What was her goal? And what should she do?
Vior never resisted asking herself questions like these.
Her father had been the steward of a manor belonging to a fallen noble family.
Although he had often been terribly busy, sometimes gone for an entire day without being seen, the generous pay he earned working for the noble "master" had allowed their family to live a fairly respectable life in their small, not especially prosperous town.
When Vior was young, she had been very curious about her father's work. She could not understand why he seemed to earn far more than those farmers and laborers who endured the wind and sun, when all he appeared to do was sit in a study.
As for that, her father—only just past forty then, yet already gray at the temples—naturally would not pour out his troubles to the youngest daughter he doted on most, nor explain what he, his father, his father's father, and their entire family had paid for that job.
Instead, he explained the work before him in a humorous, engaging way.
It was a management plan for the manor's crucial matters—land, forests, livestock, farming tools, grain, and the like—using detailed records and forward-looking planning to arrange an entire year of agricultural activity.
When to plow, what crops to sow, when to harvest, where to store things, how to respond to all kinds of weather, even the food supply for the lord and the hired farmers...
From childhood, the girl had watched how her father managed the manor like a precision machine, how he continuously, meticulously planned the operation of such a large piece of land and a system involving over a hundred people, all with a clear goal.
Immersed in it, she naturally came to understand, deeply, the necessity and power