HTLCCBFT Chapter 104

Has The Lord’s Career Chart Been Filled Today? – Chapter 104

Hahn, with a face full of unease, was quickly brought before Oliver by Johan.

When Hahn spotted the blond lord standing by the chicken coop from afar, his jaw dropped in shock!

God, was he seeing things?

He couldn’t help but rub his eyes.

That was the filthy, stinking chicken coop—a place even his own family members avoided getting close to.

A noble of such high status, and the only duke in the entire kingdom at that, was willing to approach such a dirty place?

As Hahn drew nearer, his face betraying unconcealed disbelief, he immediately noticed something different about this chicken coop.

From a distance, it hadn’t been obvious, but up close, he suddenly realized how unusually tall and beautiful the coop was.

Such a fine wooden house—most commoners living in his hometown of Albury City couldn’t even afford to live in one.

And this lord was extravagant enough to let chickens live in it!

Hahn’s eyelids twitched violently.

What struck him as even more wasteful was the sight through the open coop door: the interior was incredibly spacious.

Countless perches stretched horizontally above, and against the walls were neatly arranged rows of identically sized wooden boxes. The ground was spotlessly clean.

Thanks to good ventilation and the diligent cleaning by the caretaker, only a few freshly dropped chicken droppings and down feathers lay on the ground, with none of the foul stench he was familiar with.

Was this really for raising chickens?

Even housing people might not be this meticulous!

Gazing at this rare scene, Hahn couldn’t help but marvel.

He had previously thought the content in that textbook was exaggerated, but now… perhaps these incredibly pampered chickens really did eat such complex, precisely proportioned feed.

Johan suddenly spoke up, “Your Grace, the merchant Hahn has been brought before you.”

Startled back to reality and anxious to avoid being rude, Hahn quickly averted his wandering eyes and prepared to kneel on one knee in salute. “Your Grace, thank you for—”

“No need to kneel; the ground is muddy.”

Oliver had been watching a plump hen that looked lazy, having taken only a few steps before lying down to scratch at the ground.

Hearing their voices, he turned around with his usual gentle smile. “Go over there.”

Over where?

Before Hahn could feel flattered by being excused from the kneeling salute, he was plunged into confusion once more.

Nervously following the blond lord, he soon arrived at a separately enclosed area beside a group of chickens.

Unlike the previous pasture filled entirely with hens, this plot—clearly set aside for resting—was sparsely populated only by roosters.

Oliver glanced at Johan.

Understanding the cue, Johan smiled and inquired, “Merchant, how many roosters have you brought this time?”

Hahn’s attention was completely captivated by the roosters in the enclosure.

God, he had never seen such magnificent roosters before!

Each one had bright, alert eyes, long and powerful legs, and walked with their keel bones at just the right angle to the ground. Their chests were broad and flat, and their feathers gleamed with a healthy sheen.

Since this involved his livelihood, Hahn’s mind snapped to clarity with unusual speed.

Hesitating for a moment, he answered honestly, “This time, I’ve mainly brought hens that are still laying eggs and chicks. There are only four roosters.”

He had a vague inkling of the duke’s purpose.

But what he couldn’t understand was, why would this duke who treated chickens purely as pets—already possessing so many robust breeding roosters that he deeply envied—still need to purchase from elsewhere?

Upon hearing the answer of “only four,” Oliver couldn’t help but feel disappointed.

He had a total of 201 hens. According to the ideal ratio of 1:8 to 10, he needed at least 21 roosters.

Not to mention he still had to conduct further screening among the candidate roosters, selecting the highest quality ones for breeding to ensure the second generation of Lainan chickens could inherit the excellence of the first generation.

It was far too few.

Oliver found it neither convenient nor necessary to explain the reasoning behind this to Hahn.

After all, this was an era that didn’t understand the heritability of genetic defects, one that blindly praised “pure” noble bloodlines and encouraged—even demanded—inbreeding.

If even the nobles at the pinnacle of power practiced this, why wouldn’t chickens?

If Johan truly had no suitable roosters available, Oliver planned to wait until his attendants returned from Albury City and Gregor City before reassessing the situation.

If the latter two also dashed his hopes, he would have no choice but to let these adult chickens—who might originally have been siblings—pair among themselves first, and only consider diluting the bloodline in the generation after next.

“Let me take a look first.”

Oliver quickly rallied his spirits.

When he saw with his own eyes the few listless roosters Hahn had brought—their bodies only slightly larger than the hens in their flock, their eyes dull and lifeless—Oliver was completely disheartened.

Even accounting for the effects of travel fatigue, which could at most affect feather condition and mental state, it was impossible for their weight to drop so significantly in such a short time. A qualified breeding rooster needed to weigh at least 30% more than a healthy hen of the same age.

Such scrawny, poor specimens—even if taken as live-in sons-in-law—were utterly unworthy of the meticulously raised “yellow, wealthy, and beautiful” hens of Laina.

Although Oliver said nothing and maintained his usual expression without showing obvious disdain, Hahn still lowered his head uncomfortably.

……There was no helping it. After seeing those majestic, spirited, and energetic large roosters, unless one was deliberately lying through their teeth, it was impossible to boast about his own chickens!

Hahn lamented silently in his heart.

He never expected that not only were there nobles among people, but even among chickens!

Johan, who was skilled at reading expressions, spoke up at this point: “In Albury City, can we find roosters of better quality than these?”

