Chapter 77: What The Hell Did I Just Get?

Raymond remained seated on the repaired northern wall long after the final golden notification stopped moving.

Behind him, Althoff carried on as if nothing extraordinary had happened.

Hammers struck timber, wagons rolled through muddy streets exposed by melting snow, and somewhere below, Boris was shouting at somebody with enough force to make it clear winter ending had done nothing for the man’s temper.

Raymond heard all of it without really listening. Two translucent lines still hovered before his eyes.

[ Congratulations, Host. ]

[ House Althoff has completed its first Family Evolution. ]

He had spent months waiting for progress, complaining about locked functions, chasing population requirements, and wondering what the System considered a proper noble family.

Now it had answered by dropping so many rewards on him at once that his mind had simply stopped cooperating.

"Okay," he murmured, rubbing both hands over his face. "Nobody move. Especially me. We are going through this slowly before I accidentally build a fortress in someone’s bedroom."

He dismissed the congratulatory message and reopened the mission reward summary, deciding to start with the easiest thing to understand: money.

Before the mission evaluation, House Althoff had 71,200 Gold Coins available. The S-Rank reward had added another 100,000, while his previous 161,000 System Points had received an even larger increase of 250,000.

Raymond selected the treasury section, and the numbers appeared cleanly before him.

[ Family Funds: 171,200 Gold Coins ]

[ System Points: 411,000 SP ]

He stared at the second figure with particular satisfaction. Four hundred and eleven thousand System Points sounded obscene.

For months, SP had accumulated faster than he could meaningfully use it because the System Shop remained locked, leaving him sitting on what increasingly felt like imaginary money. Now the Shop was finally available, and

Raymond found himself grinning at the number. "Four hundred and eleven thousand," he whispered. "I am disgustingly rich."

There was nobody close enough to correct him, which was fortunate, because that confidence was going to survive for considerably less time than he imagined.

The money was straightforward. The inventory was not. Raymond opened it and immediately understood why randomly activating rewards would be a terrible idea.

The list had become long enough that he had to filter it by category. He started with summons, partly because those were familiar and partly because the three Gold tickets had been bothering him since they appeared.

[ Summoning Inventory: Bronze Knight Summoning Tickets: 65 | Silver Knight Summoning Tickets: 20 | Gold Knight Summoning Tickets: 3 | Specialized Civilian Summoning Tickets: 10 ]

Raymond counted the Bronze tickets again despite knowing the arithmetic. Fifteen had remained after winter, and the mission had awarded fifty more.

Sixty-five Bronze Knights waiting to be summoned. Twenty additional Silvers. Three Golds. Ten specialists. His currently active summoned force already contained thirty-five Bronze and eighteen Silver Knights, meaning that if he emptied only the Bronze and Silver reserves, House Althoff would possess one hundred and thirty-eight summoned Knights before even considering the Golds.

His finger hovered over the Gold tickets before he deliberately moved away. He wanted to use them immediately.

After watching one Gold Rank Blackstone Ursar smash Silver Knights through buildings and require eighteen of them to finally kill it, the idea of having three Gold Rank warriors under absolute loyalty was difficult to ignore.

Unfortunately, summoning powerful people onto a public wall was exactly the kind of decision that produced rumors about the Goddess personally sending heavenly warriors to Raymond whenever he sneezed.

He had suffered enough from that nonsense.

"Later," he told the tickets reluctantly. "Somewhere private, preferably before Boris starts asking questions I don’t feel like answering."

He closed the summon category and moved to territorial items, where the situation became considerably worse.

The Tier III Land Upgrade Card still sat unused beside the newly acquired Tier IV Land Upgrade Card. Beneath them waited the Althoff City Master Development Blueprint, the Beast Processing Complex Blueprint, the Tier-II Military Training Ground Blueprint, the Tier-II Barracks Blueprint, and the entire City Infrastructure Starter Package.

Raymond opened that package just far enough to confirm its contents before closing it again: water distribution, sewer and drainage systems, a public bathhouse, large grain warehouse, central market, medical hall, elementary academy, administrative hall, large blacksmithing workshop, and textile and leather workshop.

Then there was the Winter Vanguard Package with hundreds of equipment sets, crossbows, ammunition, Mana Signal Beacons, and mobile medical stations.

Five additional preservation artifacts had joined the two already in use, alongside the Gold Rank Magic Beast processing kit and Advanced Magic Beast Resource Repository.

He closed the inventory completely and leaned back against the cold stone. "Nope. We’re not doing this like an excited idiot opening presents."

