Chapter 8: Ch 8: An Ingenious Plot

After parting ways with the mother and daughter pair, Weiss came to the baron’s office where most of the general paperworks of the territory were kept. Butler Robin was in that room waiting for her.

Even before the death of the baron, these works were mostly handled by Robin himself. The baron was not really interested in managing the territory himself. If he could get a decent sum of money at the end of the year, that was enough for him.

Butler Robin had a lot of opportunities to cheat the baron for some money. But he was a loyal person and there was also not much money to be made here. So he had never done anything like that.

But because of this reason, he was very familiar with all the useful plots of lands in the Souran territory, the people of the village and even a little bit about the resources found in the forests.

So, Robin would be able to assist Weiss with his knowledge. He had known this place for even longer than the previous baron. So his experience was very valuable.

…

Last night, after handling the dismembered corpse of his previous master and mistress, Robin was unable to sleep at all. Their body pieces were almost haunting him.

So instead of sleeping, he came to the office and worked for the whole night to create a brief overview of all the important points that Weiss would need to know in order to rule the Souran territory properly. He was truly a very dedicated servant.

…

As soon as Robin saw Weiss entering the room, he immediately bowed to her with a respectful expression on his face.

Even though he had become scared of the massacre last night, Robin did not blame Weiss for it at all.

If he was in her situation, getting tortured day in and day out, he probably would have done something similar if he had the strength.

So, he did not say anything to his new mistress and handed her the report that he had made after working through the night.

Weiss took a quick glance at it and finished reading it in no time. Even though she had already read a few things about this territory in secret before, her knowledge of it was very much incomplete.

That was why she was very satisfied with the report that Robin had created. It helped her in detecting the areas where she was not very knowledgeable about and this would save her a lot of time in the future.

Even though Weiss felt gratitude in her heart, her cold expression did not change even a little bit in the outside.

But still, as Robin had known Weiss for quite a long time. So he was still able to detect a few signs that Weiss was in a good mood after getting his report.

Just this observation alone made Robin very satisfied. He felt as if all his hard work in the previous night was now perfectly justified.

…

The Souran territory was not a large plot of land to begin with but even then, 70 percent of its areas were covered by a dense and dangerous forest.

So only the area around the Souran castle, called the Souran village, was the actual land that the Souran family ruled. The rest of the areas were ruled by wild beasts.

Not only that but this territory was also located in the northern side of the Brightshine kingdom. So the climate here was very rough and cold. Even before the arrival of proper winter, snow would start to fall here, making the whole area white.

For that reason, people were only able to farm at most for two seasons in this land. The soil here was also not exceptionally good for any crops.

So the amount of money that the territory earned from farming was not much, just a few gold coins in the whole year, which was a pitiful number for any noble family.

The total number of residents in the barony was just a few hundreds of people . Among them, 80 percent of the residents were serfs.

Serfs were the lowest class of citizen in the Brightshine kingdom. The only humans who were lower than them in the social ladder were the slaves.

Actually serfs were practically slaves of the nobles ruling over them.

The only difference between them and the actual slaves were the fact that they had a proper citizenship of this nation and slaves were treated basically as objects.

The rest of the twenty percent were free citizen from other territories who were unable to stay in their birthplace for one reason or another.

Nobles were extremely cruel, so whenever a free citizen got in the bad side of a noble, the only option they had was to leave that noble’s territory.

Even though the serfs and even the free regular citizens would not be able to go against a noble, there was one duty that the nobles must do. And that duty was to have enough strength to protect the subjects under them.

Weiss was soon planning to declare the death of the previous baron. Even though he was a very weak knight, he was still an offical knight nonetheless.

For that reason, even though the residents of the Souran village were fearful of him and even hated him for his violent behaviour, he was also their pillar of hope with his strength of an offical knight.

So the disappearance of that pillar of hope would be devestating for these subjects. In this village surrounded by dangerous beasts, not having a protector with the strength of an official knight would be extremely bad.

The subjects would always be in low spirit as the fear of death would always be over their heart. The other neighbouring nobles could also use this weakness to make vile schemes.

Weiss had a lot of plans to develop this territory in the future. For her future knight’s training and also for her search of a method to become a magus, she would need a lot of money. And currently the best way of making a lot of quick money available to Weiss was this territory.

For that reason, Weiss could now allow her subjects to feel dispirited and also could not give the other nobles any chance to interfere.

To accomplish this objective, Weiss had came up with a plan and that was exactly what she was going to execute today.

Even though Weiss was also an offical knight, currently she was very young. Her declaring herself as a knight would either be seen as a lie or would attract the bad kind of attention. So she was not going to reveal herself for a few more years.

Instead, she was going to take an alternative identity as a wandering official knight who had saved the young baroness when she had going to be killed by monster beast and had avenged the previous baron who was killed by that same monster beast.

This wandering knight would then become a protecter of the baroness and that way the Souran territory would have a proper official knight working for them.

But just declaring it was not enough. Many would not believe this as it was too coincidental and sounded truly like a lie.

So Weiss was going to put on a little show to get rid of any worries that the subjects might have and to solidify the identity of this unknown knight.

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