You were made to farm, and now you're the emperor of an empire?

Chapter 12 The Price of Twenty Oxen

the next day.

As dawn broke, the agricultural officer, Mohr, hurried to Roman's estate.

He stumbled and crawled to find Roman.

"Lord Roman, something terrible has happened! A demon appeared in Sig Town last night!"

At this moment, Roman stood in front of the neatly cultivated fields. He admired the rows of orderly furrows and the soil moistened by the morning mist, finding it more and more pleasing to the eye.

Roman frowned immediately upon hearing that pig-like scream.

……

"Is she a witch?"

"It's a witch, isn't it?"

"Magic can't do that, and even if it could, it couldn't last that long. Only witches have such unpredictable magic."

After learning the details, Roman called Green and Aaron over, and together they deduced the main cause of the phenomenon.

When talking about witches, one cannot help but mention the church.

This religion, which worships gods, holds a rather special place on this land.

The king, nobles, and the church together constituted the power class of this era.

However, the relationship between the three was quite subtle. The nobles obeyed the king, the king submitted to the church, and the church was wary of the nobles.

The Church has the majority of its power located within Sinnoh. They not only possess priests with healing abilities, but also have a powerful armed force.

For example, there are many armed organizations such as the Holy Templar Order of the Pope, the Demon Hunter Order of the Cardinals, and the Inquisition's Knights of Judgment.

Armed forces and faith enabled the church to collect tithes from the entire land.

Tithing refers to one-tenth of the total national income.

Even so, Roman never saw the Grand Duke of the Cracked Armor make any compromises with the Church.

The Black Iron Kingdom is the most powerful nation on this land, with its three Grand Dukes controlling nearly 40% of the kingdom's military strength and territory.

They also shook their heads at the church, having never paid tithes.

Of course, this does not mean that the farmers of the Black Iron Kingdom live more comfortably than those of other countries.

Nobles and the church are similar; both are oppressors who leave peasants only a meager surplus of grain before ruthlessly taking away the majority of it.

Faced with a gluttonous beast that can never get enough to eat, even if the land is planted with a lot of grain, the farmers can only stay at the stage of barely surviving.

The three dukes refused to pay taxes, but the king of the Black Iron Kingdom paid a tithe instead.

Roman found this to be a very interesting phenomenon.

The leader pays money to the church, but the three top leaders under him despise the church. There are rather complicated historical reasons for this.

Let alone scoffing at it.

If the Papacy's army dares to step out of Sinnoh, it will be attacked by the three Grand Dukes.

As a remote territory of the Lord of Rift Armor, Sig Town has no church presence, and the church has no intention of proselytizing here.

If there were a church, Roman would have had to dispose of it privately.

With mountains high and the emperor far away, what's there to be afraid of!

Closer to home.

Magic is a form of supernatural power.

However, magicians require special training, and magicians have basically disappeared from this land. Only some nomadic tribes possess rudimentary magic, call themselves magicians, and make a living by performing their talents.

Witches are natural spellcasters, and all women have a very small chance of awakening witch powers.

The church viewed witches and sorcerers together as sources of calamity and uncleanliness.

Therefore, the Church's Demon Hunter Knights have been hunting witches and magicians for a long time, causing countless tragedies.

These matters did not involve the interests of the nobility.

Therefore, the nobles didn't care whether the witches were persecuted or not. The witches' magic was considered by the conquering knights to be nothing more than superstitious tricks.

In the eyes of the conquering knights, even a mortal could kill a weak witch with salt and a dagger.

This phenomenon would be impossible for a conquering knight.

Witches are not worth taking seriously at all.

However, the church seems to have a terrible obsession with witches. Once a witch is discovered, not only will she be burned at the stake, but her family members will also be purified.

They also claimed that an evil witch had corrupted their family members' bodies through blood ties.

When Roman was 10 years old, he witnessed the church burning witches.

She was a witch who awakened in the territory of the Cracked Armor Clan.

The Grand Duke of Cracked Armor refused to pay tithes, but for some reason did not object to the Church arresting witches on his territory, even though the Church intended to burn the witches in public.

Roman was very curious about this, so he went over to take a look.

He saw the burning pyre, with black smoke rising from the flames and drifting into the sky like the devil's grin.

A woman, powerless and helpless, was bound to the stake. As the flames burned, her neck was craned back, her face covered in soot and blackening, her hair disheveled, and her body subjected to the intense heat.

But those screams of pain and despair were all drowned out by the crackling sound of the wood fibers breaking.

Until everything collapsed and turned to ashes.

That scene deeply shocked young Roman, as if something inside him had been shattered.

……

"That's not a devil, it's just a witch."

At the dinner table, the butler Seth brought out the breakfast.

Roman gestured for Mohr to sit down.

There are no rules here, and Green and Aaron started eating.

Sais was also allowed to sit at the table, but this old-fashioned man only wanted to stand next to him, refusing to eat the fresh food and insisting on eating the leftovers.

At Roman's invitation, Moore cautiously took a seat and then asked, "So, sir, what do you intend to do with this witch? Should we notify the church?"

There is no church influence in Sig Town.

But Moore believed that once the fanatics learned of the witch's presence, they would not care about the short journey of a thousand miles and would even reward the informant with 10 gold coins.

That's the price of twenty oxen!
Roman glanced at him: "Why deal with her? Why notify the church? She was just passing by."

Moore was speechless.

This is the frontier of the Black Iron Kingdom, and there is no place more remote than Sig Town. Surprisingly, a witch is passing by here.

My noble lord, do you even believe your own lies?
Moore believed it.

"Yes, you are right."

Roman then asked, "It didn't cause any panic, did it?"

Moor said, "No, two poor souls witnessed her. They weren't cursed. I shut them up. I've also checked the situation in Sig Town. No one is missing or injured."

Roman nodded and said, "Then let's not worry about it."

The witch seems to be looking for someone in Skye Town.

But it didn't matter; Roman didn't care about the witch's origins or purpose, as long as she didn't get in his way.

Otherwise, how can we find it?
Should we dig up Sig Town?
It is said that if one possesses amethyst, special phenomena will occur when one holds this extraordinary crystal near a witch.

Because amethyst has the power to see through evil.

But Roman didn't have amethyst, nor did he have the time or inclination for it.

After he finished breakfast, he set off for Skye with Green, Aaron, Seth, and Moore.

……

(End of this chapter)