Without waiting for Hahn to reply, Johan meaningfully added: “In front of His Highness, I believe no one would dare to lie.”

Hahn certainly didn’t dare.

After pondering carefully for a moment, he cautiously replied: “Your esteemed Highness, if you desire roosters with better quality—or even equal to—those you already possess, then I’m afraid not only in Albury, but even in Gregor City, none can be found.”

In his entire life, he had never seen a noble lord who, upon raising chickens for the first time, could raise them so meticulously and so excellently!

—If Hahn were to learn that this duke with unique interests not only raised chickens but also personally handled them daily, and that the survival rate of the chicks he sold reached an unimaginable 100%, he would surely be even more astonished.

Oliver furrowed his brow slightly and gave a faint “Hmm.”

With the plan to buy a ready-made rooster now dashed, there was only one option left…

He swept a glance over the three hundred or so chicks in Hahn’s shop, all contained in bamboo cages, and declared decisively, “I’ll take all the chicks you’ve brought this time.”

As long as he avoided the possibility of siblings, it would be acceptable to delay their maturity slightly and let them become “child husbands.”

Having just received the final payment for the first batch of pickled corn from Kondiment, the seasoning merchant who had rushed to Laina yesterday, Oliver finally felt the pleasure of being able to buy whatever he wanted.

Of course, he didn’t need to personally oversee every detail of these newly purchased chicks as he had done last time.

They could be handed over entirely to Lucy and the others to manage, serving as a test of what they had learned.

Just dealing with matters related to the chicken coop had taken up the entire morning.

Oliver returned to the castle, intending to take a bath and change clothes before lunch.

To his surprise, he saw the butler he had sent out in the morning already waiting quietly by the stone steps.

“Your Highness.” Fosse gave a slight bow. “My apologies for making you wait.”

“Fosse, thank you for your hard work.” Oliver asked expectantly, “How did the negotiations go?”

The business he had specifically tasked Fosse with handling concerned corn wine, sunflower seed oil, and fabrics.

In the fleeting span of over a month, his Farming profession skill had smoothly reached level 8, and he was only a few days away from unlocking the “seed duplicator” at level 9.

The reward for reaching level 8 in Farming was an oil press and a brewing barrel.

Although he had no intention of letting Laina rely too heavily on the game system’s output, seeing the ever-growing pile of materials in his inventory, Oliver had still produced a small batch of brewing barrels and oil presses.

When harvested sunflowers were placed into the oil press, after just a short wait, each one would produce a bottle of sunflower seed oil.

As for corn placed in the brewing barrel, it took four days to ferment into a bottle of corn wine.

Additionally, the dozen or so looms he had made according to his original plan had, over the past half month, spun the large quantity of cheap, ragged wool he had bought into high-quality fabric.

The moment he touched the snow-white fabric, smooth and almost comparable to silk, Oliver realized that the better the material, the more it meant he couldn’t let the slaves use it directly.

It was too conspicuous, too extraordinary.

But of course, this wasn’t a bad thing.

Even if the merchants at the Autumn Market couldn’t purchase all of this high-quality fabric at once, he could still find a way to sell the batch to neighboring cities before winter arrived.

With that money, he could buy large quantities of inexpensive but functionally warm fabric for the slaves to sew into clothes themselves.

Upon hearing Oliver’s question, Fosse’s expression immediately became uncharacteristically subtle and troubled.

He pursed his lips slightly, lowered his eyes, and struggled to find the right words. “My deepest apologies, Your Highness. The matter you entrusted to me… this time… I was unable to complete it.”

Oliver was taken aback for a moment, then offered a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry about it, and there’s no need to apologize to me, Fosse. Did they not think highly of the goods?”

To his surprise, Fosse quickly shook his head.

“While negotiating the price, someone made a request to sample a cup of corn wine first,” Fosse explained. “Since you had instructed so earlier, I agreed.”

Oliver blinked in confusion and pressed, “And then?”

Fosse: “After just one cup, they all passed out drunk.”

Oliver: “……”

He had taken a sip when the corn wine was first brewed—its alcohol content was indeed quite high.

Especially compared to the pale ale people were accustomed to drinking now, it could definitely be considered a strong liquor.

“That’s not bad either,” he couldn’t help but chuckle. “At least our corn wine left a strong impression on them.”

As he spoke, he walked ahead, with Butler Fosse following two steps behind.

While continuing to ask the butler about the details of the situation, he headed toward the bedroom.

Only when he opened the bedroom door, his mind having been distracted all along, did he finally remember the big cat he had locked inside. Out of habit, he glanced toward the bed.

The smile on Oliver’s lips froze instantly, along with his footsteps.

The familiar big cat—slender and robust, with beautiful, bright golden, fluffy fur—was gone.

In its place…

Oliver’s expression turned blank, his tone flat: “Holy crap.”

What drove his composure to flee, after so long, was the bizarre scene before him.

This “Fosse,” with a pair of fluffy golden cat ears on his head, a deep golden fluffy tail trailing behind him, and a dazed, innocent look in his eyes, was tilting his head slightly, staring intently at Oliver—just as the adorable yet formidable big cat loved to do.

But faced with this naive, cat-eared version of “Fosse”……

Oliver’s next reaction was to take a sharp step back.

Under the gaze of the newborn deity—confused and hurt—without a second thought, before the real Fosse behind him could react, Oliver slammed the heavy door shut with what could only be described as rude, brute force!

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