The Isolated Marchioness Just Wants to Make a Living - Chapter 14

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 14

2. The Most Splendid Evening Banquet

‘Oh no, oh no.’

Baron Forman felt like he was sitting on a bed of thorns.

‘This is…’

His anxiety had become reality.

Warp had completely stopped working.

The Central Region was a basin surrounded by mountain ranges. Monsters began appearing on every mountain.

The same was true for the hills that marked the territory’s boundaries.

Even if you hunted monsters, their meat was inedible. It wasn’t fit for consumption.

With monsters appearing, it was impossible to climb the mountains. Even edible plants became toxic if touched by monster saliva.

Moreover, encountering monsters was a life-threatening matter in itself.

‘If only we hadn’t traded the horses for dairy cows… sigh.’

A month and a half ago.

Baron Hawin had ordered them to take all the horses to the western border and trade them for dairy cows.

At first, everyone was pleased.

“We can make porridge with milk and butter too! We can even eat the old cows for meat!”

But problems soon emerged.

The dairy cows consumed enormous amounts of water. Two dairy cows drank more water than ten people.

The wells in Baron Hawin’s Territory quickly began to run dry.

Moreover, they ate far more hay than horses. Baron Hawin was unaware of this fact.

He ordered them to go to Erenta and fetch river water, but Sears’s knights blocked their way.

“You were the ones who first blocked distribution on Jezel Street.”

The dairy cows were even sensitive to environmental and feed changes, producing little milk initially.

“At least horses could be used for transportation and such, but these… they just require more labor for cleaning and milking… Plus, if they eat even slightly less feed, milk production drops.”

All the workers who had originally operated the horse farm were deeply dissatisfied.

The cows devoured in less than half the time what would have been a month’s worth of hay for the horses. After that, they had to feed them food meant for human consumption.

“Feed them dried corn! That’s what we have the most of.”

The cows ate the corn well.

In fact, they ate an enormous amount.

But before long, the cows lay down panting heavily. They had developed acidosis from the sugar in the corn.

Naturally, they didn’t produce much milk either. Meanwhile, they drank even more water.

‘In the end, we’ll have to slaughter those cows and eat them.’

But even that was wishful thinking.

The doctor warned that eating cows that died from acidosis could cause food poisoning. They couldn’t even be eaten as meat.

In such circumstances, Baron Forman, who was receiving meals regularly, felt extremely tormented.

Those meals were also becoming increasingly meager…

‘A person’s mouth is more frightening than I thought.’

Baron Forman was curious.

Now even he couldn’t eat his fill.

‘How is the situation in Sears? They probably don’t even have salt over there?’

Since knights were guarding the territorial borders, Baron Hawin’s subordinates couldn’t even go check that side.

‘It’s probably still too early to harvest potatoes, and they weren’t catching fish well either. On top of that, haven’t their grains already run out long ago?’

“And lastly, they bought chickens from Jezel Street. A tremendous amount too. They bought all the chickens that all those shops were selling.”

When the merchant from Jezel Street said this, Marquis Hawin replied irritably.

“They made a foolish choice. Where on earth will they get food for those chickens?”

“Well, at least they lay eggs every day.”

“Then give some salt to the households in our territory and bring back chickens. We should raise some at the baron’s residence too.”

“Uh, each household already has plenty of salt… I wonder if they’ll really trade for chickens…”

“Just force them to trade if you have to!”

Since the chickens were noisy, they locked them in the warehouse for now.

However, contrary to expectations, the chickens didn’t lay eggs every day. When given barley husks, their weight decreased and egg-laying stopped.

“Why aren’t the chickens laying eggs?”

“Well, I don’t know… When we fed them proper feed at our house, they laid one egg per day.”

“Then where is that feed?”

“We had to buy it to feed them, so we don’t have any now. Since warp isn’t working, we can’t get any either…”

‘Then all the chickens in that territory must be at this level too!’

In this situation, he quietly stared at the invitation card.

The date of the invited banquet was approaching.

‘Wouldn’t going just be a burden for nothing?’

Since when had Baron Forman become so conscious about a single meal…

My grandson is the heir to the Nogen Duchy…

In his old age, eating meals while reading others’ faces, the old man felt frustrated.

‘Should I just not go?’

But it wouldn’t be proper not to go when I had received a formal invitation.

