Everyone Wants Me Dead: The Villain Lord's Survival Diary-Chapter 3 – System, you have a flaw

Not long after, Sylvie, surrounded by a group of knights, arrived outside Winterfell City.
He was here to complete his third Villain Quest.
What met his eyes was a wide moat, ending in a waterfall.
Distant green mountains, forest pastures, and scattered villages surrounded the majestic Winterfell City.
It was undoubtedly a beautiful scene, but behind the beauty lay widespread devastation.
Along the way, Sylvie saw figures in tattered clothes, with sallow and thin faces. Farmers wearing straw hats worked in the fields, women with headscarves carried baskets with some wild fruits, preparing to sell them in Winterfell City.
Occasionally, he encountered a few hunters carrying game.
Although they looked slightly better, they were covered in scars. In such a world, ordinary people hunting in the mountains was essentially gambling with their lives.
These people, living in extreme hardship, were the main population of Eaglehold. Most of them were low-status farmers and serfs, not even considered freemen.
According to the Kingdom Codex, everything within the territory belonged to the lord.
Farmers had to work for the lord for free at least four days a week and pay agricultural products and land rent as taxes to thank the lord for his protection.
Even though the remaining food was barely enough to eat.
The serfs, with even lower status, were worse off. They had no household registration, no land, and no personal property, merely a group of unpaid laborers, with survival being their greatest luxury.
"System, these people were already exploited to the brink by the previous lord. And now you want me to trample their fields? Doesn't your conscience hurt?"
Sylvie felt uncomfortable, gritting his teeth as he questioned the system.
As a young man from the 21st century with a good education, taking candy from children was already excessive, and now he was being asked to bully these exploited farmers.
It was like opening a wound and then rubbing salt into it.
[Ding! Please, host, push your limits. Long pain is worse than short pain.]
"Damn it..."
Sylvie was speechless. Long pain is worse than short pain? What kind of nonsense is that?
"Following this idiotic quest to torment those poor people is impossible."
Sylvie pondered. If he really did that, what meaning would his life have? He would just be a pathetic puppet controlled by the system's quests.
Knowing oneself and the enemy leads to victory. Sylvie felt he needed more information.
"System, can you tell me what the specific criteria for villainous behavior are?"
He didn't know if the system would answer, but if it did, he might be able to analyze the system's rules.
[Ding! The criteria for villainous behavior are that it must cause psychological trauma to others.]
"Psychological trauma?"
Sylvie stroked his chin, deep in thought.
Previously, his actions in the city did cause severe psychological trauma to a group of children, likely becoming a shadow in their childhood.
And with Little Chub, he once said he would take one candy and return two, which clearly wouldn't cause psychological trauma, so it was deemed an ineffective villainous act by the system.
Thinking about it, Sylvie felt he had grasped something.
"So, giving a slap and then a sweet date is feasible, but the slap must cause psychological trauma, and the other party must not know there will be a sweet date as compensation."
Sylvie's eyes lit up. He decided to test his idea immediately. Looking around, he spotted a field not far away.
Old Link was working in the field, the scorching midday sun baking his dark skin, with sweat rolling down his cheeks into the soil.
Suddenly, he felt a tall shadow cover him, and then a massive black hoof trampled on the wheat he had painstakingly planted.
"Which damn... huh?"
Old Link frowned, raising his head to scold the fool who trampled his wheat.
But as he looked up, he was nearly scared out of his wits.
He saw a noble knight with the Golden Lion Crest on his armor, riding a majestic Dragonblood Steed. Behind him followed a team of knights, looking like his retinue.
Old Link swallowed hard, forcing back his curses, and his legs gave way, kneeling on the ground.
"Mercy, noble lord! Mercy, noble lord!..."
Old Link trembled, burying his head in the ground, his mind blank, unable to utter anything besides begging for mercy.
Sylvie looked at the trembling old farmer, feeling uneasy.
He had trampled the old man's field, yet the one kneeling and begging was this gray-haired elder.
"This system is truly despicable."
Sylvie cursed inwardly. By now, he and his knights had trampled a two-meter-wide path through the field, yet the system still hadn't marked the quest as complete.
With no choice, and despite his reluctance, Sylvie ordered his knights to trample the field further.
Old Link, seeing this from the corner of his eye, trembled in fear, not daring to say a word.
"It was my offense to the noble lord; this is my deserved punishment."
Old Link thought bitterly, repeatedly telling himself that offending a noble and escaping with his life was already a blessing.
These were the wheat he had painstakingly planted. Without them, he couldn't pay taxes in the second half of the year, and the result would be losing his land and becoming a serf.
***
[Ding! Daily Quest Three completed. Would you like to claim your reward now?]
"No!"
It seemed his brutal actions had indeed caused severe psychological trauma to the old farmer.
Now was the time to see if he could make amends.
If not, Sylvie would have to find a way to give the old farmer a way out.
But how to compensate was a technical task. The compensation had to cover the old man's loss without making him feel it was intentional. Whether the old man realized it later didn't matter, as Sylvie only needed to fool the system for now.
Considering the old man would likely try to salvage the wheat with all his might after they left, Sylvie had an idea. As he left the field, he "accidentally" dropped a dozen silver coins.
Sylvie held his breath nervously, but even after leaving the field far behind, he didn't hear the system notification sound.
"It seems my idea was correct."
Sylvie smiled slightly, feeling relieved.
This system was indeed rigid, unable to adapt.
This meant he could fully control and utilize the system to become stronger.
Claremont rode beside him, having witnessed the entire scene.
Others might think those silver coins were accidentally dropped by Sylvie, but Claremont didn't.
Since Sylvie was an Earth Knight, his senses were incredibly sharp, so the coins must have been dropped intentionally.
Claremont couldn't fathom Sylvie's purpose, but he believed, like the candy incident, there was a deeper meaning he couldn't easily grasp.
"The young master is becoming more and more unpredictable!"
Claremont looked at Sylvie's back with admiration, silently praising him.
***
In the field, Old Link sorrowfully tended to the toppled wheat, tears of bitterness welling in his cloudy eyes.
Suddenly, in the sunlight, Old Link saw something round and shiny in the field.
A silver coin!
Old Link rubbed his eyes, looking closely, and indeed, it was a silver coin.
He joyfully picked it up, holding it in his hands, and thanked the God of Harvest for the gift.
But soon, near the first coin, Old Link found more silver coins, one after another.
By the time he finished tending the field, his tattered pocket held thirteen shiny silver coins.
These coins were enough for his family to live comfortably for a year, with enough left to pay taxes, without fearing becoming a serf.
The sudden wealth left Old Link dumbfounded. He couldn't help but think of the noble knight who had trampled the field with his knights.
"Could it be that gentleman?"
Old Link quickly shook his head, dismissing the naive thought. High and mighty nobles wouldn't care about the lives of humble farmers like them.
Old Link preferred to believe it was the result of his diligent prayers to the God of Harvest, that the deity had seen his suffering and saved his struggling follower.
Proofreader & Editor: Peter Pan