Fishing was mostly boring, but Reivan was finding it surprisingly fun.

  Despite the deal with Axion of Argonia, Reivan wouldn't just throw himself or his forces into the enemy's residences and hope for the best. He obviously had to ensure that they possessed good information before going through with it. Of course, the sooner he rescued the Arkhanians in Argonia's clutches, the better. But risking the lives of his forces wasn't the way to do it, especially when the core of his forces didn't take oaths that beheld them to protect these people. There wasn't any doubt that none of the human knights would falter if the people they were charging into danger for were Aizenians, but that wasn't the case.

  As such, he focused on internal affairs such as the cleanup of the waters near his territories.

  That had gone well, which was never in doubt. It had been a week since the job was finished with the help of House Demoscene's spirit beasts and the warbeasts of the Terracatta Clan. To celebrate, Reivan was holding an event and even participated in it personally.

  It wasn't anything big. Just a fishing competition that was open to everyone who wanted to participate. Afterward, there would be a barbeque where they would cook up everything that was caught. There were just a couple of days before the next Snowday so it wasn't as cold out and the waters weren't iced over yet—the perfect time to go fishing, according to a bunch of old fishermen he talked to while roaming Lageton's streets in disguise.

  There was even a reward for exceptional hauls. While he wanted to stoke some competitive spirit though, he didn't want people to go too far. Just some good clean fun. As such, he just promised to have life-sized statues of the winners and whatever they caught made and put near the beaches.

  "Oh!" Reivan exclaimed, feeling a tug on his line. He pulled his fishing rod back and held it steady as the fish fought to escape. When he felt the pull weaken, he knew the fish had tired and immediately started reeling the fish in. Mere moments later, he smiled as he grabbed the large fish by the tail. "I got another one!"

  Getting a bite at all was mostly a game of luck, but the feeling of reward from it had him hooked. Well, maybe that was a bit much. But he could certainly see the appeal. He supposed this was why fishing as a hobby was prevalent in Aizen's rich and idle.

  "That's a big one." Hector nodded, eyes wide. "Hurry up and measure it."

  "Later, later." Reivan shook his head and dumped the fish as long as his arm into a bucket with the other seven whoppers of similar size he'd caught. "Sun's almost setting. I wanna catch as much as I can."

  Hector chuckled. "The competition's about the size, not the number. But whatever. I doubt you can catch up to me though!"

  'This bastard's getting really cocky...'

  Reivan grimaced, glancing at Hector's bucket full of fish. While he had just caught his eighth one, Hector was already fishing for his seventeenth. It was crazy, how lucky the guy was with fishing. If he didn't know any better, he would've thought that his friend was cheating.

  Helen groaned from beside them. "I'm still not getting a bite..."

  Reivan had to rib Hector to avoid the bloodbath that would have followed. Nobody could annoy Helen the same way Hector could, and the normally talented young woman was not taking to her lackluster result very well. She had been fishing for hours now and hadn't gotten a single bite.

  In any case, Reivan already knew from his experience earlier in the day that offering comforting or encouraging words wasn't going to improve his wife's mood about this. The only way for her to brighten up was if she caught something particularly large by herself. For now, he would keep to himself and avoid ruffling her feathers. Pregnant women weren't known for being patient or rational, after all.

  'A lot more people participated than I thought…'

  Looking all around the ship would treat one to the view of hundreds of little row boats floating above the mostly calm sea. Reivan’s ship was the largest one around and was yet another assertion of his superiority. He was the ruler, after all. It was fine to participate in the event but he had to do it in style.

  Besides, using a larger ship like this didn’t give him much of an advantage, so it was fine. Rather, wouldn’t the fish be scared off by the much larger shadow?

  “You sure there isn't any dangerous stuff out there?” Hector idly asked as he reeled in another large fish.

  ‘Seriously, why the hell do fish like him so much…!?’

  Fishing involved a lot of waiting, so most of the time was filled with chatting. Nothing important, however. Mostly because he had nothing important to talk about with Hector at this juncture. It had been more than a week since their reunion and they’d run out of relevant topics.

