Ch.234Visitor (1)

And so, as the plan for the number of Golem Armors was being reduced in the face of the harsh reality of compromise with actual circumstances.

While the scale of the new opening plan was inevitably shrinking due to budget and personnel issues, apart from the full-scale renovation of the Golem Armors beginning, nothing particularly noteworthy was happening in the village itself.

At most, there were minor debates regarding the introduction of the four-field crop rotation system, or discussions in the village about how to handle the harvest after it was completed.

From an objective perspective, it was a situation where daily life continued in such an ambiguous way that it would be strange to claim anything significant had happened. In fact, it would be odder to make a fuss about these mundane occurrences.

And so, time passed quickly.

In the Golem Armor hangar, work on renovating the existing Golem Armors continued, while villagers either stuck with their traditional farming methods according to their preferences—or came to me to learn and implement the four-field crop rotation system.

As these changes progressed thoroughly, several new developments emerged in the village.

First, an internal consumer market began to form within the village.

At the stalls that had sprung up like mushrooms in the space I had designated as a marketplace, homemade handicrafts, agricultural products, or byproducts from livestock and game were displayed and sold.

Especially these days, cool linen fabric was gaining considerable popularity in preparation for summer, while firewood and kindling were also selling reasonably well, though not as much as during winter.

Additionally, since there were no tax exemptions applied to product sales, the taxes collected in the village thanks to a series of events, creating revenue sources beyond village-level product sales, was an undeniable benefit.

Although the market wasn’t enormously large and the tax revenue wasn’t tremendously high, at least enough money was coming in to purchase ironware from outside.

Anyway, the consumer market formed in the village wasn’t just limited to the literal marketplace.

Carpenters, stonemasons, and even architects were being paid by villagers to build desired structures, while families who had saved up money were covering their house ceilings with roof tiles or replacing them with brick houses.

Also, some apprentices who had been learning under carpenters were making and selling furniture with their skills, and as people gradually became more comfortable financially, the overall food quality they demanded was trending upward.

While humans who would silently eat oat porridge like horse feed when they had no means, once they gained some leeway and their circumstances improved, they naturally wanted to eat something delicious, whatever it might be.

As a result, unlike before, animals were neatly butchered and sold by cuts, and ingredients that were previously eaten only out of necessity were now being sold in the market solely because they tasted good.

I honestly don’t understand why dishes like “butter-roasted electric snail” are becoming popular… Well, I suppose they must taste good.

And at the pinnacle of this trend was the restaurant established by a Halfling family who had been among the 150 new immigrants.

Halflings, a small folk race, possess extremely dexterous hands despite their small bodies, and perhaps because of this, most of them are famous for their outstanding cooking skills.

This Halfling family, sharing these characteristics, used their talents to open the village’s only specialized restaurant. Despite being new immigrants, they quickly integrated into the village and generated countless regular customers.

In particular, their signature dish, rabbit stew, was something even I occasionally enjoyed with a drink, which says it all.

Of course, since running just a restaurant in this era would be a perfect way to starve to death, these establishments also provided lodging services, doubling as inns.

However, looking at this, one might wonder:

What kind of guests would use an inn in such a rural village? It’s a perfectly understandable question—why would anyone come up with such an idea?

But have you ever considered that the premise itself might be wrong?

People aren’t fools—would they open an inn if there were no potential customers? Naturally, they started accepting additional guests because they saw the situation and deemed it feasible.

And this was another change occurring in the village: the increasing number of outside visitors.

※ ※ ※

In truth, the village had always had regular visitors.

From wandering peddlers to passing adventurers and travelers. Once, even a mercenary group that was apparently acquainted with Droop visited, had a drink, and left.

….Those troublesome knights from last winter would technically count as visitors too, I suppose.

Anyway, these visitors would briefly stop by the village for their own purposes and then leave…. Honestly, from a ruler’s perspective, these visitors inevitably represent potential risk factors.

In an era where population movement is restricted, people wandering around outside are essentially those who have broken away from the social order.

In modern terms, the wanderers of this era are equivalent to stateless persons.

Therefore, while I’m quite uncomfortable with these outsiders, I don’t intend to take the initiative in showing hostility unless they commit wrongdoings that necessitate their expulsion.

Although they’re a group of potential criminals with a high probability of disrupting the village’s order, visitors who quietly come and go actually spend money and inject vitality into the village, preventing it from stagnating.

Anyway, while most of the previous visitors to the village were either passersby or merchants, interestingly, a significant number of the newly increasing visitors were adventurers.

These adventurers used this frontier village as an intermediate base for supplies or lodging, coming and going from nearby unexplored territories to complete requests or hunt down monsters with valuable byproducts.

Of course, one might ask how they dare to hunt creatures like monsters, which only the lord has the right to hunt, even in unexplored territory that is nominally part of Baron Alzar’s land….

In fact, there are several exceptions to this rule.

In the Frankish Kingdom, and indeed across all human nations of the Western Continent, the right to hunt monsters on a piece of land typically belongs to the landowner, meaning people don’t have hunting rights unless they’re attacked first.

However, there are a few exceptions to this, the most representative being the unrestricted hunting of flying creatures.

Based on the logic that in the common language of the Western Continent, a lord can only claim rights over beasts “standing on their land,” many poor farmers survive by shooting down birds with arrows and living off their meat.

The next well-known exception is that—even in someone’s territory, within unexplored regions, hunting by others and the extermination of monsters (hostile creatures) can be freely carried out.

….Well, this is actually more like a case of “go ahead if you can” since unexplored territories are excessively dangerous due to naturally formed otherworldly spaces.

In reality, a considerable number of adventurers die in droves while striving for personal wealth, and these unexplored territories are particularly hazardous even among dangerous zones.

Therefore, I saw a reasonable explanation for the increased frequency of adventurer visits—it was for profit.

But regardless of this reason, I couldn’t shake off an uneasy feeling no matter how much time passed, and to be honest, this sudden increase in adventurers seemed suspicious.

My intuition was warning me, and through my own deductions, I suspected there must be some ulterior motive behind this sudden increase in the adventurer population.

With the branch manager of the Colland Adventurers’ Guild potentially plotting rebellion in the city of Colland, it would actually be stranger if there weren’t any ulterior motives.

And while this unsettling feeling persisted… but I couldn’t act rashly given the atmosphere… right at that moment:

“Please, please save us!!!”

“….What?”

I found myself confronted by a visitor I never expected, who immediately fell to their knees before me and begged to be saved.