Chapter 144: Join or Die

She placed the micro-bomb in a box with commonly used items, planning to see if she could use it to make some kind of trap after tomorrow’s dark creatures’ attack, which would make it easier for her to deal with the monster spawner later.

…

After the merchant caravan left, the territory felt much quieter. But thanks to the increased population—and the fact that the three travelers hadn’t left yet—it was still livelier than before the merchants had arrived.

Su You looked at the population count, now showing “9,” and thought about the timed quest’s countdown, which had just over thirty hours left. She couldn’t help but feel a bit anxious.

In the last thirty-some hours, only a few travelers and a wanderer had shown up. She’d already checked: the events for recruiting travelers and wanderers had both disappeared. That meant it was pretty much impossible to recruit any more wanderers to boost her population…

Originally, Su You hadn’t wanted to use this method, but she had no choice. It wasn’t her fault she’d been unlucky and hadn’t gotten another wanderer yesterday.

Thinking about all this, Su You went to the tavern to find Meike.

Meike was annoyed at being interrupted while cooking, but when he saw Su You’s troubled expression, he swallowed the words he’d almost blurted out and instead asked, “What’s wrong?”

“I need your help with something.” Since breakfast was over, Meike was the only one in the tavern.

Normally, Yue would be here helping out, but Meike had just told him he wanted to experiment with new dishes and not to get in the way, so Yue had gone off to take a job from the bounty board.

“So, what do you need?” Under normal circumstances, Meike wouldn’t refuse a request from Su You. After all, he’d joined the territory partly to act as a “bodyguard,” and partly to repay a favor.

Over the past few days, Meike had come to deeply appreciate just how powerful that advanced cooking skill book was. His opinion of Su You, the lord who’d given it to him, had only grown more favorable.

Especially since Su You treated him well—providing ingredients, a kitchen, everything he needed—and she didn’t bother him with every little thing… But!

But something was clearly off about Su You’s expression. Meike was sure that whatever she wanted his help with this time, it wouldn’t be simple.

And he was right—Su You’s request was indeed out of the ordinary.

“You remember those three travelers who just arrived in the territory, right?”

Meike nodded, then guessed, “You want to do something to them?” He couldn’t think of any other reason Su You would bring this up.

But if that was the case, he didn’t understand why. The travelers didn’t seem special.

Rob them?

They didn’t look like they had much money.

Something else?

Meike figured Su You’s eyes weren’t that bad.

“Sort of. I want one of them to join the territory, but since they’re travelers, I’ll have to use some special means to get them to stay.” Since she’d come to Meike, those “special means” were either using force, or leveraging Meike’s identity as a mage to tempt them.

But the latter wasn’t likely to work—not everyone was like Yue. Just because people admired mages didn’t mean they’d change their minds for one.

So the simplest way was the more violent one: use force to solve the problem—join the territory, or die.

The reason she chose Meike for this was simple: his identity was more intimidating than anyone else’s, and the others really weren’t suited for this kind of thing.

To put it bluntly, Meike didn’t have much of a moral compass (not in a bad way). He might not agree with Su You’s approach, but he probably wouldn’t refuse, and he wouldn’t feel any guilt about it.

If it were Duoya or Lyle, they probably wouldn’t refuse either—their goodwill toward Su You was high enough—but they’d definitely feel conflicted inside.

“…That’s it?” Meike had expected something much more serious, but it turned out she just wanted him to threaten one of the three travelers into joining the territory.

It wasn’t a hard task, though Meike didn’t quite understand.

“Yeah, that’s it. Not too hard, right?”

Meike replied, “It’s not hard, but have you thought about whether they’ll do anything bad to the territory after being threatened into joining? In other words, aren’t you worried about their loyalty?”

There was a clear difference between joining a territory willingly and being forced to join. The former usually meant higher loyalty and goodwill, while with the latter, if either stat wasn’t zero, you should count yourself lucky.

Yes, those stats could go negative, though that almost never happened among territory residents.

After all, if loyalty dropped below 30, there was a chance they’d leave. Below 10, almost any NPC would choose to leave—unless they wanted to stay for revenge.

“I’m not worried. They just need to join before tomorrow. The day after, they can leave. If they try anything, I’ll just kill them.” Su You said this coldly, and Meike’s opinion of her changed dramatically.

He’d wondered how long such a young girl could hold onto a territory, but now…

“Alright, leave it to me.” Honestly, Meike didn’t see anything wrong with Su You’s matter-of-fact talk about killing. On Sunset Continent, strength was everything—whether it was technical skill or combat power.

As he’d said before, no one took bounties from small territories, because many were set up as traps: people would lure others in, then rob and kill them.

It was wrong, sure, but no one found it strange—it happened all the time.

Besides, Meike himself had killed before, though never without reason.

Once, someone found out he was a mid-level fire mage (he hadn’t advanced to high-level yet), and came to ask for a favor, bringing gifts. When Meike refused, the man got angry and tried to ambush him that night, even using a killing move.

Maybe he overestimated himself, or underestimated a mid-level mage’s combat power, but either way, they didn’t stand a chance against Meike…

(End of chapter)"

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