Three months passed.
For Adrian, they were the busiest three months of his life.
The agricultural experiment had begun quietly.
At first, almost nobody cared.
Twenty acres of royal land had been divided into different sections.
Farmers planted wheat, barley, beans, and several other crops.
Some fields received manure.
Others received less.
A few were irrigated using water carried from a nearby stream.
It wasn’t revolutionary.
Not yet.
But the results were already interesting.
Some sections were doing noticeably better than others.
Adrian spent several mornings walking through the fields, asking questions and looking at the records.
He had learned quickly that agriculture was far more complicated than anything he remembered from books.
Soil differed.
Weather differed.
Seeds differed.
Even two neighboring fields could produce different results.
That was why he had insisted on testing rather than simply ordering every farmer in Arvendale to follow his ideas.
He didn’t have enough evidence yet.
And Adrian had no intention of gambling the kingdom’s food supply on a theory.
“Your Majesty.”
Adrian turned.
Eliza was walking toward him.
She carried a basket filled with grain.
“What’s that?”
“Today’s harvest.”
Adrian looked inside.
The grain looked healthy.
“From the rotation field?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“More than the same-sized field beside it.”
Adrian’s eyes narrowed.
“How much more?”
Eliza smiled.
“Enough that Tomas has stopped calling your experiment foolish.”
Adrian laughed.
“That’s progress.”
“He still thinks you’re strange.”
“I expected that.”
Eliza handed him the basket.
“But he admits the field looks good.”
Adrian examined the grain.
It wasn’t enough to prove anything.
One successful harvest could be luck.
Still, it was promising.
“Record everything,” Adrian said.
Eliza nodded.
“Already done.”
That answer pleased him.
The experiment was beginning to belong to the people working on it.
Not him.
That mattered.
The more difficult problem was money.
Adrian sat in the royal council chamber staring at the latest treasury report.
It was not good.
“How much?”
Lord Cedric Marrow swallowed.
“The treasury currently holds enough reserves for approximately eight months of ordinary government spending.”
Adrian frowned.
“Eight months?”
“Yes.”
“And if we have a poor harvest?”
“Less.”
Adrian looked around the room.
The ministers remained silent.
He understood why.
For years, Arvendale had been spending money without asking what the spending accomplished.
Royal banquets.
Court festivals.
Military ceremonies.
Road repairs that were delayed until roads became unusable.
Buildings that cost more than their original estimates.
Subsidies granted for political reasons.
Payments to nobles.
Payments to merchants.
Payments to everyone who had learned how to ask the crown for money.
Adrian rubbed his forehead.
“We need revenue.”
Cedric nodded.
“That is the obvious conclusion.”
“Then why haven’t previous kings fixed it?”
Cedric hesitated.
“Because increasing taxes is unpopular.”
Adrian gave him a flat look.
“I wasn’t asking to increase taxes.”
That surprised him.
Adrian stood and walked toward the large map of Arvendale.
“If we increase taxes now, farmers will produce less, merchants will hide more goods, and nobles will complain.”
He pointed toward the western provinces.
“We need more economic activity.”
Cedric frowned.
“Meaning?”
“More trade.
More production.
More people working.”
Adrian turned back toward him.
“If a merchant currently pays ten gold in taxes because he earns one hundred gold, I’d rather have him earn five hundred and pay fifty.”
Cedric stared at him.
“That sounds simple.”
“It isn’t.”
Adrian smiled faintly.
“But the principle is.”
The problem was creating the conditions for that growth.
Better roads.
Safer trade routes.
Reliable laws.
Less corruption.
Efficient ports.
But all of those things required money.
Which brought Adrian back to the same problem.
Money.
He hated circular problems.
That afternoon, Adrian visited the royal workshop again.
Daniel was nowhere near the waterwheel.
Instead, he was sitting at a workbench surrounded by pieces of wood and metal.
“What happened to the pump?”
Daniel looked up.
“It works.”
Adrian blinked.
“It works?”
“Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“It pumps water.”
“That’s generally the point.”
Daniel grinned.
“But the gears are wearing down.”
Adrian walked over.
He examined the mechanism.
It was crude.
Very crude.
But it worked.
A rotating waterwheel transferred movement through a basic gear system into a pump mechanism.
Water was being lifted from a lower channel into a wooden irrigation ditch.
Adrian watched it operate.
The flow wasn’t impressive.
But it was continuous.
That was what mattered.
“How much water can it move?”
Daniel shook his head.
“Still measuring.”
“Good.”
Daniel looked at him.
“You’re not going to tell me to build a bigger one?”
“No.”
Daniel looked genuinely surprised.
“Why?”
“Because you don’t know whether this design is efficient yet.”
Adrian pointed toward the machine.
“Improve this first.”
Daniel nodded.
Then Adrian added:
“And write down every measurement.”
Daniel smiled.
“I knew you’d say that.”
The next surprise came from Liora.
Adrian found her in the small laboratory he’d given her.
The young mage was staring at a collection of mana crystals.
Several were cracked.
“Should I ask?”
“They overheated.”
Adrian stopped.
“How?”
“I was trying to increase the rate of mana transfer.”
“Why?”
“Because mana crystals waste energy.”
