The next morning, Adrian was standing over a table covered in maps.
Not military maps this time.
Agricultural ones.
The western provinces of Arvendale were spread across the table, marked with rivers, villages, farmland, roads, and irrigation channels.
Several reports had been placed beside them.
Adrian rubbed his eyes.
He had spent half the night reading.
The numbers were ugly.
Grain production had been falling for years, yet the population continued to grow.
That meant the kingdom wasn’t simply dealing with a bad harvest.
It had a system problem.
“Your Majesty?”
Adrian looked up.
Minister of Agriculture, Lord Bernard Hale, stood across the table.
Beside him were two officials and three farmers.
Adrian had specifically requested farmers.
Not landowners.
Not nobles.
Farmers.
“Come in,” Adrian said.
“And please, sit.”
The men exchanged uncertain glances before taking their seats.
One of the farmers was Tomas, the man Adrian had spoken to several days earlier.
The other two were younger.
One was a broad-shouldered man in his thirties named Martin.
The other was a woman named Eliza, perhaps in her forties, who looked far less nervous than the others.
Adrian noticed that immediately.
“You’ve been farming how long?” he asked.
“Twenty-three years, Your Majesty,” Eliza answered.
“Your own land?”
“Mostly.
My family rents six fields from a minor lord.”
Adrian nodded.
“Good.
Then I want honest answers.”
Tomas smiled faintly.
“Farmers usually give honest answers when they’re tired enough.”
Adrian almost laughed.
“Fair enough.”
He pointed toward the map.
“Why is production falling?”
The officials immediately began discussing weather.
“Unusually harsh winters.”
“Flooding.”
“Several years of poor rainfall.”
Adrian listened.
They weren’t wrong.
But they weren’t telling the whole story.
“What about the soil?”
That stopped them.
Eliza answered.
“It’s tired.”
Adrian looked at her.
“Explain.”
“We plant the same fields with the same crops year after year.
Wheat, mostly.
Sometimes barley.
We add manure when we have enough, but there isn’t always enough.”
Martin nodded.
“After a few years, the fields don’t give as much.”
Adrian leaned forward.
“What do you do then?”
“More fertilizer.”
“What if you don’t have enough?”
Martin shrugged.
“We plant anyway.”
Adrian stared at the map.
Of course.
The kingdom had been trying to squeeze more food out of increasingly exhausted land.
And every year, when production dropped, taxes remained the same.
Farmers planted more.
The soil weakened further.
Production fell again.
A vicious cycle.
“Have any of you tried leaving fields unused for a season?”
Eliza raised an eyebrow.
“Fallowing?”
“Yes.”
“Of course.”
“Does it work?”
“Sometimes.”
“Then why isn’t it common?”
This time, Tomas answered.
“Because the tax collector doesn’t care whether the soil needs rest.”
The room became quiet.
Adrian slowly leaned back.
There it was.
One of the kingdom’s problems.
Not stupidity.
Not laziness.
Bad incentives.
A farmer couldn’t afford to let a field recover if he would still be taxed as though it were producing.
Adrian picked up a piece of charcoal.
He drew three sections on a blank sheet.
“Wheat.”
“Barley.”
Then he wrote:
“Legumes.”
The farmers stared.
“What’s that?” Martin asked.
“Beans, peas, things like that.”
Eliza frowned.
“And what are we supposed to do with them?”
“Plant them.”
“We already do.”
“Not randomly.”
Adrian began explaining what he remembered about crop rotation.
Not everything.
He wasn’t a professional agricultural scientist.
But he knew enough from his previous life to understand the basic principle.
Different crops drew different nutrients from the soil.
Some plants, particularly legumes, could help replenish nitrogen through their relationship with soil bacteria.
It wasn’t a magical solution.
But it was better than doing nothing.
“We could rotate the crops,” Adrian said. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
“Wheat one year.
Legumes the next.
Another crop after that.
Then wheat again.”
Lord Hale looked interested.
“Would that actually increase yields?”
“I don’t know.”
The minister blinked.
Adrian shrugged.
“But we can test it.”
That answer seemed to surprise everyone.
Adrian wasn’t pretending to know.
He was proposing an experiment.
“How large?” Eliza asked.
“Small at first.”
He looked toward Lord Hale.
“Find suitable royal land near the capital.”
“How much?”
“Enough for several different trials.
Not hundreds of acres.”
Adrian paused.
“Perhaps twenty acres.”
Hale nodded slowly.
“We can do that.”
“And I want farmers involved.”
The three farmers looked at him.
“Not nobles.
Not officials.
Farmers.”
Tomas smiled.
“You’re going to make them work?”
“I’m going to pay them.”
That earned a few laughs.
Adrian continued.
“We’ll divide the land into sections.
Different crops.
Different planting methods.
Different amounts of manure.
Irrigated and non-irrigated sections.”
He pointed toward another section of the map.
“And I want Daniel’s waterwheel tested there.”
Lord Hale looked confused.
“The workshop craftsman?”
“Yes.”
“The one building the water pump?”
“He’s trying to.”
Adrian corrected himself.
“It hasn’t worked properly yet.”
Tomas chuckled.
“Good.”
Adrian looked at him.
“Good?”
“Means we’re not the only ones failing.”
