At dawn, the islanders of Castel opened their doors and headed out to work.
It was said that last night's beast hunt had yielded quite a haul. The lord had hung a pack of wolf carcasses from poles for display—wolves Ash had casually hunted down for Theus the previous night.
Looking at the dead wolves, the islanders gathered together, pointing and talking, before quickly dispersing. The factories started work at a fixed time in the morning, and being late meant having their pay docked.
Not long ago, most of them had been fishermen and farmers. Now, they all shared one identity—the lord's hired workers.
The islanders here were far from the mainland and had almost no contact with other territories, so they did not realize how strange this arrangement was.
Most lords of this era still lived off taxes. There was scarcely any extra work to be found in their territories, and even when lords summoned people for construction projects, they usually received no wages. It was more akin to forced labor.
Of course, farmers also had another obligation: when they were not busy farming, they had to follow their lord to war.
—Even nobles halted their wars during the farming season. No one wanted their lands to yield nothing the following year, especially with the royal family watching them like a hawk.
Theus had not yet invested any knights, nor was there any fighting for the time being, yet he had hired large numbers of his subjects to work. Such a situation was almost unheard of in this era.
Naturally, the rate at which he burned through wealth was equally unprecedented. The money he had brought was essentially all spent.
In return, factories had sprung up across the territory. Groups of pickers headed into the woods to harvest olives;