell me about it. It feels so surreal."

"Enjoy it. You risked your neck to save my brother and the other victims."

"We all did," Evan reminded him sternly.

"I don't think we'll get to enjoy this for long, though. We still have to find the Professor." Oliver sighed.

"He could be anywhere by now."

"All the more important that we start searching for him soon. Catriona is right. I doubt he will just give up. He will look for a way to continue his experiments. We need to stop him." Oliver was silent for a moment.

"Do we? Hunting down criminals is the job of the Guardian Guild." Evan scoffed and turned away from the window to face his friend.

"Do you have any trust that the Guardian Guild will act upon this in a quick and decisive manner?" Oliver shook his head.

"No, not at all. I don't know what's going on with the guilds right now, but they're obviously distracted. They're not doing their jobs."

"Exactly. They already dropped the ball once. They ignored dozens of people being abducted. I doubt they're going to put much effort into hunting the Professor down when they ignored this from the very beginning. It has to be us. We have to stop him."