TALES OF A WITCHER - Season 2 Episode 80

Recently, Roland would always find himself in a cheerful mood.

Even while he was sitting alone in the office, he would occasionally be humming a ditty or two, immersed in the memories of his fantastic time inside the hot air balloon.

When Anna closed her eyes to kiss him, here appearance was just too cute. Every time he thought about it, he couldn’t stop himself from smiling. Furthermore, the most important point had been the meaning behind her words, and how she showed them afterward with her passion and affection.

The only thing he could do was to respond even more passionately to her.

So strongly that when they landed Roland felt like there was a dull pain from his lips.

Probably, I had been kissing her too long, so that she became short of breath and used her teeth in panic?

In any case, I haven’t experienced this kind of feelings in a long time.

When he came already near the end of his first quarter of life, those skills he’d learned from television dramas, and manhua finally came in handy, and the best part was that the object of his affection was the beautiful and moving Miss Anna. Roland finally felt that he had taken his first step to becoming a winner in life.

He opened the drawer and grasped blindly around it, wanting to chew some snacks to calm his joy, yet the result was that he only felt empty air – I clearly put the beef jerky in yesterday, ah.

Roland looked back at Nightingale who stood by the window, seeing that the latter was blowing the whistle and pretended to only be casually watching the scenery outside. He had deliberately replaced the dried fish, trying to prevent Nightingale from stealing, but who could have thought that this also wouldn’t stop her from taking the dried beef?

At this moment, the sound of footsteps could be heard coming from outside the door.

“Your Highness, Lord Barov requests to see you.”

“Let him in.”

Nightingale did not fade this time as she had always done before, she only pulled up her hood and took a place on the couch by the wall.

When the Assistant Minister opened the door and saw another person was also in the office he slightly raised his brow but soon resumed his normal appearance.

“Your Highness, this month’s demographic statistic has been completed.” Saying this he handed over a parchment to Roland.

“So fast?”

“With the Citizen Registration File, it has become much more convenient to count them,” the Assistant Minister explained laughingly. “Your previous decision to implement them was really wise.”

Oh, now you’ve turned into a bootlicker… Roland spread the scroll out in front of him; on it, Roland could see how many people inside of Border Town were engaged in which professions. They were sorted in categories so that one glance was enough to know all the relevant information. Compared with his previous reports, which hadn’t even been separated into paragraphs, Barov’s ability has progressed by a significant margin.

The first line contained the group with the largest population, the serfs. Currently, they included a total of 3628 people (including their family members). The line underneath it read, “Remarks: 1500 serfs are now engaged in farming.”

“Your Royal Highness, don’t you think that the number of farmers are too small?” Barov pointed to first line and said, “According to Sirius Daly, from the Ministry of Agriculture, if we want to achieve a state where Border Town doesn’t need to import food any longer, he fears that we will have to double the amount of the recently added farmland and manpower, only in this way will we be able to satisfy the amount of grain that Border Town needs.

Hearing this name, Roland recalled the impression he had of Sirius, he should be a former knight who belonged to the Wolf Family. The 1500 men who were now engaged in farming were the first serfs who were sent to Border Town, all the subsequent batches Roland had transferred to the mine or to Karl’s construction team – but they also gotten the same assurance that as long as they worked hard enough, they would also be promoted to free people.

“I did not intend to produce enough grain to become self–sufficient by this year, and also, we currently have so much wheat stored in the castle warehouses, that it is enough to supply us for two or three months at least. And this year’s harvest of the new species of wheat won’t be the same as before.

“Not the same?” Barov got shocked by the unexpected revelation.

“When the moment comes, you will understand.” Roland smiled. After all, they had planted Leaves’ Golden Ones, the yield of each plant was at least three times higher than that of the old wheat plants. When it came time to harvest, it would surely serve as a shock. This was the reason why he didn’t want to put too many people into the area of agriculture. With the crops being changed by Leaves magic, in the future they would only need a small number of farmers to feed most of Border Town’s population. So with this in mind, as to save valuable human resources, he had placed a lot of the serfs into the industrial-development and the urban-construction fields.

Roland continued to look further down the list.

The second paragraph on the parchment was concerning the construction department, the following notes were divided into several groups, such like masons, bricklayer, mud craftsmen, carpenters, handyman and so forth. The total number that was engaged in this area was more than 1100 people, of which the vast majority were serfs who worked as handyman.

It was precisely because of these newly added people, that he was able to quickly build a batch of residential areas and factories – changing it to template buildings, mass production and routine process where all the important part needed to speed up the construction process. In Roland’s eyes, this degree of improvement was still not enough, but for the locals, it was already a completely different world.

The third paragraph was about the mining staff.

Similar to the construction industry above, the amount of Border Town’s local inhabitants were reduced to 25 people. They were mainly operating the steam engine, or were there to handle the registration of the ore and supervise the work. The remaining 1600 people were outsiders, it included mercenaries captured during the battle against Longsong Stronghold and all of the serfs sent in the rear.

“Recently there have been a few brawls in the mine,” Barov said, “mainly between the mercenaries and serfs, this is a concealed source of danger, Your Royal Highness. They are too many, once they start to make trouble, the twenty-five managers won’t be able to control them. I suggest that the First Army becomes responsible for guarding them.”

“Well …” Roland thought about it for a moment, “Alright, do it. For now, we don’t have enough manpower to set up a police force. I will speak with Iron Axe soon, fifty men from the firearms team should be sufficient.”

“What is a police…?”

“You can think of it as a kind of patroller, but the scope of their area is much larger. Basically, all the internal security will be done by them.”

During this era there was no separation between the inner and external force, because of this, they would permit the army to administer law and order. Furthermore, it was unlikely that it would turn into their own dark history. He had no intention of diverting his manpower to form a secondary force, considering he had his own huge enemy, the Church to look out for.

The fourth paragraph contained information about Border Town’s First Army.

After the end of the war against Longsong Stronghold, the achievements of the First Army sounded through the whole of the Western Territories, making them famous – three hundred people while only paying a minuscule price had overcome the 1500 man strong force of the Duke. Completely destroying any thought of resistance within the nobility of Longsong Stronghold.

After evaluating their merits and bestowing them with their rewards, Roland had doubled the size of the First Army, increasing it to the size of 600 people. Soon after the recruitment order was made public, the whole town’s square became packed with enthusiastically people who wanted to sign up. Roland still followed his old concept to select the member of the First Army. He chose the three hundred indigenous people, who had the best physical condition, and did not have a criminal record and let them join the First Army.

The rest was a summary of all kinds of technical personnel.

For example, the smelting and firing industry had substantially increased in the past month, from the initial no more than 20 people, they had risen to about 400 people. Thanks to the furnaces granted by the “furnace expert” Lesya, the North Slope Furnace Group could not only produce red brick but they could also fire cement and glass. At the same time, they had also erected three shaft furnaces. They were used to smelt the ore which had already pilled up n the yard. The produced ingots could afterward also be transported to the required areas.

As for education, chemistry, industry, animal husbandry, the people engaged within amounted to less than 50, so from a demographic point of view, Border Town still had a long way to go. But the fact that the original population of hunters and miners in Border Town could be changed into this within merely half a year, could be regarded as earth-shaking.

Today, the occupation of hunters had basically disappeared, from hunting for surviving it was now changed into a hobby. Excluding those people who became members of the First Army or joined the smelting industry, the current Border Town still had nearly a thousand individuals who were unemployed. While waiting for the literacy phase of the universal education finished. Roland decided to pull all of these people into the factory, and open up the prelude to the industrial era.