Chapter 44
Chapter 44: Servant Cedric (10) - Image Improvement. Territory Edition.
When the people of Eched Territory heard that Claudia had driven out the acting lord and taken up residence in the manor, they were all gripped by fear.
"If it's Lady Claudia... isn't she that terrifying villainess?"
"I heard she beats the servants and hurls abuse at them at the slightest provocation, and it's rare for anyone to last even a year."
"Until now, she'd been cooped up in the mansion the whole time, so why on earth is she handling the lord's affairs?"
"Isn't she trying to squeeze us dry by raising taxes like crazy?"
"Maybe she wants to feed disobedient villagers to the monsters!"
"Hey! Keep your voices down, all of you! What if someone hears us?"
In Eched Territory, Claudia's name was infamous for all the wrong reasons.
She hadn't gone around the territory committing atrocities herself, but people who had gone to work as servants in her mansion and fled in horror had spread all sorts of vicious rumors about her.
As rumors always go, about half of it was exaggeration or distortion, but the other half was firsthand testimony, so it couldn't be dismissed as completely baseless slander.
The villagers trembled at the thought of what Claudia might do.
But Claudia betrayed their expectations in the best possible way.
-Woof! Woof, woof!
-Grrr.
"...Those are supposed to be terrifying monsters? They're just dogs with reddish fur."
"They're supposed to be on guard duty? How does that even make sense?"
The villagers were first thrown off by how cute the notorious blood beasts Claudia handled actually were, second by the announcement that those dogs would serve as guard dogs, and third by the fact that it really worked.
"I was about to get beaten up by some thugs when I heard a dog barking from somewhere, and a little later the guards showed up. They saved me."
"I lost my coin purse and kept looking everywhere, but the dog found it for me!"
"My son is a soldier in the guard unit, and he says work has gotten much easier lately. Instead of having to run around scattered all over the place like before, they just wait on standby and go wherever the dogs lead them."
"The criminals holed up in the back alleys seem to be getting skittish even at the sight of an ordinary dog these days."
Once Claudia, whom they had thought would be lucky just to sit around and do nothing, ended up running the lord's affairs surprisingly well, public opinion toward her flipped almost overnight.
There were two major reasons for this rapid rise in support.
One was that the expectations for Claudia had been ridiculously low.
And the other was that the policies she put into place were very easy to feel firsthand.
In fact, even when some high-ranking official announces a policy meant for the people, it is rare for the common folk to feel its effects directly and rejoice over it.
Policies that are too extreme and made without considering their social impact often cause side effects and draw criticism instead, while carefully tuned policies tend to have effects that are too small or take so long to show results that they're just as hard to notice.
By contrast, the blood beast guard system was immediately visible, easy to understand, and required no effort or sacrifice from the villagers themselves.
It wasn't as if Claudia had introduced a new guard system and then conscripted more villagers, nor had she raised taxes by that much.
Since the villagers were getting nothing but pure benefit at no cost, they could praise Claudia with complete peace of mind and no hesitation.
Of course, not everyone was happy with this change in public opinion.
***
"Damn it, we're screwed."
Hameln, a young official in Eched Territory, was one of the representative figures who did not welcome Claudia's actions.
It wasn't because he was taking bribes from criminals or anything like that, nor was it because he disliked Eched's improved security.
No, on the contrary, on that point he actually held Claudia in fairly high regard.
More precisely, he only held that one part in high regard.
"If you've kicked people out, you should at least bring in a proper replacement! Do you think you can just dump a bunch of new hires on us and say work together from now on and that'll work!?"
Those who quit in protest over the acting lord being driven out were mostly people close to the acting lord and financially comfortable.
In other words, they were high-ranking officials even among the bureaucrats.
Claudia filled their vacant posts by promoting some lower-ranking officials, including Hameln, but taking over the work with no handover, no explanation, nothing—if it ran smoothly, that would be the strange part.
Not to mention he couldn't devote himself solely to that.