This time Adrian laughed.
“Fair enough.”
For the first time that morning, the tension disappeared.
They weren’t rebuilding Arvendale in a day.
They were simply trying something.
That was enough.
By midday, Adrian was walking through the royal workshop.
Daniel was standing beside a half-finished wooden machine.
It looked terrible.
Adrian stopped.
“What happened?”
Daniel wiped sweat from his forehead.
“It broke.”
“How?”
“The wheel turned too quickly.”
“Then slow it down.”
“I tried.”
“And?”
“It broke again.”
Adrian stared at the machine.
Daniel stared back.
Then Adrian smiled.
“Good.”
Daniel frowned.
“Good?”
“We learned something.”
Daniel’s expression changed.
He looked at the machine again.
Then at Adrian.
“You’re not angry?”
“Why would I be?”
“Because I failed.”
“You built something that didn’t exist before.”
Adrian walked around the machine.
“Failure is part of building things.”
He tapped the wooden frame.
“But we need to understand why it failed.”
Daniel nodded.
That was exactly what Adrian wanted.
Not servants waiting for instructions.
People who could think.
“What if the wheel is turning faster than the pump can handle?” Adrian asked.
Daniel looked at him.
“Then I’d need some way to reduce the speed.”
“Can you build one?”
Daniel stared at the machine for several seconds.
“A gear system.”
Adrian smiled.
“Try it.”
Daniel immediately reached for a piece of charcoal.
Adrian stepped away.
He didn’t give him the answer.
He didn’t need to.
Daniel was already thinking.
That afternoon, Adrian visited the royal agricultural grounds.
It wasn’t much.
A neglected stretch of land outside Valoria.
But it would become important.
Farmers marked the boundaries.
Officials recorded the soil conditions.
Samples were collected.
“This field received manure.”
“This one didn’t.”
“This section will be irrigated.”
“This one won’t.”
“If we don’t record what we do, how will we know what worked?”
The officials began taking notes.
Eliza watched Adrian for a while before approaching.
“Your Majesty.”
“Yes?”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Why are you doing this?”
Adrian looked over the fields.
The honest answer was complicated.
Because he had another life.
Because he’d seen what organized agriculture could accomplish.
Because he knew kingdoms didn’t become powerful simply because their kings were strong.
But none of that could be said.
So he gave her the truth he could.
“Because Arvendale can’t survive if we keep doing things the same way.”
Eliza studied him.
“And you think farmers can fix it?”
“No.”
Adrian shook his head.
“I think farmers, craftsmen, soldiers, scholars and officials all have something to teach the crown.”
She seemed surprised.
“Most kings don’t say that.”
“Most kings probably don’t have enough farmers yelling at them.”
Eliza laughed.
“Give it time.”
Adrian smiled.
“Noted.”
Three days later, Adrian received his first report.
Not from the agricultural ministry.
From Clara.
She entered his office carrying a thick folder.
“I found something.”
Adrian looked up from his paperwork.
“Already?”
“I’ve been sleeping four hours a night.”
“That’s not healthy.”
“I’ll sleep when the merchants stop lying.”
Adrian sighed.
“Clara.”
“Yes, Your Majesty?”
“Sleep.”
She reluctantly nodded.
Then placed the folder on his desk.
“The grain discrepancy is larger than we thought.”
Adrian’s expression hardened.
“How large?”
“Large enough that I don’t think all of it is accounting error.”
She opened the folder.
“There are missing shipments from three western provinces.
Grain collected from farmers appears in provincial records, but some shipments never reach the royal warehouses.”
“How much?”
“Not enough to bankrupt the kingdom.”
She looked at him.
“But enough to feed thousands of people.”
Adrian stared at the documents.
For a moment, he said nothing.
Then he closed the folder.
“Don’t confront anyone yet.”
Clara nodded.
“I assumed you’d say that.”
“Keep investigating.”
“How far?”
“Until you know where the grain goes.”
Clara smiled slightly.
“Understood.”
She turned to leave.
“Clara.”
She stopped.
“Yes?”
“Get some sleep.”
She sighed.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
After she left, Adrian leaned back in his chair.
Agriculture.
Taxes.
Infrastructure.
Military logistics.
Corruption.
Every problem seemed connected to another.
He had expected ruling a kingdom to be complicated.
He hadn’t expected it to feel like trying to repair a machine while it was still running.
And the machine was enormous.
His kingdom.
Outside the window, Valoria stretched across the horizon.
Thousands of people lived there.
Thousands more lived in villages Adrian had never seen.
They didn’t know their king was studying crop rotation.
They didn’t know he was reading financial reports late at night.
They didn’t know about the experiments beginning outside the capital.
And Adrian realized something.
That was probably how change worked.
It rarely began with everyone cheering.
Sometimes it began with twenty acres of dirt.
A broken machine.
A few stubborn farmers.
And a king willing to admit he didn’t know whether his idea would work.
Adrian looked back at the agricultural map.
For the first time since becoming king, he felt like he had actually started something.
Not a speech.
Not a decree.
Something real.
Something that could grow.
And if it failed?
He would learn.
Then try again.
Because Arvendale had spent decades slowly falling behind.
Adrian intended to spend the rest of his reign making sure it never did again.