So. The bookkeeping is a disaster.
I’ve been doing farming and basically nothing else, delegating that whole department to Ouroboros and Maria.
My assumption was that everyone except Sonya had a respectable education, so it was fine…
Which brings us to today, when I tested Ouroboros’s actual math ability.
“Okay, Ouroboros? So we let this unknown be X, and—”
“S-s-se…?! M-Master, such matters… could they not wait until nightfall?”
“Ouroboros… even YOU are at this level…”
So, to summarize the findings.
Ouroboros can do three-digit addition and subtraction, and two-digit multiplication. That’s the ceiling.
On paper, mind you. Not mentally.
Maria tested at the same level, and Sonya cannot perform any calculation exceeding the number of fingers on two hands.
Here’s the thing though — Maria was tutored by elite S-rank colleagues in her adventuring days, and Ouroboros came up through a genuine elite-education track.
Yes. Really.
THIS is what top-percentile education looks like here.
Arisa, for reference, also runs on vibes-based accounting. Multiplication past two digits: not happening.
—The result being that the vegetable inventory and the gold count don’t match. At all. Anywhere.
I did have them keep transaction records, technically. The records are where the chaos BEGINS.
“Well. This is a problem.”
A genuine problem, in fact.
You cannot do bookkeeping when you cannot do arithmetic.
Per Arisa, professional merchants keep ledgers by some other method entirely and are “way better than your place” — which I believe, and which I am also confident would still look like madness to my Japanese sensibilities.
“Ufufu~. Who caaares about money~♪”
Yes, dear. YOU are on record.
Honestly, a suddenly-intellectual Sonya would be more disturbing anyway.
But the DILIGENT wing — Ouroboros and Maria — being at this level is a real operational crisis.
As I sat there wracking my brain—
“An intruder~♪”
One of the palm-top rabbits on field-guard duty came pattering into the house.
So: an intruder.
Petite, black-haired, looks sixteen or seventeen.
A mage’s mantle, a mage’s staff.
And under the mantle — a blazer school uniform with a miniskirt…
Which is to say: one of the high schoolers who got transferred here with me.
In a crowd of manga-grade blond delinquents and gyaru types, this black-haired girl always stood out oddly. Striking eyes — genuinely beautiful eyes, I remember thinking.
Mayu, I’m pretty sure they called her.
From what I saw, she ranked near the bottom of that group’s pecking order.
And she was the only one who ever showed me any sympathy — another reason she stuck in my memory.
Anyway — we found her collapsed near the field, covered in blood and mud.
I had Maria administer healing magic and a towel bath, which restored her to presentable condition — but whether from sheer exhaustion or worse, she didn’t wake for hours.
Her life wasn’t in danger, at least, so we laid her out by the living room and sat down to dinner…
GRRRRRROWL!
With that maximally legible stomach noise, the girl called Mayu woke up.
“Ah… mister…”
Still half-asleep, she gazed blearily around the room, and then—
“HII! PALM-TOP RABBITS!”
—and with that, she fainted. Again.
Yeah… by this world’s standard sensibilities, palm-top rabbits really are apex-tier nightmare fuel, huh.