113. I’m Worried Because My Husband Is Too Fragile

“Um, my lady. It’s true that His Grace was once ill enough to collapse, but he seems completely recovered now. He’s attending to his duties as before and personally overseeing the knight training.”

“That’s exactly the problem! He’s already trying to do everything instead of taking care of his health!”

It seems he’s doing this to see Lady Anette fret over him whenever he does anything.

“The other day, he was staggering from morning, so I told him there was no need to go to the training ground, but he said he had a promise with the knights and went out anyway.”

“At the training…… ground, he looked quite…… healthy. Perhaps because he’s…… spent his entire life wielding a sword.”

On the first day when the well-rested Darius returned to the training ground, the knights asked him if he was feeling better.

Since he’s been resting, today he’ll probably just watch us train and then go back inside at a reasonable time.

……Who was the crazy person who thought that?

〈The Grand Duke is disappointed in you all.〉

〈You call yourselves knights, but when you encounter monsters in the mountains, you panic and run around? Break formation? Can’t attack?〉

〈Those who couldn’t kill more than twenty monsters while up in the mountains, step forward now.〉

Staggering?

Keeping promises with knights despite being sick?

Just who is she talking about?

Who exactly did we see that day?

“Sigh…… I wish his mother had given birth to a sturdier child. What am I to do with someone so constitutionally frail……”

Daniel grew more confused with each word from Anette.

The Darius that Daniel had observed from the sidelines was a healthy man who hadn’t caught a cold even once in ten years. This was despite both his mother and father having passed away from illness.

He was someone who could face three trained knights at once while still teaching them, and he was the most accomplished swordsman in the North.

But what use would it be to explain this fact?

“My lady, although His Grace may appear weak before you recently due to overexertion, I’m not worried. That’s because you’re taking such devoted care of him.”

Thinking about it, what did it matter to him if Darius pretended to be weak in front of Anette while working the Black Knight Order to death in the training ground?

Daniel was a knight, but he had somewhat shifted to administrative duties. He didn’t train as frequently as his other colleagues, so it wasn’t his business whether Darius ran wild in the training ground or not.

There was no point in correcting Anette’s misconception and risking Darius’s displeasure.

‘Aren’t you a knight? Have you been slacking off lately?’

……He’d just end up being summoned to the training ground with such words.

‘So I’ll agree with whatever the lady says. It’s better if the two of them get along well.’

Though Daniel’s mind was furiously busy with such thoughts, outwardly he maintained a gentle smile.

“From the moment I first saw you at the Pochet family, I thought that only you are suitable for our lord, Lady Anette.”

But despite his efforts, Daniel had been marked by Darius from the moment they first visited the Pochet family to arrange the marriage with Anette.

〈His Grace the Grand Duke is handsome but cold. Sir Daniel is the one who’s gentle.〉

For a reason he would never know.

* * *

Sir Daniel listened to all my worries that I couldn’t tell anyone until now and even encouraged me, saying that His Grace would be fine. He truly was a good person.

‘Until now, Darius insisted that a lord’s illness shouldn’t be mentioned to anyone, so I could only seethe inside when I saw him sick.’

Oh, Darius, maintaining a lord’s dignity even while being so ill. I fell in love with his sense of responsibility all over again.

And now that I’d shared my worries with Sir Daniel, who was also one of Darius’s closest people, my heart felt lighter, and I thought I could focus on work again.

Of course, in exchange for my unburdening myself, Sir Daniel’s face had turned gray. But that must be because he felt heavy-hearted learning that his respected superior had been secretly ill. Darius was right after all. A lord’s illness causes anxiety among his subordinates.

‘For that reason, he couldn’t even properly say he was in pain……’

Sniff, I pulled myself together before falling into thoughts of Darius again and opened the documents I had requested from Sir Daniel.

The documents I had requested from Sir Daniel were reports related to mines.

If there’s a trend in romance fantasy novels these days, isn’t it mine development?

The female lead buys an abandoned mine for a bargain price, only for the depleted gold vein to revive, or she subjugates a mine occupied by kobolds and finds rare artifacts there!

A life-changing jackpot!

In keeping with the current trend, the original work also featured a scene where a mine investment paid off big time, and I wasn’t unaware of this. However…….

‘Until now, I’ve been a conscientious extra, leaving the female lead’s share intact.’

Something I could have done but deliberately didn’t—that’s the loyalty of someone who has possessed a character!

‘But in this world, Evangeline is no longer…… no longer here.’

Having decided to stay by Darius’s side, I needed to fill Evangeline’s vacant position. That way, things would follow the original storyline as much as possible.

In the original work, Evangeline acquired the mine like this:

In the slave market episode, Evangeline buys all the slaves, gaining people but emptying her wallet.

