8 — 1 (7)

On the first day of the cultivation test, a new quest appeared. The reward was a full 100 points. With 100 points, he could unlock another Stage-1 trait.

That meant Louis absolutely had to defeat Hansen.

His current points were 45; once Boromir returned from the Mercenary Guild with the hired men, Louis would gain 60 points. Even securing those 60, he would still need 25 more.

Louis took no special measures to spur the farmers. The money he had was reserved for mercenaries. Thus, the first and second days began with the most ordinary of work.

Whether or not this was a contest with Count Hansen was irrelevant to the farmers; they simply did their usual tasks.

‘For now, keep it ordinary. Let’s secure the 60 points first.’

Louis watched the fields fill with farmers plowing to sow seed. There were many, yet far too few for the acreage he had to manage.

On the second day, Hansen received reports on Louis’s every move. The content was simple: aside from words of encouragement, Louis offered the farmers no incentives.

‘Well, it’s not like Young Lord Louis has money or troops. He even had to borrow staff from his father.’

Hansen was confident. Louis’s actions, in hindsight, were only natural—trust the land’s quality and handle the farmers. The one variable was Boromir; Hansen guessed Boromir might return with funds.

‘If he brings money, he’ll only fail faster.’

That night, Hansen planned to sabotage the canal tied to Louis’s fields. If Louis lost the canal today, restoring it would take a full week. What was the worst case for Hansen? There was no cap on construction laborers, so if Boromir brought builders, they could repair the canal swiftly. With water restored, Louis’s superior land would surely produce far more. What’s more, once burned, Louis would at least post Boromir to the night watch, and since bloodshed was forbidden under the ducal domain, the tide would then fix in Louis’s favor.

‘But that won’t happen.’

Only someone who knew Hansen well would foresee an attack on the canal, and he had barely crossed paths with Louis before. He summoned his men and gave the order to begin. The plans had been laid for days; smashing the canal would take under twenty minutes.

At that very hour—unaware the canal was under attack—Louis reviewed the quest list. Two quests could be completed immediately if he met their conditions: one military, one output. One demanded he raise farm productivity now that he had land; the other was a discipline quest to instill order in newly recruited troops.

By all logic, the discipline quest was the answer. With Military Charisma, he could easily hit the respect threshold it required.

One concern remained: earning respect via Military Charisma took time—and Louis had little of it. He needed a solution.

The next day Louis went to his fields. The farmers were idle and murmuring.

“What’s going on?”

“Ah, Young Lord Louis—the canal’s been smashed. Looks like wild beasts or a monster passed through in the night.”

Louis rode to the source of the commotion. The timbers bracing the canal were splintered—something heavy had passed, or struck.

He tracked the prints. If the farmers were right, it was a bear or some attendant monster, yet the depth was too shallow for that.

‘Hansen.’

It was sabotage. He had expected interference, but not an attack on the canal. It was a fairly underhanded tactic—yet management cared nothing for the “how.” If results failed, the blame fell on the one in charge. In truth, Hansen had struck Louis’s weakest point. If Boromir had been here, no chance—but Louis had sent his only centurion to hire mercenaries. The timing was good as well. Accounting for the time to bring construction labor here, the schedule turned tight.

‘Not that I have money to hire builders anyway.’

“What shall we do?”

Military Charisma worked flawlessly on the farmers; hundreds stood bare-headed and waited for Louis’s word.

“Split into teams—some draw water by hand, the rest continue the usual tasks.”

Thus the farmers’ productivity for sowing wheat naturally dispersed.

Louis began assigning people without batting an eye.

Hansen’s scouts, watching, were startled. This was not the Louis they knew; with a burst canal, an ordinary man would at least panic or rage—but he moved to the next steps without hesitation.

Hansen, reading the report, was just as surprised.

‘Calm…? The Louis I knew wouldn’t— Strange.’

Meanwhile Louis was absorbing new readouts from the Civilization System. It did more than grant traits—it displayed his current food and production as curious icons: a hammer and a green dot. By his analysis, the hammer was production, the green dot was food. The grassland under cultivation registered as his, but the green dot was dark—no food output yet. By contrast, the farmer clusters showed up as hammers.

‘Impressive. A simple scale to gauge highs and lows.’

Even with the canal wrecked, it hardly mattered to him. His real interest lay in whether the mercenaries Boromir brought—and what he had in mind for them—would raise respect immediately.

The “Monument” Louis intended to unlock would let him overtake Hansen with ease. A monument inherently raised culture and boosted nearby productivity—adding one more hammer.

Later on, a single hammer would mean little. But in the early game, a forced extra hammer packed a punch.

Of course, as a monument, it required a stele—at least a stone slab set upright. With no builder crews to hire, there was only one way to raise such a stone now:

‘The mercenaries.’

They would balk, of course—but once the discipline quest was complete, they would obey orders.

Half a month later, Boromir arrived. True to his word, he had recruited one hundred mercenaries. In the meantime, Louis had picked out a massive stone—three meters tall, heavy, but sufficient to satisfy the monument’s condition. The instant he unlocked the Monument trait, he planned to set the mercenaries to move it.

“…My lord.”

Before Louis stood a hundred mercenaries in mismatched gear. They scarcely knew why they had been brought here at all. In the city of Pontina, the regular troops were well-organized and culled nearby monsters on schedule, so mercenaries were rarely needed. Barbarians would be suicidal to come this deep; when Pontina’s lands were attacked, it meant the outlying cities, not the center.

Even mercenaries, whose trade was the blade, swallowed when Louis appeared; his presence was no joke. They could not stand like drilled soldiers at rigid attention, but none lounged about. However crookedly, they formed ranks.

Louis checked their respect values in his info window.

The value was 1.