Will the kemonomimi encounter Alien Ranch Story?

"Those knights' lances can't hurt your big darling." After all, it's a heavy-duty knight mount weighing 122 tons, requiring 15 people to operate, and capable of sweeping the entire block and everything moving around on the street into dust in half a minute.

With eight fully armored tracks, its entire body covered in weapons, and 600mm thick carbon-metal composite armor, it is truly the knight among knights, the best embodiment of the chivalrous spirit of the new era.

You don’t even need to use any weapons. Just the sight of it slowly approaching you is enough to break down the psychological defenses of an average person. By making good use of its large size and heavy weight, no one can get past the crossroads guarded by these knights.

Its sturdy appearance and unassuming nature will undoubtedly bring a great sense of security to both allies and those being protected; it is so full of the glorious spirit of chivalry:

Brave (50mm multi-barreled), Compassionate (will not attack unarmed enemies, because it is unnecessary), Resilient (600mm main armor, please install naval guns), Steady (122 tons, anything more steady is called a land-based ship), Loyal (no secrets or ulterior motives), Pure (if it were impure, any stuck parts would take days to repair), Sweep Away the Darkness (high-lumen searchlights and infrared detectors, darkness has nowhere to hide), Destroy Evil (cannon fire that can take away even demons);

If the Knights' Arena hadn't genuinely refused to allow this heavyweight knight to participate, he would undoubtedly have become the arena's star. Of course, the Knights' Arena might have simply been renamed "Tankery."

"Speaking of which, our unit is armored cavalry, so why don't we start a similar competition, with armored cavalry fighting against each other? We've been doing this for thousands of years, with people clad in armor battling it out. Why don't we try something new? Tank battles? It's safer and more exciting, and there would definitely be a lot of spectators, right, Platoon Leader…"

"Shut up!" The logistics engineer's expression changed drastically. "Shut up, you monster!"

"The era of man versus man is almost over. The era of tank versus tank, tank versus mobile suit, and mobile suit versus mobile suit is coming!" Platoon Leader Kobel, a fervent tank enthusiast, uttered this shocking and outrageous statement.

Thinking about it carefully, the vast plains of Kazdel seem quite suitable for doing this kind of thing...

Chapter Twenty: The Crossroads of an Era

Chapter 20

Kavaleria is not the only arena in Kavaleria. In fact, each city-state has its own arena. Only during the triennial Grand Tournament, when four cities are combined, will the largest arena be formed for this national event.

The knightly arena in Kazimierz is not only for Kazimierz; Victorian steam knights hone their skills here, squires of the Tower come to please their masters, and Ursus legions occasionally appear here to win prizes for their generals.

For the commercial associations that established and controlled the city, each one was trying to build a larger arena to attract more hot money and spectators, and in order to achieve this goal, the proportion of harvests and taxes in the various villages of Kazimir had reached a ridiculous and absurd level.

"Is this what Boss Xia meant by... the sheep of industry eating people? Although here it's the arena that's eating people."

Rural areas have been exploited to the extreme, and landless farmers are forced to serve as human props in city factories and mines. As long as industry and mining exist, infected people will be continuously produced. Then, the infected people will become tools in the arena.

This was a complete, assembly-line cannibalistic operation, which filled Talulah, who came from Ursus and was experiencing the countryside and the lower classes of Kazimierz for the first time, with an incredible anger and anxiety, to the point that she was unsure whether her actions in assisting the Business Federation were right or wrong.

"This is the village in the suburbs..." Flame Tail Sona and the Red Pine Team's competitive knights led everyone on a tour of the impoverished village.

However, Talulah did nothing, simply toured the place normally, lingered for a while, and then excused herself to leave, giving the time to the team members who were going home for the last time before the match.

Their burdens are already heavy enough, and the conflicts in Kazimierz haven't reached their most intense point yet. To put it bluntly...

Although the titles of noble and knight are gradually declining, the knights of the Federation and the Supervisory Council still maintain a certain tacit understanding.

The real escalation will occur when the Federation's conspiracy is implemented, eliminating Margaret Nearl, a key member of the Nearl family and the most vehement leader of anti-commercial competition.

It's not hard to explain the motivation behind all this. In terms of personal character, behavior, and the family's past achievements, the Linguang family is a rare noble family without any blemishes. As for the country, they fought desperately on the battlefield, fulfilling their duty to protect the people and the land.

In terms of chivalry, each of them was almost a perfect knight, perhaps with some minor flaws, but in general, they embodied the spirit of chivalry.

For ordinary people, the servants of the Lin Guang family, and farmers, they lived relatively comfortably. Of course, because of this, the manor's income never increased.

So... someone was forced to find a way to invest in other industries to maintain the family's basic expenses.

Compared to Victoria, Kazimierz is a country standing at the crossroads of modernity and conservatism.

On the one hand, merchants began to rise, and with the rise of knightly competitions, increasingly developed industry and trade, they amassed a great deal of wealth.

On the one hand, nobles and knights, including the Lin Guang family, still occupy the countryside and manors.

To put it bluntly, in their eyes, only those who own manors and fiefdoms and collect rent steadily are respectable people. Those who make their fortunes by running businesses and factories are nothing more than a bunch of nouveau riche. And now these nouveau riche are not only encroaching on the glory of knights, they are even starting to encroach on the knights' fiefdoms.