  If Helen wasn’t around, they would have likely talked about dumber topics. Or raunchier ones.

  “It’s fine.” Reivan shrugged. “You may not notice it since they’re hiding a lot deeper, but House Demoscene is somewhere below. They’re making sure that nothing too big gets close for now.”

  “Cool, cool. They’re the ones who pushed all the fish that went outward back into this area, right?”

  “That’s them. I was hoping the Terracatta could help with leading the fish populations here too, but they kept catching them instead.”

  Hector snickered. “Being married to one, I can very easily imagine their people doing that. We eat fish at home, like, seventy percent of the time. My girls love it though, so I’m not complaining.”

  Reivan frowned. “Does Sienna already eat fish…?”

  “Yeah, she does. Oh, but she doesn’t eat the bones yet.”

  “...You’re supposed to?”

  “Warbeasts apparently do.”

  ‘I didn’t know that… Jiji doesn’t eat it, as far as I know.’

  But then again, Reivan didn’t stare at his little sisters while they ate. Maybe they did eat the fishbones too, he just hadn’t noticed.

  “It would’ve been interesting if Mimi and Jiji were here,” Hector remarked idly, yawning as he took out a measuring strip to evaluate his latest catch. “Or Dame Gwendolyn. And maybe even… y’know. Your other wife.”

  It was just Reivan and the twins on the sky ark they were using as an anchored ship.

  Gwendolyn and Elsamina were both very busy managing the event or some other thing that he should know about. But the cat-eared princesses were absent for very different reasons.

  Mimi and Jiji were evidently experienced fishers even before they came to Aizen. They had been excited about the event until they realized that diving into the ocean and using a spear to catch fish wasn't allowed.

  An interesting tidbit of historical information about spearfishing was how there was very little mention of it in recorded human history. Which made sense in a world where going into waters too deep meant that the fish started looking at you as prey.

  Yet another reason was that Aizen had a reincarnator as a founding father. The nation’s knowledge base was accelerated beyond belief because of Reivan the First. The people at the time jumped from not fishing at all to wide-scale fishing via nets, fishing boats, or fishing using lightning elemental arts.

  Cursory knowledge of fish farms was offered too and was put into practice in the regime after the initial one. So really, diving into the ocean to spearfish was both inefficient and terrifyingly dangerous. One didn’t do it unless one was ridiculously strong, and at that point, they wouldn’t be wasting time fishing.

  Even Arkhan didn’t have a record of spearfishing ever being a thing, though that may have been because of Aizen’s influence. No doubt, news of Aizen’s methods reached them at some point. It wasn’t hard to replicate the technology required as long as the concept of what was being done was understood.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Reivan spent the next few minutes nerding out over this to Hector, who didn’t have anything better to do than to listen while waiting for another bite. Meanwhile, Helen had lost interest in fishing in general and looked down at the sea with electricity dancing on her fingertips. It seemed she was seconds away from zapping the sea with a lightning strike to compensate for her horrendous luck.

  Good thing he stopped her in time and simply agreed to swap fishing rods with her, which she found an acceptable alternative. It seemed she thought the rods were the problem, but all three of them had the exact same rods and were using the same bait.

  Naturally, he wasn’t going to point that out. Again, pregnant women weren’t the most rational people.

  Reivan and Hector both wiped off their sweat, having finally placated Helen. Then they both sat down and resumed.

  It only took ten seconds before Helen’s rod was tugged.

  “I-I got a bite!” Helen exclaimed, strangely excited. Her smile immediately vanished as she turned to Reivan. “What now?”

  Reivan took one look at the reel spinning rapidly and felt panic rise up from the depths of his soul. The fish was getting away and he knew that he would somehow shoulder the blame if it did. “Stop the reel!”

  “Okay!” Helen immediately did so. With her strength, nothing but a whale could cause her any difficulty, much less a fish that would even take the bait on the line. “I did it. What’s next?”

  “Don’t start reeling it in yet or you might break the line,” Hector offered. “Just let it get tired trying to get away.”

  Helen nodded and grimaced in focus. Moments later, she turned to the two young men again. “It stopped.”

