Chapter 16 The Beginning Is Difficult
Gervis ignored Benny and was the first to walk into the inner castle door. The moment Gervis stepped into the inner castle, he was blown by gusts of cool breeze, and it felt like all the heat in his body was blown away by the cool breeze.
He wandered around the inner castle, especially the third floor where he lived. Everything inside was still intact and had not been damaged in the orc invasion. Gervis was very satisfied with the internal situation.
Later, Gervis left the inner castle because it was not habitable yet and needed someone to clean it up again.
The task was assigned to Thomas, who, accompanied by Benny, went to the town, recruited 20 serfs, and started cleaning inside and outside the castle.
As a noble lord, Gervis was much more leisurely. He was standing on the castle wall at the moment, overlooking the mountain. The small hill where the castle was located was the only commanding height nearby. Although it was only a few dozen meters high, standing on the castle and overlooking the earth was a great pleasure.
Gervis really felt like he was looking down on all the other mountains, especially since the population in this world was so sparse that the damage to the natural world was minimal. The sky was blue and clear, not as hazy as on Earth when you looked far away.
Binhai Town is originally very small. Looking from the city wall, it is sparsely populated. Compared with the endless green vegetation, it is like a lone boat in the green sea.
While overlooking the earth, Gervis was constantly thinking in his mind how to build and develop his own territory. His territory was indeed not small, comparable to the viscount's territory, but the population was too sparse, with only more than 2,000 people.
And there were 2,000 impoverished serfs. Gervis believed that if the weather was not good and the crops failed for a quarter, 99 percent of the serfs in the territory would starve to death!
These two thousand serfs completely depended on the most primitive farming crops to survive, which meant that even if these people could have a bumper harvest every year, Gervis's tax revenue would always be fixed. Unless the population base expanded, as Gandalf said, by expanding the population and reclaiming wasteland, he could get more tax revenue.
However, there is a deadlock here. The reason why there are so few people in this territory is because there was an invasion by the orc army in the winter. The main food crops here can only be cultivated once a year, and the harvest is halved.
If the crops were cultivated in the second season, they would only mature in the winter, but by then the orcs would have invaded, and even if the crops matured, they would only be food for the orcs. Secondly, the orcs’ invasion made people feel that this territory had become unsafe, and people felt that their lives were threatened, so they had to leave.
If this problem is not solved, Gervis will never be able to recruit a large number of serfs. You can farm anywhere, so why would you come to such a dangerous place to become a serf?
In this world, there are two sources of serfs: one is those who were plundered and sold during wars, and the other is free people who voluntarily gave up their identities and joined the serf industry.
Incredibly, the second method was the main source of serfs for lords to recruit.
The first one is easy to understand. Population is also a kind of resource in this world. In wars, there are often many surrendered soldiers and enemy civilians affected by the war. After being captured, they will be taken away and either sold as slaves or become serfs.
As for the second type, in fact, many free people did not live much better than serfs. Although serfs had always been a group exploited by nobles, when they encountered danger, they would be protected by their lords because they were the lords' private property.
But the freemen are different. They have no relationship with the lords. When they encounter danger, if they want to seek help from the lords, they need to pay a high fee, otherwise there is no deal.
For example, if the crops failed and the serfs were about to starve to death, the lord would definitely find a way to rescue the serfs as soon as possible. But for the freemen, unless they gave up their status and became serfs of the lords, they would only starve to death.
Freemen living in big cities were better off. If they lived in the countryside, unless they had large plots of land, their lives would only become increasingly difficult, because everything in the land, even a blade of grass, was the property of the lords. Becoming a serf seemed to mean giving up freedom, but as long as they worked hard, they could survive. Therefore, many freemen who could no longer survive became serfs under the temptation of land.
After becoming serfs, they could dig wild vegetables, pick wild fruits, and hunt in the territory at will, and the lords generally did not prohibit them. As long as they paid the required taxes every year, the lords were still very "friendly" to their serfs.
Gervis's territory is now equivalent to a run-down company that is about to go bankrupt. If there is nothing special, it is impossible to find a large number of employees to work for him. After all, your treatment is the same as that of other companies, but you are facing the risk of bankruptcy. Anyone with a clear mind will definitely not choose him. You can get the same benefits in other stable places, so no one will make a fool of themselves.
The more he thought about it, the more headache he got. Fortunately, Gervis got down from the city wall and stopped thinking. He had just arrived at the territory and hadn't even sat down yet, so he could make long-term plans.
When they arrived at the open space, Jimmy was roasting two chickens with great effort. These two chickens were the ones Benny had caught.
