Unknown Knight

Relying on his superficial ability to judge people, Aix talked half-truthfully with the girl named Desevi. After a few cups of hot beer, the atmosphere of their conversation became more and more harmonious. Aix started with bows and arrows. He combined Professor Bandak's shooting skills with related knowledge from later generations, and pretended to exchange archery experiences with Desevi. When he got excited, Desevi took off her bow and shot three arrows at the oil lamp hanging on the wall of the tavern. All three arrows hit the same place above the oil lamp, causing everyone in the tavern to sigh. Aix gave him some flattery appropriately. Later, as they got drunk, they talked about Desevi's tortuous life experience.

What Aix said was right. This woman had indeed experienced many ups and downs. She was born in a remote village called Kurum. Her father was a cowardly and incompetent man. Such people would never have a good life at any time, let alone in the cruel Middle Ages. So Desevi suffered from it since she was a child and went through a lot of hardships. When she grew up, her father married her to a drunkard who would beat people when drunk. Seeing that life was hopeless, Desevi bravely escaped from her husband. Later, in order to survive, she had to join a group of robbers. During this period, she met the love of her life, a The man named George was the one who taught her hunting and archery. The two of them spent the happiest time of her life together, but happy times are always short-lived. Their sweetness was envied by other bandit accomplices, who together excluded and suppressed the couple. Finally, in a fight caused by a quarrel, these bandits killed her lover and drove her away. Since then, she has been wandering at the border between Swadia and the Nordic Kingdom, practicing archery and waiting for an opportunity to take revenge, while relying on hunting to make a living. This time she came to Sagoth to sell the animal skins she had saved.

Every woman is strong, but also has a soft spot in her heart. Desevi may have been a lone hunter for a long time. In addition, she drank a lot of wine today, and the floodgates of her heart opened. She said more words tonight than she had said in half a year. When she was sad and emotional, she showed her soft side as a woman and cried. Fortunately, when Bandak saw Desevi shoot three consecutive arrows, he understood Aix's intention and returned to the caravan in time to call the only woman, Catherine. This woman also had a rough life. All women who could travel around in the Middle Ages had this characteristic. Therefore, the two who sympathized with each other quickly became confidants and became good girlfriends who could talk about anything. With Catherine's comfort and relief, Desevi stopped crying, and the two came to the previous wine table hand in hand and sat down.

Aix used his magic weapon "money power" at the right time, and paid the bartender to serve some good wine and food, and the few people ate and drank together. Eating delicious meals, drinking warm beer, and the warm comfort and kind care of the people around made the lonely and miserable Desevi feel a sense of belonging. When Aix extended an olive branch to her through Catherine, everything fell into place, and another heroic figure joined the caravan family.

Everyone enjoyed the meal very much. During the meal, the low-key and introverted Fatis was uncharacteristically generous and promised Desevi to help him get revenge. Maybe because he drank too much, Aix's heroic blood was aroused again. Following Fatis' promise, he said that family members should not have different opinions, her hatred was everyone's hatred, and the caravan would avenge her. Catherine and Bandak also expressed their opinions. Desevi was moved and burst into tears again. After a round of drinks, seeing that the hearts of several core members of the caravan were more cohesive, Aix was very relieved. Since he came to this world, he always felt empty in his heart. Now he has such a few sincere partners around him, which makes him feel more at ease than ever before. Not only him, but everyone wants to be in such a team. Look, such a person came over and came to the table with a cup of hot beer. He said embarrassedly:

"Excuse me, everyone. I would like to buy this gentleman a drink. I wonder if I can do you the honor."

Seeing the hot beer handed to him, Aix was a little confused, and the others didn't know how to respond for a moment. This person felt that his behavior was a bit rash, and his face turned red. He had to bite the bullet and continue:

"I wanted to buy you all a drink, but I only have five coppers, so..."

"It's my pleasure."

Aix took the initiative to clink glasses with him to ease the current awkwardness. He was also very curious about the purpose of this person's visit, so he said gently:

"Do you need any help?"

"Uh, I was just sitting next to you and heard you guys were hiring, so I wanted to come over and try my luck."

