Rest (Part Two)

Just then, the head of the merchant guild handling construction below heard the news and hurried over.

"Lord Romon, I'm Maibangjin, the man in charge here." A middle-aged merchant approached and bowed.

"Mr. Maibangjin, you've done well." Romon walked down the path, looked around, and praised him.

The two knight fiefs lay on opposite sides of a river, with a wooden bridge already built across it.

The two fiefs were essentially two villages. At the center of each stood a lord's villa. Though simple, each had stone walls, bedrooms, a sitting room, and a kitchen.

"That's because your plans were so clear." Maibangjin said the plans had already been sent back to the merchant guild, where they had received high praise.

Streets, drains, town halls, warehouses, guardrooms, and mills were all accounted for. The villagers' wooden cottages lined both sides of the streets.

Large tracts of land had been divided into plots and assigned to the villagers.

A wooden fence over two meters high already enclosed the fiefs. A narrow ditch had been dug outside it, and several watchtowers were under construction.

But the moment Romon entered, a wave of noise greeted him. The place looked much like a construction site.

"My lord, your villa is largely complete, but the other work isn't finished yet," Maibangjin reported.

"How much longer will it take?"

"A week to finish the main construction, my lord. But many supplies still haven't arrived."

"How many households do I have now?" Romon asked casually.

"One hundred."

"How many do we need to keep things running?"

"My lord, the two knight fiefs should have around two hundred households to function properly."

"Maibangjin, I want you to bring in another hundred and fifty households or so within a week. You'll also handle the purchase of food, cattle, sheep,