Benny told Thomas that he had bought the two chickens in the country and wanted to give them to Lord Gervis. Thomas was worried about his Lord Baron's lunch, so he accepted the two chickens without a second thought.
When Gervis found out, he didn't believe Benny's words no matter whether others believed it or not. However, he accepted the chicken because he had been eating dry food for two days and missed hot food very much.
Judging from the situation in the small town, it would probably take some time to get good food even if we had money. We would eat these two chickens first, and then send Thomas to the town in the afternoon to see if there was anything good to buy. As for Benny and the others, we still need to find out about them tomorrow.
He had already made plans in his mind. Tomorrow he needed to interrogate all ten guards separately, especially the seven guards. Gervis felt that the information he could get from them would definitely be more accurate than what he could get from Benny and his lackeys.
Only by ensuring that the people around him are reliable can he develop his territory with peace of mind and his personal safety can be guaranteed.
Thomas and Jimmy were sent to him by Alice, so they should be trustworthy. Even if the two might be Alice's spies, Gervis didn't care, because at present the only thing he needed to keep secret from others was the gold finger.
Gervis had tested the cheating panel when he was in Baron Gandalf's castle. He opened the panel in front of the servants, but found that the servants were unaware and could not see the existence of the panel at all. So as long as he was careful to hide when using the reward, there would be no risk of exposing the cheating panel.
The three guards who followed him were all his father's most trusted men, so there was no need to worry about their loyalty. Now he only needed to purge the unruly elements among the ten guards in the Viscount Castle.
…
The twenty serfs worked very hard. Although some places had not been cleaned yet, the bedroom, study and other areas where the noble lords moved around belonging to Gervis had basically been cleaned.
There are only a few places that have not been cleaned, which are those places that are not used at the moment and it will not be too late to clean them tomorrow, such as the guest rooms prepared for guests and some storage rooms.
What Gervis didn't know was that it was precisely because of this reason that Benny was able to escape the disaster temporarily.
As it gradually darkened, Thomas dismissed eighteen of the serfs, gave each of them three copper coins as instructed by Gervis, and let the serfs return to the coastal town amid endless praises for the Baron's generosity.
Originally, according to Thomas's own idea, there was no need to pay so much money, because these serfs all belonged to Gervis, and they occasionally worked for their noble master. If they were to be charged so much money, it would definitely be hung as a flag in the town square for everyone to see, to warn those serfs whose ideological awareness was not high enough.
The eighteen serfs received the copper coins and left happily. As for the other two young serfs, Thomas asked Gervis to keep them temporarily.
They will continue to clean the remaining places that have not been cleaned. Even after cleaning, the two can temporarily serve as servants in the castle.
When Gervis came, he did not bring any more people with him except the five of them. Recruiting male and female servants would have to wait until the next day or the day after tomorrow. Therefore, these two serfs were chosen by Thomas to serve as servants in the castle during the few days of free time.
…
Dinner can be had in the inner castle restaurant. When the castle was breached by orcs, they simply killed everyone in the castle and took away all the gold coins and food. They were not interested in the furniture or artworks, so they kept a lot of them.
The valuable works of art had been taken away by the Earl, and the remaining tables, chairs and benches were not pleasing to the Earl, so they remained in the castle.
The furniture used by the Viscount was, of course, made of the finest wood. Although the Earl did not like it, it was not ordinary stuff. After being placed for decades and cleaned, it still maintained its original appearance without decaying due to the passage of time or being eaten by insects and ants.
These remaining furniture in the castle can be considered a small bargain for Gervis. Even though one-third of the furniture was damaged that year, the remaining two-thirds of the furniture is still worth a lot of money.
Just like the long table in the restaurant, it is not only made of good materials, but also very finely crafted, with many knight patterns carved on each table leg. Compared with such a table, the dining table in Gandalf's restaurant is simply a civilian version of the dining table.
The food for dinner is no longer just barbecue. Chef Jimmy certainly doesn’t only know how to barbecue. In the past two days, he was limited by the ingredients, so he could only grill it.
This afternoon, Gervis gave Thomas a coin worth a gold coin and asked him to go to the town to buy the urgently needed supplies. Food was the most important thing. They set out from Gandalf's castle, traveling light, with only enough dry food and a few sets of clothes to change, nothing else.
Gandalf gave Gervase's money to him before he left. In addition to the supplies that would be delivered in a while, Gandalf also gave Gervase twenty gold coins. For Gandalf, who had just emptied his bankroll by buying royal blue elf worms, twenty gold coins were not a small sum.
With these twenty gold coins, Gervis' current predicament was greatly alleviated.
(End of this chapter)
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