Brown Stone Village.

It didn't take more than a day to arrive at Brown Stone Village.

By earth's middle-ages standard, this could never be called a village. There were at least a few thousand villagers here, which is considered the standard of a village for this world. There's a big need for manpower here, while food is easy to produce with the aid of magic, simple diseases like the cold can be cured in mass by a low-leveled spell. It's not abnormal that there are so many people. Although many people still die from bandits and such.

I rode a horse in front of the entourage, I had exited the carriage just to take a look at my territory, and what I saw wasn't different from what I expected.

Wooden huts, some with rotting planks. Dirty (in the literal sense) peasants working on the fields, although most were taking care of cattle, which is the specialty of the village. There were a few elderly working, some of them were eighty years old with long white beards, but they were still able to take care of some cattle. The children had hoes in their hands as they plowed the field, or fixed fences with wood hammers and nails (which already exist).

Whenever I passed by, the peasants would give way and bow respectfully, it was a little fun to see the children stumble when bowing too fast, one even fell face-first to the ground.

However, one elderly man who had much difficulty walking, didn't get out of the way of the carriage behind me in time.

I was already past him and turned to see that the carriage behind me was still moving, and the old man was still in front of it.

"Stop the carriage!" I shouted, but there was no time. The horses wouldn't stop fast enough, and the man driving didn't react fast enough.

I usually wouldn't be able to react, but I already trained my spells enough, I could cast Cat's dexterity by instinct.

With my heightened senses, I jumped from the horse and landed next to the man with the help of mana.

The old man was frightened, the carriage was already so near he could feel the breathing of the horses. However, the hit didn't come. The old man felt two arms hugging him, and then wind blew on his face.

After opening his eyes again, he saw a black-haired man by his side, me.

The moment I hugged him, I cast one of the five spells I learned from random elements, Wind Step. It enabled be to use air as a platform once, but only once since I have no affinity with wind.

The old man was surprised, but soon reacted.

"My lord! Forgive me for my impudence!" The old man said, trying to kowtow in front of me, but his legs gave in.

I grabbed him again before he fell.

"No, I am sorry. My servant should have stopped the carriage when you were passing by. I'll lecture him later." I said to the man, with my usual cold face.

I left him there and rode my horse again.

"March!" I gave the command, and the entourage started going forward again.

The peasants by my side were surprised by my act of using magic to save a mere old man. But to me, it's just proper.

I had my share of selfish and corrupt politicians in my world. What's the reason someone would be given the position of a leader, if they can't even take care of those he leads? I still have my own morals.

I followed the main street… The wide earth patch that lead to the Lord's manor.

The manor wasn't anything surprising by this world's standards, but it is actually as big as Lord Angus' manor, not counting the space expansion spells his mansion had, but mine didn't. There were wide carved glass windows, a steel gate, a run-down garden and even a broken fountain in front of the manor. The manor itself should have more than fifty rooms.

"Hey Violet… How is this manor compared to your mother's." I asked violet, who was riding another horse behind the carriage.

"It's utter trash. Architecture and infrastructure in this world is really developed, and it also uses magic. This manor is a really standard one that would take a construction-specialized magus a few hours to make. It also has no magic circles inscribed in it, so it's just a normal manor." Violet said, with a smug smile.

"But of course, it is." Mary added. "You are just a small Baronet that barely started ruling. There's no way you could have anything worth much. If you invest your money well though, it can change fast." She commented. Thankfully I have a lot of money I got from helping Artmer, I can spend it to grow this village into something bigger.

Aside from that one time with Victoria, Mary is always stoic and arrogant with anyone but Violet. She even treated Lord Angus with little more than respect. As part royal, she has an almost unbreakable pride.

"Oh… Really?" I asked with a slight smile, and asked Violet again. "Violet… How is the noble's current approach to economy?"

Violet already understood what I was thinking.

"Heavily reliant on taxes, no investment on commerce a basically leeching off the peasants and merchants. Only in the Vitaogon empire do the nobles have a better mindset."

What did this mean?

"Let's lower the taxes, and the merchants will flock here like bees to honey. Start a program to lend gold to start-up merchants, Invest in bringing talents and manpower here, and give the serfs a salary to spend… And let's start an education program. Also, import normal full-body armor and weapons… I'll need them for later." I explained my ideas.

"Those otherworld ideas are really difficult to understand… I can see the reason behind lowering taxes, as well as getting manpower and talents to come here… But giving the serfs money? And education? It will cost basically all the money we have!" Mary argued. Violet already explained our origins to her, but as expected from a veteran warrior that went through a lot, she accepted it well after the initial shock.

"It may look dumb, but that's already been proved to work. Even if we lower the taxes now, and barely scrape by for some time, in a few years, that will pay off dozen-fold. As for education… It's going to pay back two-hundred-fold in a decade."

Violet explained. We had the same problem with slavery back on earth, people back then underestimate the value of an economy formed by freemen with money to spend.

"Well, that's something to do later… For now, let's enter the manor."

Violet and I discussed about the plans in detail, I didn't know much about public administration, but Violet knew more than a little, since she learned a lot about it from early age in the past life…

This is the first time I wished I had payed more attention in handling business in my past life… I barely learned enough from what my mother taught me every now and then.

We spent the rest of the day fixing the manor to a usable state, and then went to sleep…

But at night, I was woken up by someone…