Chapter 22: Where does the leftover money come from?

Not wasting much time, Lortisa entered the bathhouse, soaked briefly, then quickly stood up.

Wrapping herself dry with a towel, she changed clothes and left the bath.

Waiting quietly until the young female soldier captain had walked far away, Weiss, who had been avoiding attention while soaking in the water, hurriedly climbed out of the pool.

Though it was hard to guess the exact content of the border army’s strategy meeting,

everyone needed to make their personal preparations before delving deeper into the Calamity Zone. After all, one couldn’t rely entirely on help from others.

Putting his clothes back on and stepping out of the bathhouse, Weiss didn’t dwell on anything else but immediately returned to his tent to begin inventorying the tools he currently had.

Aside from some common items used for outdoor activities,

the main focus was those objects summoned from the “Wish.”

The white and blue quality items he had drawn before

weren’t all high-grade weapons or practically useful like “Private Time.”

For example, the cellphone he carried was fine—

just like the menu options embedded as items in the game,

except it had no internet connection. As a terminal to assist with information processing, it was very helpful, and luckily it was the exact model from his original world, making it easy to use.

But the others were rather hard to explain,

things like rice cookers, electric kettles, fire extinguishers, cheering sticks, digestive tablets,

and even an item labeled “Stick on your body and become a ballroom dance master for three minutes,” which was frankly puzzling.

They were the sort of items that couldn’t even fetch much money if sold cheaply at the market.

Though these were solid objects drawn using actual wish power points, Weiss wasn’t about to throw away everything unusable in one go.

But the useless clutter that wouldn’t help at all with outdoor missions definitely didn’t deserve space in his magic bag.

Following the principle of making the best use of everything,

Weiss packed everything he could think of that might be useful or possibly needed.

For missions with generally low danger levels, white and blue quality items were usually sufficient.

However, this time running into the Soul Devouring True Lord was truly unexpected.

Facing an Aberration—and a lord-level threat at that—only purple quality equipment could put up a real fight.

When there was such a big gap in power levels, using low-quality equipment was largely ineffective, or even useless—the earlier example being how the close-range stop effect of “Private Time” was instantly broken.

(If calculated that way… after “Guardian Spirit Blade” was shattered, only a handful of usable trump cards remain…)

Weiss fiddled with the few reliable tools on the table.

The most recent summoned orb that could attach mana attributes—the “Eye of Melomelo”—

had already been in use for nearly three to four months.

Though purple items were guaranteed at least one every ten draws,

the “Wish” had a dismal drop rate, and the wish points were painfully hard to accumulate for each draw.

Even now, he barely had enough accumulated for a small guaranteed draw, so he didn’t have many aces up his sleeve.

Although moving with the main force, backed by the kingdom’s strongest soldier captain, gave him far more personal safety than acting alone,

there was no guarantee that other threats besides the Soul Devouring True Lord wouldn’t emerge.

With the uncertainty of the calamity, who could say for sure?

Carrying a hesitant thought, Weiss habitually picked up his phone and opened the “Wish” interface.

(If only I had enough for one more draw… hmm?)

Staring at the screen, he straightened up, moving the phone closer to his face.

Before departing on the mission, he had 200 wish points.

In a last-minute emergency, he made one draw and got a small golden guarantee.

Each summon cost 160 points, leaving him with 40 points.

Weiss was confident he wasn’t so bad at basic math.

Though he’d had a chance to earn wish points during his duel with that Holy Cavalier young lady two days ago, he ended up empty-handed, so the total shouldn’t have changed—that was correct.

Yet now, on the phone screen,

the “Wish Points” section clearly read:

“42”

Weiss rubbed his eyes hard, wearing a look that said, “Subway, elderly, cellphone” —

No, where did this extra two points come from?

Responding to the notice, Lortisa arrived at the commander’s camp and entered the meeting tent—not late by any means.

Inside, many other unit commanders were already present, sitting quietly at their seats waiting.

However, the commander himself was nowhere to be seen.

After all the battalion captains had assembled, a few more minutes passed before the tent flap lifted again.

Count Leicester entered the meeting with a steady stride.

Surprisingly, accompanying the commander were not only his personal secretary but also the captain of the Holy Cavalier Knights.

Compared to the other serious attendees, Northem maintained a composed demeanor, even somewhat relaxed, seemingly out of sync with the tent’s solemn atmosphere.

Whether intentional or not, as he passed in front of Lortisa, she caught a glimpse of a courteous smile directed her way.

Of course, the cold and indifferent young female soldier captain had no intention of responding.

Like everyone else present, her attention was focused more on the Western Border Count, concentrating on what he was about to say.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming at this late hour. I’m sure many of you already have some idea about the content of this meeting, so I will keep it brief—”

Count Leicester did not sit in the main seat but leaned on the table, surveying every face inside the tent.

“There are two pieces of news. The first, and bad, is that according to the scouting units’ reports over the past two days, the Calamity Zone has expanded beyond the kingdom’s border warning line. The knights responsible for patrol and watch have already engaged in skirmishes with the Aberrations that have appeared.

“Furthermore, the rate of the Calamity’s expansion is accelerating. If left unchecked, it won’t be many days before the camp we are meeting in is swallowed by the disaster zone.”

At the end of his words, the assembled soldiers involuntarily drew a cold breath.

After a pause that felt like time left for them to accept the news, Count Leicester continued in a low voice:

“The second—and worse—piece of news is that the dispatched envoy has already entered the Empire, reaching the Fernan territory, but did not encounter the official responsible for the region.

“From the contact magic reports received, we cannot determine why the Empire is ignoring the border situation.”

Even with strict military discipline, whispers erupted inside the tent as the news only grew bleaker.

Count Leicester raised his hand, and the hall instantly fell silent again:

“So, the situation is clear. We do not have the luxury to wait quietly for the Empire to wake up and respond. We must begin swiftly to eradicate this sudden outbreak of the Calamity at the border.”

“—Count, forgive my interruption…”

From the right side, a dark-skinned warrior with a facial scar couldn’t contain himself and raised his fist.

“I would like to ask, has it been considered that this might be a trap set by the Empire?”