Chapter 25: The Frost Has Come (1/2)

Winter had not arrived, but the weather was becoming colder with each passing day.

As Angora looked up at the bright skies in his stroll around town, he sighed by reflex.

That same blue sky would not be seen for three months when the frost arrives.

Nonetheless, the people in town were not slowing down despite the coming cold, but started to work harder instead.

Work such as harvesting spirit oats from the farms, the building of wooden houses, hunting for meat and fur, as well as fortifying the town against the revenants with wooden structures were all conducted without pause and complete synchrony.

It was fortunate that Angora had the Lord System, which was why agriculture and construction which took much time and great labor could now be completed even by idle old folks with simple prayers. That in turn freed much youthful labor who could accomplish more vital tasks.

“My lord, you’re here.” The old mayor appeared out of nowhere, his milky eyes showing a hint of delight when he saw Angora overseeing the construction progress of the new houses. “The last batch of those blessed oats has been harvested.”

“Well done. Let’s seize this moment before the snow comes to plants some vegetables.”

Angora drew out a cloth bag carrying vegetable seeds he redeemed from the System yesterday.

Before, the basic procedure for farming had been an unchanging cycle of: plant spirit oats→wait for them to mature and harvest→store half and sell half to System→earn game coin→spend ninety percent on new seeds→plant spirit oats.

The other game coin saved would be allocated to buying new farmsteads and build wooden houses.

Nonetheless, the number of oat seeds sold in the Penguin Farm Shop was limited. As it kept snowballing, Angora realized that it was every oat seed available on each day was not sufficient for their farmstead available presently.

It seemed that he has to first upgrade Penguin Farm if he wanted more seeds to be sold, which requires raising his level as lord and the fief prosperity on the ascension page. Either way, it was quite far from reach for the moment.

Angora himself held some grief at first, believing that the shop feature of the System was being too stingy.

Still, he relented eventually—in the first place, the interface was named Lord System and not Farmer King System.

While most would consider farmsteads equals food and that it was not normal to work the fields for the entire day, agriculture was a just part of his fief for a lord like him.

When the only grain silo in the town was stacked full of oats, Angora began to think about planting other vegetables or whatnot.

For the poverty-stricken townsfolk, it was happiness to have a full stomach every day. Still, for better or worse, Angora was noble-born—he did keep it together for days solely on rations, but having oats over all winter would definitely drive him mad.

***

The old mayor accepted the little cloth bag from Angora somberly.

He had been moved to tears days ago when he witnessed the oats mature hours after being planted, to the point that even his deeply-furrowed wrinkles seem to have eased.