Chapter 49
Noah, the financial officer of House Kron, looks through hundreds of documents every day.
It was a workload no ordinary person's brain could endure, but perhaps because of her blessing, Noah had no trouble with it—in fact, she enjoyed it.
As she looked through hundreds of documents and reports, the flow of money and resources took shape as images in her mind.
At some point, a strange noise began to intrude on Noah's thoughts.
At first, the noise was so insignificant that she tried to ignore it.
But as time passed, it grew clearer and louder, until it became impossible to ignore.
The source of that noise was Dreihart's food reserves.
At some point, Dreihart's food reserves had begun to decline little by little.
Sensing that something ominous was afoot, Noah headed to Dreihart while everyone else went in response to Lord Jeras's invitation.
And there, she saw an astonishing sight.
“Get in line!! Line up! Get in line!”
As in the Kron territory, enormous numbers of free citizens were immigrating to Dreihart.
That was not the only problem.
“Four silver for a sack of wheat?”
The price of wheat in Dreihart had doubled, rising all the way to four silver.
No matter how many free citizens were trying to immigrate, this price was beyond all common sense.
When Noah investigated to find the cause, the name of a certain house came up.
“So House Klaus is behind this situation.”
“Yes, that is correct, Miss.”
『Klaus』, the eastern territory located north of Dreihart.
People had begun noticing suspicious activity there some time ago.
The first sign was that they had begun allowing free citizens to move to Dreihart far too easily.
Klaus's subjects, who were struggling to survive, rushed to Dreihart one after another, and as a result, Dreihart's population began to increase rapidly.
On top of that, they had apparently begun reducing their wheat sales little by little.
That alone was strange enough, but Klaus took an even more incomprehensible action.
They had even begun stockpiling the wheat they had contracted to sell, paying breach-of-contract penalties; by the time Noah learned this, she had a rough idea of what they were trying to do.
“A food attack.”
“Yes, my lord. It is clear that House Klaus is trying to launch a food attack against Dreihart.”
In a place without modern logistics and transportation technology, food was an extremely important resource.
Dreihart was not a good city in that regard.
It had dragonkin warriors with exceptional physiques, as well as rare materials and spices obtained from monsters, but it lacked the most important thing of all: food.
Kron had also cleared and cultivated considerable farmland, giving it enough production capacity to feed Dreihart, but transportation remained a major problem, so until now, they had purchased food from the east, especially Klaus.
“There is something I don’t understand.“
“What is it, Hart?”
“Even if they launched a food attack against Dreihart, we could transport provisions from Kron. Did they not know that?”
Hart's reasoning was not wrong.
If I had only Calix Kron's memories, I might have been persuaded by his words and dismissed it as my imagination.
But I had memories of my previous life.
“The Desert Flood…”
“You knew about it too, my lord.”
At Noah's words, I merely nodded.
I had seen it while playing Dreihart.
In Dreihart, floods occurred once every five to ten years.
Those floods, which suddenly arose in the middle of an empty desert, lasted for one or two months and were accompanied by violent storms that made it impossible even to launch ships.
The problem was where they occurred.
The area where the Desert Flood occurred was usually directly southeast of Dreihart—right between Kron and Dreihart.
When the Desert Flood occurred, Kron and Dreihart became completely cut off from each other.
They say that a person can survive for up to two months without eating anything.
But that was merely a nutritional statistic.
An ordinary person would lose their mind after starving for just two weeks and begin using every means possible to survive.
And Dreihart's population had already grown much larger because of the free citizens sent from Klaus.
A suddenly increased population, a natural disaster, a food shortage, and help that never came…
After that, Klaus would have free rein.
It could invade under any ridiculous pretext or force Dreihart, on the verge of starving to death, into a treaty that let them devour it—whatever they pleased.
I felt a deep surge of anger, something I hadn't felt in a long time.
Food attacks had been used countless times throughout history.
The problem was that, along with water attacks, they were one of the major tactics that inflicted enormous harm on ordinary people.
The siege of Namhansanseong during Korea's ‘Byeongja Horan’ is a representative example.
