New Members and Cultivation

(4,000 words! Thanks to Guardian Wings for pointing it out. The issue with the concentration of Moon Essence has been corrected!)

Once inside, Donald looked around at the furnishings. The house was much like any commoner's home, and nowhere near as fine as his residence in Red Maple Town. The Merlin Family might have fallen on hard times, but they still had a few aristocratic possessions to show off—something ordinary commoners could hardly compare with.

William saw that the only decent seats in his home were two round wooden stools. With nowhere else to sit, he couldn't help feeling deeply embarrassed.

Just then, Donald sat down on one of the stools without the slightest hint of disdain. Looking at William, he said:

"William, don't feel inferior. No one can choose their birth, but you can work hard to change your status. Mages believe that although people may have different stations, every soul is noble, so long as it hasn't been corrupted by evil thoughts like greed or envy! Even a slave should have pride!"

Hearing these words made William feel even more ashamed of his earlier behavior.

Seeing that the moment was right, Donald explained why he had come.

"I bear some responsibility for the Mage Association dismissing you. If you hadn't warned me about the temperament of Mage Naron and the others, I would surely have suffered at their hands, and you would have been resented by those two mages because of me. That's the last thing I wanted!"

William was deeply grateful for Donald's explanation, but what he said next left him unable to believe his ears.

"My manor is newly established, and the steward has his hands full, so I'm still looking for a Head Attendant. If you're interested, you can manage all the male attendants and servants for me. Your wife can also serve as the kitchen manager for now. The two of you should earn enough to support your family this way, don't you think?"

William felt as if he were dreaming. He murmured:

"Is this... is this really true?"

Donald gave him a firm answer.

"Of course. If you decide to become a member of House Merlinar, your two eldest sons should already have some foundation in martial arts. They can serve as my Knight Attendants and receive basic training in etiquette and literature. I'm not yet old enough to have earned formal knighthood, but as the heir to the hereditary knighthood that carries on the glory of the Merlin Family's ancestors, I'm still entitled to take on Knight Attendants."

"I've also heard that you hope your youngest son can become a mage. He can serve as my apprentice-in-training for now and learn some basic magical knowledge. If he has talent, I can take him on as a formal apprentice. If he doesn't have what it takes to become a mage, you could also consider having him become a scholar."

"Are you satisfied with this arrangement?"

Donald's offer left William so overwhelmed that he couldn't speak. He could only nod again and again.

Then Donald's tone shifted, and he spoke with authority:

"Since you're satisfied, I'll make one thing clear."

"These benefits I'm offering you must be repaid with your family's loyalty. House Merlinar needs faithful servants and followers, not freeloaders who come and go as they please! If you can't do that, you can refuse this opportunity. I'll still give you a hundred Gold Sol as payment for the help you gave me before. That should be enough for your family to live comfortably for several years. The choice is yours!"

William didn't give it much thought. He gritted his teeth, formally bowed to Donald, and paid his respects to his new master.

For a commoner like him, this was an incredibly rare opportunity. Ordinary commoners might not understand, but many of them had their own plans. They would rather become Adventurers or join the army in the hope of rising in rank than become lowly servants and work for an aristocrat.

Others were ashamed to serve the rich and the nobility. But William knew how misguided that kind of commoner pride was. Pride was a fine thing, but without anything to be proud of, a person's meager pride looked laughable to those in power. And what chance did a commoner have to gain anything worth being proud of?

William was not like those ignorant commoners who lacked an education. From what he had seen while working at the Mage Association, he knew that beneath the gods, everything in this world was controlled by the nobles and the powerful. How difficult it was for commoners to rise in status!

Whether it was literary knowledge and books on etiquette, or the secrets of training in professions such as martial arts and magic, all of it was in the hands of the nobility. Commoners had no access to such an education. It had been this way throughout human history. After all these years, the nobles were still nobles, while the commoners remained ignorant.

There were only a handful of exceptions, and they were the fortunes of a very few lucky people.

Take joining the army to earn military merit, for example! Commoners could only serve as the lowest-ranking soldiers, while nobles and Professionals could at least become officers. If anyone won any merit, it was the officers who received the credit for their command; ordinary soldiers usually got little more than a bit of prize money. The soldiers risked their lives in battle, while the officers reaped the rewards. In truth, enlisting in the army to make a better life for yourself offered little hope at all. The best outcome was to retire with a body full of wounds and ailments, receive a small sum of Gold Sol, and spend the rest of your life getting by.

Only a very few lucky people in history had risen from commoner to officer and earned enough merit to advance further. But those promotions had come at the cost of countless commoner soldiers willingly laying down their lives. William understood this, and had long since given up hope of such a thing.

He only hoped that his sons could all become Professionals. They didn't have to make a name for themselves as high-ranking powerhouses; it would be enough if they could live a little better than ordinary commoners.

Now an incredible opportunity lay before him. As someone who saw things clearly, William felt no shame about becoming a noble's servant, unlike those commoners. Especially not when the noble in question was a kind-hearted young mage with enormous potential, like the one standing before him.

Generally speaking, a high-ranking servant under a noble could gain access to a great deal of knowledge and education. And once their master recognized their loyalty, perhaps a few generations down the line, their family might even produce a Lesser Noble.

With a noble title, they would have countless opportunities to learn more and climb to a higher position. No amount of money could give an ordinary commoner the same chance.

Besides, once his two eldest sons became Knight Attendants, they would have a chance to rise to knighthood. Perhaps their family wouldn't even have to wait several generations before producing two Knight Lords and becoming part of the nobility.

And so William's family officially became Donald's servants. They would move as a family to the newly established Dark Night Manor as soon as the two boys returned from their current martial training.

