Right of First Night

Romain snorted softly. "If you don't finish this by this morning, you're not allowed to eat lunch!"

The moment Green heard that, he wilted.

People were made of iron, meals were made of steel; skip one meal and you'd be starving.

With his food bowl in someone else's hands, he had better work honestly.

At his peak twenty years ago, Borg had been at least a fourth-tier Extraordinary, but after hiding in the mountains and starving for twenty years, his physical condition had deteriorated drastically. In the end, he could not even defeat a first-tier Extraordinary. Otherwise, how could he have worked himself to death?

Dick and Jet's strength had most likely declined after entering the mountains as well. Without sufficient food to replenish themselves, let alone training, even maintaining their original strength was extremely difficult.

Green did not want to end up like that.

"Other lords give their followers fish and meat every day, with all the white bread they can eat..."

Green muttered as he worked with Aaron to fit the yoke onto the draft cattle, then led them down into the field.

For a War Knight to be reduced to this was truly miserable.

If this continued every day, how was he supposed to train and improve his strength?

Aaron, meanwhile, did not seem bothered at all and appeared very steady.

He held the Heavy Plow. This plow was quite cumbersome, and with its wooden wheels, it was difficult to turn. When plowing, simply moving forward would cut a long straight line through the field. War Knights had a strong sense of direction, so there was no need to worry about the furrow running crooked.

Gevra looked at Romain with glittering eyes. "Lord, what about me?"

She was no stranger to farm work and eagerly awaited the task Romain would assign her—she had little idea what a lord or a lord's attendant was supposed to do. She only thought that a lord truly was a lord; even the plow Lord used for tilling was heavier, bigger, and wider than Lord Mol's.

Romain lifted his chin and ordered, "Just stay here. Don't run around."

She was too small, her limbs lacked strength, and she was skinny as a rake. Not helping was helping enough; she could not do much anyway.

He had brought Gevra out purely for fun.

There was no need to rush now. Once she regained her nutrition, better days lay ahead.

"Oh." Hearing this, Gevra obediently sat on the ox cart. From time to time, she looked around, exactly like an idle child sitting at the edge of a field and watching her parents work.

"Hm hm hm..." Romain hummed a little tune as he held the Heavy Plow and drove the draft cattle.

He plowed at an unhurried pace, with planting experience +1 occasionally popping into his mind.

Romain's task today was simple: to mark out a specific boundary for this year's spring-plowing land—much like the white lines on a sports field.

Yet for this mere stretch of thirteen hundred meters, Romain took over an hour to finish.

Romain wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked back.

A straight, deep furrow lay before him, and the black soil more than ten centimeters below the surface had been thoroughly turned over as well—previous light plows could not achieve this at all. With only limited fertility in the shallow soil, the harvest had been hard to speak of.

But this deep plowing had turned up the deeper soil as well.

The vertical plowshare sank deep into the ground and was pulled by the draft cattle, opening a path for the plow blade. Behind it, the plow blade overturned great swathes of soil, while the moldboard was a slanted board installed behind the plow blade. The soil flipped up by the blade piled diagonally to the right of the plow, forming furrows and ridges across the field.

It was much like drawing a line in the sand with a stick—the sand naturally piled up on both sides.

Looking at the neat rows of furrows and ridges, Romain felt greatly pleased.

He lifted the Heavy Plow, drove the draft cattle around a turn, and continued plowing forward for another thousand meters, forming a right angle.

Green and Aaron had long been waiting at the end.

The two took turns holding the Heavy Plow and were more efficient than Romain. Aaron had also casually picked up all the hard clods of mud, stones, tree roots, and dead grass turned up by the Heavy Plow, tossing them all onto the land beside the field.

From high above, one could see Romain holding the Heavy Plow as two draft cattle pulled it along, carving a straight plow line and slowly closing the gap in the rectangle.

Romain met up with the two men and raised the plowshare—this vertical, hard, pure-iron plowshare could adjust the depth of tilling.

By the time the three returned to the edge of the field, they were all sweating.

The eager expression on Gevra's face as she sat on the ox cart told Romain that she was hungry.

Romain snapped his fingers. "Time to eat, time to eat!"

After these past few days, the farmers had also learned when lunch was served.

It was a free meal, and the food was of excellent quality.

They returned to Sigg Town, where Romain's meal had been prepared as well. Though he ate the same food as the farmers, his was clearly more refined.

Whether it was the oatmeal porridge or the black bread, everything looked very clean.

So Romain had tacitly allowed Mol's little arrangement. An Extraordinary's constitution was not afraid of dirt, but it was still better to keep things clean when possible.

After he finished eating, the steward Seth stopped him.

"I think it is necessary for you to take a look at Sigg Town's financial situation."

Seth handed Romain a thick stack of parchment.

Romain took it and read for a moment.

The power of nobles in this world was beyond imagination. They only needed to answer to their superior nobles or the King.

Aside from that, they possessed most rights over their own territories, even the Right of First Night.

Romain knew that some nobles truly exercised those rights.

For ordinary people, tenant farmers who could rent land were called Freemen, while those without land were basically Slaves. But that only applied to the fiefs of minor nobles; the domains of great nobles could be divided into many more classes.

Sigg Town's finances were utterly bizarre—a complete mess with no reference or statistical value whatsoever.

That was perfectly normal. This place had once been Mol's personal kingdom.

Whenever he made a deal, he recorded it if he felt like it; if he did not, he simply left it unrecorded.

The Grand Duke's tax collectors received a fixed share of taxes every year and had never inspected Sigg Town's detailed circumstances.

Mol had stayed here for so long, yet he did not even know Sigg Town's population. Perhaps that had been deliberate.

He only knew to keep the farmers from starving, make them produce more children, cultivate more land, harvest more grain, and trade that grain for more money. When necessary, he would even lend grain to farmers during hard times to help them survive the crisis...

It was not exactly wrong, but a Lord could not govern like that.

Romain's arrival changed everything.

All accounts had to be recalculated, and every expense and income had to be listed in detail. That was the only way to ensure long-term rule.

Romain had even seen an entry in Sigg Town's financial records stating that, at some point, Nova's family had borrowed one hundred jin of rye, repaid one hundred and fifty jin after the autumn harvest, and would still have to repay another hundred jin the following year.

Usury had even appeared...

Romain summoned Mol. As Mol broke out in a cold sweat, Romain took the quill from Seth's hand and crossed out every sheet of parchment.

The gesture carried something of the flair of the Great Sage revising the Book of Life and Death.

Romain said, "All previous debts are hereby wiped clean. Understand?"

He had reclaimed all the land. How were the farmers supposed to repay their old grain debts?

Of course, Romain knew that no matter how strongly he demanded the concentration of labor on the surface, most farmers would surely secretly grow some miscellaneous grains and cereals.

Not allowing them to cultivate those wastelands during the day did not mean they truly would not farm them.

But as long as it did not interfere with their daytime work, Romain turned a blind eye—after all, at harvest time, those farmers had to hand over half of the land's output to him. There was no way to hide the crops in the fields.