That was as good a plan as any. "Can you actually do that!?" I asked him. Charlie shrugged. "Once you become a major clan, you can send somebody to the court of the local lord. It scales up as time goes on. Once you rise up and become a part of their entourage, when they rise, you rise. That doesn't even include political coups." He explained to me. Apparently, the local lord was a cruel and exacting man. He did not care about the plight of the many peasants suffering. He still wanted all of his taxes on time. Both in food and in coin. Neither of which the people could afford. From there, he would send samurais to slap them around and take what they wanted. This was not something that could be tolerated for too long. That was one of the reasons there was less traffic in the region. The famine was affecting the whole of the eastern half of the country. The central eastern province was taking on the brunt of the crisis by delaying the taking of taxes and asking other western lords for aid. The northeast lords were more helpful. They were helping the people by trying to find help and planting.
It was a big time of crisis in the east. The capitol was in the middle of the country and had its own large court, harem and shogun system. There were large daimyos for the cardinal directions, and each of them had 3 lords reporting to them. In the large region we were in, we had 20 settlements and a castle town. 2 were cities, 8 normal towns, 10 villages were the layout. If we took on 5 villages and made them serve us, we would all be known as minor nobles. Obviously, we would come into conflict with other nobles that were in the southeastern lord's court. That was fine. We had level 50 demons. That was good enough to slaughter any NPC we would come across. It would just be a challenge to convince the other settlements to listen to us. That was why Charlie was focusing on the villages. Towns and cities were doing relatively fine in spite of the famine. They had a diversity of finances because of the division of labor. It was slim picking for food, but artisans, builders and soldiers still got money. With money, you could pay for food. Not a lot, but enough to get by. Villages did not have that.
While Charlie stayed here in the village, he would send out all 4 of his samurai. They would offer to protect the village from the abuse of other samurai in exchange for them swearing fealty to Onishiri Village. I would be able to go to the fifth village. The party members came back with the 10 bottles. I would definitely be able to protect a village single-handed with the power boost. I took the bottles and used the command to drink it to get the effects without the taste. I was not interested in guzzling demon cum. "Before I leave, where will I live?" I asked him. He led me out of the meeting hall and into the village. Taking me to all the rows of houses, he told me to pick one. I looked at him. "Are you going to kick the demon out? That's not necessary." He smirked. "I heard a bit of that talk with Suzie. You were going to get married. I'll marry you to one of them." he said. I raised an eyebrow. "Aren't they all guys?" I called him out. He groaned and said "Just trust me already!" I pointed to a house. It was the seventh house on the fourth row that I pointed to. It was the home of a gunner oni. He was home.