After taking on William's family, Donald was in high spirits. The Merlin Family was rising again, and everything had to start from scratch. He had the Book of Truth, so what he lacked most wasn't resources of any kind, but talented people loyal to the family.

"William is reliable, and has far more worldly knowledge than an ordinary commoner. He's familiar with mage-related matters too. If I train him properly, he'll surely become a capable assistant."

On the way back, Donald spoke with his steward.

"Code, you're capable, but there's more and more to do now. Even the most capable person can't be everywhere at once. The little, menial tasks should gradually be delegated to your subordinates. That's the only way to improve efficiency, and it'll make things easier for you as well."

After returning to the manor, Donald spent the afternoon inspecting Dark Night Manor.

Aside from the villa, which was still under construction, everything else was up and running. The last farm, which had been converted into a vineyard, was also finished. The grape trellises were already up, and several of the best wine grape varieties in North Shire had been planted.

The villa would probably be finished before summer ended. By autumn, most of the manor's crops and some of its livestock would be ready to produce.

With development going so well, Donald was naturally in high spirits.

That night, he built two more farms on the remaining wasteland between Dark Night Manor and the Tree of Life.

One was converted into a pasture for raising livestock, while the other became a medicinal herb garden for cultivating rare medicinal herbs and magical plants.

"Master, the farm has been sown. Should we ask a Priest from town to come bless it, so the crops will grow better?"

At night, after reporting on the day's work before bed, steward Code asked Donald.

Donald thought of the role played by the Goddess of Agriculture's Priests, but still shook his head.

"No need. I should be able to figure out what the Priests can do through my own research as a mage. As a mage, I should avoid asking the servants of the gods for help unless it's necessary!"

The Priests of the Church of the Goddess of Agriculture were generally less capable in combat than the Clerics of other True God Churches, but they were extremely powerful when it came to support. Their unique Nature Divine Art could promote plant growth, much like the spells used by Elves. Farmland tended by even a single low-ranking Priest produced at least thirty percent more than usual. That was one of the reasons the Kingdom of Selt, a remnant of the Ancient Magic Empire, had always resisted the Churches of the gods yet still allowed the Church of the Goddess of Agriculture to preach in the Northern Lands.

The Kingdom of Selt had few people and a lot of land. Though the soil was fertile, it was poorly cultivated, and the kingdom had always lacked sufficient population. That only began to change three hundred years ago, when His Majesty Celt V, the great and wise king, built a Temple to the Goddess of Agriculture in the Royal Capital and brought the Church into the Kingdom. In just a few decades, the Kingdom's population grew from fewer than thirty thousand to over a hundred thousand, and its national strength could finally hold its own against the old kingdoms of the continent.

Donald didn't have any miraculous alchemical formulas. He planned to find a solution through the Tree of Life.

The Moon Essence gathered in a Moon Well was a substance formed from pure moonlight energy and the Force of Nature. Its properties were mild. It could not only restore life and magic, but also had the miraculous effect of promoting plant growth.

If the Book of Truth didn't possess the powerful laws of a high-grade divine artifact, it couldn't possibly conjure up an object with an effect almost on the level of a divine artifact at such a low cost.

In theory, this kind of mutual conversion between matter and energy had already surpassed the power of mortals. Beneath the true gods, even legendary beings couldn't accomplish it easily.

Donald acted as soon as the idea came to him. The three Moon Wells had been producing more and more over the past few days, and there was still plenty left after setting aside what was needed to make Moonlight Wine.

That very night, Donald began experimenting, watering different crops on the farms with diluted Moon Essence at various concentrations.

Since the crops on the farms had been planted almost a month later than those in normal fields, several of the manor's farmers had predicted that the manor's harvest would be ten to twenty percent lower than elsewhere that year.

But the crops soon began thriving under the Force of Nature that filled the Nature Barrier. The farmers were all impressed, praising their employer's manor as truly fertile land.

A few days later, the crops in the small test plot Donald had watered with the highest concentration—twenty percent Moon Essence—began to shoot up, growing much taller and sturdier than ordinary crops. The farmers were so astonished that they couldn't speak.

Only then did they realize that their employer's extraordinary identity as a mage wasn't a sham. He really was worthy of being called a mysterious and powerful Mage Lord. He could make crops grow faster, just like farmland blessed by the Priests of the Goddess of Agriculture.

Farmers across the continent, whether devout or not, were basically all followers of the Goddess of Agriculture. After all, people depended on the land for their livelihoods. That was the main reason why the Goddess of Agriculture, who had ascended to godhood less than a thousand years ago, had become one of the most powerful true gods among those worshipped by humanity.

Ten days later, Donald's experiments yielded a basic conclusion.

"A concentration of two-thousandths Moon Essence works best. It can probably triple the growth rate of crops. At one-thousandth, the effect drops to only one and a half times. At half of one-thousandth, it probably reduces the growing time by about ten percent. If I water the crops with pure Moon Essence, they'll probably ripen in just a few days!"

Of course, that was only wishful thinking. Moon Essence was still being produced in limited quantities, and some of it had to be set aside to blend the two kinds of Moonlight Wine. So it had to be diluted ten thousand times to water all the crops on the manor once a month.

Even so, combined with the effect of the Nature Barrier, the crops watered with diluted Moon Essence grew lush and vigorous. Their growing cycle was at least thirty percent shorter than that of ordinary crops. In other words, crops that normally took three months to ripen could now be harvested in just over two months—slightly earlier than the normal crops planted much earlier in the fields outside.

This greatly accelerated the manor's development. With the Moon Well as a cheat-level treasure, Donald could foresee that before long, the manor would become his greatest source of income.