On the night of the day Soma arrived at Elk, a huge feast was held by the Lord of the town Duke Alf El Elk in front of his castle inviting literally everyone in the town. All of the town’s residents, Mercenaries visiting the area, merchants, and even the slaves. All of those people were invited to the feast in honor of Soma coming back to Elk.

The people of Elk were the only ones who seemed in agreement with the Lord and were partying with everything they got feeling truly happy to see Soma again. On the other hand, the mercenaries who heard stories about the “Hero Of Elk” were surprised to see that the rumored hero was very young, and they were in the process of hearing stories about him, and they were surprised yet again to find out that most of the stories were from after he left the town. On the other hand, the merchants were divided into two groups. The first group was merchants coming from the town of Elm and some who were coming from the Merchants Guild in the capital city. The first group was very interested in the man who made the whole town of Elk move to make such an event by just coming back to it after a mere one month of absence. And seeing all of the people partying together regardless of their ranks especially seeing the Lord seated with his people without guards… or more like the guards themselves were drinking and dancing with each other. And the second group were extremely irked by the prospect of having to sit amidst all of those commoners, they were even thinking that the Lord was very disrespectful towards them, the personal merchants of the capital’s nobles, only to be surprised by the Lord coming out of his castle and sitting with the commoners, partying, talking, and even arm wrestling with some of them. Those merchants were sent to Elk to claim the empty noble positions for themselves and for the sons and daughters of their masters.

The nobles of the capital of course heard about Elk having only three noble families at the moment, and so they sent those wealthy merchants to Elk with a lot of supplies and personals and even some of their children. Since it’s after the Flood, they expected the town to be in need of those things, they honestly thought that Lord Alf was a fool for executing all of his nobles leaving his town without enough nobles to hold the important positions in his government. And since it’s just after the Flood, they expected the town to be in need of the supplies and personal, and so they thought they could negotiate with Lord Alf using the supplies and personal as a bargaining chip. They even sent those merchants late to make the town suffer for some time so that the merchants look like Heroes in the eyes of the desperate people. And so they finally arrived at Elk one month after the Flood only to find a town suffering from the excess food and materials harvested from the Flood’s monsters. But what surprised and irked them the most was the fact that the positions they were aiming for were already given to commoners who were perfect for the job. And so they tried to talk Lord Alf out of such a thing claiming that giving commoners such important roles was outrageous and that his actions were unfit for a Glorious Noble. But Lord Alf simply responded to them by saying “I have been a fool in the past for giving those positions to those Glorious Nobles you spook of. Giving those positions to the perfect people for the job was the best decision I made in my entire life. Those commoners you don’t like very much were able to accomplish in the past month what the nobles before them couldn’t do in years! And that’s why I have no need for any more fools!”.

The fact that Lord Alf knew about their plans and even called them fools angered them to no end, but what shocked them the most was the fact that he just slandered the Glorious Nobility they were aspiring for. Not because they wanted to become nobles themselves, nor was it because he just now slandered their masters, but because he effectively made himself an enemy to more than half the nobles of the capital. And them being included in the list of his new enemies, they used the Love faith to threaten him stating that his actions go against the teachings of the Love Church. Lord Alf, hearing that started laughing for five minutes straight before replaying to them with “So what? Since when was the Love Faith the state faith of my territory or even the Kingdom? The Love Church is nothing but a parasite in this kingdom! They have done nothing but harm to us! Now go and tell your masters that I’m fully aware of their schemes! And tell them that siding with the Love Church will cost them their lives in the near future!”.

Before any of them was able to respond to his words, a soldier came running bringing the news of Soma’s return shifting Lord Alf’s attention from the merchants. And since then he has been ignoring them completely. And when the feast started they participated in it for but a short while only to see Lord Alf making a Fool out of himself by sitting, drinking, and even playing around with lowly commoners. That was the moment they lost all interest and respect for the Lord of Elk, and so they left the town right as the people were having fun eating and drinking intending to deliver Alf’s declaration of war against most of the nobles of the capital to their masers. No… they were actually intending to exaggerate his words to anger their masters even more hopping them to banish him as severely as possible.

Seeing that the stupid merchants have left the town, Lord Alf, his son Ito, and the master of the Craftsmen Guild Dolan went to the table Soma, Marina, Rimi, Maria, Mai, and the kids from the Alchemy department are seated at.

“Well, look at yourself having a beautiful girl on each side. Wait… Isn't that princess-san?!”(Dolan)

“Rimi?! You were here in Elk?”(Lord Alf)

“… From the way she acts…. It seems somehow things turned in the direction Ren wished for…?”(Ito)

“You know that I’m working as a teacher in Akud right now, right? Rimi is one of my students, and when she learned that we are going to Elk, she insisted on coming with us”(Soma)

The three were going to retort that the princess insisting on going with him and without her close friend Alice has a deeper meaning behind it. But all three of them decided against it after seeing the blushing Rimi, and not because of Marina’s intense glare…. Really.

“You guys seem to be doing pretty good handling things here”(Soma)

“…Y-Yeah, asking the people from all the villages in this territory and the tribes scattered all over the place to move here to Elk was a huge success! We were able to learn a lot from them, and after seeing what Elk has to offer they all agreed to emigrate here”(Lord Alf)

“…From my end, the number of mercenaries has increased a lot, and they are growing stronger and stronger thanks to the books from the library. They keep exploring new ways to use Magic and Mana as if it was the most fun thing to do”(Ito)

“…I’m having a lot of problems on my side. Most of the things needed to advance the town can’t be made by anyone but myself as the only one with the Gray System. My workload keeps increasing by the day, and I’m unable to keep up with all of it! And what’s more stressful is that all of those things are things l truly want to work on, but I just get more and more overwhelmed whenever someone discovers a new thing!”(Dolan)

“Gray System…?”(Rimi)

“Actually, I came back to Elk this time for that exact reason”(Soma)

Hearing Dolan talk loudly caused the people to look at him and hearing the contents of what he was saying caused some of the people to look away awkwardly. Rimi was just perplexed from hearing that Dolan say that he can use the Gray System she read about in Soma’s Library in Akud. And there was a particular family who was surprised to hear that. But Soma’s response caused the time to freeze for everyone in the feast. There were even drunk people who sobered up just from hearing the sentence Soma said.

“Wait! Soma! You don’t mean?!”(Dolan)

“Yeah… I came back to provide the town of Elk with the Five Systems!!”(Soma)

Soma said that in a loud voice, so everyone would hear him. And as he said that, Soma pointed his left arm at the sky and from that arm appeared five balls of light colored in the five colors(Gold, Yellow, Orange, Gray, Green). The balls of light flew up towards the sky as they grew in size, and once they became 1m across they stopped growing and morphed into five identical books colored with the five colors.