Chapter 77: Hunting Game (1/2)
Evening came quickly, and Rino would not have known if it wasn't for the soap making ladies knocking at the door to inform him that they finished making the soap and washing the slime off the frog skin that they managed to hang for drying.
”We will stop here for today,” he told Erika. ”Please revise what I taught and practice by yourself until I see you the next time to test you on what you learned.”
The female ghoul bowed and thanked Rino before returning to his shadows. Rino had to say, her learning speed was impressive. He managed to teach her all the alphabets, how to read them and write. Then, he taught her how to count to a hundred and explained how written numbers are formed. Even though Erika did not understand what thousands and millions were, she wrote them out when asked in chronology sequence.
Night was finally here, and Rino gathered everyone in the fields. Too much work and no play made Rino a dull boy. If the Gods wanted him to work, they should know better than to put him on a tight deadline. Rino needed time to have fun and enjoy what he was doing because he wasn't getting paid enough.
Who was he kidding? Even if he was paid all the gold in this world, he would still not work for something he did not believe in.
As a supreme leader, Rino must not only produce results. He had to learn how to manage his people, resources and plan for the future. If the gods wanted him to hunt fifteen King Toads, there were several ways to do it. It wasn't difficult to hunt fifteen of them over five days even though one day was gone. These toads weren't very smart, and the sylphs could easily take care of them.
However, Rino was a person who did not believe in wasting opportunities. He still had four days but the next three days were a vacation for him. He wasn't going to do any work during the next three days after the hunt was over tonight. Hence, the best decision was to create competition to inspire his people and produce the best results.
”Greetings, my citizens. As the kingdom is still in its developmental stages, there are plenty of things that will require your utmost support. I will be entrusting certain jobs to outstanding individuals like I have entrusted farming to Fronzo so that I can work on more important things. Tonight, I will explain the rules for the hunting game to select an outstanding individual to act as my Hunting Squad's Commander.”
Hearing how there would be a new commander elected, everyone cheered, and Rino winced at the pain that erupted in his head. He was hearing everyone's mental communication through his bond even if there was only silence, in reality, accompanied by the singing crickets of the forest.
The scene of over a hundred undead and a few hundred faes gathering in a potato field struck the gods above as odd. Although Rino was a king, he did not feel like one. Even if he wore a crown, he did not act like one. This magician was through and through a scholar and commoner at heart. It wasn't dislikeable, but Ark wondered if Rino would run into problems as his kingdom expanded.
”It was nice of you to give him five days,” Ace mused, and Ark looked away.
He did some reflecting after the last system update incident. Ace was right about Rino, and the kingdom was not going anywhere. Pulling the noose too tightly might backfire on them. The lich already found ways to destroy one world. It wasn't impossible to do it again, ever since he became more powerful. Ark thought that it would be better to work with Rino and get on his good side for once instead of trying to force him to work against his will.
The magician might be lazy, but he had the incredible foresight to know what had to be done after receiving some hints about what the Gods required from him. The tutorials were merely informational guides for Rino if he needed them. His innovation and ability to think ahead made Phil's task of guiding him very simple. In fact, if they were honest, Rino's desire to maximise efficiency in every production cycle worked in their favour.