Shu was quite a good teacher it seems.
Apparently, Shu was teaching them his personal "Kotori handbook" Which contained a large amount of information regarding how to address her and her mannerisms.
How Shu came to these conclusions about her behavior and why he decided to note them down was beyond Kotori's understanding, but she was happy with the fact that the spirits looked at her with awe.
There was now a rotation system among them. They would occasionally come and observe Kotori. Apparently looking at her was enough for them to be happy. She thought it was odd but let it continue.
They were very cute in a way. They had large round eyes with small bodies and that just made you want to protect them.
Kotori ordered them to burrow into the dirt in the fields and enrich the soil. If her hypothesis was correct. Then the spirits had the ability to enrich the soil naturally. The mana they emitted probably was low enough to make the soil healthier but not enough to birth new spirits.
Kotori on the other hand didn't have the fine mana control to do such a trick. Although she could spread out mana thinly it was a matter of density. Her mana was especially dense and thus it was ill-suited for this light work.
The crops grew quickly after that. They seemed to grow from the ground and if once watched closely enough they would notice that the slacks were visibly becoming taller.
The villagers seemed quite pleased with this
"Nice job missy!" Uldricht said slapping her back he'd been quite happy to see the plants grow so fast.
"With this growth speed, we could even make another harvest!" He said excitedly.
He suddenly had a fearful look as if realizing something
[Hmmm?] Kotori thought
"What's wrong Uldricht?" She asked
"About those taxes…" he started to say
It seems these farmers feared tax season. It made sense, often during seasons where there are good harvest less scrupulous nobles would tax at the higher rate. They would then keep a portion of those taxes for themselves and send the rest to the kingdom under the pretense that the harvest was normal that year. Even more unscrupulous nobles would simple do that every year and lie about the true numbers it wasn't like the kingdom was going to audit every village after all.
Kotori had no intention of doing such things. She was once a farmer herself and sympathetic to their plight. Besides, she already hated nobility and wanted to avoid acting like one as much as possible.
"Ah, no worries, I'll tax a normal rate" Kotori said. For some reason, Uldricht had been treating her as the noble instead of Layla he was surprisingly perceptive to these sorts of things.
"Ah thank you, Missy. You've been a real help for us." Uldricht said relief evident on his face.
He had good reason to be excited being able to plant another crop meant that the villagers would essentially have double the income for the year. Of course, since many were subsistence farmers their first crop would go towards feeding themselves, but the next crop could just be sold after this crop was done.
Kotori smiled bittersweetly at the words. She felt a taste of defeat. For one, her plans for making a religion had failed in the small village they all just thought she was a talented mage. She even had Shu make a small chapel near their mansion, but it now sat unused and empty. Additionally, teaching the villagers here crop rotation was also useless now that the dirt spirits were enriching the soil for Kotori. They would never need to rotate their crops if they had the spirits making the soil better.
She also had other plans for her taxes. She was still going to only send in taxes to the kingdom of course, but she was going to lie about the amount truly collected and sell the rest for herself. Yes, it was going to make her lose some karma, but it was a piddling amount. It wasn't as if the taxes of the kingdom of Faramouth were going towards social services. The taxes of the kingdom were basically there to line the pockets of the kingdom and fund their army and infrastructure. Nothing that was particularly important for the people of the kingdom.
In fact, most villages could function perfectly fine without the kingdom.
The harvest soon came, and the villagers went into a frenzy to collect the crops.
Kotori happily joined them. The harvest season was a happy time and she wants to join in on the fun. The other villagers seemed hesitant to let her help out, but soon their fears were abated when they saw that she was quite adept at the work.
Threshing wheat and pulling daikon was very relaxing work
[Umu, wholesome work is good for the mind and heart] she thought to herself while pulling a radish from the ground.
Kotori was much stronger than the average human because of her unnatural stat gains and thus could collect much more than the average farmer.
The villagers had a small contest every year toward who could collect the harvest the fastest and the winner would be able to take a small cask of beer home.
Kotori won without much contest. When she saw the runner up she was surprised to see it was Raymond, the boy who had bothered her before. He had far outpaced the other villagers and he seemed quite mad that he lost to Kotori.
[It seems like he is good for something after all] she thought