After two days in the mountains, Charles followed the convoy to a small mountain village in a col.

The village is small, with about 20 households, a stream three to five meters wide flows through the village, and the few fields outside and the slopes of the reclaimed hills are planted with corn ready for harvesting.

The area of the village is very small, and there is no open space such as a square in it, so Charles set up a stall in the open space outside the village gate for drying grain.

However, his business was not good, and the villagers, who looked a little malnourished, had little intention of buying anything, except for a woman who appeared to be in good health, and exchanged a few hides for a trap.

Charles chatted with her and learned that her husband was a hunter and was considered a wealthy man in the village.

On the other side of the clearing, Kuloai was talking to the village chief, who was too old to die in the next moment, listening respectfully to Kuloai's instructions.

In the past two days, Charles has relied on pressure cooker stew to mingle with several people in the horse caravan, and learned that the horse team was hired by Koloai, and that the old man was the owner of the horse team that night.

Kuroai was the illegitimate daughter of a viscount in Messina and an ordinary family in the city, and usually did some errands for the viscount.

This year the viscount and his knights pooled their money to build a small wool mill, and sent Kuroai to the villages of their domain to recruit workers.

Charles had basically no business that day, except for the trap, someone exchanged some linen for a dried thigh of an unknown monster.

As it darkened, the village's people who had been working in the fields and hunting returned to the village.

At this time, someone brought some potatoes and turnips to exchange a little needlework and thread with him.

Helpless, Charles could only accept the barter transaction, he asked, and learned that there are really not many families in the village with copper plates, all of them are used for emergency relief at the bottom of the box, and even the lord comes to collect taxes in kind.

When the smoke rose from the village cooking, Charles carefully washed a large piece of meat cut from the monster's leg by the stream next to the village, and the ghost knows how long the jerky hung in the house, and after washing it, he cut it into diced meat and put it in a pressure cooker with peeled and diced potatoes and turnips.

Normally, Charles and the people in the motorboat would spend the night in the village, but the village was so poor that the houses were in tatters and not as clean as the tents.

After everyone had finished dinner, Kuloai had a bonfire lit in the clearing, and the sound of gongs sounded in the village, and it was not long before all the villagers came to the clearing outside the village.

It was obviously not the first time that Kuloai had been here, and many people in the village knew that she represented the lord, so the villagers stood quietly in front of the fire.

Charles, who had just returned from washing the pot by the river, sat in his carriage and drank cold boiled water to watch the excitement.

Kuloai announced to the villagers about the recruitment and salary conditions, much to the surprise of the villagers, who thought that she had come to collect taxes or conscription.

Charles listened to the whispered discussions of the villagers for a while, and found that they were quite tempted.

Many young people in the mountain villages will follow the passing caravans or adventurer squads to go out into the world, some of them have never heard from again, some of them have returned to their hometowns in fine clothes, and some of them have come back to marry honest people and live a life, which shows that they do not mind leaving this place with many mountains, many magical beasts, and little arable land.

It's just that in the past, the villagers went out and then looked for a workshop or something to go in to work, and it was the first time that the workshop took the initiative to recruit people.

The teenage girls were obviously more excited, and now they were asked to work in the workshop, which was obviously better than the work of tavern waitress and the like, who "worked during the day and at night".

And this is also considered to be going to the city, and it is better to marry outside in the future than to marry from this side of the mountain to the other side of the mountain for the rest of your life, in short, it is better to live in the mountains for the rest of your life.

Kuloai didn't talk much to the villagers, and after saying a few key words, he let them disperse, and with the understanding of these villagers, the more they talked, the easier it was for their minds to be confused.

At this time, Charles in the carriage began to think about a problem that he had not noticed before, with the development of the wool industry, the outflow of young rural labor, which would inevitably break the original economic structure.

