Kotori had been living with her new family for months now and the days were beginning to blend together.
Wake up
Work on the field
Go home and eat.
The only brief moments of respite were when her father taught her the flute during their breaks and when he played for the family at night.
Her father on Kotori's birthday had given her a hand-carved reed flute much like his.
Consequently, she picked up the flute rather quickly and was able to play simple tunes. Of course, her skills were quite literally "child's play" in comparison to her father but it made her proud to know she was learning something.
Every week or so they would visit the village and go to the market to pick up supplies. The people of the village were relatively nice and would sometimes pat Kotori's head when they saw her.
She had also met the count. Her father was right when he said that the count was a difficult person. If he could be described in one word it would be "eccentric". The count was an old man who rarely left the house. Apparently, he spent most of his time researching local history and other things that caught his fancy.
And despite sounding like an interesting person with many stories to tell, the Count was actually a rather dry person. He spent most of his time talking about his research and rarely cared about whether or not the listener cared to hear it.
As a person who was once also a science researcher in her past life Kotori was sympathetic to him. She herself, had often gotten caught up in rambling about her research for long periods without noticing the other person had long since stopped paying attention.
Since her father would sometimes perform for him. The count was rather Amicable to Kotori's father. He even gave Kotori a small honey-sweet when they met.
Kotori had also learned quite a bit about how karma generation worked.
Karma worked on a utilitarian system that would modify the amount of karma you gained in relation to how much of a direct impact you had on a good deed happening. In other words, it would reward her based on the total "good" that her actions did and would also "modify" the reward based on how directly she caused the action.
It took her several tests to do this.
The utilitarian system was figured out when she had tried to help her father start the fire and ended up burning the straw mat they slept on accident. When she later checked her karma value she found that she actually lost karma in that incident.
The attribution mechanic was found out when she had Shu dig help holes for her. If he did it on his own she would not gain karma, but if she directly ordered the spirit to do it she would gain karma.
All this testing meant that over this time period she had gained very little karma.
[Not that it would be possible for me to do this alone.]
Although that thought gave her grim comfort. The massive negative karma number still loomed over her head and she wracked her brain every night to think of ways to resolve it.
At the very least it was impossible for her to do it on her own. The attribution system gave her some way of envisioning how to surpass her negative value.
If it was possible for her to get a lot of subordinates to do good deeds then it may be possible to overcome the number. Since their actions would also cause her karma to rise
Regardless, Kotori finally had a plan
Step 1. Get a lot of subordinates
Step 2. Do a lot of good deeds.
Unfortunately, step one was going to be quite a hassle, and she needed to network and meet people to do it.
This was incidentally, why Kotori was accompanying her father to the village. She needed to meet people and convince them to follow her. But even she was aware that it was unlikely that anyone would want to follow a young girl.
She still went with her father to the village anyway because it was a nice break in the monotony of farm work. And she was also working on her people skills.
Although Kotori had done great things for her old world in her past life, She was in truth, a lazy person. She had only solved the world hunger issue by solving making human photosynthesis because she was tired of wasting time cooking her own meals. Not out of any sense of altruism. This laziness was also why she spent so much time in heaven and didn't reincarnate. In heaven, nobody forced her to do anything so she wasted quite a lot of time there.
In her old world, Kotori was thought to be an eccentric and reclusive genius. When in reality she was just a mostly socially awkward NEET. This was why she had been making a resolute effort to try and improve her social skills.
As they walked along the rough dirt road towards the village, Kotori saw a small pile of dirt moving with them. This was Shu, he had grown a little bit under Kotori and now looked more akin to a rat than the field mouse shape he used to be. He seemed quite proud of this fact and regularly told his "mother" Kotori about it.
[I can't believe this thing is still following me] Kotori would often think
Although, she couldn't complain much since the little spirit often helped her with her work.
It had also started speaking, apparently being around Kotori and her family had made it want to communicate in a more sophisticated way than just using feelings. Although, the few times it did speak were generally with single word sentences and it still preferred to speak with emotions.
The visage of the village was soon approaching. The village itself was small, essentially a few buildings huddled around a clearing. Most of them were rather simple. The village has a general store, a blacksmith and of course, the Count house, which was larger than all the other buildings there. Kotori had not been inside but she was told the inside was rather plain as well.
There seemed to be something going on in the clearing so she and her father ended up going to investigate. The villagers seemed to be huddled around a pole with a piece of paper on it.
Kotori herself had no clue how to read the text of the world. Although speaking seemed to be done automatically for her, the letters of this world made no sense and didn't look anything like the words in her past life, and thus she could not read them.
This rarely became an issue for her, since most of the villagers couldn't read either, and it was not like reading was something she needed to do often as a farmer.
Still, after asking around, she finally learned why there was such a commotion.
In short, the old count was going on a long trip and his grandson was coming to take over the responsibility of the village.
According to the villagers, the son of count Derkin had left home the moment he came of age and traveled to the capital to seek his fortunes by courting royalty. Apparently, he was a pretty big shot in the capital and was an advisor to the royal family. He married and had a couple of kids. And now one of those kids was coming down to manage the village.
The news made Kotori excited. And she thought that this would be a great opportunity to learn about the capital. She was excited to ask the new count about the world.
Since he had come from the capital, making good relations with him would give her an inroad into the wider political sphere of the world.
Although she was unsure whether or not he would be willing to listen to a small little village girl. If he was anything like his grandfather he would likely be willing to hear her out or at least humor her.
If she got on his good side she would likely use him as a connection in the capital.
Kotori herself spent much of the time in the village thinking about how she was going to convince the new count to tell her about the capital. Although it was a long shot, she finally had a concrete plan that got her hopes up.