Ch.96Renewal

I am going crazy right now.

I’ve entrusted my entire body and soul to these documents.

Documents were the only pillar that could sustain the administration of a nation.

This is who I am now.

The one sitting in the office, wringing his brain dry while wrestling with the annual budget plan.

It’s difficult and painful, but I have no choice but to get it done.

A monarch who breaks promises to his subjects will inevitably be despised, whether he likes it or not, and I myself could not forgive the corruption and injustice brought about by my own complacency.

More than 3,600 people lost their heads due to corruption; if I hadn’t cut off those heads then, 3,600 might have become 36,000.

A nation where bribes outweigh petitions, where personal connections override legal grounds—this was something I, above all others, could never tolerate.

Scratch… scratch…

Thus, only after enough time had passed for morning to turn into afternoon, I finally managed to finish my paperwork, and took a short break while eating the lunch Michaela had brought.

The menu consisted of pork belly steak with french fries, along with lemonade and three roasted tomatoes to prevent scurvy.

It was a feast that would make commoners drool, but for me now, it was merely fuel to continue my work.

“You seem to be working hard these days, Master.”

“Well, I have no choice… Thousands lost their heads because of my careless handling of affairs. If I had been even slightly more lax, thousands could have become tens of thousands.”

I answered while chewing on my steak, and Michaela quietly massaged my shoulders in response.

Just as a tightened screw must be periodically retightened when it loosens, human discipline must also be regularly maintained or it will inevitably slacken.

Without periodic audits and inspections, any institution or organization will lose its initial enthusiasm and, steeped in complacency, fall into the clutches of corruption, intoxicated by comfortable incompetence.

Especially in this world where unimaginable, indescribable darkness actually exists.

“Michaela. Please call my aide.”

“Yes, Master.”

After finishing my meal, I promptly called for my aide.

A few minutes later, the aide opened the door to my office, pulling a cart full of parchments.

Was it my imagination? He seemed to be pulling the cart with a subtly pleased expression.

“Are those additional documents?”

I asked, desperately hoping they weren’t.

“Yes.”

But of course they were. Ignoring my despair, the aide lifted the parchments piled on my desk and replaced them with the new documents from the cart.

“I’ll need your approval by this evening.”

“Nooooo…”

The aide left silently with a smile.

And once again, I despaired at the sight of the documents piled high enough to break my desk, and with trembling hands, began to sift through them one by one.

And so, I had to remain bound to my office until day turned to night—this was the rightful punishment that a tyrant must bear.

*

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

“Whew! Let’s call it a day!”

“Right! No good in overexerting ourselves!”

“Perfect timing to have a snack before heading home!”

Meanwhile, as Tiberius von Adler was withering away in real-time on the Administrative Throne for the sake of 1.4 million—no, now 1.6 million—citizens, a group of farmers outside the city walls were comfortably enjoying their mid-work snacks at the edge of their field.

While the city was in an uproar about eradicating corruption and putting criminals on the execution block, in the villages outside the walls with their relatively low population density and simpler social structures, it might as well have been news from a foreign country.

Though called villages, they were essentially large areas with extensive fields, orchards, and pastures for large-scale food production. They employed numerous adventurers to guard against thieves, rodents, and wild animals that might steal fruits and crops. With such a high transient population, these places were virtually barren ground for corruption to take root.

Moreover, for corruption to occur, there needed to be officials as the main actors, but in these villages, apart from clerks handling minor administrative tasks and storekeepers collecting taxes, there were hardly any officials to speak of.

“I hear the city’s been in an uproar lately. What’s goin’ on?”

“Don’t even ask. They say all the officials were corrupt, so they’re breaking necks in the square. I went to the market with my son and came back traumatized.”

“Aish… why is it that officials, whether in this country or another, always get their heads chopped off for the same crimes?”

“How would I know? Let’s hurry up and finish eating so we can clean up. We need to get home, don’t we?”

Most of Amurtat’s rural areas were occupied not by natives but by immigrants.

Because of this, rural people intellectually understood that they were citizens of Amurtat, but emotionally felt that they were somehow different from the city dwellers, which resulted in indifference toward the city.

In fact, this trend originated from the Elysian refugees who dominated the rural hegemony of Amurtat. Having experienced all sorts of injustices in “cities” back in Elysia, they instinctively avoided cities, and this tendency spread to other farmers as well.

The painful memories from Elysia, where they didn’t even have enough land to be buried in, let alone a place to stretch their legs, transformed into extreme stress regarding cities. As a counterbalance, a culture developed that regarded the countryside, “the land they pioneered,” as a kind of paradise.

Of course, as the saying goes, there is no paradise in a place you flee to, and these farming villages each had their own problems. But just as hell can look like heaven to those who have lived in an inferno, a dystopia can become a utopia for those who have survived man-made hells.

There’s a saying that even rolling in a dog dung field is better than the afterlife, but for such a proverb to make sense, there must first be a dog dung field to roll in.

“Since we plowed the field today, tomorrow we just need to sow the seeds.”

“What about the sorted pebbles?”

“Hmm… load those onto the cart and dump them at the waste site over there.”

“Got it.”

In Amurtat’s countryside, where various ethnic groups gathered, baseless dialects abounded, yet strangely, everyone understood each other.

Whether farmers are farmers wherever they go, or whether the power of the continental common language derived from the continental common script was that formidable, no one could say.

*

“Hurry! We must complete the village before winter comes!”

“Yes, sir!”

“We need more nails here!”

“Where did all the resin go? We need it now!”

To supply the food needed for the new city of Woodbury, dozens of villages were currently being built across the Amurtat plains.

Immigrants have children, and those children grow up to have children of their own.

For this cycle to continue, food was needed, and shelter was needed.

Now that shelter had been secured, food was next in line.

The vast plains had the potential to satisfy the hunger of millions, and humanity’s only duty was to unearth that potential through sweat and labor.

Plow the land, remove weeds and pebbles so crops can take root, build barns and mangers so livestock can have a place to call home.

Add manure, spread fertilizer, mix the soil again to make the land fertile.

And in between, houses for farmers and the amenities they need are erected.

Shops. Taverns. Hospitals and theaters. The foundations for everything humans need to live are determined and then implemented.

In one part of the village, there will be a senior center where the elderly can gather, a playground where children can play, and one of the adventurer guild’s branch offices where naive adventurers will congregate.

And spaces for administrative offices, police stations for security, and fire stations for handling fires are prepared, and soon the skeletons of numerous buildings begin to rise.

Iron and wood intertwine to form frames, and earth and stone gather to raise walls.

A village is being created.

Land is cultivated for crops and fruits to grow, and pasture fences are closed as tens of thousands of livestock begin to cry mournfully.

The lowest fragment of human civilization, spreading wide and thin, is being created in this world once again, and soon those who will shoulder this fragment will gather.

In the autumn of the 13th year of the Amurtat calendar.

Before the first frost fell, a village was completed.

During the years it takes for a child to grow into a boy or girl, Amurtat has also grown by leaps and bounds. Someday, even these vast plains will be covered by the shadows of windmills built by humanity.