Adrian raised an eyebrow.
“Waste?”
“Not exactly waste.”
She struggled to explain.
“When you draw mana from one too quickly, some of it becomes unstable.
The spell consumes more mana than necessary.”
Adrian immediately became interested.
“Can you measure it?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I’ve been building a measuring device.”
She pointed toward a table.
Adrian walked over.
The device looked like a strange mixture of copper wire, glass tubes, and a mana crystal.
“What does it do?”
“Measures mana flow.”
Adrian stared at her.
That could be extremely useful.
“How accurate?”
“Not very.”
“Yet.”
Liora smiled.
“Yet.”
Adrian nodded.
This was exactly why he had started finding talented people.
He didn’t need to know everything.
He needed people who could discover things he couldn’t.
But while Adrian’s small projects were producing encouraging results, his political problems were becoming more serious.
The first major confrontation came during a council meeting.
Duke Alaric Voss stood at the opposite end of the table.
“The crown has allocated funds to a royal agricultural experiment, a new irrigation project, additional military studies, and several workshops.”
Adrian said nothing.
Voss continued.
“And now we hear Your Majesty intends to change the tax system.”
“I intend to study the tax system.”
“With respect, Your Majesty, that distinction means little.”
Adrian leaned back.
“To you, perhaps.”
The duke’s expression tightened.
Several nobles exchanged glances.
Voss was not openly hostile.
That was what made him dangerous.
He was experienced.
He knew when to push.
“The kingdom has survived for generations using these institutions.”
“Survived?”
Adrian repeated the word.
“Yes.”
“Is survival the standard we’re aiming for?”
Silence.
Adrian looked around the room.
“Our grain production is falling.
Our roads are deteriorating.
Our treasury is weak.
Our merchants complain about transportation costs.”
He paused.
“And somehow the greatest danger is that we might change something.”
Nobody answered.
Adrian wasn’t angry.
He wasn’t even trying to intimidate them.
He was simply tired of pretending the current system worked.
Duke Voss finally spoke.
“Change creates uncertainty.”
“So does decline.”
The duke stared at him.
Adrian continued.
“I am not ordering every tradition destroyed.”
His voice softened.
“I am asking whether each tradition still serves Arvendale.”
That was different.
Several reform-minded nobles nodded.
Even some conservatives remained thoughtful.
Adrian noticed that.
Good.
He didn’t need everyone to agree.
He needed them to think.
Later that evening, Elena found him in the library.
“You made Duke Voss angry.”
Adrian looked up from a report.
“Did I?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“You told him that decline was also uncertain.”
Adrian smiled.
“Was I wrong?”
“No.”
Elena sat across from him.
“But you could have been less annoying.”
“I’ll try next time.”
“You won’t.”
“No.”
She laughed.
Then her expression became more serious.
“Are you worried?”
Adrian paused.
“About what?”
“Everything.”
She gestured toward the mountain of documents surrounding him.
“You’ve been working constantly.”
Adrian looked down at the report in his hands.
“Yes.”
“Then?”
He thought for a moment.
“I’m worried that I don’t have enough time.”
“For what?”
“To fix everything.”
Elena was quiet.
Then she smiled.
“You don’t have to.”
Adrian looked at her.
“Father spent his entire life trying to keep this kingdom stable.”
She leaned back.
“You’ve been king for only a few months.”
Adrian said nothing.
“You don’t have to rebuild Arvendale in one year.”
She smiled.
“Just make it a little better before you go to sleep.”
Adrian chuckled.
“That’s surprisingly wise.”
“I’m seventeen.”
“Exactly.”
She kicked his chair.
“Don’t make me regret helping you.”
The following morning, Adrian received three reports.
The first was from the agricultural project.
The crop rotation fields had produced approximately twelve percent more grain than the comparison fields.
Not enough for a kingdom-wide reform.
But enough to justify expanding the experiment.
The second was from Daniel.
The improved pump was capable of supplying water to several acres of farmland.
It still broke after prolonged use.
Daniel had already begun redesigning the weakest components.
The third report came from Clara.
Adrian opened it.
Then stopped.
The grain investigation had identified a provincial official who had been falsifying records.
But Clara had discovered something more troubling.
The official wasn’t working alone.
Several merchants were involved.
And the missing grain wasn’t being sold inside Arvendale.
It was being transported south.
Toward the coast.
Adrian slowly lowered the report.
The problem was no longer just accounting.
Someone was taking grain from the kingdom and selling it elsewhere.
During a period of declining harvests.
Adrian looked toward the window.
The southern coast was hundreds of miles away.
Ports.
Merchants.
Ships.
Foreign buyers.
He could already see the shape of the problem.
But he wasn’t going to accuse half the kingdom based on one report.
“Bring Clara to me.”
A guard bowed.
“Immediately, Your Majesty.”
Adrian returned his attention to the agricultural report.
Twelve percent.
It wasn’t much.
But it was real.
For the first time, one of his reforms had produced measurable results.
That gave him confidence.
The investigation, however, reminded him of something else.
Changing Arvendale wasn’t only about building new things.
He would also have to deal with the people who benefited from keeping the old system exactly as it was.
And that battle was only beginning.