Chapter 287 : Chapter 287
Chapter 287. Planning a Territory
When the sun rose over the Northern Frontier, the people living there began a new day.
Ella was someone who lived in an unnamed small village in Snow Bear Territory. She was all alone, because when she was very young, her parents had gone off in search of the Northern Society.
After hearing that the Northern Society was a good place where one did not need to burn firewood for warmth all year round, and where food was abundant, her parents had set out together on the journey to find it.
They entrusted Ella to their neighbors, because at that time, Ella was not even a year old. If they rashly brought her along, it would only cause Ella to lose her life during the journey.
After that, whether they found it or not, there had never been any news of them again.
When the sun had risen slightly, Ella put on her leather gloves and went out, walking into the forest.
For people like them who lived in the Northern Frontier, food could be made from a type of berry unique to the Northern Frontier as their staple food.
After many years of cultivation in their village, the output of this food had long since far exceeded every person’s needs.
Every year, quite a few berries even rotted inside the warehouse.
The reason the population of the Northern Frontier had never risen, however, was another matter entirely: the cold.
This kind of cold was absolutely not something the human body could withstand on its own.
When the cold wind raged, there could even be the strange sight of a furnace still burning while the person beside it had already frozen to death.
Thus, the people of the Northern Frontier needed a large amount of fuel. They even had to keep their furnaces burning fully at all times, or the heat would not be enough to get them through the day.
The firewood in Ella’s home was no longer enough. She had to go north of the village and chop some wood to bring back.
This kind of wood did not require any special treatment before it could burn for a very long time, and it produced plenty of heat. It was Ella’s best choice if she wanted to survive.
But today, just as she was about to walk out of the palisade made from sharpened wood, she heard a burst of noisy shouting.
“You cannot do this! I am the administrative officer personally appointed by the lord! I want to see the lord!”
When she raised her eyes and looked over, she saw a scene that made her wonder whether she had truly woken up.
She saw that inside their village, the person who was usually the most domineering, the man who called himself the lord’s administrative officer, was actually losing his composure to such an extent.
Although Ella did not know what had happened when she saw this scene, just seeing it made her happy.
Ella did not like this administrative officer. Or rather, there were not many people in the entire village who liked him.
This administrative officer often used excuses such as road repairs or wall repairs to take away the firewood they needed to preserve their lives, then threatened that if they did not hand it over, there would be no knights to eliminate monsters for them in the future.
Logically speaking, paying the cost of eliminating monsters was something that they, as subjects of the territory, had to do, because the threat of monsters was also one of the difficulties the people of the Northern Frontier faced in order to survive.
But this administrative officer often collected many additional fees for matters that did not exist at all. They had to distinguish which taxes were truly supposed to be paid to the lord.
They had dealt with this administrative officer for a very long time, and they were already used to him inventing taxes they had never heard of every day, then making them pay.
As for them, after carefully distinguishing the truth, they would choose whether to pay or not.
They were not afraid that this administrative officer would embezzle the taxes they had originally handed over, then use the excuse that the taxes were insufficient, because once the taxes were not paid, this administrative officer would also face the lord’s punishment.
Even if those knights truly came here to ask about the situation, the most the villagers would have to do was pay an additional share. This administrative officer, on the other hand, would be in trouble.
Even so, the residents who had to match wits with this administrative officer every single day were physically and mentally exhausted. They did not want to see him at all.
That was why Ella felt so happy when she saw this administrative officer losing his composure.
However, after hearing the contents of the following conversation, the smile on her face froze completely.
“This is also your lord’s order. Did you not see that knight over there carrying the lord’s written order?”
“From now on, I will take over this place. I have already made myself very clear.”
Then Ella watched that administrative officer kneel before another knight who had come along with them, repeatedly talking about how difficult his life had been.
In any case, afterward, that administrative officer was taken away by the knight, while the woman dressed in distinctive attire remained here.
Ella looked at that woman, somewhat curious about the contents of the conversation just now.
She had actually seen the attire Anna wore half a month ago. At that time, countless people dressed like this had appeared along the roadside, seemingly searching for something.
Back then, that administrative officer had ordered everyone to hide inside their houses and avoid coming out as much as possible.
She had followed the order as well, because she had an intuition that those people searching for something did not seem like good people.
Ella tilted her head and watched Anna stand on the snow, surveying the entire layout of the village. She heard Anna seemingly muttering something under her breath.
“Where am I supposed to find a house here to build those things? I also have to mobilize those villagers... It seems that administrative officer’s original house is quite good. Let us use that one.”
