Chapter 75: S Rank Evaluation

Raymond remained standing on the northern wall, staring at the final line of the System evaluation while the distant Blackridge Mountains sat quietly beyond the thawing wilderness.

Only moments earlier, his thoughts had been occupied by those mountains and the uncomfortable realization that the Beast Tide had never truly been an attack.

Thousands of Magic Beasts had poured south because they were fleeing something deeper inside Blackridge, and whatever had frightened predators, shattered established migration routes, and driven even a Gold Rank creature into the lowlands remained somewhere beyond that horizon.

Raymond would have preferred a little more time to think about that particular nightmare, but the Infinite Clan Treasury System apparently had other plans.

The translucent panel before him flickered once, the unfinished evaluation disappeared, and a clear notification sounded directly inside his head.

[ Ding! ]

[ Final Mission Evaluation: S ]

Raymond’s eyes widened.

"S?"

For several seconds, that was the only word his brain managed to produce. He had expected a good evaluation.

Althoff had survived, after all, and he had fulfilled the primary objective while doing considerably more than simply hiding behind the walls for four months.

Still, S-Rank was the highest mission evaluation he had seen attached to the System’s grading scale since the winter mission appeared.

His gaze immediately moved across the notification again as if there were some chance he had misread the letter, but the golden S remained exactly where it was.

Raymond slowly grinned. "Well... I’d like to thank myself, my incredible administrative abilities, the people who did most of the actual fighting, and whichever idiot in the Blackridge Mountains frightened enough monsters south to accidentally make me rich."

He was still congratulating himself when another chime interrupted him, followed immediately by a second screen.

[ S-Rank Mission Rewards Generated! ]

The grin on Raymond’s face became considerably wider. "Now we’re talking."

[ Base Rewards: ]

[ +100,000 Gold Coins ]

[ +250,000 System Points ]

Raymond’s mouth opened slightly. One hundred thousand Gold Coins was already more liquid wealth than House Althoff had possessed at any point since his arrival, and the quarter-million System Points immediately pushed his accumulated reserves into territory he hadn’t expected to reach this early.

He barely had time to calculate the new totals before additional notifications began appearing beneath the first ones.

[ ×50 Bronze Knight Summoning Tickets ]

[ ×20 Silver Knight Summoning Tickets ]

[ ×3 Gold Knight Summoning Tickets ]

Raymond stopped breathing for approximately two seconds.

His attention went straight past the Bronze and Silver tickets and locked onto the third line.

"Gold?" he muttered, leaning slightly closer to the screen. "Actual Gold Rank Knights?"

The System offered no explanation, but Raymond didn’t need one. His mind immediately returned to the Blackstone Ursar tearing through buildings while eighteen Silver Knights struggled to bring it down.

He remembered standing beside Boris on the merchant-house rooftop and being unable to properly follow parts of the battle because the combatants were moving beyond what his Bronze-level perception could comfortably track.

One Gold Rank Magic Beast had nearly turned the town into rubble. Now the System had casually handed him three summons at that level.

Raymond’s grin returned with enough force that anyone watching him from a distance would probably have assumed something was wrong with him. "Three Gold Knights. Boris is going to have a religious experience."

The System wasn’t finished.

[ ×10 Specialized Civilian Summoning Tickets ]

[ ×1 Tier IV Land Upgrade Card ]

Raymond’s eyes moved between the two rewards with increasing satisfaction. The civilian tickets were arguably just as valuable to Althoff’s long-term development as the Knights.

Five agricultural specialists had already changed how efficiently the territory managed farming, livestock, irrigation, and future cultivation; ten additional professionals could fill holes throughout an administration and economy that had expanded far faster than its expertise.

Architects, physicians, engineers, craftsmen, administrators, depending on what professions the tickets offered, Raymond could solve problems that would otherwise take years of education and recruitment.

The Tier IV Land Upgrade Card was even more interesting. He still possessed the Tier III card capable of transforming one hundred hectares into fertile farmland, and if the next grade followed the System’s usual pattern, spring agricultural expansion was about to become far larger than Harlan or Gideon currently imagined.

Raymond was already wondering whether he should warn them in advance when another notification appeared.

[ System Development Reward ]

Raymond straightened slightly. "Development reward?"

[ System Shop Unlocked! ]

Every thought in Raymond’s head stopped.

He stared at the notification.

Then he stared at it some more.

