Blacksmithing Is Child’s Play for a Dark Mage - Chapter 41

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 41
Monsters pour in → defeat all the monsters → sell the Monster Corpses to merchants who come to the village → the merchants provide provisions and supplies, buy the corpses with smiles, and head back satisfied
What a cycle!
Moreover.
The true purpose of the merchants’ visits wasn’t actually to purchase Monster Corpses.
The Twisted Bone Spear of Finger Sacrifice
They came to buy this blockbuster product—so revenues were skyrocketing!
Even though Tay couldn’t collect tariffs, he was still turning a substantial profit as a primary producer of both the bone spears and Monster Corpses (strange as it is to phrase it that way).
As a result.
After accounting for various expenses, Tay was bringing in roughly 12,000 Goldmanta Coins per month.
Extraordinary earnings!
And he paid almost no taxes!
Because of Feudalism.
Most people don’t understand this aspect.
Under Feudalism, Lords don’t pay taxes to a king or emperor. Instead, they’re bound by various agreements, which is the core of the Bilateral Contract.
Put simply, it works like this.
A sovereign grants land—a Fief—to his vassal permanently, along with certain conditions.
The word “permanently” coupled with “certain conditions” was crucial.
Those conditions are loyalty and military service.
That is: when war comes, bring troops.
If you break this, the contract is void and the sovereign can seize the vassal’s land.
But if the vassal honors the contract?
Then that land is his forever.
Which is why taxes cannot be demanded.
Bilateral Contracts can include various clauses that allow for tax payments, but the vast majority are structured around loyalty and military obligation.
And in the case of the Lord of Pioneer Village.
This was automatically treated as a military Bilateral Contract.
In other words.
If Tay successfully maintains this Pioneer Village, he becomes a noble with an inheritable title and Territory under the Marquis of Harundale.
In exchange for the obligation to lead his forces in defense should Harundale be attacked—he pays no taxes!
That’s the orthodox Feudalism of this age.
Even under the name Empire, this hasn’t changed.
Well, this region.
The civilization level roughly spans Earth’s 10th to 16th centuries.
If you travel to the Imperial Capital where the Emperor resides, you find nearly 16th to 18th century civilization, but step outside that area and the level drops to 6th to 10th century—that’s this world’s peculiarity.
Most Koreans probably don’t pay attention and don’t know this well.
But in Earth’s history, the Medieval period spans the 5th to 16th centuries.
Naturally.
The closer you get to the 5th century, the lower the civilization level becomes.
All those fantasy novels describe lavish palaces, grand feasts, and decadent nobility.
But in reality, below the 14th century, no such thing exists.
Even holding the title of Baron with his own Fief, a man is poor enough to celebrate if he eats meat once every ten days.
Though undeniably noble, he eats bread hard as stone, and despite his bloodline’s prestige and his status as master of his Territory, winter brings no proper heating—he trembles through the cold.
The heating problem, in fact, isn’t solved even by the 16th century.
This world at least has magic, so in well-developed places like the Imperial Capital, heating, water supply, and sanitation issues are somehow resolved through magic.
But the further you travel into the provinces, the less magic is available (it costs too much), so civilization plummets.
And that’s why such disparities exist.
The reason, as mentioned before, is the overwhelming abundance of monsters.
No one knows where they come from.
Despite exterminating them to near extinction, they sprout like mold everywhere—if you lack considerable military strength, you can’t respond at all.
So Feudalism persists. Even with magic.
That’s why civilization advances only marginally, despite magic’s power.
In any case, Tay, after starting construction of Pioneer Village in summer.
Survived through winter.
And when spring comes again, then summer—
He can become a Lord.
The success condition for Pioneer Village is to safely maintain it for one year.
* * *
“Master. Our available funds currently total 48,000 Goldmanta Coins.”
“That’s quite a lot accumulated.”
Tay was receiving a report from Lant.
Ase had withdrawn into the shadows and lately seemed content to simply observe without interjecting unnecessarily.
She chimed in during casual conversation from time to time, but whenever business matters arose, she held her tongue.
“Monster Corpse sales and the bone spear sales have been stable, sir. So then—what are your plans for all this accumulated capital?”
“Hmm. I’ll need to think it over. Could we fill the entire village with slaves, or…?”
“Quite possibly. Your system for managing ransom valuations is remarkably efficient, sir.”
