Chapter 29— Father

"I'm angry! They hurt my cute children!"

　After presenting the Familiars to the aristocratic family, we are now returning to the inn we booked in the city.

　I was complaining one complaint after another in one of our rooms.

　That's exactly what it means to boil over.

　When I was looking at the Familiars whose horns were cut off, I almost hit the person executing the task.

　I was holding my palm tightly as I was putting up with it so that my anger wouldn't show, and my nails pierced enough into my skin to let out a bit of blood.

　Suddenly, I remembered a story I heard in my previous life.

　It's a story of a guide dog who was there to help the visually impaired.

　Guide dogs undergo specialized training to replace the eyes of the visually impaired.

　The first step seems to be to avoid barking at any time.

　This is because you cannot work as a guide dog if you bark unnecessarily.

　However, it seems that there was a guy who threw a cigarette at a guide dog who was stopped at a traffic light or something.

　The hair of the dog was burned as if it had been branded a mark, leaving burns on its skin.

　However, the dog trained as a guide dog still did not bark or cry out.

　The blind owner couldn’t hear any signs of pain from his guide dog, so he couldn't notice the sneaky behavior that had happened with the cigarette at that time.

　The owner, who later realized that, mourned a lot.

　Normally, if you have to experience that, you're likely to become a dog that hates humans, but the dog, who was an excellent guide dog, stayed close to and supported humans until his death.

　Dogs, which have been partners with humans since recorded history, have some so far depending on their education. (TLN: I think this is an altered version of this 9/11 Guide Dog story. Or it could be a Japanese story that I can’t get on Google because of my language preferences.)

　And it may be possible for a Familiar to do the same thing.

　Even if the horns growing from their heads were cut off, the Familiars endured without crying.

　I was crying a little involuntarily at that thought.

"It's time to calm down."

"Why isn't Father regretful?"

"I'm more worried about a horned Valkyrie dying prematurely. I don't know what the blame would be if the Familiar that we gave died soon."

　Mumumu.

　Is that possible?

　Unlike me, my dad was very calm.

　Unlike me, my father, who was born as a poor farmer in this world, is an illiterate person, but he is not crazy.

　He also notices a lot of things that I don't notice.

　In particular, he has a strong understanding of how vulnerable farmers are to the aristocrats.

　The remarks he made earlier may have come from there.

　The horned Familiars may die prematurely.

　I didn't even think about it, but I'm sure he’s worried about that.

　In fact, we don't even know how long a Valkyrie's life is.

　How many years will one live?

　Will they get sick if they cut corners in maintaining a Valkyrie’s health?

　It's frustrating, but I can only look it up later.

　In addition to this problem, it seems that my father was also interested in something else.

　It was the land of the forest that I cut out.

　As a child, I opened up a part of the forest in a short period of time that could erode the village if left alone.

　I don't know exactly how he feels about it.

　Maybe it looks very creepy to him that I went into a spooky forest by myself.

　However, it seems that he was more worried about another thing.

　The real problem was collecting taxes.

　The main methods of taxation are the poll tax, which is paid by seeing how many are in the family, and the land tax, which is paid according to the size of the farmland. (TLN: Poll tax is levied as a fixed sum on every liable individual…. So every person in Ars' family is worth an amount, and they have to pay that much money. Ex. Ars=$20, Mother= $50, Father=$60. $20+$50+$60= poll tax for the family.)

　Moreover, farmers have a rule to pay taxes with wheat grown in the fields.

　And it seems that he couldn't predict how much the tax would be this year as I expanded the land.

　Actually, it seems that the villagers thought that they would never be able to pay taxes if they expanded the fields so much.

　It seems that the village mayor secretly made a plan to steal the field from me who couldn't pay the tax.

　This time, I was able to meet with the aristocratic family who governs the land.

　My father made the petition he had been thinking about there.

　He complained that it would be necessary to grow hatsuka in the fields in order to continue producing Familiars, and that wheat could not be produced in the fields created by opening the forest.

　Even on the aristocratic side, the production of Familiars and the development of forests are important.

　The aristocrats listened to Father, who desperately petitioned, and allowed me to produce and sell Familiars, as well as to officially own the land and pay taxes with money instead of wheat.

　I'm very fortunate to be born to a dependable father.

　In this way, I was officially the owner of the land.