Sipping grape juice, Lex stood on the highest point of the castle, overlooking his territory with a commanding view—very much like a primitive village, with slaves working, and from this angle, one could see at a glance who was working hard and who was slacking off.

Lex found that the most hardworking were the Minotaurs, who almost never stopped, constantly opening and closing the kilns and smouldering the charcoal, while the goblins loved to slack off, whether it was running off to pee, which took ten minutes.

But this is only in comparison to the slaves themselves. If you compare them to Lex, all the slaves are working hard, and he, the lord, is doing nothing.

Lex remembered that in high school he insisted on studying art, and in college he studied game art design. Then his parents helplessly sent him to boot camp.

During boot camp, the teacher told them to sketch or paint every day, so he would use the excuse of going to the bathroom to go to the snack bar and play with his phone.

The teacher was so angry that he said to him, "You have such a talent for color, and you're not trying hard! You're degenerating!"

Lex swam in the sea of depravity, and in the end, he was admitted to the best art college in the province.

Unfortunately, he got here before the semester started.

So when it comes to laziness, these gnomes who dare only to steal a few minutes are completely inferior to him.

At that time, he could use the excuse of going to the bathroom to slack off for an afternoon.

But every now and then, he wonders if he had painted seriously during the training camp, would he have had a chance to get into the best art college in the country.

But there are no ifs in this world, so Lex only thought about it once or twice.

Anyway, the result was satisfactory to him and his parents.

He looked at the gnomes who were making excuses to go to the bathroom and steal time, and his face showed a smile that said, "I understand."

Butler: "Oh! Those lazy gnomes! They haven't been taught a lesson in a long time! I'll go teach them now!"

Lex: "No need. What's the point of teaching them? It's useless."

The butler said earnestly, "My lord, you can't be so kind. You'll make them even lazier!"

Lex: "...I didn't say I wasn't going to punish them."

The butler blinked, wondering what kind of punishment Lex could think of.

Lex: "The tauren can have more beans and bran with every meal, and they can each have a piece of bread as a reward tomorrow."

"The dwarves don't need to change, they can stay as they are. As for the gnomes, they will be punished by going back to eating only once a day, and they will only be allowed to resume eating twice a day when they stop slacking off."

He looked at the butler and said, 'What do you think?'

The butler thought about it and felt that not being able to eat was even crueler than being beaten, so he agreed wholeheartedly, 'You are a kind and wise man!'

Gnomes are tough and can forget being beaten.

But they can't forget being hungry.

The butler smiled sinisterly.

Lex: "..."

He felt that the butler's smile was a little scary.

He thought that being hungry was better than being beaten, and being beaten hurt too much.

Just as Lex brought the wine glass to his lips, ready to drink another glass of grape juice, a huge growl suddenly came from the woods!

The growl was as loud as thunder, with the fear of death before it. If you listen carefully, you will find that the cry is very delicious – it's a pig's cry!

Lex swallowed, and the sound of the pig's cry made him think of all the delicious pork food!

"It must be Alwin hunting!" Lex excitedly gripped the railing, "He's so good!"

The butler held back a laugh, "My lord, when I was young, I was much better than him!"

Lex turns a deaf ear to the butler's words: "We can make bacon out of the rest, it's also delicious."

The butler doesn't really support this: "There's not enough for bacon! We might as well hang it on the windowsill."

Lex: "...then it'll stink, and how can you eat stinky meat?"

The butler sighs: "My lord, that's the flavour of meat. With a little spice, it can be made delicious again."

Lex was speechless. He felt that he would never understand what the butler was thinking, or whether his sense of taste was normal.

The huge boar fell on the hillside. Alwin wiped the blood from his dagger. The boar was still twitching. It let out a death rattle and two of its hideous tusks had broken off. Two tears fell from its dark eyes as it gradually stopped moving.

Alwin stood up. He looked at the small mountain of a wild boar and thought that even the wild boars in the abyss probably weren't as big.

He looked at it for a while, then reached out and closed its dead, wide eyes.

In the end, the wild boar was carried away by slaves.

The slaves weren't greedy at all – they had never eaten meat before and didn't know what it tasted like.

Here, a slave was considered very happy if they could eat a meal of beans and bran gruel and be full.

The Minotaurs were the main force in carrying the wild boar. They were strong, hardy, and hardworking. They tied strong ropes to the wild boar's limbs, then put the ropes on their shoulders. A dozen Minotaurs worked together to drag the wild boar back to their territory.

Because the wound was small, the wild boar did not bleed much, and it did not attract more ferocious beasts.

