I Reincarnated as a Noble Girl Villainess But Why Did It Turn Out This Way?

Golden Sea

Two years had passed. In just two years, my domain had changed greatly. Outside my window, all I could see beyond the fence, were rippling waves of wheat. He had done quite well in only two years, is what I was thinking, Earl Terejia could be proud of what he had accomplished.

Due to the despotism of the Kaldia family, the people’s resources had been stretched to the limits. Since my shallow father’s biggest problem was his fear of rebellion, he had  repressed the people overzealously. If they didn’t work in the fields, then there would be less income. Even an idiot could see that this would only eventually lead to self-destruction.

But, saying that my father did not completely understand the famine issues within my domain, might have been an exaggeration. He knew that repressing the people as much as he did would reduce income. Then, how did he maintain such a luxurious lifestyle in bad taste?

……When I learned about my family’s incredibly evil “source of income,” I was unable to stop myself from throwing up at the boundless depths of human greed and evil, even if he were my own father.

Among the punishments for the people in this domain, there was something called forced labor. Basically, putting someone to work. With my common sense from the previous world, there wasn’t really anything like this in my country, so at first I was a bit confused.

When my father started the forced labor system nineteen years ago, he would take girls from twelve to eighteen years old, and boys from ten to fifteen years old, and force them into sex service. Without sugarcoating it, he was basically treating the domain’s people as slaves.

In the Arxia Kingdom, “slavery” is considered illegal.

It is clearly stated in national law that slavery is illegal, but, it is only there in the first place because the state church, the Ar Xia church, protested against slavery on a large scale. The reality is that most commoners were under a system similar to slavery, called serfdom, in this country.

Father, with his despicable cleverness, came up with this trick to get around the label of “slavery.” First, saying that this wasn’t a demotion or a lifetime thing like slavery. Also, sending the gathered laborers to other domains to work as well. Calling this only as “labor” to the very end.

In this country, no, on this entire continent, people were merely considered to be the property of their domain’s lord. This was considered to be common sense here, but I disagreed with it. Meaning, a rental fee could be earned by loaning out the “property.” It had to be concealed in this flashy manner, and nobody would blame my father.

Since anti-slavery laws were strong in the Arxia Kingdom, openly practicing slavery would mean getting exiled. Although Earl Terejia seemed to have a strong sense of ethics, there were probably corrupt nobles in other parts of Arxia.

Because this country had enjoyed a long period of peace, I wonder if that caused Arxia to stagnate and begin to rot from inside. Unfortunately, I found out that “laborers” were dispatched to countless houses. And even now, there were still many of them.

These laborers were an example of the numerous despotic laws that my father enacted like vomit. It was horrifying. “Laborers” that returned due to pregnancy would be abused even more, increasing even further the amount of psychological damage dealt to them.

Since they were under an unbearably high tax, countless commoners were in the harsh situation of facing starvation, and there were so many famished people that improving the quality of life within my domain was progressing slowly.

That’s why I was saying, things were better already. Earl Terejia had put the safety of my domain’s people as his first priority.

He started with the hunger issue. He sold off all the excessively expensive stuff in the house. That’s good. I wouldn’t even know where to sell all these things. That money was used to provide free meals to the people.