Everyone suddenly realized what was going on. Aix took a closer look at the young man. He was not tall and thin, probably in his early twenties, with a slightly childish face. He was wearing a casual gown made of fine linen. His face was fair and had a slight beard. His eyes were bright and lively. He should have come from a good family, but he had dark circles under his eyes and a dark forehead. It seemed that he had been having a bad time recently.

Aix decided to understand the situation first, so he said to him:

"We are looking for people, but we only need friends with special abilities. What are your specialties?"

"Uh..., this..."

Obviously, he didn't expect someone to ask him this question. Then he thought that he really didn't have any particularly outstanding abilities, and he didn't know how to answer for a moment.

Seeing that he couldn't explain it for a while, Aix had to help him out:

"You can also introduce yourself."

"My name is Manid, and I'm a merchant from Gronia. To be more precise, I'm a merchant from a merchant family. My father, my father's father, and my ancestors were all merchants. I'm familiar with the market prices of various commodities produced in Gronia, especially spices, including those produced in Kugit and Sarande."

As he spoke, he carefully observed Aix's expression. When he found that Aix had no impatience or disgust, he knew that he had made the right choice. Especially when he talked about his familiarity with spices, he found that Aix was obviously interested, so he continued:

"You should know that the price and quality of spices are crucial in the spice trade. If you master it well, you can earn several times or even dozens of times the profit. Even for spices produced in nearby Kugit and Sarand, it is not a problem to earn one or two times the profit."

Seeing that what he said was a bit exaggerated, Aix interrupted him and said:

"If the spice business is so lucrative, then what brings you here?"

Aix's words made Manide blush, and then he became angry and cursed:

"It's all because of those damned Khergit bastards..."

Bandak was obviously not happy after hearing what he said, and stood up suddenly. Fortunately, Aix stopped him in time. Some time ago, in Suno, through chatting with Yamila every night, Aix knew that his appearance roughly matched the appearance of the Kugit people. Combined with the fact that Old John and Bandak repeatedly tested his noble identity and asked him about the Kugit Khanate during that period, he vaguely felt that everyone should regard him as a fleeing Kugit noble. Fortunately, the caravan's eastward business route only went to Dehrim, and no one had been to the Kugit Khanate, and they didn't know much about the situation there, so he used a method of neither admitting nor denying to get away with it. So he immediately understood Bandak's reaction today and stopped Bandak. It was obvious that Bandak had the awareness of "the master humiliated the minister and the minister died", which made him grateful and secretly happy. He nodded and smiled, patted Bandak's shoulder, indicating that he didn't care, and motioned Manide to continue.

When Manid saw that he must have said something wrong, he stopped cursing the Kugit people and at Aix's signal, he had to tell the whole story.

It turned out that this Gronia merchant named Manid had recently spent all his money to buy a team of goods in his hometown, determined to come here to make a new world. As a result, he was not acclimatized to the climate and when passing through the Khergit Khanate, most of his property was robbed by local Khergit bandits. What's worse is that the caravan guards he hired took advantage of his misfortune and took away his remaining property at night two days later. As a result, he is now penniless and has to wander here.

When he heard that Aix at the next table was recruiting members for the caravan, he used his only five remaining copper coins to buy a cup of hot beer and came over to show his goodwill, hoping to join the caravan and find a temporary place to eat.

After listening to Manide's narration, Aix scratched his nose pretending to be embarrassed, and asked him about some personal situation and experience in business. Only then did he find that this man was a talent. Although he had no special skills in martial arts, and was even inferior to ordinary people, he had rich business experience, after all, it was inherited from his ancestors, and the most important thing was that he could keep accounts.

Don't underestimate the ability to keep accounts. One of the reasons why the feudal system was adopted in the Middle Ages was that the feudal lords found that once the scope of management became large enough, the territory would be in chaos or even out of control, so that some territories would have extremely high maintenance costs or even lose money. They had no choice but to divide some territories and collect certain taxes themselves. This actually saved money and trouble. The reason was that most feudal lords did not know how to keep accounts, and could not find qualified accountants. They did not know how much their territory produced and spent. In addition, the people below were not honest, and if they interfered a little, the territory would be in chaos, and they could not form effective control over the territory.

