Chapter 79 New Ideatail

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"Lord Lily, the dwarves came and asked for a trade." A messenger came a week later.

"Huh? So soon. Isn't it supposed to be next month or two months later?" Lily said. "Wait, they followed the quarantine protocol, right?"

"Yes. They even initiated it first by declaring they were dwarves and shouted from a distance." the guard said.

"Alright. What do they want?"

"Food. They want a carriage more. They said this is irrelevant to the previous trade and brought several kilos of iron bars for trade."

"it is a worthwhile trade. If not that we are currently in a food deficit. The food that we purchased from Regoia has already arrived, right? We could trade them in." I noted.

"Ugh… so sudden. Well, tell them they could stay in the quarantine center, and we will bring the listed foods tomorrow," Lily replied. She then proceeded to call Lhorne.

"Lhorne, buy more food from Regoia, okay?" Lily turned her head to her adjutant. While Lily was the lord, this region was run by Lhorne. We needed elves to communicate with fellow elves. It made a lot of things smoother.

"Oh, the dwarves? You decided to fulfill their request?" Lhorne turned away from his administration work. He sighed as his task grew but didn't complain because he knew we could afford it.

"Yes." Lily nodded.

"Alright. Let Anny arrange it. Guards, you will be our liaison. Please remember to apply this potion before you meet them. Just in case. After they leave, we must also clean the quarantine place again."

"Yes sir!"

"Wow, it is so nice when everyone obeyed the law like that. They are so disciplined." I muttered.

"Isn't it obvious? You made me write a very thorough instruction for them. Why wouldn't they obey?" Lily questioned me.

"I don't think humans do that," I replied

"Yeah. They don't. They would try to screw their way out because of some inconvenience or more profits."

"By the way…. We also have several sacks of cement here. They wished to sell it. Will we buy it?" Lhorne asked. "But we would need to pay them with more food in that case."

"Why do they bring it here? That wasn't in the contract, right?" Lily asked while tilting her head. "we could not afford those cement."

"They hope to be able to sell it, maybe?" Lhorne shrugged

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"Ugh…. we need more farms!!" Lily shouted. "How's the Western Edenthal going? The one that we gave to Mattheus? Is it a proper village now?"

"Not even close. You could not call a settlement with only 40 people a proper village. They only had like one hectare of farmland worked there." Lhorne reported.

"Is there anybody we could put out to work those lands?"

"Maybe those five thousand?" I suggested.

"But they are crucial. We need them for an assault later." Lily replied

"We could put them to work a double job, right? Like two thousand standing army and three thousand militia." I replied.

"Ahh! Lhorne. How about if we put our three thousand soldiers as a farmer?"

"You wanted to decommission them? How outrageous! Why? Because they didn't meet Ghander's standard?" Lhorne asked

"Not that. They performed admirably, but I was just thinking. Since we could only have a thousand soldiers to send out, one thousand to guard this place, why not send the rest of them to do farm work."

"There are going to be a lot of complaints. They did nothing wrong," Lhorne frowned.

"It is going to be fine." Lily waved away Lhorne's concern. To be honest, I am on Lhorne's side on this. You are basically firing away three thousand people, you know. Are you sure it's okay?

"Ahh! But how are we going to assemble the farmwork? We only have tools for the current farmers." Lily asked

"Buy them, of course. That should put you in another two million debt." Lhorne shrugged. One step forward, two steps back. This is getting depressing.

"No!!" Lily shouted.

"Shiro! Help me with your wisdom!" Her desperation coursed through me as she mentally whispered.

"Well, I dunno. Farm tools aren't used every hour of the work. You can rotate them between villagers." I tried my best, but the best that I could come up with was simply farmers lending their tools to others.

"Excellent idea!" Lily shouted.

"Huh? What idea?" Lhorne asked.

"We could simply ask farmers to lend their tools to the next farmers," Lily replied.

"Wait. That's a breach of privacy. I mean, the law stated that we could not appropriate villager's property." Lhorne shouted.

"Is it their property, though?" Lily asked while glancing at her enormous debt. "I remember paying for them. Since I am the one paying for those tools, they are mine, right?"

"Ugh. Well, I suppose you are right… How are we supposed to do it, then? Shall we appropriate every single farmer for their tools and then assign an administrator for the rotation? This is going to cause a riot. Although you didn't give them away, the previous administrator did. Ugh… the law isn't clear on this. Should we ask for a court of law to judge our action?" Lhorne asked.

"No, Lily would lose. Lily was certainly shouldering the debt of some action not entirely her fault. However, so are the kings or the lords shoulder the debt of their previous generations. In this case, your previous generation is the country or the king himself. The council will not take Lily's side on her action." Lisey muttered. "There is no law, but there are customs. Lily could make new laws, but she could not disable the previous decisions. That would be an insult to the throne. I highly advised you not to take those actions."

"Wait-wait. Why are we talking about going to the court right now?" Lily asked, "We will just ask farmers for their tools for a while, right? It's like borrowing pens from a friend."

"It is not that simple. You are the governing lord. If you take action, you need to make the law first. The exception only applies if the city is under martial law. Martial law only recruits soldiers for a specified amount of time, not asking them to be farmers. These farmers worked indefinitely, right?" Lhorne sighed, but Lily was unfazed.

"Let's call the farmers and ask for their tools nicely. If they don't participate, then it is fine. I will write how the announcement is going to be read." Lily still tried to force through. "Putting any kind of announcement is fine right? As long as I didn't forcefully steal their tools?"

"Well, that's fine, I guess." Lhorne sighed as he wrote a letter to guards while assigning them as messengers. Lily then diligently wrote the announcement letter to be read to all farmers of Edenthal.