The Players And The Protagonist Want To Kill Me – Volume 1, Chapter 3
Chapter 3: System, You Have Loopholes
Shortly after, Sivey arrived outside Winterfell with a crowd of knights. He was here to complete his third Villain Mission.
(E/N – The 3rd mission was to stomp on a citizen’s vegetable garden)
What caught his eye was a wide moat, with a waterfall at the end. In the distance, green mountains, forests, and scattered villages surrounded the majestic Winterfell.
It was undoubtedly a beautiful sight, but behind the beauty lay widespread devastation.
As Sivey walked, all he saw were figures in tattered clothes, with sallow faces. Farmers wearing straw hats toiled in the fields, while women with headscarves carried baskets filled with wild fruits, preparing to sell them in Winterfell.
Occasionally, he would encounter a few hunters carrying wild animals or birds on their backs.
Though they looked healthier, they were covered in scars. In such a world, going into the mountains to hunt was essentially gambling with one’s life.
These people, who seemed to be living in extreme hardship, made up the majority of Eagle Territory’s population. Most of them were low-status farmers and serfs who lacked the rights and privileges of free citizens.
According to the kingdom’s laws, everything within the territory belonged to the lord.
Farmers had to work for the lord for at least four days a week without pay and had to pay taxes to the lord in the form of agricultural products and land rent, as a token of gratitude for the lord’s protection, even though they barely had enough food left for themselves.
The situation was even worse for serfs; they had no household registration, no land, and no personal property. They were just a group of unpaid laborers, and being able to eat a meal was their greatest luxury.
“System, these subjects were already exploited to the brink of collapse by the previous lord. Do you not feel guilty making me trample on their fields?” Sivey asked through gritted teeth, feeling uneasy.
As a young man educated in the 21st century, it was already outrageous enough to make him snatch candies from children. Now, he was being forced to bully these exploited farmers. It felt like rubbing salt in the wound.
[Ding! Host, muster up your courage to break your own bottom line. It’s better to endure short-term pain than prolonged suffering.]
“Damn it…” Sivey muttered, exasperated. “What short-term pain is this, childbirth?”
“Following the intent of this idiotic quest to torment these poor subjects is impossible,” he resolved, frustrated by the situation.
Sivey pondered deeply. If he truly did such a thing, what meaning would his life have? He would just be a pitiful puppet controlled by the system.
Know yourself and know your enemy, Sivey thought. He needed more information.
“System, can you tell me the specific criteria for villainous behavior?”
He didn’t know if the system would answer his question, but if it did, he might seize the opportunity to analyze the system’s rules.
[Ding! The effective standard for villainous behavior is to cause psychological trauma to others.]
“Psychological trauma?” Sivey propped up his chin, pondering deeply.
His actions in the city earlier could indeed have caused serious psychological trauma to a group of children, potentially becoming their childhood shadow.
But with the chubby child, he had told him that he would take one candy and give him two back, a behavior that obviously wouldn’t cause psychological trauma to the child. The system judged it as ineffective villainous behavior. With this in mind, Sivey felt like he had grasped something.
“So, it means that slapping someone and then giving them a sweet actually works, but the slap must be delivered to cause psychological trauma to the other party, and the other party must not know that there will be a sweet as compensation afterward.”
Sivey’s eyes lit up. He decided to immediately try out his idea. Looking around, he spotted farmland not far away.
Old Bertram was laboring in the field at this time. The scorching noon sun was baking his dark skin, and beads of sweat rolled down his cheeks into the field. Suddenly, he felt a tall shadow looming over him, covering his entire body. Then, a huge black hoof stepped on the wheat seedlings he had painstakingly planted.
“Who’s… oh?” Old Bertram frowned, about to rebuke the jerk who had trampled on his wheat seedlings. But when he raised his head, he was almost scared out of his wits.
He saw a noble knight with the emblem of the Golden Lion Clan on his armor, riding a majestic dragon-blood horse. Behind him was a group of knights, looking like his attendants.
Old Bertram swallowed hard, forcibly suppressing the curse words he was about to say, then his legs went weak, and he knelt on the ground.