Caught unprepared and besieged by the Qing army, the Joseon army was driven to the brink of starvation at Namhansanseong, and countless people actually died of hunger.
Among those who had starved, some also died of refeeding syndrome, going into shock when an excessive amount of nutrients suddenly entered their bodies after the siege was lifted and they began eating.
The fact that some bastard was trying to inflict such a horrifying act on my territory made anger surge through me for the first time in a long while.
“Still, it’s fortunate that we found out in advance.”
“That’s right, my lord. If we start preparing now, we can make all the necessary preparations before the Desert Flood occurs.”
Hart and Noah spoke as if to calm my anger.
But this was not something that could be resolved so easily.
If we started stockpiling food from Kron right now, they would probably abandon the plan, though not without regret.
The problem was what came next.
Once a person tested the waters and saw that it had caused little damage, they would try the same thing a second and third time.
That was why retaliation occurred between nations.
Even minor conflicts led to such retaliation, so should we simply let a ‘food attack’ that could starve hundreds or thousands of our people to death slide?
Others might be able to tolerate it, but I could not.
“Preparation alone isn’t enough.”
“M-My lord?”
I stood up and looked outside.
I could see countless citizens going about their lives peacefully.
The people in Dreihart must surely be living peacefully like this as well.
To protect their lives, we needed to show them what would happen if anyone attacked us recklessly.
“Call Rikain. From this moment on, this is war. Prepare every means at our disposal… and strike back.”
Everyone seemed surprised by my words for a moment, but they soon nodded in agreement.
These were troubled times.
In an age where the weak died, we must not become slaughterers like Hadem, but neither could we become punching bags that simply took every hit.
We began preparing our counterattack.
* * *
Meanwhile, countless loads of wheat were being carried into Klaus's warehouses.
“Come on! Let's hurry!!”
“Warehouse Five is almost full too! Tell them to open Warehouse Six!”
Wheat was beginning to pile up in the food warehouses in quantities never seen before.
Ordinarily, Klaus stored wheat in no more than two or three warehouses.
But they began mobilizing every resource at their disposal to stockpile wheat.
They refused to sell even the wheat they were contractually obligated to sell, paying breach-of-contract penalties instead, and as a result, wheat began overflowing from the warehouses.
“Beric, is everything prepared?”
“Lord Lois, you’ve arrived.”
Beric, the chief steward directing the operation, bowed to greet Lois when he arrived.
Lois felt proud as he looked at the enormous quantity of wheat.
“That’s an incredible amount. Were we really producing this much wheat?”
“Yes, my lord. All of this wheat was produced in the Klaus territory.”
Lois believed that Klaus was, whatever anyone said, responsible for feeding the East.
That was one reason he had agreed to Beric's scheme.
“You dare disregard the people who feed the East like this?”
“Go on, starve to death!”
Imagining the food attack succeeding and the wheat piled in the warehouses selling for dozens—no, hundreds—of times its usual price, Lois could not keep the smile off his face.
If they sold the wheat currently stockpiled at a price hundreds of times higher, Dreihart would not be able to pay with all the gold it possessed.
So Lois planned to take the spice farms as payment.
Who would give up a spice farm, where money grew on trees? But if they were driven to the brink of starvation, their minds would certainly change.
Thus, on Lois's orders, Beric prepared the food attack by stockpiling wheat and purchasing food that was supposed to go to Dreihart.
They did not merely stockpile food.
They also dispatched informants disguised as free citizens to Dreihart to assess the situation inside.
Fortunately, House Kron seemed completely unaware of the food attack. According to reports, there was no sign that it was stockpiling food, and Beric saw an opportunity. He stockpiled even more food as he prepared for that day.
A month passed, and at last, that day arrived.
Ruuuumble-!
Shhhhhaaaa-!!
A tremendous downpour suddenly began to fall over the arid desert.
In an instant, the torrential rain created a huge river in the desert, and waves churned violently, preventing anyone from approaching.
『The Desert Flood』 had occurred.
<Heroine Illustration>
Noah White
Rana Ansus
Selenia Lily Novarens
