Ruin has come to our family

The serfs did not only work during the busy seasons of planting and harvesting. In their off-time, they were still required to complete tasks assigned by the landowner. The men were generally assigned heavy labor, such as feeding livestock, logging, foraging, brewing, or transport. There were, of course, some skilled positions: coopering, carpentry, making candles and torches, and the like.

The women were not left idle, either. Their primary work was processing raw materials like flax and wool into cloth, which involved spinning, dyeing, and sewing. Some of the women were assigned as servants in the manor, where washing and cooking were also their duties. Some of the more comely ones would be singled out to satisfy the lusts of others—one of the methods the landowner used to control his guards.

Tedious work occupied most of their time. Anyone caught slacking would be punished—whipping, food deprivation—the landowner would not let them rest. Only when night fell could the serfs, after a day of toil, finally have a moment's respite. Not because the landowner did not wish for them to continue working, but because lighting was a problem. The cost of torches and candles was too great; it was not worth the expense.

Originally, the farmstead had only a dozen or so serfs. But now, that number had swelled to nearly a hundred, while the living quarters remained the same. As one could imagine, many of them did not even have the space to lie down. They could only sleep sitting upright, propped up by ropes. Some were crammed into the foul-smelling animal pens. It stank, but at least they could lie down.

On this closed farmstead, these people were no different from slaves. They received no reward for their labor, working for the landowner for nothing. But at least they were given a mouthful of food to eat, which made their lot far better than that of most of the townsfolk.

The first place Lance inspected was the granary. Opening the doors, he saw sacks of grain piled high inside.

"Hahaha!"

After confirming the contents, Lance let out a loud laugh. Even having crossed worlds, he could not change his deep-seated focus on food. As the saying goes: with a full larder, the heart is at ease. He desperately needed grain. Otherwise, he could not placate the starving townsfolk, and all his future plans would require a steady food supply as support. After all, if people could not even eat their fill, no one would follow him to fight the Ancestor. If they rose up in revolt, it would be a fire in his own backyard, and his entire foundation would be gone.

"Come, to the next one."

Lance eagerly moved to the next granary. After inspecting all three, he had a general conclusion. The other two were not completely full, but the grain within was enough to feed the town for a year. No wonder the town had been exporting grain before. But with the trade routes cut off, the grain had to be stored. And with the mercenaries' consumption driving up the price of alcohol, the landowner had begun brewing wine to use up the excess grain and extract more money from the sellswords.

The poor had nothing to eat, while the rich had a surplus of grain to brew into wine.

Lance went to the brewery and immediately halted this wasteful practice. The serfs there could only obey. Even if they did not recognize him, they certainly recognized the knightly plate Reynauld wore.

The animal pens held pigs, cattle, sheep, and chickens. The farm raised most of these for their byproducts—milk, wool, eggs. Only at the end of their lives would they be used for meat. Only the pigs were raised specifically for slaughter. Because of the disruption to production, many of these products had piled up. Milk was being poured out rather than given away, and a room was filled to the brim with eggs that had not been distributed.

"Damnation... damn these people to hell."

Seeing this waste of food made Lance's blood boil. It had only been a month. If so many eggs were to spoil, it would pain him more than being punched himself. The serfs working in the chicken coop did not know why this great lord was so angry. They all looked terrified.

But Lance did not vent his anger on them. Instead, like a manager inspecting his staff, he offered a word of encouragement. "You all work hard. After today, everything will be better."

The serfs looked utterly stunned. They had never been treated with such an attitude. It only made them more flustered. Lance said no more. He turned and left. Once outside, he said curtly: "Let's go back."

Reynauld and Barristan could both feel his foul mood. They said nothing, only hurrying to keep up.

But the situation back at the manor was also somewhat unexpected. Dismas had somehow failed in his task. And he was being chased. By two women. One was the maid from before. The other was a mountain of a woman, weighing at least two hundred jin, who was currently chasing Dismas around, shouting obscenities.

"Get out! Get out of my house!"

The maid was pacing frantically nearby, not knowing what to do.

Lance's party burst in, interrupting the farce. The chase came to a halt.

"My lord... I..." Dismas came over to Lance, his face a picture of embarrassment, clearly ashamed at having failed his mission.

"It's fine," Lance said, not particularly concerned. He knew of Dismas's vow to never harm a woman or child. Otherwise, his pursuer would have long since eaten a bullet. Still, he couldn't resist a joke. "I doubt any of us could withstand a charge from her."

Hearing this, Barristan hefted the shield in his hand. In his youth, he had dared to wrestle bulls, but now, he found he truly wasn't confident he could block her.

"Who are you? Get out of my house!" the woman roared, her face, already fleshy, now looking even more ferocious.

"You are the landowner's daughter?" Lance sized up the corpulent woman. No wonder David had been so resistant when the landowner had mentioned his daughter. Now he knew why. He had almost been envious of David's luck—surviving against the odds, marrying a rich woman, taking control of a farmstead. But now it seemed that marrying into wealth was not so simple. To control the farmstead, David had paid a price. It was a burden that life itself could not bear.

"Where did she come from?"

"A servant must have let her out." Dismas looked helpless. If it had been a two-hundred-jin man, he would have dropped him with a single shot. But this was a difficult situation. He looked to Lance for help. "My lord, what do we do?"

"Difficult?" Lance drew his pistol. "Then let's not make it so." I wonder, he thought, if a person of this tonnage would yield a greater [Boon] when sacrificed?

The woman, who had been fearlessly chasing Dismas, was paralyzed with terror at the sight of Lance's gun. The fat on her body trembled. Her earlier bravado was completely gone. She bullied the soft and feared the hard.

The landowner, seeing Lance draw his pistol without a word, was terrified. The image of David's death was still fresh in his mind. And now, the gun was pointed at his daughter.

"Wait!" the landowner cried, rushing forward to stand in front of her.