After finding the Grand Duke of Inkheart’s gold coins in the Ash Tree Forest, she says that God gave them to her to help people and spends it all on purchasing slaves…….

It still makes me angry thinking about it.

Why buy slaves with money?

She could have summoned the knights, occupied the slave market, tied up the slave traders, and seized the slave rights certificates!

Isn’t illegal response fair when dealing with criminals?

No matter how kind the female protagonist needs to be, when the other party is committing crimes, why act only within the boundaries of the law?

As a result of not coming up with the same rational approach as me, Evangeline lost all those gold coins of the first Grand Duke of Inkheart and had to watch the people of the North shiver and starve in the cold.

〈Ah, God! Please hear my prayer. What can I do here? I want to help these people.〉

Evangeline, befitting a saintess, prays to God, and God, moved by her compassionate heart, responds.

She receives divine revelation in a dream and says this upon waking:

〈Lord Darius. On a certain day of a certain month, at a certain auction house, there will be a mine for sale, and you must buy it. That mine will be of great help to us.〉

‘……Huh? Divine revelation?’

Wait a minute. How am I supposed to replicate that? God doesn’t even tell me lottery numbers in my dreams!

This is truly a development only possible because Evangeline is a saintess!

Moreover, when Darius dubiously purchases the mine Evangeline mentioned, she looks at the minerals from the mine and says:

〈You bought the mine as I told you. God has also told me about this mineral. If you cut this mineral as I tell you…….〉

When the stone was cut as Evangeline instructed, the description said that a brilliant light never seen before filled the room.

The identity of the mineral that emerged was diamond.

The abandoned mine that had been neglected because no one knew its value was actually a diamond mine.

The problem is that I don’t know exactly which auction house, when, and which mine this certain jackpot property will appear in?

‘But I can’t miss out on a diamond mine!’

I pushed myself to recall the original work.

‘Squeeze your memory! What you need to find is diamonds, diamonds! There must be a hint somewhere in the original work!’

Then a brief flash of insight passed through.

〈Indeed, son-in-law love comes from the father-in-law.〉

A mutter I had made while reading the diamond episode. That was the hint.

In the original work, Evangeline was an orphan raised in a temple.

So for Darius, the only “father-in-law” would be Marquis Pochet, Anette Pochet’s father.

And since Marquis Pochet, who had been on bad terms with Darius throughout the original work, wouldn’t help him, this phrase “son-in-law love” meant.

‘Marquis Pochet sold that mine from the original work. And later, when Darius showcased the diamonds to the world and raked in money, I laughed at the marquis as he beat the ground in regret!’

As my attention turned to the diamond mine, my interest naturally extended to the mining industry in the North.

Inkheart with no land for farming. A land with only cold, barren mountains.

‘The rocky terrain may be unsuitable for farming, but it must be rich in rare resources!’

Just wait, when the industrial revolution era comes, we’ll be the richest.

As I was scanning through the materials, one report particularly caught my eye.

“An estimation report?”

“Ah, yes. Although we suspect that our territory contains many rare metals…… since all the production sites are toward the northern mountains, actual investigation or extraction is impossible, so this is just a compilation of estimated data.”

The northern mountains not only spawn monsters, but even if one braves the monsters and enters, without a foreigner as a guide, ordinary people get lost in there.

But the foreigner’s curse was lifted not long ago, right?

‘As the fact that the northern mountains are now accessible gradually becomes known, there might appear entrepreneurs willing to risk monsters to develop mines.’

If that happens, the impoverished territory of Inkheart will enter a gold rush era……!

“Instead of buying elsewhere, should we just invest in our own territory……? That might be more profitable……”

I desperately wanted to shout, ‘What’s so special about the original work? What I write from now on is the new original! I’m going to hit it big here!’ but I held back.

No, no. Rather than an uncertain mega-jackpot, it’s better to first secure a definite jackpot. Besides, our territory’s mines aren’t going anywhere if we leave them alone. Let’s first secure the mine that the original work pointed out.

“Hmm? Is this all the information about domestic mines in the report?”

“Yes, these are all the major mines currently available on the market. Is there a problem?”

However, the materials that Daniel had meticulously prepared didn’t include the mine I wanted, the one currently owned by the Pochet family.

“Well, I know of a mine in the South, but I don’t see its name here.”

“Ah, if you’re referring to the mine owned by your family home, there is one. But that mine is essentially abandoned……”

“Abandoned?”

Oh my, an abandoned mine, he says. My heart is racing. I feel like I’ve taken one step closer to the hint provided by the original work.

“Are you perhaps talking about the quartz mine?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Uncut diamond rough stones look very similar to quartz. No doubt about it. This is the mine!

“Let’s buy that mine! That’s it! I have a feeling about it!”