Ella watched Anna walk toward the inside of the village. Although she was very curious about this person, she also knew that now was not the time to be curious.
“I still have to go up the mountain and chop some wood.”
Ella breathed out a mouthful of warm air and spoke.
She no longer stood there in the snow. Instead, she carried her axe and strode toward the mountain.
---
Inside Fulan’s dormitory at the Northern Society.
Fulan was packing her luggage for a trip. She was going to Snow Bear Territory again, but her purpose this time was not to complete a mission. It was to conduct an experiment.
She stared at several printed articles about territory analysis in her hands and became somewhat lost in thought.
She had read these articles about territories. They contained some attempts by mages to obtain territorial blessing.
Settlements of the people would affect changes in a territory’s borders, and if the thoughts of the people living upon it changed, the territory could even change hands.
These patterns had long since been understood by mages, but so far, every attempt related to territories had failed.
Almost all the papers attributed this to another aspect, which was the issue of profession.
They believed that the reason a knight could obtain a territory and become the lord of that territory was because his profession contained a part capable of receiving the territory. Only then could he become a lord.
Aside from professions like knights, almost no other profession could become a lord through a territory, let alone a mage.
Therefore, after many mages had spent a very long time studying this matter, they would only discover that there was no method at all.
In the end, they could only helplessly choose to give up and devote themselves to other fields.
The reason Fulan searched for these papers that explored territorial blessing was to find a line of thought that could allow her to truly obtain territorial blessing while being a mage.
Fulan still had a Territory Token in her possession. It was in the Antir Region, and it was still being managed by someone she knew.
After Fulan reached the second tier, she had the thought of taking back that territory. But first, she had to confirm whether she could truly obtain the territory’s acknowledgment and become a lord.
After learning about other mages’ attempts and combining them with the knowledge from Earth in Fulan’s previous life, Fulan roughly had two lines of thought for solving this matter.
The first was to begin with the profession itself. The Territorial Knight profession had appeared on Fulan’s panel a very long time ago.
Logically speaking, as long as Fulan went to Whiteflower Territory and found Finley, then obtained a Knightly Title from him, she could satisfy the conditions for forming that profession.
But after carefully understanding the Territorial Knight profession, she dismissed the idea of obtaining this profession. The reason was nothing else: the Territorial Knight profession was somewhat bad.
This was one of the few professions Fulan had seen that had negative effects.
As one of the professions that should currently have the largest number of Professionals on the continent, a large part of the reason Territorial Knights were so numerous lay in their stability and inheritability.
Territorial Knight was the only formal-tier power that could be inherited. As long as one could obtain the Knightly Title left behind by one’s father, as long as that person was not too terrible, they could advance to the formal tier.
This inheritability had given rise to countless territorial families. Maintaining a family’s strength through a territory was a very “advanced” system on the continent.
That was right. Fulan used the term advanced, because this inheritability truly was extremely important.
Many families had fallen precisely because of inheritance. Take the Alliance Fulan belonged to, for example.
Many mage families had declined because their descendants had failed to produce mages for a long time.
A system like this, one that could steadily produce formal-tier Professionals, was already extremely “advanced” on this continent. No wonder there were so many Territorial Knights.
But as the price, Territorial Knights also had many negative effects.
For example, restrictions such as difficulty in advancement and the person being unable to leave their territory did not really amount to much.
What Fulan found most unbearable was the characteristic linking a Territorial Knight to their territory.
What did that mean? It meant the territory itself would affect the strength of the Territorial Knight.
When famine broke out in your territory or the people suffered terribly, your own strength would be severely weakened.
But conversely, if your territory prospered, your strength would also grow stronger along with it.
This would force Fulan to invest part of her energy into governing a territory. But honestly, it was not worth it.
As long as Fulan chose a few more professions, she could easily obtain strength that surpassed territorial blessing.
What Fulan wanted to find was a method that had no major negative effects and could still grant her territorial blessing. This was also the method most mages wanted.
At her current stage, she truly needed a sufficiently vast place and enough manpower to realize some of the ideas in her hands.
Putting everything else aside, much of the knowledge from Earth required a powerful level of industrialization to support it. Otherwise, some knowledge simply could not be implemented.
This line of thought was therefore ruled out by Fulan, while the second line of thought came from Fulan’s experience in her previous life.
This line of thought was institutions. Fulan could sense that the key to territorial blessing was actually the people. Many mages had realized this point.
Perhaps under these circumstances, establishing a relatively complete set of institutions in another world could be of some help in studying territorial blessing.
And this would require borrowing some knowledge from the Law School.