Early the next morning.
The thin mist had not yet dispersed within the forest when the army was already packed and moving out.
Valery and Victor rode on horseback, flanking Sophia's carriage to lead the way, followed by a long convoy of captured supplies.
The first place they arrived at was a small village closest to the bandit's nest: Kree Village.
To call this place a village would be generous; it was more like a collection of ruins that could barely provide shelter from the wind and rain.
Due to years of suffering from bandit raids, the young men of the village had either died in battle or been abducted and sold as slaves. Only a handful of able-bodied men remained.
The rest were mostly elderly people with cloudy eyes, women so thin they were just skin and bones, and a few children hiding behind cracks in the doors, eyeing the army with terrified gazes.
It was no wonder that, according to the records, less than half of the expected tax revenue was collected each year.
It was hard enough for them to stay alive and keep their bellies full; even if they handed over everything they had, it would be nothing but a drop in the bucket.
When Sophia stepped down from the carriage, the entire village fell into a deathly silence.
The villagers walked out of their doors one after another, then fell to their knees in large swathes by the roadside, like wheat being harvested.
" The Queen... it's that Tyrant Queen..."
"She really came. Is she here to harvest what little grain we have left?"
The fragmented whispers were filled with despair.
In the perception of these villagers, compared to the bandits who occasionally came to rob them, this Queen—whose notoriety had spread far and wide, and who had even 'disposed' of her own father and siblings—was the true Living King of Hell.
They had witnessed the Old King's methods of taxation, and they feared this new Tyrant would be no different, if not worse.
Sophia stood expressionlessly at the village entrance, her pale golden eyes sweeping over this group of the old, the weak, the sick, and the disabled.
"Too miserable," Sophia sighed in her heart.
"With this kind of labor structure, never mind farming, even self-sufficiency is difficult. The poverty level of the Kingdom of Mason has simply refreshed my cognition."
She raised her hand, signaling Victor to step forward.
"Her Majesty has a decree!"
Victor raised his voice, the sound echoing through the village.
The villagers buried their heads even lower. Some even began to sob quietly, thinking that what followed would be orders for forced grain confiscation or collective execution.
"First, all females between the ages of ten and sixty, as well as men who are physically sound, are to be registered. You will be incorporated into the 'Royal Reclamation Corps', and new seeds and planting methods will be provided by the inventor appointed by Her Majesty, Miss Irene."
"Second, the elderly who are too old and children under ten will be taken in batches to the temporary shelters around the Royal City. There, they will perform 'primary material processing' work needed by Miss Irene, such as sitting indoors peeling plant fibers or sorting slag. Simple work, with meals provided."
"Third, all remaining grain in the village is to be handed over. The Royal House will uniformly distribute Black Bread, which is more filling and nutritious, until the first spring harvest is produced."
After this string of orders was issued, the villagers did not show the joy of surviving a disaster; instead, their faces turned the color of ash.
"Taking the old and the young away? Are they to be living sacrifices for experiments?"
"And we have to hand over all the grain? She intends to let us starve to death before we can even plant the fields!"
Although the Tyrant's subordinate said they would be issued more filling Black Bread, they didn't believe it at all.
According to the rumors of the Tyrant's methods, she would surely take the people and the grain, then abandon the remaining laborers here or exploit them in other ways.
But because the fear of the 'Tyrant' was so deeply ingenuity rooted, the villagers dared not resist.
Even if they resisted, what could they do?
Even if these soldiers weren't as stout as the bandits, they were tall and physically fit. What use would the resistance of these villagers be?
They mechanically obeyed the soldiers' instructions, trembling as they handed over their pitiful rations, and watched helplessly as their children were led onto the carriages.
Sophia watched this scene without explaining.
They wouldn't believe it.
And as a Queen, she had no need to sell her mercy to her subjects.
She simply beckoned to Irene.
"That high-survival-rate seed of yours, test plant it in this village first. If it doesn't grow, we'll all be eating bread and flour paste next year."
"Rest assured, Your Majesty!"
Irene pushed up her non-existent black-rimmed glasses, then gave a sheepish laugh.
After transmigrating here, her vision, which originally had 800 degrees of myopia, had become very healthy.
Her eyes still flickering with excitement, she said to Sophia, "As long as this batch of laborers tends to the crops with care, I can triple the yield of this small village! Once the experiment here is successful, we can farm on a much larger scale."
Sophia nodded and turned her gaze toward the villagers.
Meanwhile, Delilah, who had been trailing them the entire time, looked at the Royal Black Bread being distributed by the soldiers—which, although hard, was indeed filling—and fell into deep thought.
"Taking away the elderly and children to protect and settle the labor force? Is this planning method not for exploitation, but for efficiency? And the Tyrant actually distributed Black Bread to these villagers."
According to her observations, the grain handed over by the villagers was nowhere near enough to let them eat bread for every meal.
Aside from the Empire, in other marginal small countries, it was normal for the poor quality Black Bread to be made of mixed bran rye, oats, or low-quality wheat mixed with sawdust and sand.
Even then, a person would only eat a small piece a day.
Or they would stew beans with wild vegetables and tree bark; one pot could last a family for several days, with each person only eating a small bowl.
For the Tyrant to issue such a large piece of Black Bread to these people at once... what exactly was her intention?
----------
After counting the elderly and the very young children in the village, only a little over two hundred people of suitable age remained.
Among these, more than a hundred were extremely emaciated women.
"Irene."
Sophia uttered a single name.
"Here, Your Majesty!"
Irene trotted over, clutching an iron rod used for measuring soil depth.
Under the trembling gazes of hundreds of villagers, this strange young girl titled 'Inventor' tied her long pink hair into a bun on top of her head and began gesturing on the muddy ground.
She required the villagers to dig trenches of extreme depth and precise spacing, and demanded they lay a specific layer of plant ash and rotting leaves at the bottom of the trenches.
"Listen well, this is called 'Deep Plowing and Ridge Planting'."
Irene pushed up her non-existent glasses frame, her expression as serious as if she were adjusting a gunpowder formula in a laboratory.
"The depth of every pit cannot be off by half a finger, and the soil in the pit must be turned until it's as soft as breadcrumbs. If I catch anyone slacking off..."
Irene subconsciously glanced at Sophia, who was standing by the field ridge with her hands behind her back.
Sophia sensed the gaze and turned her head slightly, her pale golden eyes sweeping indifferently over the villagers kneeling in the mud.
The villagers felt as if they had fallen into an ice cellar under that glance.
"That is the Tyrant's threat!"
"If we don't dig the pits according to that crazy inventor's requirements, those pits might just be used to bury us!"
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