Chapter 2 Chapter 2 Repairing the Manor
Due to the cold weather, Olivia had been carrying out the exploration mission slowly for two or three days.
Although the manor is dilapidated, it is not small and is roughly divided into six parts.
Main house, tower, wooden longhouse.
Livestock pens, vegetable plots, and orchards.
The main house is actually a small two-story building, made of stone and covered with pottery tiles, with only ten rooms in total.
From the outside, it looks like a small gray house with stone walls covered with dead branches and leaves of climbing plants.
The first floor has a hall, a restaurant, and a prayer room.
There was no church in the fiefdom. The chapel in the manor was used for weddings and baptisms for the residents of the fiefdom, as well as for court.
There were hundreds of people in the fiefdom, and all trivial matters had to be decided by the court.
The second floor of the main house has four rooms.
There is also a room called a bathroom, but it is actually very simple, with only a wooden bathtub and a wooden bucket for the toilet in the corner.
The tradition in Alta is to bathe before prayers, at least once a week.
At least the social atmosphere is still simple and honest, not so dirty.
There are two storage rooms in the attic. The housekeeper had someone clean them up before the wedding, and they are now empty.
These rooms are more dilapidated than the other, especially the attic. The tiled roof may be leaking a little, and the floors in many hidden places have been soaked and rotten.
When the old knight was alive, his only hobby was drinking beer and remembering his late wife. He was also very stingy and did not have high demands for the quality of life. Therefore, he never spent any money to plan and renovate this house and manor.
Lucy's family is used to it.
There is also a tower on one corner of the main house.
The tower can be entered from the side of the prayer room on the first floor. It is one floor higher than the main house. No one lives in it. It is mainly used for observation, defense and signal transmission.
A longhouse is a row house built with logs and divided into four or five rooms.
There was a kitchen, a smokehouse, and Lucy's family lived there.
Lucy's father is the old steward of the manor, and Lucy's mother is the cook of the manor.
Lucy's husband is the knight's squire of the manor, and also the only squire. She also has a younger brother named Adam, who is the manor's servant.
Their family is the property of the old knight, and their ancestors have served the manor for many years.
The livestock pen was located diagonally opposite the longhouse, and originally housed two cows, two horses, and seven chickens.
Olivia had visited that place yesterday. The living conditions of the livestock were very simple, but since they were important properties, the housekeeper usually took care of them personally.
Now, a new wooden shed has been built to house Olivia's dowry, which is the two ewes.
As for the orchard and vegetable garden in front of the manor, they are quite large, but the planting is sparse and not valued, and they need to be rectified.
Behind the main house is a small grassland slope for livestock grazing. It takes more than half an hour to walk around it. There are two silos made of wooden boards.
Olivia had explored most of the manor in the past two days and knew it very well.
The only unexplored area left was the cellar.
The entrance to the cellar is located beneath the tower.
It stores various crops and grains from the manor and is obviously very important.
Olivia plans to complete this exploration mission today.
She heard Lucy say yesterday that the seven chickens in the pen only laid three or four eggs a day, probably because the weather was too cold. But even adding warm hay to the chicken coop didn't help.
Only when the tasks are completed will the system increase production.
The current progress of this experience value is 4.
When certain integers are reached, she will be given a random reward and some game features will be unlocked.
At the moment, she could only see that after the experience value reached the integer of 100, she could unlock the seeds of a mysterious crop.
The reward for the next stage requires 500 experience points, and the reward is not yet visible.
The help the system can provide her at the moment is indeed limited. If she wants to improve her quality of life, she has to rely on her own initiative.
There was no mirror on the dressing table, so she stood up and looked at herself in the basin, then turned back, took out a key and opened the money box in the room.
Here was all the old knight's property left, a small pile of coins of various denominations, enough to buy three or four cows in town.
It’s not that they were wealthy, but in the wealthier counties in the southern part of the kingdom, even rich farmers could achieve this economic capability.
This place is poor in resources all year round. How could a knight become rich by living off his fief?
She could only blame herself for being unlucky, drawing such a bad place, which was really a disaster to start with.
There are also various relics left in the box, such as daggers, rings, and a large key that can open the cellar door. This key is the only one of its kind.
After taking out the key, Olivia didn't rush downstairs. She came to the bedroom window, where there was a table and a wooden chair. She asked Lucy to move in the day before yesterday.
According to normal etiquette, she would have to go downstairs to the dining room for breakfast, but this would require lighting the fireplace for heating, which was very wasteful of firewood and not cost-effective. It would be better for her to eat in the room.
In this place, the emperor is far away and no one cares about etiquette.
After a while, Lucy came upstairs with Olivia's breakfast. On the table in front of her were several rough-surfaced ceramic bowls and uneven iron spoons.
There was not only the porridge Olivia had described, but also sliced sausages made by the cook herself and apples from the orchard.
Lucy waited quietly by the side, watching her hostess eat.
Apart from the oatmeal, she only took one bite of the sausage and one bite of the apple and then stopped eating.
Olivia pursed her lips and continued to eat the porridge that tasted normal.
Let’s talk about the sausage first. She didn’t know what kind of vanilla was added to it, but the strange smell mixed with the meaty smell was unbearable for her.
Speaking of apples, they are completely different from the improved varieties in modern society. In terms of appearance, they are very small, with mixed colors and are not good-looking. They are not very sweet in taste, lack moisture, and are a bit astringent.
It would be great if the system could improve the taste of these crops.
At the same time, Lucy looked at the heavy snow outside the blinds while reporting on the big and small things in the manor.
"After the deerskin is tanned, is it sold as a whole piece or is it used to make items?"
The local deer are huge in size, and their skin is the more valuable part. If she had not been an accountant in her previous life but a craftsman, then of course she would have kept it to make things.