He also had to teach the rookies who had just joined the organization and knew nothing at all about administrative work.
Anyone who has worked in an organization knows, to some degree, that at first a new hire is more of a burden than manpower until the adjustment period is over.
Answering endless questions like "How do I do this?" and "How do I do that?" eats up time and mental energy.
"For now, you can probably fool people with flashy policies. But soon enough, accidents are going to start happening all over the place...."
And when that happened, the ones who would likely have to take responsibility were Hameln and the other existing officials.
A lord is not someone who bears responsibility, but someone who demands it, and when it comes to strengthening power, removing the existing officials would be more helpful than removing the newcomers who are purely Claudia's people.
One day, Hameln was sinking into deep gloom over a future that looked anything but bright.
"Take this."
Called to the lord's office, Hameln blinked when Claudia handed him a bundle of papers.
Reading the question on his face, Claudia said,
"I saw some inefficiencies in the existing workflow, so I revised it. From now on, work in the order written there. Spread it to the people in your department too."
"I-is that so."
Hameln had to work hard not to let a sour expression show.
In truth, it wasn't that rare of an occurrence.
It was a common thing for those above to glance over the work done below them and say, "Don't do it like that, do it this way instead."
The problem was that such advice was usually pretty badly thought out.
Even the former acting lord had once issued the miracle decree limiting each official to a set amount of paper per day in order to prevent paper waste, only to rescind it in a hurry after documents with text so tiny they were nearly unreadable were mass-produced.
Much less if it was an order from a precious young lady who had never done paperwork in her life.
Suppressing the urge to sigh, Hameln began turning the pages of the paper bundle.
'...Surprisingly, the opening is pretty solid. They even prepared a table of contents.'
Flip.
'Standard forms? You predefine what to write and in what order depending on the type of work? I'm already doing that now... still, there are plenty of people who ignore that and do whatever they want. It's better to make it a rule outright.'
Flip.
'Hmm, splitting the work by field. It would definitely be easier to teach that way. They'd get up to speed faster too. But at this rate, if the person in charge disappears, the other staff won't be able to handle a problem in that area... Ah, a deputy manager for that, I see.'
Flip.
'Guest reception manual? Wait, you've recorded all the etiquette and procedures according to rank for when an honored guest visits!? '
Flip.
Flip.
Flip.
At first, Hameln started reading the paperwork with the feeling, What kind of nonsense is written here? but the more pages he turned, the more serious his expression became.
By the end, he had even momentarily forgotten that he was standing before the lord.
'...Unbelievable.'
Hameln's hands trembled.
As the most capable of administrative work among the officials left in Eched Territory, he could tell.
The immense value of this document.
'The content of each individual item isn't all that revolutionary. There's nothing here so advanced or conceptually new that it can't be understood, and a lot of it is stuff seasoned bureaucrats already do unconsciously more or less by habit.'
But that doesn't lessen the value of this document.
There is an unbridgeable gap between vaguely thinking, 'This should be enough here,' and 'When A happens, do B.'
Thoroughly systematized manuals.
A magic set of instructions that, as long as you're not literally illiterate, will make even a beginner do their share simply by following what's written exactly.
'What's more, this isn't only needed by beginners. If the things written here are put into practice, the existing officials' efficiency will shoot up tremendously too.'
He couldn't know exactly how effective it would be until they tried applying it, but if Hameln's estimate was right, even the minimum would be more than twice as effective.
It would be enough not only to fill the manpower gap, but even to handle Eched Territory's administration with fewer existing workers.
Hameln looked at Claudia with eyes brimming with emotion.
The complaints he had quietly harbored toward her were already gone without a trace long ago.
No, he even felt a sense of satisfaction at being able to serve such a lord.
"Wonderful, truly wonderful, my lord! With this, we can manage the territory perfectly—no, even more perfectly, without any issue!"
At Hameln's words, Claudia twitched slightly for some reason.
