Magus: Rise of the Darkness Empress

As for how she was planning to grow her territory, there was several plans in her mind. Firstly she was planning to modify the system used to treat the serfs.

They had no right to the land that they farmed and all the crops were taken by the noble family.

So the serfs basically had to work hard in the field only for some scraps of food and a place to live. They had nothing else to their name.

This system was definitely beneficial for the nobles but still Weiss wanted to change it.

It was not like she was a selfless person who was doing this because she wanted to help the poor serfs but actually she wanted to do this because it would be more beneficial for her in the long run.

As the land actually did not belong to the serfs, they were not very eager to do their best for it.

Even if they did not slack off because of the fear of the noble knights, they still had not done their best for the land.

This way, if a plot of land was capable of producing a total of 1oo kgs of crops, with the demotivated farmers, it was only producing about 60 or 70 kgs.

That was why Weiss was thinking of allowing the farmers to get 20 percent of the crops that they would produced. In this way, they would be motivated to produce more in order to get more crops for themselves after each harvest.

Even though this might lessen the territory’s income slightly at first, there was a high possibility that it would increase the overall productivity of territory in the long run.

Other than the farming, hunting was also one of the main source of income for the people of this territory. Especially in the winters when the farmlands were covered in snow, hunting was the only way to get fresh food.

And as most of the Souran territory was covered in forest filled with various beasts, there was no lack of prey to be hunted.

But at the same time, it was also not unusual for the humans of the territory to become the prey for the beasts too. Actually the chance of that happening was much higher.

The only reason the humans were able to survive here was because the stronger beasts did not care about the little meat that they could get from the humans. There were several large prey in the forest, they were also much tastier.

As for the smaller and weaker beasts who were interested in humans, the humans were more than capable enough to match them with their tools and such.

These beasts were not only the source of meat but much more. As there were various wolf type beasts in this area, the Souran village was somewhat famous for being a supplier of high quality wolf pelts.

But even in this field, the hunters were not earning a lot. That was because they were not allowed to sell the beast to anyone else but the lord of the territory where it was hunted. And the lord obviously would always buy the beast for dirt cheap.

Only thing that the hunters were allowed to take from the hunted beast’s body was a portion of it’s meat. Everything else needed to to be sold to the nobles.

Hunting was already a very dangerous job where the hunters could lose their life at any time.

And now this dangerous job was also not paying very well. So the hunters only participated in hunting when they needed food and they never did it for the money in most territory.

There were some nobles who would force the hunters of their territory to hunt for them. But as the Souran territory already had very few inhabitants, they never tried to do this.

If someone mistakenly provoked a powerful beast, then the whole territory could be wiped out. With this risk, no one dared to do too much hunting here.

This way, a very valuable resource of the Souran territory was being under utilised. That was something Weiss did not want.

To change this, Weiss wanted to make hunting more profitable for the hunters by paying them a decent sum of money for the hunted beasts and not buying them for dirt cheap.

This would actually be more profitable as Weiss would always earn way more than the hunter by selling the material outside. And adding more meat to the diet of the villagers would make them more energetic and strong.

Not only that but she was also planning to start a training course for the hunters so that their success rate would increase and fatality rate would decrease while hunting.

There were times when Weiss was not given any food because of her mother’s orders. At those times, Weiss needed to find food on her own.

But in this impoverished village where there was not even a single restaurant, the only place where she could get food without stealing was in the forest.

Later on, when she had stated training to become a knight, her daily energy requirements had gone off the charts. For that reason, Weiss needed an astronomical amount of food to sustain herself.

But obviously her family was not going to provide her with the food. So, the only way Weiss was able to maintain her daily needed food intake was by hunting the beasts all by herself.

That was why, even though Weiss was young, her experience as a hunter was very high. Her knowledge about the surrounding forest was also top notch.

If Weiss shared some of her hunting knowledge with the hunters of the village, then their efficiency would definitely increase by several degrees.

After writing down all her plans, Weiss gave Robin an order -

”Inform all the villagers that these new changes made by me will be the first of many for the territory. In future, I will make more changes to make their lives better.”

As for how these changes would be taken by the villagers, only the future could answer that. But Weiss was sure that as these changes would be beneficial to the villagers’ life, they would accept them wholeheartedly sooner or later.