Poor, Overworked Silco

Silco had been run off his feet lately, with barely a moment to catch his breath.

All because Louis had casually said, "Go register the basic details of the Red Tide Fief's residents and find out what each of them is good at."

And so he had been thrown into this mess of handwritten records, trading blank stares with a crowd of bewildered farmers and blacksmiths.

Some stammered, with no idea how to answer.

"I used to farm."

"Then do you want to keep farming?"

"...I don't know."

"..."

Others gave flippant answers outright: "Staying alive."

Silco had nearly slapped his ledger across that man's face.

"Fuck, I'm a future alchemist. How did I end up being a border lord's steward?"

Silco cursed under his breath as his pen flew across the page, copying one name after another into the ledger.

He had only himself and his sticky fingers to blame. Why had he gone and stolen an alchemical formula?

He had originally been nothing more than an alchemy apprentice who occasionally stole his mentor's magic crystals for spending money, living the high life in the Jade Federation.

Until one day, he met a mysterious man at the black market who offered him a fortune to steal a particular alchemical secret from his mentor. The price was high enough to tempt him.

Silco had not hesitated for long. After all, the money was enough for him to leave his apprenticeship behind and open an alchemy workshop of his own.

But the plan had been nowhere near as smooth as he had imagined.

The formula was far too complex for him to memorize, so he simply took the whole thing.

His mentor was absentminded anyway. Surely he would not notice one missing formula.

But Silco had underestimated how important that formula was.

His mentor soon discovered it was missing, and the Golden Marrow Guild his mentor belonged to issued a warrant, vowing to bring the thief to justice.

The black-market buyer was quickly caught and gave him up.

Silco knew that if he was caught, he would face more than a harsh punishment. He might even be sent to a laboratory to serve as a guinea pig for all manner of bizarre alchemical experiments.

So, to save his own skin, he cleverly disguised himself as a slave and slipped among the slaves being transported by a slave trader, hoping to get out of the Jade Federation with them and find a chance to escape later.

But those slave traders were even shrewder than he had imagined!

The moment he tried anything, they gave him a thorough whipping, leaving him no room to fight back.

A few rounds of ten lashes each soon brought him into line.

Just like that, he truly became an ordinary slave, and he did not dare reveal that he was an alchemy apprentice.

If the slave traders found out, they would be more than happy to sell him on to the Golden Marrow Guild, where Silco would be sent straight to an experimentation table.

And so, after all those twists and turns, he was brought to the black market in Frost Glaive City.

He had thought he would be sold to a mine and spend the rest of his life digging ore.

Instead, a young pioneering lord named Louis bought him and brought him to this godforsaken fief.

At first, Silco thought he had probably escaped one hell only to land in another, where he would be enslaved until he died.

But Louis did not work his slaves like livestock the way other nobles did.

Instead, after learning that Silco could write and keep accounts, he freed him from slavery and made him an assistant of sorts, something like a steward.

During the time Silco spent observing and interacting with Louis, he discovered one thing: Louis was a good man.

He shared his own food with starving slaves and even tore up their slave contracts himself, granting them freedom.

A noble who actually treated slaves as people?

To Silco, he hardly seemed like a proper lord at all. He was more like a religious devotee.

"Tsk. Guess I got lucky for once..."

That was what Silco said, but inwardly, he was always calculating his chances of escape.

After all, how could a future master alchemist possibly spend his entire life in this godforsaken place?

"My lord, here's the survey of the residents you asked me to carry out." Silco placed a thick ledger on Louis's desk.

Exhaustion weighed heavily on his face, and his steps were a little unsteady.

"Mm. Thanks for your hard work." Louis took the ledger and casually leafed through it.

The handwriting was not exactly neat, but the information was clearly organized and meticulously categorized.

Even the elderly who could barely lift a hoe, the women who could weave, and the children skilled at hunting had been noted. Clearly, considerable effort had gone into compiling it.

He's got some talent.

Louis raised his eyes to the young man before him.

Silco stood with a loose, slouching posture, dark circles heavy beneath his eyes.

Of course, Louis also knew that Silco was no ordinary man.

His daily intelligence system was not just for show, after all.

When he first bought Silco, he had already known the fellow was an alchemy apprentice from the Jade Federation's Golden Marrow Guild-and a criminal.

But he had not exposed him.

For one thing, Silco did not seem to harbor any ill intent.

Louis was in no hurry to reveal what he knew. He wanted to see when Silco would be willing to speak up on his own.

For another, given the Red Tide Fief's current circumstances, a literate assistant with administrative skills was more useful than an alchemy apprentice.

The fief was still in the early stages of construction. Never mind alchemy-even its basic infrastructure was not yet complete.

What mattered most right now was getting this land running properly, not conducting alchemical experiments.

If I expose him outright, what if he decides to slack off and stops doing the odd jobs?

Louis glanced at the mountain of documents and account books piled behind him.

If he lost Silco, he feared that, as the new lord, he would have to sit amid that heap of junk and slog through every word himself.

At that thought, Louis decided to keep playing dumb.

This place was out in the middle of nowhere anyway. Silco could not get away.

Setting Silco's situation aside for now, Louis opened the survey ledger in his hands and skimmed the basic information on his subjects.

At the results, he could not help letting the corners of his mouth lift slightly.

Although the Red Tide Fief looked like a desolate wilderness, it actually had a much wider range of talent than Louis had imagined.

Of its population of over a thousand, more than half were farmers or livestock herders, and over a hundred were experienced fishers.

There were also several dozen hunters, blacksmiths, carpenters, and leatherworkers each-enough to build a fief capable of meeting its own basic needs.

This was exactly the information Louis needed.

He had sent Silco to survey the population not merely to keep records, but to understand how this fief fit together.

A fief was like a precision machine. Every gear had to be placed correctly for it to run efficiently.

If a farmer was arbitrarily assigned to forge iron, a fisher to dig ditches, or a hunter to herd sheep, the machine might still run, but it would naturally run slowly.

A lord who did not understand his subjects could not control the future of his land.

The next step, then, was figuring out how to assign these people sensibly and get the Red Tide Fief on track as soon as possible.