The Crown of Rutile Quartz: Volume 1 [Parts 1 to 8] by Surume Enoki

Author:Surume Enoki
Language: eng
Format: epub

Later that afternoon, Slaine met with Chancellor Sergey and Minister Adrashelm in the council room to relay his suggestion.

Just as Monica had, the two men stared at Slane with dumbfounded expressions. Then they looked at one another in silence.

Slaine felt himself growing tense and nervous as he observed the ministers’ terribly stern faces.

Monica had praised his thinking, but perhaps it was still reckless and presumptuous of him to make such a suggestion to the premier minister of the government and the head of domestic agriculture.

But then Sergey turned back to Slaine. “May I ask how you conceived of such a proposal, my lord?” he asked, his gaze as sharp as ever.

“Um, well, I remember reading a description in one of my mother’s history books.”

Slaine had often helped his mother in her work as a scribe, copying religious scrolls, technical manuscripts, storybooks, and historical texts. Of course, he’d had to read all those works to transcribe them.

While he’d often lacked the education to fully understand the content of certain specialized academic materials, he’d particularly enjoyed the fictional and historical materials, which were fairly easy for him to parse.

Even if he could not perfectly recite their contents, he could remember much of what he learned from those works—and he recalled a certain legume mentioned among the historical accounts he had read.

This bean had become widespread as a crop about two hundred years ago—back when the western kingdoms had been unified under the banner of the Valomean Empire. It was said that the bean was cultivated in the northern region of Salestakia, and spread from there.

“I remembered about it when I was taking lessons with Monica. I figured that if there were examples of such a thing in the past, then perhaps there were other new staple crops to be discovered now as well,” said Slaine. Nervous of being chided, he made the first move to criticize his own suggestion. “Imprudent of me, perhaps.”

“I see,” replied Sergey, quiet and motionless. He took a moment to think before he opened his mouth to speak again. “If I may be straightforward, I believe there may be merit to your proposal, my lord.”

Slaine’s eyes widened. The strict and uncompromising Sergey had found value in Slaine’s suggestion? This was perhaps the first time that Sergey had acknowledged one of Slaine’s opinions at all.

But the chancellor was quick to temper Slaine’s expectations. “It is too early yet to rejoice, my lord. It is a path worth pursuing, but that is all I can say—I do not know if we will be able to find a crop as useful as you imagine, nor if any crop we discover will be suitable for cultivation in Hasenvalia. And even were we to find such a crop, it may not be easy to convince the citizenry to accept this mysterious new produce as one of their staple foods. It took decades for even the three-field system to take root,” said Sergey. “No single idea will dramatically improve our society all at once. This will be a major project we must build from the ground up.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.