Lex commanded the cook to gut the wild boar—with a stone knife, because iron knives tend to break and the cook didn't want to waste them.

Making a stone knife is also very simple. Go to the river and find a red gravel. This kind of stone makes a sound somewhat like metal when struck, and then it is broken on the ground. The sharp side is the blade. If it becomes dull, just break it again until it can't be broken anymore.

The cook has already broken all five stone knives beyond repair, but still can't bear to part with her iron knife.

The wild boar was a bit too big, so he had the cook and the servants make bacon out of all the meat except the part they were going to eat right away.

He couldn't bear to waste the salt, so bacon was the best way to use it.

The only thing he regretted was that the pig was full of muscle and there was no fat to make oil.

He did know that there were several main oil-producing crops: soybeans, sesame seeds, and rapeseed oil.

"Let the slaves have some meat too," Lex is excited, and he has already thought of 18 ways to cook pork.

But soon, Lex gets some despairing news from the cook.

The seasonings here are only salt and various spices that Lex has never heard of before, but not the soy sauce and sugar that Lex is familiar with, not to mention the peppercorns, pepper, allspice, etc. Without sugar and soy sauce, everything will taste bland.

Sweet and sour pork ribs, now there are only ribs, no sugar and no vinegar.

Lex was disheartened: "Let Anna do whatever she wants."

It was pork anyway, and he could eat it no matter how bad it tasted.

—As long as Anna didn't put the pork in the thick soup, he would rather starve to death.

This time, the butler did not dissuade Lex. He was so shocked that Lex said nothing in response to the idea of letting the slave eat meat that he wondered if the butler had been possessed by a ghost.

"You don't have a problem with me telling the slave to eat meat?" Lex stopped the butler.

The butler said with a face full of righteousness, "You are the lord, you can give any order, I am only your butler, I have no right to question your decision."

Lex looked confused and doubted life.

You didn't say that before when you were hugging my thigh.

That night, Lex ate pork roasted with various spices, served with grape juice. He had to say that although none of the seasonings were his favorites, when he ate the pork chops, he felt that it was the most delicious food in the world.

Alwin was sitting opposite him.

Lex suddenly remembered something, but it wasn't a clear thought. He just felt that Alwin didn't seem to be able to sit in that seat.

"What's wrong?" Alwin held a knife and fork in his hands and gazed into Lex's eyes.

Lex felt bad asking Alwin to change seats.

The servants were also able to enjoy a delicious pork feast today, but it was prepared by the cook using bones and no seasoning, just plain broth.

The slaves also got some broth, and they sat together, taking their bowls from the servants.

Their broth was even more watery than the servants' portions and contained no meat at all, but they drank the warm broth and ate the gruel every day and felt that today was the happiest day of all the years.

Only the gnomes felt bad.

"Why do we only get broth and no gruel?" The gnomes dared not ask loudly, but whispered their discontent to the servants.

"Broth doesn't fill our stomachs," the goblin says, feeling his stomach. 'We only had a bowl of gruel for breakfast and we're hungry!'

The servant says, 'You want another bowl of gruel?'

The goblin says, 'Yes, we want the same as the dwarves and the minotaurs!'

The servant says, 'Then you can't even have this bowl of broth!'

He doesn't give the goblin any broth and instead sends the dwarves, who are at the end of the queue, forward.

The gnomes were furious: "Why won't you give us any broth? No gruel for us! That's not fair!"

"Yes, it's not fair! Are we not as good as those stupid trolls and dwarves?!"

The servant put down the spoon and picked up the whip lying nearby.

The gnomes shrunk back, but did not move.

The servant dropped the whip and picked up the empty spoon. The goblins cringed, but did not back away.

"Even we servants of the lord have never been lazy!"

The goblins didn't dare to speak, they couldn't lie, and the smartest thing they could think of was to use the excuse of peeing to be lazy.

One goblin cried and said, "Not every goblin is lazy, I have never been lazy."

The servant snorted, "Can anyone tell the difference between a goblin? You all look the same! All green skin! Get back there, and don't make me tell you twice!"

Lex finished the last bite of meat and said to Alwin, "We won't be short of meat this season. Is there anything you want? Consider it payment for your hunting."

Alwin laughed, "No, my lord, I have already received my payment."

Lex tilted his head, "What?"

Alwin licked his lips: "It was very good pay."

Lex suddenly felt a little ashamed for some reason. His face turned red and he stuttered, "That's, that's good..."

If Alwin kissed his hand once, he would give him a pig.

Then the deal was still good.

For the sake of the pork, he didn't care about losing face.