Chapter 6: No Increase in Population
In this world, there are six days in a week, five weeks in a month, and twelve months in a year. In other words, a year has 360 days.
It had already been four weeks since Noein and Matilda entered the forest of the Arkwright territory. One more week and a month would have passed.
"What should we do from now on, Matilda?"
"...I apologize. I'm ignorant and can't come up with any good ideas."
"Oh, no, that's not it. I was just thinking out loud. I'm the one who should apologize."
Noein hurriedly added these words when his earnest and faithful slave looked genuinely dejected.
If you kept cutting down trees with golems for four weeks, you would naturally end up with a fair amount of flat land. It was already more than enough space for just Noein and Matilda.
Furthermore, the area of the fields had also expanded. They had planted more vegetables such as beans, and they had also planted barley. They were also taking care of the sprouts that were growing steadily in the field where they had first planted potatoes.
The development was going well. Except for one thing.
"...I wonder how we can gather people to live here."
To call a place a territory, you needed people living there. No matter how you looked at it, a lord and his slave alone couldn't be called a territory, and you couldn't count golems as citizens.
However, to attract people to live here, you needed something that would make them want to move here.
So, was the Arkwright territory a place where people would want to move to? You couldn't say that it was, even as a compliment.
All it had were fields, a tent, a large amount of lumber produced during the logging process, and the endless Great Forest.
Even the lord himself was living in a tent. Who in their right mind would want to live in such a place?
"We need at least a house for ourselves, don't we?"
"Master Noein, should we call craftsmen from Letovic to build a mansion?"
"I'd like to, but... the money, you know."
The severance pay Noein's father had given him when he was cut off from his family was 300,000 reblos. After deducting the cost of buying Matilda, it was 250,000 reblos.
Considering that a commoner family in a rural village could live modestly for a year on 10,000 reblos, this was quite a large sum, but it was far from enough as a budget for a lord to develop a village.
In addition, he had purchased fire magic tools such as "Boil" and "Tinder" to ensure a minimum level of convenience in the settlement. He had only had two humanoid golems when he left home, so he had bought an additional horse-shaped golem and a cart, and he had also bought potatoes, which were rare in this country, and various other crops.
As a result, Noein's current funds were less than 150,000 reblos. If he hired craftsmen to build a mansion, his wallet would be completely empty.
That shitty father of his probably didn't think that Noein would be able to succeed in developing the territory with just this much money.
He probably thought that it would be fine if Noein lived for a few years under the name of Arkwright, and then died a lonely death somewhere once the existence of "Maximilian Kivileft's illegitimate son" had faded from the public's memory. This money was probably just meant to keep him alive until then.
"...Master Noein, your face has become grim. Are you feeling unwell?"
"Hm? Oh, I'm fine. I just remembered that shitty father of mine who gave me this severance pay."
After replying to the worried Matilda, Noein cleared his troubled thoughts and turned his attention back to the development work.
...
Yuri was a mercenary born in the Lordberg Kingdom.
No, it would be more accurate to say that he "was."
To escape his position as the second son of a poor farmer, he ran away from his home village before reaching adulthood and joined a mercenary group.
He started as a laborer, and as he grew older, his physique helped him rise to prominence as a core member of the group.
Eventually, through his accumulated achievements and seniority-based promotion, he became the new leader of the group at the age of 35 after the previous leader died in battle.
And his first battle as a leader... was to be used as a pawn on the battlefield.
The long-standing conflict between the Lordberg Kingdom and the Pallas Empire to the east. Yuri and his men, hired by a certain nobleman in the southern part of the kingdom, were sent to the battlefield and abandoned to buy time for the regular army to retreat, simply because they were rootless mercenaries.
"A client's orders are absolute" was the mercenary code, and Yuri was literally forced to choose between upholding it to the death or abandoning his post and escaping with his and his men's lives.
Faced with this extreme choice, Yuri chose their lives.
They abandoned their assigned position, killed the regular army knights who tried to capture them, and fled the battlefield.
They became bandits, robbing travelers and merchants of their possessions as they fled west, and further west.
They fled to the northwestern edge of the kingdom and eventually reached a town that was said to be the capital of a certain viscountcy.
...
"Sigh. I'm getting tired of just cutting down trees every day."
"I understand how you feel, Master Noein."
Noein continued to worry about how to attract people to his territory, but he couldn't come up with any good ideas.
At best, he could only think of things like "picking up destitute commoners with nowhere to go and bringing them here."
However, to do that, he first needed the means to support those with nowhere to go.
For that, he needed abundant food and farmland to grow it.
So, even though he was frankly getting tired of the same daily routine, Noein continued his steady development work.
Even if he couldn't come up with a way to attract people, the development progressed, his stomach growled, and he consumed food.
Exactly one month after starting the development, Noein once again took Matilda and the golems with him and headed to Letovic in the Viscountcy of Konitz to buy food.
He visited Eliza's shop again, bought several weeks' worth of food for him and Matilda, and paid for it.
They left through the west gate of Letovic, passed through the farmland of the Letovic residents that stretched outside the gate, crossed the plains dotted with small forests, and entered the animal trail of the Bezel Great Forest.
After walking for a while, it was Matilda who noticed it first.
"Master Noein!"
Something, or rather someone, jumped out of the bushes and approached them. By the time Noein realized it,
"Whoa, don't move. Don't move..."
A man who had jumped out grabbed him from behind and held a knife to his neck.
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