Chapter 31 (1/2)

On the next day, they departed early in the morning again, and they arrived in Caralime village just before noon.

Though Ernst watched them from the window of his carriage, he couldn’t really see if the militia’s movements were any different from how they were yesterday. It seemed like this wasn’t something with such a straightforward fix.

Caralime Village was even worse than expected.

This village, which was three hours away on foot from Arruca, the first village Ernst had ever set foot in when he arrived in Meissen, really deserved to be called the village of Kleber’s disease.

Of the thirty villagers, not counting the seven children, all twenty-three adults were affected by the disease.

“When did this village first start seeing a rise in Kleber’s disease?”

In the village head’s house, Ernst met with the four elders of the village. Though they were called elders, they were all 140 to 170 years of age, which in the capital would still be considered working age.

“Well, let me see… back when I was a child, my mother was a normal adult… so maybe it was about 160 years ago.”

“Very well, then; what this means is that up until at least 160 years ago, there were people who didn’t contract the disease?”

The villagers nodded. If a bystander watched this scene, then including Ernst, this would only look like a group of little boys gathering around to conspire over something.

“Just what had happened to cause this situation, I wonder.”

“We wouldn’t be able to know that. We don’t even know what causes Kleber’s disease, after all.”

Hearing the villager say those words as if distancing himself from them, Ernst smiled wryly and nodded in agreement.

He was right; no one had found the cause of the disease.

However, if every single villager had Kleber’s disease, which was said to occur in 1 of every 100 people, then he had to consider that there might be something causing it in the village.

But it seemed that rather than trying to investigate the cause of the disease, they had to focus on giving their all to survive each and every day.

“I had heard that this village focuses on shepherding?”

At Ernst’s words, the villagers smiled cynically.

“Hmm. Did the other villages say something to you?”

“Something like that you were lazy…”

“Those guys don’t know anything at all, but they always act so smugly, always making fools of us.”

After they spent some time cursing the other villages, one of the villagers turned to Ernst.

“Honorable Lord, have you ever ploughed a field?”

“No…”

“Then, how about shepherding?”

Ernst lightly shook his head to deny it.

“Working on the fields isn’t a job that you can say you’ll only do over the summer. It’s impossible to cultivate enough food for the entire year in just the short summer season. That’s why, in the winter, you would have to plant winter crops.”

This was also what the Kata and Latelle villages had told him. They grew wheat over the summer and root vegetables over the winter.

“Ploughing the frozen fields over the winter is a very power-intensive job. I believe that the honorable Lord should understand why this would be a difficult task for us…”

The men discreetly looked at Ernst. The people who had fallen ill with Kleber’s disease would only be able to exert the same power as a little boy or girl throughout their entire lifetime.

“More and more of the villagers contracted Kleber’s disease, burdening our parents. Though they had ploughed wide fields, if things continued like this then we, their children, would struggle to work on them.”

“That was why we left them to become pastureland. When it comes to pasturage, you can just ride on the back of a donkey while you work.”

“That said, it isn’t as if it’s all easy. We have to take many things into consideration when we work as shepherds. Which kinds of grass can we let them eat, when should we move the sheep, how many animals can we take care of before they start to starve… many things… Honestly, we have to think about so many things.”

“How we can calm the sheep down with our limited strength, how we can shear the wool as quickly as possible, which sheep we should breed more of… we had to think about these kinds of matters.”

“In spring, in summer, in fall, in winter, we followed after the sheep. That was how we, in our own way, worked as hard as we possibly could.”

The men looked away with distant eyes, as if remembering the faraway past.

“But in the end… all of our efforts were for nothing, all because of that damned Arruca village. Because those bastards were so sloppy with their work, no one would even take a look at Meissen’s wool anymore! And those other villages, without even knowing anything, all blamed us for it!”

This was a village on the outskirts of a land that was already on the outskirts. Not a single one of the villagers has ever received an education.

The villagers had tried to keep in mind to speak politely to Ernst in the beginning, but once their emotions grew more and more intense, they began to forget.

The only people in this place were Ernst, his butler Mais, and the villagers. But once the villagers’ voices could be heard outside, the door quietly opened to reveal Targes’ figure.

The villagers hadn’t noticed Targes’ appearance; Ernst sent him an order with his eyes, and Targes withdrew.

“What did the Arruca village do?”

When the villagers’ emotions had somewhat subsided, Ernst quietly asked this.

“Those bastards… they copied us.”

“Copied?”

“Yeah… those bastards abandoned ploughing their farmland, migrated over to where they are now, and started shepherding, just like us.”

Farmers weren’t allowed to change their lands.

But that only applied to migrating between territories. It wasn’t illegal to change land within the same fief.

“But those bastards, they didn’t think over how to care for their sheep as much as we did.”

“Those guys just kept increasing how many sheep with low-quality wool they had. Once they sold their low-quality wool to the other fiefs, no one would buy for a high price anymore. The prices of Meissen’s wool were smashed all at once.”

“And on top of that, Arruca Village’s shepherding was sloppy, too. They let the sheep eat up all the grass, so the sheep eventually starved…”

“Those bastards walked however many hours it took to get to our pastures and let their sheep eat our grass. And because of that, our sheep starved…”

Tearing up, the villager squeezed out these words.

After stepping foot in Caralime Village, Ernst found it very surprising.

He had heard that it was a village of pastures, but he barely saw any sheep. He had wondered if maybe their pastures were far away, but apparently, that wasn’t the case.

Just like the town of Saiquani, which was now unable to live off of trade, this village of Caralime was now unable to live off of their shepherding.