But only for a moment. Soon she waved a hand as if it were nothing and said,
"You're making a fuss. If you don't have any complaints, go spread the word quickly."
Though her actions seemed indifferent at first glance, to Hameln, who was already completely smitten, even that felt like the humility of a ruler who didn't boast about her own achievements.
He bowed deeply, then left the room with a buoyant step, eager to put it into practice as soon as possible.
Only after Hameln had completely disappeared did Claudia mutter in a low voice.
"...Cedric. Is that really that great? Honestly, I still don't really get it."
In response to her question, Cedric, who had been quietly standing guard diagonally behind her, answered.
"If it's impressive, then it's impressive, and if it's trivial, then it's trivial."
"For something like that, his reaction is ridiculously loud."
"Hahaha, it's pretty similar to how the young lady reacted when she first ate omurice."
"What."
Claudia drew in a sharp breath for a moment, then immediately rattled off a barrage of words.
"Y-you're lying! There's no way I reacted that dramatically!"
"Is that so? The way you were concentrating so hard you couldn't even tell whether anyone was nearby was exactly how it felt back then."
"Shut up right now!?"
"Ah, how can I turn away from the faithful testimony of a loyal servant."
Claudia grabbed the paperweight on the desk and hurled it at him, and Cedric, as always, caught it without batting an eye and put it back where it belonged.
Glaring at him as if irritated, Claudia clicked her tongue and said,
"Even so, that's surprising."
"What exactly are you referring to?"
"Honestly, I thought you wouldn't just hand over documents like that, but would step in and handle everything personally."
Claudia knew Cedric was capable of administrative work too.
There was no way she wouldn't know when she was receiving private lessons from him every day.
The reason she hadn't bothered to stop the existing officials when they said they would leave on their own was the same.
Because she was certain that even if those bastards were gone, having Cedric around would mean there'd be no problem.
But contrary to Claudia's expectations, Cedric chose to help indirectly by making a manual instead of directly stepping in to do the work.
She couldn't make sense of it.
If it were someone else, she might think he did it because the work was a pain, but the Cedric Claudia had seen so far was, frankly, close to a workaholic.
"It's simple. If I stepped in and handled the work myself, it would be convenient right now, but in the long run it would be harmful to the organization. An organization that grinds to a halt just because one person is missing isn't worth much."
"Though the one with the final say is another matter entirely," Cedric added.
Claudia frowned at the subtle nuance in his words.
"Then what about hiding the fact that you made that manual and making it look like I did?"
"Because that is more advantageous in several ways."
Cedric answered without the slightest hesitation.
"People don't usually think about efficiency first; they tend to keep using the way they've always done things out of habit. People like that official Hameln, who proactively try to apply things, are rare, and if you want to force such people into it, using the young lady's authority is efficient. If the lord herself made the manual, they'd be self-conscious enough to at least put on a show of following it."
"If you announce it under your own name, that won't work?"
"Of course not. If a mere servant, a greenhorn at that, suddenly pushed administrative reform, which bureaucrat would take it seriously?"
He wasn't wrong.
But for some reason, Claudia felt annoyed.
"...The mansion's the same too. The servants are happy that I've changed, but they hardly ever talk about you."
Strictly speaking, it wasn't that they never talked about you at all.
Claudia's behavior had changed after Cedric was hired, so if they didn't think of a connection between the two, that would be strange.
But that was only a "guess."
There were almost no people who would outright declare that Cedric had changed Claudia!
Not least because Cedric himself made no effort to publicize his own achievements.
"I merely offered advice. It was you, young lady, who accepted it and put it into practice. Do not undervalue your own achievements."
"What I want to say isn't something like that...."
Claudia, who had been about to snap back, fell silent.
That subtle unease in her heart.
Because the moment she told Cedric about that unease, she felt like it would really come true.
"Tch, whatever. Go bring me some tea. Make it sweet."
"Understood."
After Cedric had left.
She muttered in a low voice.
"...Why do you always act like you're trying to make it so things are fine even without you."