Ch.142Refugee (2)

Just as I thought the issue of refugees would be resolved with expulsion as usual, the situation took a new turn thanks to their presentation of highly credible identification.

“Charlotte! Corin! Perfect timing! I want you two to investigate this matter and report back to me!”

“”…What?””

I simply delegated the entire analysis of these refugees to Charlotte and Corin, who had just arrived on the scene.

I pushed forward the excuse—bordering on a mere pretext—that subordinates exist precisely to handle matters that high-ranking officials like myself cannot process individually.

Of course, regardless of the validity of my excuse, thanks to this delegation, about an hour later I was able to receive their report on the situation of these people.

Truly, reliable subordinates were incredibly convenient by their very existence.

“…Oh, so that’s what happened.”

While one might expect the information they gathered in just an hour to be limited in quantity, surprisingly, they had properly compiled detailed circumstances of this incident.

What particularly caught my attention was the catalyst that led these people to leave their pioneer village and form an organization of over 70 members.

Originally, they were residents of a pioneer village located in what would definitely be considered the northern part of Baron Colland’s territory, slightly north even from our village.

At that time, their pioneer village had remarkably survived past its first year, boasting a population of over 300 people, and was at the point where land reclamation was nearly complete, establishing the village’s foundation.

Their farming had succeeded enough to harvest sufficient crops for self-sufficiency, and there were quite a few people running inns or businesses catering to passing adventurers and hunters.

Unlike our village, they were not far from human territories, and there were no otherworldly elements or related matters nearby, so they didn’t even have mid-rank officials stationed in the village…

Back then, they had grown complacent due to the high transient population and proximity to human territories, but in this world, complacency is practically forbidden.

The village without a single mid-rank official was ultimately attacked by a magical beast, the “Purple Wyrm,” which exploited a gap in the village’s vigilance.

‘The Purple Wyrm, that creature…!’

Wyrms, represented by the Sand Wyrm, are unique creatures that seem like a mix between reptiles (snakes) and insects. To describe their appearance, they’re like eels or hagfish with their entire bodies protected by armor-like shells and scales.

Their circular mouths are densely lined with teeth on the inside. The muscles throughout their bodies are as tough and strong as steel.

Particularly, these creatures use their mouths, which transform into blunt beaks when closed, to dig through the ground and travel underground by moving their bodies.

Their excavation and movement speeds underground are so fast it’s hard to believe they’re moving through earth—truly worthy of being described as marvelous.

Therefore, these creatures are classified as mid-rank. Depending on the species, Wyrms may possess magical special abilities, making them mid-rank magical beasts…

Among them, the Purple Wyrm, which primarily inhabits shallow soil, is notorious for causing many human casualties.

While considered the weakest among Wyrms in terms of combat power—and this is indeed true—they have the characteristic of inhabiting areas very close to human territories.

Especially for Purple Wyrms, which prefer soft soil, cultivated farmland is practically paradise.

With food (crops, humans) available and comfortable conditions, it’s not uncommon for Purple Wyrms to surface and attack human settlements.

Just like the pioneer village where those refugees had stayed.

What’s more, the group that attacked their village was a small-to-medium sized cluster of about five or six Wyrms. Though I say “small-to-medium,” five or six mid-rank creatures is by no means a force to be underestimated.

The result of not even maintaining minimal military strength, let alone mid-rank officials, due to complacency about their stable situation: the village was destroyed by the Purple Wyrm attack, and these 73 people somehow managed to find their way here by supporting each other.

The Purple Wyrms that attacked their village have probably retreated underground again, following their natural behavior.

And at this point, having successfully grasped something like their circumstances, I was actually thinking:

Whether it would be appropriate to let them into the village as they wished.

Considering it coldly, there are significant inherent risks in accepting exactly 73 people in the current situation.

First of all, setting everything else aside, I couldn’t rashly accept them because there was no way to prove that all 73 of them were trustworthy.

While the magical proof received from the elderly representative of the refugees confirmed that they were indeed from a pioneer village, whether we could trust all of them was a separate issue.

Not only was there a possibility that cultists or criminals might be among them, but there was also no way to prove that all of them were actually from the pioneer village.

Especially the possibility that some were genuine while others were just refugees couldn’t be ruled out, but honestly, from my perspective, there was no need to worry about such individuals one by one.

In my pioneer village, land distribution issues meant that household surveys were conducted thoroughly, and villagers actively cooperated with such population surveys because they didn’t want to lose land they could cultivate.

Rather than trying to evade taxes like the head tax or other duties by escaping from the territory’s population registration, the benefit of land allocated to each adult over 15 years old was more attractive.

But while people register in our territory because of the benefits, would they actively register in a village that only collects taxes?

Moreover, there’s a high probability that the population reports kept in their village have been lost, and considering that pioneer villages typically grow by absorbing wanderers into their population, even if registrations existed, their reliability would be low.

Even if population surveys are conducted at mills or temples, the problem of ghost people created to avoid taxes (especially head taxes) always exists.

Furthermore, setting everything else aside, isn’t it burdensome to bring in the not-insignificant number of 73 people into the village during this approaching winter season?

The winter in this world is harsh. Truly harsh.

With many people dying from the cold, the probability of undead or undead hordes appearing naturally increases, and the influence of life’s mysteries weakens, resulting in increased undead appearances—and that’s just the basics.

The frigid environment of the cold itself steals human warmth, leading to death, and at the same time, hideous magical beasts that stayed in the north due to southern heat can sometimes be found migrating south.

Winters, made even colder than normal by winter’s mysteries, are difficult to endure even with fur and fireplaces, and because it’s the season when everything sleeps, ways to obtain food almost disappear.

That’s why winter preparation in this world is truly a life-or-death matter. Since there’s a high possibility of losing everything in an instant if one makes a mistake, thorough preparation is necessary to overcome winter’s harshness.

Families freezing to death due to lack of cold protection or firewood, families who couldn’t find food throughout winter ending up eating each other and becoming ghouls, entire families being massacred by winter beasts or undead in remote places—all are common occurrences.

No wonder there’s a saying in this world that a year is solely a preparation process to safely overcome winter, and how one spends it determines one’s life.

We were in the midst of preparing for winter suitable for our village’s population of about 200, and in this situation, an additional population exceeding 1/3 of the total would be added?

This is no joke—it’s perfect for holding a series of funerals in the village, and the side effects of such a large population influx at once cannot be ignored.

To be blunt, there’s a high possibility of factions or internal quasi-organizations forming.

From the perspective of a democratic nation’s leader, an appropriate dialectical process might be the desirable form of political system, but from my perspective as a “lord” with absolute dictatorial power, internal factions bring no benefits whatsoever.

Divide and rule or whatever—when you’re already ruling, creating division only leads to greater side effects in terms of organizational unity.

‘What should I do about this…’

Just as I was deeply contemplating this problem that I couldn’t quite grasp,

I finally realized that I had been thinking about something incorrectly.

‘…Wait a minute. But this isn’t something I need to solve, is it?’

In other words, this refugee issue wasn’t something for me to handle in the first place, but rather a problem for my father or the baronial administration to resolve.