Chapter 131: Beggar Gritz (7) - The Other Side of the Legend

#Chapter 131: Beggar Gritz (7) - Behind the Legend

Even today, that remains somewhat true, but in ancient times, grain itself was food, currency, and power.

Having abundant food meant being able to gather and command more people, and having more people meant being able to own that much more land.

In such circumstances, what would it mean to ruin all of one’s competitors’ harvests? How powerful would such a force be?

If the ancestor had been no more than an ordinary individual with nothing to his name, they might have been crushed by competitors attacking them tooth and nail. But even then, Carnelian, though not unrivaled, was already one of the most prominent families.

This meant it already possessed the ability to withstand its competitors’ desperate struggles and consume them in turn.

Even if they had more land than Carnelian, better soil, abundant water sources, and skilled farmers, none of that mattered.

The rivals either scattered or collapsed without managing to preserve their power, while Carnelian absorbed that power and continued to grow.

By the time the ancestor who first used that power had passed into eternal rest and their successor had taken up the position of head of the family, no one could deny that Carnelian was the greatest power in the land.

But the new head of the family, who had taken over the family’s rule after their father, thought that was not enough.

This did not mean they wanted to possess more.

They merely thought that, in the current state of affairs, maintaining the power already in their hands would be difficult.

Was that not so?

Even if one or two instances could be dismissed as coincidence, everyone who tried to oppose Carnelian happened to suffer a ruined harvest.

It would have been strange if people had not grown suspicious about that.

Carnelian’s power was so great that no one spoke openly, but it could not be good for such a perception to linger.

It might be only a small spark now, but who knew when it might become an inferno that burned all of Carnelian to the ground?

The first thing the head of the family at that time considered was borrowing the power of ‘it,’ just as their father had.

If it was possible to dry up land and water, perhaps the opposite—making them fertile—was possible as well.

As for whether that was possible, it was.

When the head of the family tried using its power, the harvest yield clearly increased.

But the head of the family soon had no choice but to shake their head, concluding that this was not enough.

Most importantly, Bellaria was already a sufficiently fertile land.

A bumper harvest in a barren, parched place would be immediately obvious, but even if an already productive land became slightly more productive, it would not be a remarkable achievement.

Of course, if the steady difference between harvesting twelve and everyone else’s ten accumulated over time, the benefit would not be negligible, but when they actually tried to use it that way, the limits of the power of ‘it’ became clear.

The thing that had easily ruined crops quickly grew exhausted and collapsed when it used its power to make crops flourish.

The reason was simple.

To produce a poor harvest, it was enough to use that ability during a very brief period in the long process of farming.

But to produce a bumper harvest, it had to expend its power several times over the course of that lengthy process.

Since ruining something was easier than making it succeed, the two were incomparable in terms of efficiency from the outset.

At that point, the head of the family changed their way of thinking.

If a bumper harvest was harder than a poor harvest, then they only had to choose the easier course.

If the value of a bumper harvest was diminished because the land was naturally fertile, then all they had to do was make infertile land the norm.

…Y-Yes, just as you said.

It was something that must not be done.

It was something that should never have been done.

Yet the head of the family at that time did it.

Little by little, they caused fertile land in various places to grow barren.

Little by little, they dried up the abundant streams.

They lowered people’s expectations of this land and of farming, as though water were seeping into cloth, without lowering them so far that people would despair and rise up together.

And when the generations had changed enough that fewer and fewer people remained who knew of Bellaria’s former prosperity, the new head of Bellaria—after another generational turnover—carried out the scheme they had heard from their predecessor.

They spread the story of the ‘Guardian Deity.’

A god who made barren, infertile land fertile.

And the Carnelian family, blessed by that god.

The evidence was clear.

While all other farmers reaped pitiful harvests, only the lands of Carnelian and those allied with it produced bumper harvests.

The ‘truth’ spoken by the few remaining old people was eclipsed by immediate hunger and the food Carnelian distributed.

Thus, the order of things was reversed.

From a land that had originally been fertile, where only those who opposed Carnelian suffered poor harvests,

to a land that had originally been barren, where only those friendly to Carnelian enjoyed bumper harvests.

To strengthen the Guardian Deity’s authority, stories concerning the god grew increasingly specific.

Various anecdotes were added, and Carnelian became not merely a family blessed by the god, but a family descended from the god.

…If everything had gone according to plan, it should have ended there.

But it did not. It could not end.

The first sign of trouble was that ‘it’ began behaving more and more strangely.

Originally, it had been a sort of docile simpleton.

It spent all day staring vacantly from the same spot, responding only sporadically when the head of the family came to speak with it.

But at some point, it began speaking to the head of the family first.

It also began demanding things such as fruit and clothing.

The heads of the family were not particularly concerned.

The things ‘it’ demanded were generally trivial, and ignoring those demands did not cause anything to happen.

-My descendant, why do you not show me the respect I am due?

Yet from a certain point onward, they could no longer do so.

‘It’ began calling each successive head of the family its descendant.

Rather than whining like a child as it had before, ‘it’ stated its demands in a dignified tone and with a dignified expression.

The appearance of ‘it’ was still damaged and oozing in places, but the golden, dust-like radiance emanating from it was far more intense than before.

Yes.

It was just like the ‘Guardian Deity’ from the legends.

When the head of the family at that time realized this, they were thrown into confusion.

Whatever others may have believed, the successive heads of Carnelian knew perfectly well that the story of the Guardian Deity was false, nothing more than an illusion they themselves had created.

They were not descendants of the Guardian Deity.

Their glory had been achieved through their own schemes.

Therefore, the head of the family at that time rebelled.

They denied the Guardian Deity and ignored its demands.

And the following year, every piece of land owned by Carnelian dried up as though a drought had struck.

-How could I bestow protection and blessings upon a descendant who does not revere me?

Watching the Guardian Deity laugh as it said this, the head of the family turned pale.

Only then did they realize that something had gone terribly wrong, but it was a hopelessly belated realization.

It was impossible to suppress the Guardian Deity by force.

The invalid who had once done nothing more than lie in bed had somehow transformed into a monster capable of effortlessly slaughtering dozens of soldiers who tried to threaten it.

The head of the family desperately begged for forgiveness.

The domain was already filled with chaos.

On one occasion, they had managed to smooth things over with the authority and power they had accumulated, but it was painfully obvious that if the poor harvests continued, even that power would collapse.

-You will need a shamaness. A god ought to have one, after all. Indeed.

The Guardian Deity demanded a shamaness.

It demanded that they offer up a shamaness as both an accessory and a sacrifice—someone who would revere it, serve it, and make it more ‘godlike’—and promised that it would then once again bestow the blessing of bumper harvests.

Considering the principle behind the god’s power, this was not a matter of bestowing blessings but merely of withdrawing the power it had been using to ruin the harvests. Yet it was impossible to point that out.

Or perhaps, to the Guardian Deity, those two things were the same.

Because the ones who had spread the rumor that the Guardian Deity was such a being and defined it as such in people’s minds were none other than the successive heads of the family.

The positions of the Guardian Deity and the heads of the family had been reversed.

The heads of the family could no longer control the Guardian Deity as they pleased.

Instead, the family had to exert its power to satisfy the Guardian Deity’s demands and clean up after what it had done.

They knew that selecting a shamaness from among the residents and offering her to the Guardian Deity was not particularly desirable as a means of ruling the land, but they had no choice but to obey.

Because that was the Guardian Deity’s will.

Because Carnelian was merely the Guardian Deity’s descendant and a servant who carried out its will.