  “You can start reeling it in then.” Reivan nodded, cheering her on. “But stop when you feel its resistance get stronger. It’s not a contest of strength, but a contest of whether the fishing line breaks or not.”

  It would have been one thing if they were using fishing rod-shaped soul armaments, but in the spirit of competition, the three of them were using normal ones. The same rods that every other participant was using, since they were sponsored by Reivan out of his own pocket.

  Watching Helen work, Reivan abandoned his own rod and clasped his hands in prayer. Somehow, Hector had done the same. it seemed he thought that he would somehow share the blame if this went sideways. Helen was already in a foul mood over getting so few bites, so failing to catch the single bite that she did get was going to make her go ballistic.

  After what felt like an eternity of suspense, Helen pulled up the largest fish without sharp teeth Reivan had ever seen. It was as big as a person and twice as thick.

  ‘Ah. We have a winner.’

  It was her only catch of that day, but nobody was ever going to deny that she completely gapped everyone else.

  ════════════════════════════════

  Reivan felt a bit complicated about someone making a statue of his pregnant wife holding a person-sized fish. But it is what it is. A promise was a promise.

  The famous Aizenian marble sculptor he invited from Aizen had already gotten a look and said that he would have the statue ready in three months. Which was incredibly fast, but the sculptor was a retired knight who had photographic memory so Helen didn’t even have to pose with the fish for too long.

  In any case, it seemed the sea was going to be a viable local source of food for Samsara’s residents from now on. But now Reivan had to focus on agriculture because that was where real bank was made when it came to food. More than the crops it produced, it also made animal husbandry possible.

  Most domesticated mammals ate grass and other stuff that grew off the ground, after all. Not fish, unless he wanted to make Samsarans cultivate predatory animals for food—which wasn’t a good idea because most carnivorous animals tasted like shit.

  Of course, this did not apply to every carnivore. But the types that normal people could take care of weren’t tasty. There was a reason why bears weren’t a common type of meat on the table even though they were very much edible and treated as a delicacy.

  In any case, while he was hoping for agriculture to make Samsara self-sufficient in terms of food supply, that was not what his constituents were aiming for.

  They wanted booze.

  Arkhanian booze, made from whatever the hell their alcohol was made of.

  Reivan and Jiji were about to be educated in it by Gwen—who, in turn, was taught by someone else. It was like a game of telephone because meeting the Hierarch wasn’t supposed to be easy.

  “Before you,” Gwendolyn began, presenting four bottles to the royals sitting before her. “are the best Arkhanian brews made from these two types of produce. They were sent in from Aizen and are one of the last few bottles that exist now, after the cataclysmic events that struck the republic.”

  Jiji took one of the bottles and examined it. “Doesn’t that make these incredibly valuable?”

  “Indeed. But merely as curiosities and for rarity alone. Not because of their… tastes. Arkhan is more famous for the wide array of luxury fruit liqueurs they trade, rather than common people’s brews like these.”

  “I see.” Jiji crossed her legs and sighed. “And they can’t produce those anymore, can they? It’s not as if Aizen kept seeds for most of them too.”

  Gwen nodded. “That is the case. The only alcohol they can produce would be the ones made from staple produce like Winter Grapes and potatoes, the latter being something we introduced to the republic when it was established.”

  She then procured two glass cases with two different crops inside. One had a very normal-looking potato, all brown and… potato-like, he supposed. The other had a cluster of dark blue grapes, though some were so dark that they seemed black instead.

  Reivan already knew about potatoes so he was obviously more interested in the other one. He popped the glass case open and plucked out one of the grapes, squeezing it and finding it surprisingly soft. It had a musky aroma that he couldn’t quite compare to anything else he’d ever smelled, but the skin texture wasn’t all that different from other types of wild berries he’d encountered.

  One difference was how cold it felt. And it wasn’t because the glass case’s interior was kept chilled. Rather, the grape itself seemed to be the origin of the cold.

  ‘Guess they’re not called Winter Grapes for nothing.’

  “Welp, nothing ventured, nothing gained.” Reivan shrugged and threw the grape into his mouth.