The territory below him offered enough evidence that every System reward eventually became somebody’s job.

A blueprint meant workers, materials, supervisors, roads, schedules, storage, and maintenance. Military equipment meant recruitment, organization, training, and command.

Agricultural land meant irrigation, seed allocation, labor, harvest planning, and warehouses.

Even the civilian tickets meant ten new specialists whose knowledge would be wasted if Raymond summoned them without deciding where they were needed.

"Fine," Raymond muttered. "We make a list. Then another list explaining the first list. Lily is going to love this."

He paused, imagining her expression. "Actually, that’s the worrying part. She genuinely will."

With the immediate urge to activate everything suppressed, Raymond opened the Family interface.

The old panel had changed. Its borders were more elaborate, the previous Tier-I designation gone and a new one have appeared, and several sections that had once been greyed out were now active.

A new heading appeared across the top.

-----

[ HOUSE ALTHOFF ]

Family Head: [ Raymond von Althoff ]

Family Grade: Tier II [ Upgrade Progress: 2% ]

System Noble Rank: [ Count ]

Population: [ 5,143 / 10,000 ]

Total Landmass/ Territory: [ 1,500 km² ]

Capital Settlement: [ Althoff City ]

Family Funds: [ 171,200 Gold Coins ]

System Points ( SP ): [ 411,000 SP ]

-----

Five thousand one hundred and forty-three citizens.

Fifteen hundred square kilometers. A city. A Tier-II family. Count. House Althoff had entered winter as a dying barony whose greatest strategic concern was whether twelve hundred people could eat until spring. According to the System, that place no longer existed.

Raymond focused on the noble rank and opened its information tab, expecting a description of whatever privileges Tier II granted.

Instead, another line appeared beneath it.

[ Political Recognition: Baron ]

His eyebrows rose. He read the two entries together.

[ System Noble Rank: Count ]

[ Political Recognition: Baron ]

"Ah."

That single sound carried considerably less enthusiasm than everything he had said during the last half hour.

Raymond understood the problem. The Infinite Clan Treasury System could declare House Althoff a County because its own advancement conditions had been fulfilled or waived, but the System did not sit inside Solaria’s royal court.

As far as the Kingdom was concerned, Raymond von Althoff remained the disgraced Baron who had been sent to govern a miserable frontier territory.

No royal decree had promoted him. No herald had arrived carrying new patents of nobility. No official had redrawn whatever records determined noble jurisdiction.

The System had advanced his family without asking whether the human government agreed.

Raymond rubbed his chin and looked toward the castle in the distance.

"So I’m a Count according to the omnipotent magical treasury living inside my head, and a Baron according to the people who can legally accuse me of treason. Wonderful."

Even by his standards, that sounded like an excellent way to get investigated, mocked, or both. More importantly, publicly assuming a higher noble title without royal recognition could turn Althoff’s growth from an interesting regional rumor into a political challenge.

Raymond had survived four months of beasts trying to kill him. He had no intention of celebrating spring by inviting nobles to do the same.

He closed the political tab and decided the problem could wait. The System could call him Count internally; the Kingdom could continue calling him Baron until he understood the consequences.

What mattered immediately was that Tier II had changed what House Althoff could access.

Raymond glanced through several newly opened interface sections without selecting them, noting expanded territorial management options and the newly acquired Lord’s Eye authority.

He needed Lily, Marianne, Boris, Harlan, Gideon, Jonathan, and probably anyone else unfortunate enough to possess useful organizational skills gathered around one table before he started assigning projects.

The thought made him sigh. He had received enough rewards to make any lord in Zulor jealous, and somehow his first instinct was to schedule a meeting.

"This is how they get you," he muttered. "First they give you power. Then suddenly you’re managing sewage."

Raymond started closing the remaining panels, intending to return to the castle and begin organizing everything properly, when one small icon at the edge of his vision caught his attention.

He stopped. For months it had been there, visible but useless, responding to every attempt with the same irritating message telling him the function remained unavailable.

During the flood of S-Rank rewards, he had celebrated when the lock finally disappeared, but everything that followed had pushed it temporarily from his mind.

Now the icon was different. No grey chain covered it. No warning hovered beneath the name.

Instead, two simple words waited beside a faint golden symbol, and Raymond slowly sat forward as the 411,000 System Points displayed at the top of his interface suddenly became much more interesting.

[ System Shop: Unlocked ]

Raymond smiled and then he selected it.