The System Shop had been sitting inside his interface since nearly the beginning, visible enough to irritate him but permanently locked whenever he tried accessing it.

Meanwhile, System Points had continued accumulating in increasingly ridiculous quantities with almost nothing significant available for him to spend them on.

Raymond had spent months wondering exactly what the Shop contained and what level of nonsense the Infinite Clan Treasury System considered purchasable.

Agricultural equipment? Weapons? Buildings? Artifacts? Technology? Specialized resources? More summons? He had no idea, but the quarter-million SP he had just received suddenly felt far more important.

Raymond immediately reached toward the interface. "Open System Shop."

[ System Shop access initialization pending completion of Mission Rewards. ]

His excitement died instantly. "You’re kidding."

The message remained.

Raymond frowned at it. "You unlock the shop, put it directly in front of me, and then tell me I can’t open it because you’re still giving me things?"

The System remained silent.

"That’s cruel."

Another panel appeared as if the System had decided his complaint wasn’t worth acknowledging.

[ Exceptional Performance Reward ]

Raymond’s irritation disappeared almost immediately. He had learned enough about the System to understand that whenever it started using words like exceptional, hidden, or special, something ridiculous usually followed.

He folded his arms and waited, expecting another ticket package or perhaps some rare item. What appeared instead made him slowly unfold them again.

[ Remaining Family Grade Advancement Requirements WAIVED! ]

Raymond stared. He read the notification a second time.

A few days earlier, he had celebrated reaching more than five thousand citizens only for the System to inform him that population was merely one requirement for advancing House Althoff’s Family Grade.

The bastard hadn’t even bothered telling him what the remaining requirements were.

Raymond had expected the next several months to involve discovering them individually, probably through a combination of territorial development, wealth, military power, influence, and whatever other arbitrary conditions the System decided constituted a proper noble family.

Apparently, S-Rank mission performance had just thrown all of that out the window.

"No fucking way."

The notification changed.

[ House Althoff: Tier-1 Family → Tier-2 Family ]

Raymond’s heart jumped.

Another followed immediately.

[ Noble Grade: Baron → Count ]

This time Raymond genuinely didn’t know what to say.

He remained motionless on the wall while cold water dripped steadily from melting snow somewhere behind him.

Baron to Count was not a small improvement. It represented an entirely different level of noble authority. The System had always connected House Althoff’s development to noble grades, but Raymond hadn’t expected to cross the first major boundary this quickly.

Four months ago, he had arrived as the disgraced Baron of a dying territory containing twelve hundred starving citizens. Now the Infinite Clan Treasury System was recognizing him as a Count.

A laugh eventually escaped him. It started quietly before Raymond shook his head and looked back toward the town behind him.

"A Count. Me."

The absurdity of it made him laugh again. Somewhere in the royal capital, there were undoubtedly nobles who still remembered Raymond von Althoff as the drunken embarrassment who had been exiled to Zulor so everyone could forget about him.

He desperately wanted to see their faces if the System ever decided to explain this promotion to them personally.

Of course, that raised the considerably less amusing question of whether the Solaria Kingdom would recognize a noble advancement issued by an invisible System nobody else could see.

Raymond decided that was a future-Raymondproblem. Current Raymond was busy enjoying himself.

Then the System continued.

[ Territorial Advancement Reward ]

[ Althoff Town → Althoff City ]

Raymond’s laughter stopped. He turned slowly and looked over the settlement behind him.

"City?"

Althoff had certainly grown beyond the town-like settlement he originally inherited, but calling it a city right now was generous enough to qualify as fraud.

The population had passed five thousand, new communal housing filled areas that had once been empty, workshops were operating again, and the central market grew larger every week , yet the settlement still physically resembled an expanded frontier town.

Raymond’s confusion lasted only until the next notification appeared.

[ Territorial Expansion: 150 km² → 1,500 km² ]

His jaw dropped.

"One thousand five hundred?" Raymond immediately opened the Family Map on instinct.

The familiar representation of Althoff appeared, but the recognized boundary was already shifting. The territory that had previously covered one hundred and fifty square kilometers expanded outward across surrounding wilderness and stretches of land left effectively unclaimed or abandoned after the winter disaster.

Raymond watched the boundary continue moving until House Althoff’s recognized territory became ten times larger than before. His eyes moved across forests, plains, abandoned roads, former hamlets, and areas he hadn’t personally visited.