  Curious, Jiji peered into his face. “How is it?”

  “It’s okay.” Reivan once again shrugged and took two more grapes, handing her one before eating the other again. “Have some.”

  Jiji did as was told, only for her face to immediately scrunch up from how sour it was.

  Reivan couldn’t hold it in anymore and also made a face, though his laughter at his sister’s expense won out in the end. It had been hard to stop his face from showing any reaction at all, but it was worth it.

  “You ass.” Jiji punched him hard, obviously not too happy about being tricked. She excused herself to wash her mouth off and left.

  Gwen, who could have warned either of them but didn’t, gestured at the grapes. “As you have no doubt experienced, Winter Grapes aren’t very popular snacks as they are. They’re highly acidic, with a sharp tart taste.”

  Reivan didn’t react as violently as Jiji but he still took out a flask of rum to wash off the taste, but he just ended up making the rum taste bad. “And the Arkhanians want this stuff?”

  “The wines produced from them aren’t very good either,” Gwen said slowly, seemingly just as confused as he was. “But they are still somewhat popular in certain circles, yes. Winter Grapes were mainly useful for hybridization to create cold-resistant grape variants, rather than winemaking itself.”

  “And where are these cold-resistant grape variants?”

  “Each famous brewery would have its own special variety. But they have likely been wiped out by now. All Aizen managed to preserve for research purposes are the ordinary Winter Grapes because the original ones transfer their cold-resistant properties faster than diluted variants.”

  Reivan looked at the bottle Jiji left behind and popped it open, pouring himself enough for a taste. Surprisingly, it tasted fine. Not something he would hoard, but he wouldn’t say no to this if it was offered. Hector definitely wouldn’t, that alcoholic bastard.

  Gwen elaborated. “This bottle is made from special Winter Grape variants. The other bottle is made from original winter grapes. The last two bottles are different but are both made from potatoes.”

  Reivan’s gaze passed over the vodka and the aquavit made from the unimpressive potato in the unopened glass case. He was pretty sure he’d tasted both of the brands as Clover, actually, so he skipped over them. All liquors made from potatoes were cheap stuff, even in Arkhan.

  He opened the other bottle of brandy made from winter grapes and had a taste, promptly regretting how indulgent he was of his own curiosity. “Not to be disrespectful of another nation’s culture, but this tastes like shit.”

  “It’s an acquired taste, I’m told.” Gwen seemed to agree, though she didn’t verbally express it. Clearly, she’d had a taste already. “Regardless, we will likely focus on the cultivation of potatoes rather than the grapes. Potatoes can be a staple food as well, after all.”

  “True.”

  “Some viticulturists have expressed their desire to try cultivating winter grape variants, seemingly having experience with it. That said, they don’t have other grape variants and would like to request Aizen’s assistance on this matter.”

  “Approved. Doesn’t it take more than a decade to do that though?”

  “A generous estimate would be ten to fifteen years, yes.” Gwen nodded. “But it seems that a Priest of Sormon mentioned how their powers work on flora. That is why they’re more confident about their quick success.”

  Reivan raised a brow. “And the local church…”

  “Has expressed their intent to help in this endeavor. Along with aiding the growth of other crops, the same way they help Aizen.”

  “Huh. That’s nice of them.”

  “They have also asked permission to invite more of their priests from Aizen here.”

  Reivan shrugged. “I don’t mind. Let them come.”

  Gwen bowed. “I will deliver your intentions when I next meet them.”

  A moment later, the door opened, revealing Jiji and a very disgruntled-looking Hector.

  Hector said with a forlorn and thoroughly betrayed expression. “You were taste-testing booze and you didn’t invite me?”

  Reivan rolled his eyes, but suddenly thought of something. “Come over here then. I’ve got something special for you.”

  “I knew you wouldn't let me down, my dearest friend!”

  Gwen and Jiji could have warned him. And Reivan was also a shitty person for orchestrating it. But nobody stopped Hector from pouring himself a glass of the horrid liquid and downing it in one go. There was solidarity between the three who had tasted the winter grape’s sourness

  If they had to suffer, everyone else had to as well.