After two days in the mountains, Charles followed the carriage to a small mountain village in the middle of the mountain.

The village is not big, with about 20 households. A 35-meter-wide stream flows by the village. Corn is planted in the few fields outside and on the reclaimed hillside, ready to be harvested.

The village covers a very small area, and there is no open space such as a square, so Charles set up a stall on the open space outside the village gate for drying food.

However, his business was not good. The villagers who seemed to be malnourished basically had no plans to buy anything. Only a woman who seemed to be in better health exchanged a few animal hides for a trap.

Charles chatted with her a few words, and learned that her husband was a hunter, a rich man in the village.

At the other end of the open space, Chloe was talking to the village chief. The old village chief, who was so old that he was afraid that he would die in the next moment, respectfully listened to Chloe's instructions.

In the past two days, Charles used the pressure cooker to cook meat and got acquainted with several people in the carriage team. He learned that the carriage team was hired by Chloe and that the old man was the owner of the carriage team that night.

Chloe is the illegitimate daughter of a Viscount in Messina and an ordinary family in the city, and usually does some things for the Viscount.

This year the viscount and his knights pooled together money to build a small wool mill, so they sent Chloe out to recruit workers in the villages in their domain.

Charles had basically no business on this day, except for the animal trap, someone used a thigh that was air-dried and didn't know what kind of monster it was in exchange for some linen.

The sky gradually darkened, and people in the village who were working in the fields and hunting went back to the village one after another.

At this time someone brought some potatoes and turnips to exchange a little needle and thread with him.

Helpless, Charles could only accept barter transactions. He asked, and learned that there are not many families with copper plates in the village.

When the smoke from the cooking in the village was rising, Charles carefully washed a large piece of meat cut from the leg of the monster by the creek beside the village. The ghost knows how long the dried meat has been hanging in the house and washed clean. Then cut the meat into cubes, peeled and diced potatoes, and radishes and simmered them in a pressure cooker together.

In the past, Charles and the caravan would spend the night in the village, but the village was too poor, the house was tattered, and it was not as clean as a tent.

After everyone finished their dinner, Chloe had someone set up a bonfire in the open space, and the sound of gongs sounded in the village, and it didn’t take long for all the villagers to come to the open space outside the village.

It was obviously not the first time for Chloe to come here. Many people in the village knew that she represented the lord, so the villagers stood quietly in front of the fire.

Charles, who had just returned from washing the pot by the river, sat in his carriage and drank cold water to watch the fun.

Chloe announced the recruitment and salary conditions to the villagers, which surprised the villagers. The villagers thought she was here to collect taxes or recruit soldiers.

Charles listened to the whispered discussions of the villagers for a while and found that they were quite moved.

Many young people in the mountain village will follow the passing caravans or adventurer teams to go out into the world. Some people have no news from now on, some people return home, and some people come back to marry honest people. It can be seen that they don’t mind leaving this mountain. A place where there are many, many monsters, and less arable land.

It's just that the villagers used to go out and then find a workshop or something to go in to work. It was the first time that the workshop took the initiative to recruit people.

Those teenage girls are obviously even more excited, and now they are required to do work in the workshop, which is obviously better than those of tavern waiters who "work during the day and work at night".

And this is also considered to be entering the city. It is better to marry outside in the future than to marry from one side of the mountain to the other side of the mountain. In short, it is better to live in the mountains all your life.

Chloe didn't talk to the villagers too much. After finishing a few key words, they let them break up. With the understanding ability of these villagers, the more they said, the easier it was to confuse their minds.

At this time, Charles in the carriage began to think about a problem that he had not noticed before. With the development of the wool industry, the outflow of young rural laborers will definitely break the original economic structure.

It’s okay to say other places, but in a place with more mountains and more monsters than the Schberg Kingdom, the departure of young adults in the countryside will definitely cause the village’s defense against monsters to decline, and then the tragic event of the monster slaughtering village is not unreasonable. strangeness.

Just like this village, there are old and new claw prints on the wall of demon beasts, and many of them are big ones.

For those factory owners, they would not spend money on relocating the village as a whole. Villages are also the core of their feudal lords' territories. The rule over the territories, taxes, etc. are based on these villages. Moving away villages is no different from depriving them of their territories.

Even if it was the territory that Charles had given to Arturia and Gawain, Charles helped them make a small perimeter in the territory. There are usually no people there, so it is a place for people who go to collect maple syrup in the spring. Now Arturia's Tuweizi has become the warehouse of the Baiyu Meat Cannery, and Gawain occasionally uses it to put wool.

As a result, the decline of the countryside and the damage to the interests of the feudal lords at the grassroots level will cause Charles to have no idea what the consequences will be. He decided to throw this problem to Linda, although this problem is still a long time away.

"What are you thinking?"

Chloe suddenly appeared beside Charles' carriage.

Charles shook his head and said, "It's nothing, it's just that business is not good today."

Chloe asked, "How about I hire you to help me carry things in the next few days?"

Charles asked curiously, "What do you want me to ship?"

Chloe replied: "It's our luggage and food. The people in the village responded well today. It is estimated that more people were recruited than expected."

She looked at the goods on Charles' car and said, "Otherwise, I'll buy all your goods."

Charles thought about it for a while. Anyway, what he brought was just a pretense. It was the same for everyone, but there was a problem with the distance.

He asked, "I'm going to Catania next, don't you know how to drop by?"

Chloe thought for a while and said, "We will pass through Cesaro Town, which is adjacent to Catania, where you can follow other caravans."

She paused for a moment, and then said: "It's just that there are many bandits on the road from Cesaro Town to Catania City, and there is no Earl of McGarden there. I suggest that you continue to follow us, halfway through the road. You can go around by water."

Charles thanked Chloe and decided to accept her hire on the way to Cesaro Town.

He went there just to gain reputation with those bandits.

Next, Chloe asked Charles to drive his carriage to the side of the carriage, and after the payment was settled, he had the things on Charles' carriage removed.

Then Chloe took those goods to exchange food with the village chief, and got back a lot of jerky, cornmeal, and potatoes.

When they recruited workers, they started to eat on the road, and they consumed a lot of food along the way, and they had to be replenished along the way.

Chloe apparently used an "executive order" to get the food back by force buying and selling.

Charles couldn't do anything about it, he couldn't control Chloe.

Not to mention Charles, as the so-called "vassal's vassal is not my vassal", even if Linda comes, it is useless, and can only issue orders layer by layer.

The night in the mountains is not quiet, and from time to time there are beasts screaming in the distance, and people who are used to running mountain roads are accustomed to this.

And a little noise made in this village made Charles very curious~lightnovelpub.net~ so he slipped into the village.

In the middle of the village is a water well, and around the well is a circle of stone pavements several meters wide.

At this time, there was an oil lamp hanging on the canopy of the well, and several children from five or six years old to ten years old were holding wooden swords and practicing the basic movements of swordsmanship under the guidance of an adult.

The grown man Charles had met in the evening, a hunter, when he came back with some hares.

Although many people in the village are somewhat malnourished, these children seem to be in good health and have basically reached normal levels.

Charles watched those children practice in a strict manner, and felt that the mountain people in the Bischberg Kingdom were sturdy because of the harsh environment, and secondly, their determination and ruthlessness in order to "hope their children into dragons".

The parents of these children obviously eat less in order to keep their children full, so that the children have enough strength to live in this ghost place.

Looking at these diligent and hardworking children, Charles's mind began to become active. He happened to have a skill that came with the Reimu spree, and he could try it now.