The situation in the country is like this and the people are even worse. Before Aix came to the caravan, the caravan under the leadership of Old John did keep accounts, but that was not formal accounting at all. Instead, they just put the receipts together in a wooden box and couldn't tell the difference between shipments and receipts, let alone inventory and sales. It was a mess. After Aix discovered this situation, with the help of Yamila, he spent several nights to sort out the accounts, and spent another two days to count the goods in the warehouse before finally sorting out the first complete account book of the caravan. Now, except for Aix who can keep accounts, Yamila is only an apprentice-level second-hand worker.

It was rare to find someone who could keep accounts. After seeing the account book that Manide carried with him, Aix immediately decided to hire him. After all, this era was not like later times, where everyone could write and do accounts. Having seen King Ragnar's secretary, he believed that Manide's ability was only better than that secretary.

The caravan had gained two talents, one civil and one military. Aix was very happy and gave up the idea of ​​licking an extra pair of "chopsticks". He asked the bartender to serve two more dishes. Everyone ate and drank to their heart's content and had a great time.

The next day, in order to save time, Aix decided to split his troops into two groups. Fatis and Amanti accompanied Aix to find King Ragnar's secretary to finalize the address of the warehouse. The rest of the people were led by Bandak to sell a small part of the coarse salt purchased from Tiha, and some other goods, as well as buy some linen, wine and other commodities produced in Sagos.

After meeting the secretary, Aix secretly gave him a purse containing 20 silver coins. After seeing the silver coins, the secretary's eyes narrowed into slits. Although King Ragnar was a rough man, he was famous for his cruelty and power. He never dared to stretch his hands too far. Things like today would not happen once in 25 years. His annual salary was only silver coins, so he was very happy and cooperated with Aix to choose the land. After picking a few plots of land, Aix was not very satisfied. The secretary changed his position and took the initiative to ask Aix some requirements. After learning some of Aix's ideas, he slapped his forehead and said that such a place was just right, so he led a few people to a piece of land.

This is a piece of land facing the street, not far from the central market. There is an abandoned warehouse facing the street, which is two doorways wide. It is said that it was used to store materials when the city was first built. There is also an open space two doorways wide next to it, which the clerk also allocated to the caravan with a stroke of his pen. There is also a large open space behind the warehouse. The entire plot of land added up is estimated to be twice the size of the Sunuo City warehouse.

After handing over the relevant formalities, Aix invited the clerk to have a drink but was unsuccessful. Perhaps he was afraid of leaving some excuse, so Aix did not force him to stay and sent him away politely.

It took several people a long time to open the door of the warehouse, and there was an unexpected surprise inside. One third of the warehouse was filled with wood, which was probably left over from the construction of the city. There was also a pile of rusty carpentry tools, nails, door handles and other building materials in the corner. Amanti estimated that these things were worth more than 300 silver coins, which made Aix exclaim in his heart that the 20 silver coins were a great value.

After discussing with Amanti, the two finalized the plan for the entire plot of land. Aix decided to repair the warehouse first and then use it. A two-story building facing the street was built on the vacant land next to it. As for the backyard, it was directly fenced off for parking and temporary storage of goods. After a rough calculation by Amanti, the wood in the warehouse was basically enough for about 200% of the entire plan. Aix allocated silver coins for the rest, leaving Amanti to recruit local workers for construction, and leaving Bandak and a carpenter to help him.

In the afternoon, Aix took Amanti and Fatis on another tour of the city of Sagos, purchased some construction materials and tools, and was busy until it was almost dark.

After a day of busy work at Bandak's end, all the goods transactions were completed and the six carriages were basically full. Looking at the prices of the goods in and out of the accounts, Aix was very satisfied. It seemed that Manide had made a considerable contribution here.

In the evening, Aix invited everyone to a simple meal in the tavern. After the meal, he led everyone except a few people on duty to the warehouse and held a small meeting for everyone in the new base. The focus was to explain some new things he had thought of to Amanti and Bandak. Mainly because these two were going to carry out the mission independently, Aix was very worried.

After the meeting, everyone walked around the new base, everyone was very excited, especially the old brothers from Sunuo City. They had been depressed in Sunuo City for a long time some time ago. Some people even thought that the caravan might be disbanded at any time, and they were afraid of losing the caravan's livelihood. They were in a state of panic all day long. Now seeing the caravan's business growing bigger and bigger, everyone was happy from the bottom of their hearts, talking and laughing all the way back to the inn to rest, just waiting to return to Sunuo City tomorrow.