All My Summons Become Divine Girls

Chapter 212: The Richest Broke Region

The town gate came into view around sunset, ending a march that had eaten most of the afternoon.

The boy had stayed awake for the entire road, cataloguing every tree, bird, and passing cart with unblinking attention from his usual seat on Hajin’s chest. Whatever hatched inside that skull was taking notes on the world, which was either adorable or deeply concerning depending on how long Hajin thought about it.

Word of their return traveled faster than they walked, because the square was already full when they came through the gate. The last time this crowd had watched him arrive, he had been holding a severed head instead of a child.

Nobody spoke, every pair of eyes bouncing between their lord, the white-haired toddler chewing on his collar, and the visible absence of a legendary monster corpse.

"My lord," an older miner’s wife finally called out from the well, wringing her apron between her hands, "the mountain beast, is it truly gone?"

"Gone enough," he answered, feeling the boy twist around to inspect the new voice, "the mine opened today, your husbands are already up there getting paid."

A ripple ran through the square at the word paid, which told him more about the last forty years than any ledger could.

Before anyone else worked up the courage, the crowd shifted and the girl from the execution pushed her way through the front row. The fever was long gone from her face, but the steel that made her spit on a dying clerk was clearly a permanent feature.

"Everyone says nobody who climbs that mountain ever comes back," she said, stopping directly in front of him with her chin up, "so did you beat the monster up there?"

"Something like that."

"And who’s that?" She continued, her eyes locked on the boy, who had gone very still and was staring back at her with equal intensity, "you didn’t have a baby this morning."

"Someone the mountain left behind," he answered, keeping it vague enough that the crowd could build whatever story helped them sleep, "he’s mine to look after now."

"Can I hold him?"

The entire square held its breath over a toddler, and Juna opened her mouth to warn the girl. The boy chose that exact moment to lean out from Hajin’s chest, studying the small human at eye level like a puzzle he had not seen before.

Then he simply climbed into her arms and settled there, resting his chin on her shoulder as if the matter had never been in question.

[ GoldRushGamer: ] she just blew past Loccy’s eleven-second record like it was NOTHING

[ Loccy_Defense_Squad: ] slander, Loccy was simply warming him up for others

[ NocturnalNadia: ] the whole town is terrified of a toddler and the only one with any sense is an actual child, kids just get it

[ RationalSkeptic7: ] two weeks I’ve been watching this and I still can’t find which studio renders this in real time, that teleport physics alone would melt a server farm, someone explain

[ first_time_chatter: ] ok I just got here, why does the streamer have a baby and why is an entire medieval town bowing to him

[ ashley (Mod): ] Welcome! Short version: he’s the lord here, and the baby adopted HIM, not the other way around.

Loccy watched the count pass eleven seconds with her fists slowly clenching, taking the loss harder than any battle she had fought so far.

The boy stayed in the girl’s arms for a full minute before blinking back to Hajin’s chest, and by then the square had decided the strange child was a blessing instead of an omen, because the region’s luck had clearly changed the day their lord arrived.

He let them believe it, knowing the truth about imprints and apex lineages would only frighten people who were finally sleeping through the night.

The registry was warm with lamplight by the time they pushed inside, where Elise and Sable were bent over a patrol map arguing about border routes. Both of them stopped mid-sentence, staring at the child on his chest with identical expressions.

"That’s a baby," Elise stated carefully, as if reporting a confirmed anomaly sighting.

"Sharp eyes, that’s why you run my patrols," he pulled out a chair and sat down, wincing when the movement reminded him of his ribs, "the mountain’s guardian left him behind, so he stays."

Sable folded her arms and leaned back against the shelves, "well, don’t expect me to fuss over it like the town girls, I don’t do children."

The boy tilted his head at her tone, then vanished off Hajin’s chest and reappeared sitting on her folded arms, which meant she was now holding him whether she agreed to or not. She went rigid from her neck to her feet, her eyes darting around the room for instructions while Elise slowly pulled out a chair to enjoy the view.

"Get him off," Sable whispered, not moving a muscle.

"You’re holding him fine," Elise replied, resting her chin on both hands.

The boy was still using Sable as a chair when the lamps burned low and Marrick finally came through the door. Ore dust covered his sleeves, the day’s ledger sat under his arm, and whatever he had seen on that mountain had aged him a year since morning.

The first day of digging had already stacked more raw ore than the region had produced in a decade, but the good news died on that line.

"The granaries are at a third," he read down the page, his voice tightening line by line, "the clinic shelves are empty since the fever treatments, and the border fort turned back another caravan this morning, the third one this week. Flint riders are checking every wagon on the eastern road, my lord. Nothing is getting through."

Halfway through the report, the boy started tapping the back of Hajin’s hand, staring intently at the spot where food kept appearing until Hajin gave up and pulled out another core. He bit into it with a happy crunch, having clearly mapped out where the food lived even if he could not reach it himself.

Marrick watched several silver coins’ worth of treasury disappear into a toddler, his quill hovering over the expense column, "and... how should I record that, my lord?"

"Food."

"Food," he repeated faintly, writing it down without further protest, his ledgers having stopped obeying the laws of nature weeks ago.

[ TaxpayerOnEarth: ] putting "food" on the books for eating literal currency is sending me

[ kernel_panda: ] accountant speedrun any% mental breakdown

[ ashley (Mod): ] Real question though, does anyone know how big Guardian Beasts grow? Because his mother was the size of a hill and I don’t think this house has been informed.

He read Ashley’s comment twice, glancing down at the boy licking core dust off his fingers in his lap before calling for Aria.

"Insufficient data," she reported from his shoulder, watching the boy with what might have been professional interest, "growth rate remains immeasurable, so I recommend larger furniture."

The briefing wound down once Marrick ran out of bad news, and the registry emptied slowly around them until the lamps went out one by one. Instead of finding his bed, Hajin carried the sleeping boy up to the flat roof, settling against the chimney with the eastern peak black against the stars.

Aria projected the numbers he had been avoiding all evening, laying the region’s future out in clean golden lines.

[ Treasury projection — current trajectory ]

[ Ore output: rising ]

[ Sellable goods: none ]

[ Regional insolvency: 19 weeks ]

"Nineteen weeks," he murmured, careful not to wake the weight on his chest, "we’re going to be the richest broke region in history."

"Correct. Ore without refinement, transport, or buyers holds no functional value," Aria confirmed, "the blockade converts your gold into decorative rock."

’So digging was the easy part,’ he thought, staring at the dark line of the eastern road where the caravans kept dying, ’the Flints don’t need to beat me, they just need to keep the doors closed while we rot.’

The boy shifted in his sleep, tightening his grip on the collar strap like he intended to keep it.

"Then we find a merchant whose greed is bigger than their fear," he said quietly to the mountain, already running through the very short list of people insane enough to cross the Great Families for profit.