Tay had made it his policy to recognize the personal property of his slaves.
And he had publicly declared that those who paid their own ransom would be granted their freedom.
Beyond that.
He had also instituted a system for precisely measuring labor output.
In other words, he implemented a wage structure where slacking earned deductions, while exemplary work earned increases.
As a result, his slaves worked with considerable diligence.
Typically, enslaved labor was expected to shirk, and that was the default assumption across this world’s standard practices of slave management.
Because of this, among the ordinary nobility who based their wealth on agriculture.
When developing their domains, they would staff them with roughly one-third serfs and two-thirds common peasants.
It was the widely acknowledged efficient method of domain administration.
All crops produced by serfs belonged to the lord—but since the serfs themselves knew this, their output hovered at roughly half that of free peasants.
And while we’re on the subject, let me elaborate further.
Common peasants faced a tax of roughly fifty percent of their harvest. On top of that, they owed various additional levies.
Everything from the Window Tax to millstone-use fees accumulated.
All told, lords typically extracted about seventy percent of the peasant’s yield.
Of course, in this age there was no reliable measurement system.
Peasants would squirrel away portions and misreport their harvest quantities.
After all, if seventy percent is taken, how does a peasant eat? So such practices flourished.
And discovering such deception was difficult work.
Moreover, the tax collectors themselves were often guilty of serious embezzlement—sometimes even taking bribes from peasants to falsify the reported harvests entirely.
So ultimately, what actually reached the nobleman’s coffers fell far short of expectations.
Handling this properly made one a virtuous lord and a powerful domain-holder.
Failing to do so led to the decline of one’s house, and eventually ruin.
In that sense, Tay’s domain operated under very different circumstances.
His income did not derive from agriculture in the first place.
Since Tay earned his wealth through his own ability—his domain was in a completely different state from ordinary agricultural holdings.
Still, he did cultivate crops for one simple reason: to achieve Food Sovereignty.
He had never started farming with profit in mind.
Food Sovereignty.
A critical matter!
“Lant. Based on what you know—what is the annual revenue of an average Barony?”
“Baronies vary considerably in their wealth, depending on the holding, sir.”
“Give me an average figure.”
“Well then… assuming a Baron commands roughly 1,000 households, that would be a reasonable baseline.”
One thousand households!
“How many people per household?”
“Including men, women, children, and the elderly, around eight persons.”
In this world.
Peasant populations followed such patterns.
Without contraception, they bore many children—and lost many as well.
Those who survived became the household’s labor, though they were also mouths to feed.
During their growth years, they consumed more than they produced.
For these reasons, peasant households in this era necessarily became large, multigenerational families.
Typically, men and women in their forties or fifties were considered elderly and died around that age.
They lived alongside their children, spouses, grandchildren, and grandchildren.
Daughters were usually married off and thus did not count toward the household.
A typical peasant household of six to ten souls, from elderly to infants, aligned with Lant’s estimate.
Tay had no prior knowledge of such realities (merely having been human on Earth in his past life did not grant him comprehensive medieval knowledge), but Lant’s explanations had educated him.
“So I should assume a domain supporting roughly 8,000 people?”
“Yes, that’s correct. However, taxes are not assessed by headcount, sir.”
According to Lant’s explanation.
Peasant taxes were determined by the size of land held.
By the land’s size—they surrender half their harvest.
Of course, remissions were granted in years of poor harvest, though additional taxes were typically levied during abundant years.
In other words, it isn’t the population that matters—it’s the breadth of farmland that determines the tax burden.
Long ago, there was a system called the Poll Tax, where people paid tax based on headcount, but this led to peasants deliberately killing their own newborn children to avoid the burden.
And the result was, they say, that hell itself unfolded?
And here’s what happened next… the gods themselves struck down the nobles who had demanded the Poll Tax.
You think I’m joking? I’m not. It’s the truth.
Some of the gods punished the noble who levied the Poll Tax, and the tax disappeared entirely.
So the nobles turned around and began taxing the number of windows in a house. Then the number of doors.
But that wasn’t all.
They created every conceivable variety of tax category.
The result was that peasants were forced to surrender roughly seventy percent of their crops.
Of course, as mentioned before, peasants will go to any length to avoid paying taxes, and it goes without saying that officials along the way pocket their own cuts.
Black Mage is Too Easy as a Blacksmith
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Automaton G
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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