Whenever Olivia thought about this, she couldn't understand why an accountant was sent to the Middle Ages. What on earth did they expect her to do? To find a way to avoid taxes from the Baron?
"...Why not sell the whole thing? How much can it get?"
Lucy thought for a moment and replied, "About a silver coin, right? The weather is getting colder, and deer are harder to find and even harder to hunt."
There are four types of currency used in Alta, the largest denomination being the Kingdom Gold Coin, followed by the Kingdom Silver Coin.
Then there is the Kori coin. The smallest denomination is called the Suri coin, which is decimal and is made of a mixture of various metals.
One souri coin could buy perhaps two palm-sized loaves of rye bread.
A mature cow in the town sells for about seventeen silver coins.
Since the system's reward is to increase egg production, why not...
"Very good, use this money to buy some hens and bring them back to the pen."
Olivia thought that every bit of this reward counts. The hens lay eggs and produce chicks. If the business can be scaled up, a 20% increase in egg production value would be quite significant.
Lucy didn't know all this. She looked at the lady's face, which seemed to have a plan in mind, and didn't know what to say.
One silver coin could buy five or six hens, but in this cold winter, hens don't like to lay eggs. However, her father had just warned her that the lady was not familiar with them yet and should be treated with care. Therefore, Lucy said nothing and continued:
"I've already calculated the number of broken tiles on the roof that need replacing. I need to buy about fifty of them. There are red clay tiles and black clay tiles. The red clay ones are cheaper, but they're also a bit more brittle. Each one costs one souri."
There are no pottery kilns in the nearby villages, so the only way to buy pottery is to go to a small town an hour's walk south.
"What about the black mud one?" Olivia asked.
"It's twice as expensive, but it's much stronger. Even the Baron's house uses it."
If you use black mud, it will cost one silver coin, which is not a big deal since you are not replacing the entire roof.
"Use black mud. I'll give you five silver coins later. Give them to the steward. You can use this to pay for the manor's renovations. If you need more, come back and get more. You don't have to come to me every time."
Olivia knew that the original servant Lucy and her family were the most loyal NPCs in the game, so she decided to try and see if reality was the same as the game.
However, this surprised Lucy, because she had never seen such a generous master who trusted his subordinates. But it was also because the old knight was too stingy and was a miser who counted every penny every day.
But this is normal. The fief of the lady's family, Knight Renault, has more arable land, which is also suitable for fishing and hunting. Her family can afford to raise seven sheep. There are three sisters, and each of them gets two sheep as a dowry.
There are ten fiefdom knights in their baron's territory, and Knight Renault can be ranked among the best.
Lucy agreed and promised her father that he would be able to manage the money well. Olivia finished a bowl of porridge without changing her expression as she was grateful for her lady's trust.
She opened the box and gave Lucy the money, informed Lucy, and then planned to go to the cellar to check.
Before walking out of the bedroom, she did not forget to find a straight-collared woolen robe to wear to keep out the cold.
In the box of clothes she brought from her parents' home, there were two coats like this one, more than a dozen skirts and petticoats, and the best fabric was only a velvet long dress, which was only worn on important occasions.
After leaving the bedroom, there are stairs every two steps in the corridor. The place is narrow, with a steep slope and no windows. You have to hold on to the wall and be careful when going up and down.
After going downstairs, there is the so-called hall, which is just an empty room with the main door of the main house in the middle. There is not even a foyer or porch. It is very simple.
The restaurant was on the east side and the prayer room was on the west side. She went to the west side, opened a small door in the corner of the prayer room, and walked in. There was an area of about four or five square meters with a wooden ladder with three levels. There was a wooden board next to the ladder, and on it was the lock for the cellar.
She felt a little scared when she thought about it now. This place looked like a vampire would jump out at any time.
But what could be worse than the current situation?
If you have the guts, just kill her. It’s not the first time she’s died anyway.
Thinking of this, Olivia was no longer afraid. She walked over, opened the lock, lifted the wooden door and put it on the ground, then went down to the cellar along the wooden ladder.
Suddenly, the choking dust made Olivia's nose itch, and a series of mice chirping sounded for a while. Then she opened her eyes and saw the whole picture of the cellar without moving.
The place was not big, and the light from the tower could illuminate it clearly. There was a circle of wooden barrels placed around the wall. She went forward to check them one by one and counted them. There were four barrels of wheat, five barrels of oats, two barrels of peas, one barrel of purple carrots, and half a barrel of dried garlic.
As for what the system said, the third wooden barrel in the cellar contained three sealed small clay jars. She fumbled to open the lids of the jars and found that they were all filled with butter.
Yes, although old Knight Helions raised two cows, he did not drink milk when he was alive. The cook made butter every three days with the milk she squeezed out, and this much butter accumulated over the past few months.
According to today's prices, this is worth a lot of money, enough to repair many roofs. The housekeeper must also take it to the town to sell it when it stops snowing.
She put the lid back on and closed the barrel. When she returned to the surface, she locked the cellar before opening the ring.
Mission "Explore the Manor" completed!
The rewards have been distributed, players please check!
Unlock the mission "Repair the damage to the main house"
Progress: 0
Task description: The living environment is in urgent need of renovation, repairs and drive away the rats!
Mission reward: 10 experience points, unlock pepper seeds.
What? ! !
After seeing what the reward item was, Olivia was no longer sleepy. She clicked on the note next to the reward and understood how to redeem the reward.
After unlocking the chili seeds, she can go to any seed store in the town and see the chili seeds forgotten in the corner by the sailing merchants.
After four days of eating bland white bread and sweet porridge, she had almost forgotten the taste of chili peppers. But now, Olivia felt excited again, as if the spicy chicken was waving at her.
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