Ris made a lighthearted request to Helga and then went to buy something from the shop right next to them.
It was a low-grade monster called a Rampa, quite similar to a spider, with a body almost as big as a human head.
It was alive, but its eight long legs had been tightly bound so it couldn’t move. Ris casually tossed it at Helga’s feet.
“Eeek!”
Helga recoiled in horror, stepping back with a look of utter disgust.
“You must have eaten plenty of these when you were younger. What’s with the overreaction?”
Ris was telling the truth. Before marriage, when Helga lived as a poor commoner, it had been cheap meat she ate often.
The texture was extremely tough and dry, with almost no flavor at all, but it was very cheap, making it a precious source of protein for the poor.
“Seeing you line up for rations, I figured you didn’t even have the money to buy fresh Rampa meat.”
That, too, was true.
However, the last time Helga had eaten Rampa meat was more than thirty years ago.
After becoming the wife of a wealthy merchant, and later a Baroness, she had never once had occasion to eat such lowly meat.
She could barely remember how she used to prepare it back in her maiden days.
Unable to even bring herself to pick up the wriggling, jet-black, hard-looking monster, Helga merely stared down at it with a deep scowl.
“You expect me to deal with something this disgusting…?”
“What, it’s fresh meat you like. Take it home, prepare it properly, and eat it. I’m buying it for you this once, out of consideration for the time we stayed under the same roof.”
“Hah, me… something like this…?”
As Helga barely muttered while looking down at the monster at her feet, another middle-aged poor woman who had been watching from behind cut in.
“So then, are you not going to take it? Then give it to me!”
At that, Helga’s face stiffened as if she were tense.
She was clearly flustered by the sudden appearance of a rival. It seemed she hesitated to take it for herself, but disliked the idea of giving it to someone else even more.
“Wh-wh-why would I give this to you?! Get lost!”
Then, her hands trembling, she hurriedly picked up the monster and put it into her basket.
Ris grinned as she watched, then flicked her finger with a ping– and tossed a single coin at Helga’s feet.
“Use that to buy bread tomorrow or something. Ah, I’m too soft-hearted.”
“…”
Helga clenched her thin lips and stared down at the coin for a moment.
A miserable feeling made her whole body tremble. Inside her, the urge to pick it up and the urge to shout that she didn’t need it collided.
Just then, the poor woman from earlier cut in again from the side.
“What, you’re not taking it? Then I’ll-“
“No!”
Helga hastily stepped on the coin lying on the ground and hid it beneath her foot.
The poor woman, who had been bending down, glared at Helga as if she were dumbfounded.
“Either keep your pride, or take the practical gain. Just pick one.”
“Hmph, wh-who do you think you are, trying to lecture me?”
Helga’s voice trembled with anger, but the woman didn’t even pretend to listen to her.
“That one over there looks like some big-hearted young lady from a good House. If someone shows you charity, you should just say thank you and take it! Honestly, wandering in from who knows where and having no manners at all… sheesh.”
Watching this, Ris gave the poor woman a firm thumbs-up.
“Wow, you’re absolutely right. Here, ma’am, you should buy yourself some good fish today.”
As she said that, she stepped closer and gently placed two coins into the woman’s hand.
The woman brightened and politely accepted the coins from Ris’s hand.
“Oh my, thank you! You will be blessed, my Lady!”
As the woman walked off with a spring in her step, Ris turned her gaze to Helga, who was picking up the coin she had hidden under her foot.
“See? When someone gives you meat, and money too, you thank them and accept it.”
“Th- this… where did you…?”
Helga, her pride wounded by the lecturing tone, barely managed to squeeze out her voice, but Ris didn’t even let her finish.
“What, you were so eager to lecture my Lady. But you don’t like it when someone teaches you?”
“When an elder speaks…”
Ris cut Helga off sharply once again.
“Ah, sorry. I’m not as kind as my Lady, so I can’t listen to someone spewing crap from their mouth. Listen, just because you are old doesn’t make you an adult. You only become an adult if you use your heart like one.”
She deliberately ground Helga’s pride under her heel.
She had seen everything Helga had done to Evelyn back at the Lansval estate, and that was why she had no intention of letting her off gently.
‘At least this much, I should do in place of my Lady’s revenge.’
Without realizing it herself, Ris was carrying out one of the rules of the law of causality Evelyn had come to understand. She didn’t know that doing someone else’s revenge for them would also bring good things back to oneself.
Helga returned home carrying a basket filled with things that were hard to even call ingredients.
The Lansval mansion, which had been kept neat until not long ago, now looked abruptly bleak and desolate.
With no money, she had dismissed all the servants, and maintaining the mansion on her own was more than Helga could handle.
Even so, the minimum maintenance costs continued to go out every month, and her already bottomed-out finances only worsened by the day.
Unable to endure it any longer, she had put the mansion up for sale, but those who knew the ruined state of House Lansval all shook their heads, calling it an ill-omened place.
As a result, Helga was left struggling under the burden of a mansion far too large for one person, yet impossible to sell.
Entering the kitchen, she finally let her temper flare and hurled the Rampa Ris had bought onto the floor.
“Aaaagh!”
Thinking about how she had humiliated herself in front of that maid over this thing made her so angry she couldn’t stand it.
‘Just a mere maid, and she dared, so insolently…!’
While fuming, Helga absentmindedly turned her head toward the Rampa and recoiled in terror, stumbling backward.
“Aaah!”
It seemed that when it had slammed hard against the floor earlier, the cords binding the Rampa’s long legs had come loose.
The Rampa, whose body alone was as big as Helga’s head, stretched out its eight long legs.
When those legs, each longer than Helga’s own, fully extended, the Rampa looked far more enormous.
“Ah, ah… go away…!”
The Rampa wasn’t a monster strong enough to harm a human, but Helga, who had a slight fear of spiders, fainted on the spot.
***
Sleeping together with Rastan every day, the degree to which I could interfere with his dreams increased even further.
Before, it had only been to the extent of entering his dreams and turning nightmares into good dreams. But after we began sleeping together every night, the nightmares no longer even started.
Not only that, I realized that both the strength of my special ability and the range in which I could influence others were rapidly improving at the same time.
Each night, I would enter Rastan’s dreams and spend time with him. At times, after tending to his dream, I would enter my own dream alone and wander through the dream world before coming back out.
That day as well, after checking that Rastan’s newly begun dream was peaceful and preparing to leave, a mischievous urge suddenly rose up in me.
‘Could this work? Shall I try it?’
Watching Rastan from a distance as he failed to notice me, I spoke to him in my mind.
‘After lunch tomorrow, tell me about your exploits during the Malia War. And how it was that all of your unit managed to return safely.’
I deliberately gave an instruction that was both abrupt and specific.
That way, I would be able to distinguish between what he did naturally and what he did because I had told him to.
Even as I gave the instruction, I didn’t have much expectation.
I hadn’t met Rastan directly in the dream to speak to him, and the action I had instructed was so specific that I thought it would be difficult for him to remember it perfectly and carry it out.
Normally, words heard in a dream or situations experienced there tend to become hazy once one wakes up.
However, the next day, an unexpected variable appeared.
Rastan had gone out from early morning due to an urgent request for support from outside.
“If he has to go all the way to a neighboring territory to deal with monsters, he probably won’t be back until around dinner time.”
That Rastan, a war hero, was the strongest swordsman in the Empire was a fact everyone acknowledged. So I wasn’t worried about the battle itself.
With his swordsmanship skills, and likely even some special power on top of that, it was almost certain he would return without incident.
The disappointing part was that I wouldn’t be able to find out whether the instruction I had planted in his mind in last night’s dream would take effect.
