Hilko had been run ragged lately. Barely a moment to catch his breath.

All because Louis had casually tossed out a single sentence: "Go register the basic information of Crimson Tide Territory's residents. Find out what each of them is good at."

And so he'd been dumped into a chaotic mess of handwritten records, stuck staring blankly at a bunch of confused farmers and blacksmiths.

Some hemmed and hawed, utterly clueless about how to answer.

"I used to farm."

"Do you want to continue farming?"

"… I don't know."

"…"

One guy even answered with complete indifference: "I'm good at staying alive."

Hilko had nearly smashed his ledger into the man's face right then and there.

"Damn it. I'm supposed to be a future alchemist. How the hell did I end up as a butler for some frontier lord?" Hilko cursed under his breath as he furiously scribbled name after name into the registry.

And honestly? He had no one to blame but himself. He'd just had to go and steal those damn alchemy formulas.

He'd been living the good life as an alchemy apprentice in the Emerald Federation, occasionally swiping a few mana crystals from his mentor to make some extra coin.

Then one day, in the black market, a stranger had approached him. The man had offered an enormous sum for him to steal one of his mentor's secret alchemy arts. The price was high enough to let him leave his apprenticeship behind and open his own workshop.

Hilko hadn't hesitated long. The payday was too tempting.

But the plan had gone nowhere near as smoothly as he'd imagined.

The formula was far too complex. He couldn't memorize it. So he'd just taken the whole thing. His mentor was scatterbrained enough, right? One missing formula wouldn't be noticed.

He'd gravely underestimated how important that formula was.

His mentor discovered the theft almost immediately. The Goldmarrow Guild issued a warrant for his arrest. They were determined to bring the thief to justice.

The black-market buyer was captured soon after and promptly gave Hilko up.

Hilko knew that if he was caught, he'd face not just brutal punishment but likely end up as a lab rat for all manner of twisted alchemical experiments.

So, to save his own skin, he'd disguised himself as a slave and slipped in among a slave caravan, hoping to sneak out of the Emerald Federation and make his escape.

As it turned out, the slave traders were far sharper than he'd imagined. The moment he tried anything, the whip came down.

A few good lashings, and he'd learned his lesson fast.

Just like that, he'd become a genuine slave. And he didn't dare reveal his alchemy training. If the traders found out, they'd be more than happy to sell him right back to the Goldmarrow Guild, and Hilko would be delivered straight to the experimentation table.

So, through one twist after another, he'd landed in the black market of Frostspear City.

He'd been sure he was destined to spend the rest of his life mining in some pit. Instead, a young Colonization Lord named Louis bought him and dragged him off to this godforsaken wasteland.

At first, Hilko figured he'd jumped out of the frying pan and straight into the fire. Enslaved until death.

But Louis didn't treat his slaves like livestock, the way other nobles did. When he learned Hilko could read, write, and do accounting, he canceled his slave status and made him something like a steward.

In the time Hilko spent observing Louis, he'd discovered one thing: Louis was a good person.

He shared his own food with starving slaves. He personally tore up slave contracts and granted people freedom.

A noble who actually saw slaves as human beings?

In Hilko's eyes, this didn't even feel like a proper lord. It felt more like a missionary.

"Tch. I guess I got lucky this time…"

Hilko said it out loud, but inside he was still scheming for a way out. A future grand alchemist wasn't about to spend his life in a place so barren even birds wouldn't shit there.

…

"My lord. The census you requested." Hilko placed a thick ledger on Louis's desk. His face was haggard with exhaustion, his steps unsteady.

"Hm. Good work." Louis accepted the book and flipped through it.

The handwriting wasn't exactly neat, but it was well-organized and meticulously categorized. He'd even noted the elderly who could barely manage a hoe, the women skilled at weaving, and the children with hunting talent. The man had clearly put real effort into this.

A useful talent.

Louis looked up at the young man before him. Hilko stood slouched and unsteady, dark circles carved deep beneath his eyes.

He, of course, knew perfectly well that Hilko was no ordinary person. His Daily Intelligence System wasn't just for decoration, after all. He'd known from the moment he bought Hilko that this kid was an alchemy apprentice from the Emerald Federation's Goldmarrow Guild—and a wanted criminal to boot.

But he hadn't exposed him.

For one thing, Hilko didn't seem malicious. Louis wasn't in a rush to unmask him; he wanted to see when Hilko would volunteer the truth on his own.

For another, given the current state of Crimson Tide Territory, a literate assistant with administrative skills was far more useful than an alchemy apprentice.

The territory was still in its foundational stages. Alchemy was a luxury when even basic infrastructure hadn't been completed. Right now, the priority was getting this land operational, not running alchemy experiments.

And if Louis exposed him outright, what if the guy decided to slack off out of spite?

Louis glanced at the mountain of documents and ledgers piled behind him. If he lost Hilko, this new lord would have to personally bury himself in that mess of paperwork.

With that thought, Louis decided to keep playing dumb. It wasn't like the guy could run anywhere out here in the middle of nowhere.

Setting the Hilko matter aside, Louis opened the census ledger and skimmed the basic profile of his subjects.

Reading the results, he smiled. Though Crimson Tide Territory looked like a desolate wasteland, it actually had more talent than he had expected.

Over a thousand people. Farmers and herders made up the majority, with over a hundred experienced fishermen. Dozens of hunters, blacksmiths, carpenters, and tanners. Enough to build a fundamentally self-sufficient domain.

This was exactly the information Louis needed. He hadn't ordered the census just for record-keeping. He wanted to understand the territory's inner workings.

A domain was like a precision machine. Every gear had to be set in the right place for it to run efficiently. Throw a farmer into a forge, a fisherman into a ditch, or a hunter into a sheep pen, and things would technically move, but they'd grind slow.

A lord who didn't know his people couldn't control the future of his land.

Now came the real task: deploying these people correctly and getting Crimson Tide Territory onto the right track as fast as possible.