It's okay to say in other places, but in the Kingdom of Bischberg, where there are many mountains and many Warcraft, the departure of the young and middle-aged people in the countryside will inevitably cause the village's defense against Warcraft to decline, and then it is not surprising that such a tragedy as Warcraft slaughtering the village will occur.

Just like this village, the claw prints of the monsters on the walls are both old and new, and there are many big guys among them.

For the factory owners, they don't have to spend money to relocate the entire village. The village was also the territorial core of these feudal lords, and the rule over the territory, taxes, etc., were based on these villages, and moving the village was no different from taking away their territory.

Even if Charles gave Artoria and Gawain a domain, Charles helped them get a small earthen fence in the territory. There were usually no people there, so in the spring there was a place for those who went to collect maple syrup to stay, and now Artoria's earthen fence had become a warehouse for the White Jade Meat Cannery, which Gawain occasionally used to put wool.

As a result, the decline of the countryside and the loss of the interests of the grassroots feudal lords, and what the consequences would be Charles, who decided to throw the problem to Linda, although the problem was still quite a long time away.

"What are you thinking?"

Kuroai suddenly appeared next to Charles's carriage.

Charles shook his head and said, "It's nothing, it's just that business is not good today." ”

"How about I hire you to help me transport my things in the next few days?"

Charles asked curiously, "What do you want me to ship?"

Kuloai replied, "It's our luggage and food, and the people in the village have responded well today, and it is estimated that we have recruited a little more people than expected." ”

She looked at the goods in Charles's car and said, "Otherwise, I'll buy all your goods." ”

Charles thought about it, anyway, he brought the goods just under the guise of selling them to anyone, but the distance was a little problematic.

He asked, "I'm going to Catania City next, don't you know where to go?"

Kuroai thought for a moment and said, "We'll pass by the town of Cesaro, which is adjacent to Catania, where you can follow the other caravans. ”

She paused for a moment, and then said, "It's just that there are quite a few bandits on the way from the town of Cesaro to the city of Catania, and there is no Count of Maccaden, so I suggest you continue to follow us, and you can take the waterway around the way." ”

Charles thanked Culoai and decided to accept her on the way to the town of Cesaro.

He went there just to brush up on the reputation of those bandits.

Culloai then asked Charles to drive his carriage to the convoy, and after settling the payment, he had the contents of Charles's carriage removed.

Then Kuloai took the goods and went to the village chief to exchange food, and exchanged a lot of food such as jerky, cornmeal, and potatoes.

When they recruit workers, they start to eat on the road, and they consume a lot of food along the way, so they have to replenish along the way.

Kuloai apparently used the "executive order" and relied on forced buying and selling to get back the grain.

Charles was helpless about it, he couldn't control Cooloai.

Don't say it's Charles, as the saying goes, "The vassals of the vassals are not my vassals", even if Linda comes, it's useless, so you can only give orders layer by layer.

The night in the mountains is not quiet, and from time to time the cries of fierce beasts can be heard from afar, and those who are accustomed to running mountain roads are accustomed to it.

The little noise made in the village made Charles very curious, so he slipped into the village.

In the middle of the village is a well, surrounded by a stone path several meters wide.

At this time, an oil lamp hung on the canopy of the well, and several children, ranging from five or six years old to their teens, were holding wooden swords and practicing the basic movements of swordsmanship under the guidance of an adult.

The adult, Charles, had seen him in the evening, and he was a hunter, when he had returned with a few hares.

Although many of the people in the village are malnourished, the children appear to be in good health and are basically at normal levels.

Charles watched the children practice one by one, and felt that the mountain people of the Bischberg Kingdom were fierce because of the harsh environment, and secondly, because of their determination and ruthlessness to "hope that their son would become a dragon".

The parents of these children apparently ate less of their own food in order to feed their children, so that the children would have enough strength to survive in this ghost place.

Looking at these hard-working children, Charles's mind began to come alive, and there happened to be a skill that came with the Reimu gift pack that he had played, and he could try it now.