“Mercy, my lord! Mercy, my lord!…”
Trembling, Old Bertram buried his head in the ground. His mind went blank, and apart from begging for mercy from the noble lord, he couldn’t say anything else.
Sivey watched the terrified old farmer kneeling on the ground, feeling uncomfortable.
He had clearly stomped on the old man’s field, but now it was this gray-haired old man who was kneeling on the ground, begging for mercy.
“This system is really terrible,” Sivey cursed inwardly. At this moment, Sivey and his knights had already trampled a two-meter-wide path in the field, but even so, the system still hadn’t judged Sivey’s Quest as completed.
There was no choice. Although he felt reluctant, Sivey had to order his knights to trample around the field.
Old Bertram glanced at this scene, trembling with fear, not daring to utter a word.
“It’s me who offended the noble lord. This is the punishment I deserve,” Old Bertram mourned bitterly in his heart, constantly telling himself that offending a nobleman was already fortunate enough to be able to save his life.
These were all wheat seedlings he had painstakingly planted. If he lost these wheat seedlings, he wouldn’t be able to pay taxes in the second half of the year. The ultimate result would be to have his land reclaimed and to be demoted to a serf.
[Ding! Daily Quest three has been completed. Would you like to claim the reward now?]
“No!”
It appeared that his tyrannical behavior had already inflicted serious psychological trauma upon the old farmer.
Now, it was time to explore the possibility of compensation.
If not, Sivey still needed to devise a solution to offer the old farmer an escape route.
But determining how to compensate was a delicate matter. The compensation not only had to rectify the old man’s losses but also couldn’t be too conspicuous, lest the old man suspect foul play. Whether the old man would eventually discern the truth was inconsequential; Sivey only needed to deceive the system for now.
Anticipating that the old man would spare no effort to salvage the wheat seedlings after their departure, Sivey suddenly conceived an idea. As they left the wheat field, he casually scattered a dozen or so silver coins.
Sivey held his breath anxiously, but even as they distanced themselves from the wheat field, he heard no prompt from the system.
“It seems my idea was correct.”
Sivey smiled faintly, feeling reassured.
Indeed, this system was quite inflexible, lacking adaptability.
Thus, it meant he could fully manipulate the system, harness its capabilities, and bolster his own strength.
Clement rode his horse beside him, having witnessed everything just moments ago.
While others might have perceived the scattered silver coins as an inadvertent act by Sivey, Clement would not be fooled. As an Earth Knight himself, Sivey possessed a keen sense of perception, enabling him to discern subtle details with remarkable precision. Hence, Clement was certain that the coins were deliberately dropped.
Although Clement couldn’t grasp the underlying purpose behind Master Sivey’s actions, he harbored a deep conviction that, akin to Sivey’s earlier act of snatching candies from children, there was undoubtedly a profound significance concealed within.
“Master’s behavior grows increasingly inscrutable,” Clement mused, gazing after Sivey with admiration and inner reflection.
In the wheat field, Old Bertram painstakingly straightened the crooked wheat seedlings, his eyes clouded with bitter tears.
Suddenly, reflecting the sunlight, Old Bertram spotted something round and gleaming amidst the wheat.
It was a silver coin!
Old Bertram blinked in disbelief, then confirmed its presence with a closer look.
With a surge of joy, he picked up the coin, holding it reverently as a token of gratitude to the deity of abundance.
As he continued his work, he discovered more silver coins scattered across the field, each one adding to his growing astonishment.
By the time he finished tending to the wheat, he had collected a neat total of thirteen silver coins in his tattered pocket.
This unexpected windfall was enough to sustain his family comfortably for a year, with ample funds to cover taxes and expenses, alleviating any fears of falling into serfdom.
Overwhelmed by the sudden fortune, Old Bertram couldn’t help but wonder if the noble knight who had visited the field earlier was responsible.
However, he quickly dismissed the thought, reasoning that such high-ranking nobles had little concern for the struggles of common peasants like himself.
Preferring to attribute the blessing to his devout prayers to the deity of abundance, Old Bertram bowed his head in gratitude, convinced that his steadfast faith had been rewarded.
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