Chapter 154: Shift in Mentality

Ulyan’s attitude toward Leo changed every single month.

Before arriving at the Riverbend, he regarded Leo merely as a little barbarian and his own vanguard.

To be cold-blooded about it, it wouldn’t have mattered even if he was expended.

A man seasoned by long years of warfare develops a mindset utterly different from ordinary people.

Human life held little value in Ulyan’s eyes, even when the person in question was a promising junior whom he held in high regard.

Dead was dead, as long as the death served a purpose.

After returning to the village, Leo and Vicky were not the only young juniors he valued and strictly trained, but virtually all of them had perished over the past two years.

The deaths of these individuals bought a chance of survival for the remaining villagers.

Given the dire circumstances of the past, the death of a single clansman could save ninety-nine others; by any calculation, it was a worthwhile trade.

Not only Ulyan, but even the families of the deceased felt it was entirely worth it.

However, after reaching the Riverbend, following a brush with near-fatal injuries, Leo’s wits finally seemed to awaken. He finally understood how to use his brains rather than his forehead when doing things.

At that point, Ulyan began to shed his previous reckless and laissez-faire attitude, starting to boss Leo around with frequent reprimands and beatings.

This was because he had invested deeper hopes and no longer viewed Leo as mere combat consumable.

He began to expect Leo to acquire some basic military common sense, become a qualified militia commander, and provide greater assistance to both himself and the clan.

By the time Leo returned victorious from several battles, having offered sound advice during every major decision, Ulyan finally began to treat him as a true successor.

From then on, whenever he spoke or acted, he would discuss and communicate with Leo, rather than brushing Leo’s words aside as he used to.

By now, he could safely leave Leo to handle matters independently.

This psychological evolution seemed complex and protracted, yet it had actually spanned only half a year.

In half a year, even a kobold could not mature this quickly!

The rest of the villagers shared the same shift in mindset. Initially, whatever Leo wanted to do, the mobilized militia and villagers would wait for Ulyan’s nod first, and some would even voice doubts.

Now, at Leo’s single call, the villagers asked no questions at all, simply picking up their everyday tools and following right behind him.

With a hundred soldiers and five hundred laborers in his hands, Leo finally had the confidence to get things done.

As the saying goes, giving a man a fish is not as good as teaching him how to fish; relying solely on relief is useless during a disaster—it is far better to provide work in place of relief.

Yet in ancient times, the use of public works as relief was far less common than simply opening granaries to distribute food.

It was not because the ancient officials were stupid, but because the conditions simply did not permit it.

Work-for-relief could only be applied on a small scale of famine—for instance, if a province suffered a crop failure while the neighboring province had surplus grain, providing the confidence to supply a large influx of external food in a short time.

Otherwise, once construction began, food consumption would multiply several times over. During a time of famine, work-for-relief would not only exhaust the people and drain the treasury, but actually exacerbate the disaster.

Beyond that, a powerful organizational capacity was required, enabling the ruling authorities to keep the hands of minor officials in check from above, while controlling the displaced vagrants at the work sites from below.

Otherwise, if ten officials were assigned to disaster relief, nine would only think about how to line their own pockets.

Embezzlement was inevitable; even if it meant risking a vagrant uprising or execution by superiors, they would still steal!

Eighteen years later, they would still be a fine corrupt official!

Out of ten foremen, nine would plot to form cliques and gather as bandits in the mountains.

There was no way they would ever do honest labor; it was much better to launch an uprising and wait for a royal pardon.

Eighteen years later, they would still be stout fellows!

This was precisely why records of work-for-relief invariably appeared during the zenith of a dynasty’s early and middle periods, while the late years of a dynasty saw nothing but the uniform opening of granaries.

Didn’t the lords of Isenpor want to reap the dividends of the refugee wave? Didn’t they want to use the opportunity to develop their fiefs and expand their territories?

It wasn’t that they didn’t want to, but that they lacked the execution capability.

Lords with poor management skills couldn’t even govern their own regular subjects.

Opening a refugee work site—forget commanding them to work—was a failure even in maintaining order in the food lines.

The nobles above never thought to manage it, and the supervisors below had zero desire to do so.

Vagrants performed hard labor yet went unfed, only to be met with the supervisor's whip.

Aside from hardened recidivists who were sufficiently savage and strong, the rest either banded together to raise their priority for food, or simply slacked off as much as possible during work to conserve their stamina, surviving on scraps or running away on an empty stomach.

When payment according to work was replaced by payment according to strength, a good deed was twisted into a disaster.

When the Solovy Knight’s Territory built its hot spring manor, recruiting a mere five hundred vagrants had already pushed them to their absolute limit.

And that was merely the population aspect. Transforming them into a qualified labor force practically exhausted the grassroots management of the Riverbend and the three other knightly territories under Petukhov—namely, the seasoned craftsmen and trusted subordinates.

Without this grassroots organization, vagrants were nothing more than a chaotic mob, far less useful than kobolds.

This was not a foundation that any random petty lord could easily pull off.

While Leo tried to harbor goodwill toward everyone, he was also deeply aware of the dark side of human nature. If he were to venture out single-handedly with grain for disaster relief, it would be tantamount to seeking death.

However, one hundred fully armed Riverbend veterans and five hundred disciplined vagrant laborers possessed the capacity for self-preservation even when faced with five times their number of refugees, ensuring they would not lose their footing in panic.

Refugees were not a regular army, comprising men, women, and children of all ages, and were so starved they could barely walk.

No matter how they were incited or coerced, if a real battle broke out, two volleys of arrows would send eighty percent of them turning tail and fleeing in a rout.

Leading his troops and labor corps with fully provisioned supplies, Leo set out along the Riverbend toward the western watchtower.

Although this thirty-li highway was still a mud road, through daily treading and maintenance, it had already become smooth enough for caravans to pass freely to and fro.

Less than two li away from the western watchtower lay a narrow stream, less than ten meters wide, flowing from the western dense forest into the Anzeno River.

Beside the stream stood an open clearing where nothing grew save for a few centuries-old giant oak trees.

So massive were the oaks that virtually not even grass grew upon the clearing.

Leo led his men to encamp here, dividing the labor corps into five squads led by five foremen, and assigned their tasks.

One squad was responsible for felling trees, another for gathering stone, a third for building the camp, and a fourth for transporting materials.

The final squad was tasked with going to the western watchtower to recruit vagrants.

The first step in saving people was opening a factory!

He was going to establish a cassava flour processing plant here, engaging in assembly-line production to turn the vagrants into his very own wage laborers.

The process of making cassava flour was extremely simple, and over half of the procedures were not heavy physical labor, allowing even the elderly and weak to participate.

Therefore, unlike the previous policy in the Riverbend that only recruited able-bodied adults, Leo’s recruitment of vagrants turned this on its head.

Families were given top priority!

Vagrants with families had emotional anchors, making them far more docile and easier to manage.

For an entire family to enter the factory as workers, with food and lodging provided, plus wages and benefits—it was simply too wonderful to imagine.

The vagrants of a magical middle ages had unexpectedly stumbled into the lifestyle of twenty-first-century wage laborers.

As long as a steady stream of antler cassava was fed in, a steady stream of cassava flour would be produced.

Their food supply would thus become self-sustaining.

As for the issue of sales, there was no need to rush at the current stage.

The Riverbend Fief had not yet achieved self-sufficiency in grain, so whatever could not be sold would simply be consumed internally.

There was currently no fear of having excess grain inventory; on the contrary, this would allow more manpower to be devoted with peace of mind to land reclamation and other construction projects.