I was curious about Sears’ situation, and worried too…

‘Right, let me first examine that territory and then decide. Whether I can go or not.’

In the end, he began disguising himself again.

‘Only the people of Baron Hawin’s Territory blocked movement. I just need to present my forged identity card from the Western Region!’

Baron Forman rolled up his sleeves and secretly left Baron Hawin’s Estate.

* * *

“Wow.”

When Philip pushed aside the soil with trembling hands, round potatoes were revealed.

It had now been a month and a half since planting the seed potatoes. It was the minimum growing period to eat young potatoes.

Looking at the soil-covered potatoes, the corners of my mouth naturally turned up.

‘It’s a success.’

Though they were still only finger-sized, there were quite a lot of them. Given a little more time, they would surely grow plump and full. The healthy-looking leaves and firm tubers promised a good harvest.

“You need to peel them and cook them thoroughly.”

Just in case, I emphasized this to the Head Chef.

“Since we harvested them immature. Only dig up what we’ll eat today. Including the territory residents’ portions. Tell them tomorrow we’ll give them tomorrow’s potatoes.”

Originally, even for early harvest varieties, potatoes would take two months to fully grow. But potatoes at an ‘edible’ level could be harvested starting around now.

It had been a month and a half since the territory was isolated. What we had was one month’s worth of grains.

“We need to survive another month and a half with this. Let’s eat sparingly.”

I had told the kitchen early on.

“Instead, we’ll have eggs, and in a little while we’ll be able to eat chicken too.”

I had bought many chickens from the beginning.

I instructed them to grind clam shells from the river and mix them with rice bran and wheat bran. It was feed for the chickens.

“Why do we mix in clam shells?”

“They need calcium. When eggshells come out, we’ll grind those up and mix them in too.”

And I had the knights let the chickens loose in the potato field or by the riverside during the day.

The chickens caught and ate larvae on their own. It was protein supplementation.

Normally I would have used commercially distributed chicken feed, but this was the best we could do now.

But even so, with the necessary nutrition stably provided, the chickens laid one egg each every single day without fail.

“I’ll give you other food ingredients too.”

A lettuce field appeared on the roof of the Marquis Manor.

‘There shouldn’t be any idle land.’

There was one household that had harvested lettuce seeds in early spring. Lettuce was the most common crop in the small fields of the riverside territory.

Lettuce grew quickly and was easy to cultivate. Most importantly, lettuce could be continuously harvested by cutting.

Besides that, there were various other things coming in. Specifically…

“Miss! Salt came in the most again today!”

“Another basket of perilla seeds arrived!”

These were food supplies secretly coming in from Hawin Territory.

I had foreseen this situation the moment I heard Dahlia say she had ‘decided to raise dairy cows.’

‘Dairy cows drink a lot of water.’

Moreover, dairy cows are sensitive to environmental changes.

They weren’t livestock that those who had never raised dairy cows before could easily bring over and raise.

‘The milk production will definitely be poor, and water will become scarce too.’

People cannot survive when water becomes scarce.

And both Jezel Street and the Beron region had been part of Sears Marquis Territory just a month and a half ago. It was obvious they would come to draw water from Erenta’s river without any hesitation.

‘That’s why I stationed knights there. To absolutely prevent them from taking water.’

Of course, I wasn’t really going to deny them water completely. I only prohibited it as a rule.

“I’ll officially prohibit it. But secretly giving it is fine. Just attach conditions.”

I gathered all 50 households of territory residents and told them.

Though they were now separated, they had all actually lived as neighbors closer than family.

“Tell them they must bring something to bribe the knights with. And this must absolutely not reach Baron Hawin’s ears.”

With only about 50 households, management was easy too.

“Listen well to that territory’s situation too. No matter that it’s a different territory now, there shouldn’t be anyone starving to death.”

When I heard the news that dairy cows had collapsed after eating corn, I deliberately had word sent to that region’s doctor.

“Don’t carelessly eat meat from dairy cows that died of acidosis. You’ll get food poisoning.”

Dairy cows were livestock with a long history. Much had been researched and recorded about them.

Moreover, the dairy cows here were more vulnerable to acidosis than those on Earth in my previous life.

I wasn’t kind enough to tell Dahlia ‘dairy cows won’t work.’ But I didn’t want innocent people to die.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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