The Chamber of Commerce has already put forward some proposals in the National Assembly, such as converting real fiefs into nominal fiefs, allowing nobles to transfer land use rights and ensuring the inviolability of private property, totaling more than sixty articles.

Of course, most of them were ultimately rejected, leaving only about thirty articles under discussion. [The Proposal of the Magna Carta]

At the same time, they did their utmost to promote the idea that competitive knights should enjoy the same rights and status as regular knightly nobles.

This is not the reason why the knights object, because as mentioned before, there were many real knights in the arena before it was commercialized, and this remains true even after it was commercialized.

Putting everything else aside, strictly speaking, your Kazimir is only a Grand Knight's Domain. Under the feudal system, it's not even a kingdom (it has no king). Can you deny that the noble conferment of titles by the Ursus Empire, which has an indisputable imperial lineage, is invalid?

Feudalism implies a strict hierarchical system and personal dependency relationships, which is different from capitalism, which does not actually have many hierarchies. It measures hierarchy based on only one thing: money or means of production.

Compared to the dense hierarchy of feudalism, it was much simpler, which meant that people at each level had more room for development, thus expanding productivity and easing social conflicts.

This example illustrates that in feudal society, peasants were not allowed to eat meat, not because they couldn't afford it or didn't have meat, but because they simply couldn't!

[This is a genuine example of European feudalism, and also the system in China before the Han Dynasty, including the Han Dynasty itself. Commoners were not allowed to eat meat, and meat-eaters referred to only the nobility...]

In a capitalist society, the only reason you can't eat meat is because you don't have money, not because your social class restricts your consumption or any rights. Therefore, the entire society is driven by money, more money, and more capital.

This is indeed a liberation for personal freedom and rights. For example, after commercialization, equestrian competitions are now open to civilians to watch, and infected and civilian equestrian teams can compete on an equal, but not necessarily fair, basis.

Therefore, they cannot deny Ursus's knighthood. After commercialization, their resistance in this regard is not intense. What they fiercely resist is the continued deepening of commercialization, extending it to civilians and even infected individuals, and even civilians in other countries.

Similarly, Margaret, who followed tradition and adhered to the wishes of her father and grandfather, along with the entire Lin Guang family, strongly opposed this commercialization.

Moreover, their prestige meant that even ordinary people at the bottom of society, such as tenant farmers and infected individuals, were no longer so obedient.

"They are already the embodiment of chivalry in fact, and they are the pillars of the chivalric faith of the Casimir people. If they cannot be desanctified, and their noble honor and status cannot be abolished or marginalized, then the Casimir people will never break free from this faith."

Talulah found reasons to convince herself, the most important of which was the countryside before her. Was it really a good thing to let merchants take power?

No, Talulah made it clear that this was bad, because the villages here would become even more dilapidated, their lands would be merged, and the major city-states would certainly increase their exploitation efforts in order to build their own arenas, even more so than the knights of the past.

Because the knights needed to use swords, while the farmers would hand over their property and land without the knights having to do anything, why not take the money?

However, having lost their land and unable to farm in the city, how long can they live off their meager savings?

This is based on the premise that they don't gamble in the arena themselves; otherwise, the money they receive would just pass through one intermediary.

Moreover, in this process, wouldn't the merchants really collude with local magistrates and the stewards under the minor nobles?

Talulah had seen plenty of the saying that it's easier to see the King of Hell than to deal with his underlings, and how the merchants could conveniently pin all the blame on the knights and nobles.

But that's exactly what they did. To maintain appearances and family honor, what's wrong with selling land use rights and collecting rent in another way? As for the tenant farmers who lost their right to farm, did they care about their lives? No!

But would it be better to let the knights take power? That might be worse, because the merchants' commercial competition would attract more spectators and customers, which would mean that a large amount of Kazimierz goods and commodities could be sold, and prosperous trade would give rise to developed industry in factories.

Both infected individuals and ordinary citizens should be able to find work, even if it comes at the cost of their health.

If one only sees this step, like Talulah in the past, Kal'tsit before, and other idealists, then Talulah would stop the Federation.

As international trade develops, a large amount of capital and profits eventually flow in. In reality, life for the Qasimir people may remain the same or even worse, but the country as a whole is developing rapidly.

"At that time, when the gap reaches a new peak, these workers will have complete control over production. And at that point, they will demand their own say, just like the merchants of the past. The infected, the common people, the farmers, the small merchants, and even the artisans—these clearly distinct groups of people will be forged into a unified whole by their own hands in the factory..."

"It's as if knights used swords and nooses to unite merchants and farmers into a whole, and even turned desperate robbers and killers into respectable people."

Meanwhile, in the Knights' Territory of Kavaleria, at the Night Market—the night market of the lower city, a gathering place for the infected and workers—the city's power plant and Originium Factory furnaces are located. Steam condenses on the pipes and metal overhead, turning into a never-ending drizzle, while the dilapidated lighting keeps the area almost perpetually dark.

However, the arena's billboards, neon pipes extending from the shops in the previous block, and light-up installations cobbled together by locals from trash and scrap illuminated the entire street, while the street-side vents perpetually emitted steam.

Each block has its own power plant to provide electricity for the city, and each city has its own power hub to distribute the energy provided by the Originium power plant.

For employees belonging to the business association or "enterprise," it's hard to tell that Marna Rinko is a member of the Rinko family; he's just a newly hired employee, the reason being that the family is broke.

Margaret was determined to participate in the knightly tournament. She was determined to win the entire competition with real skill and chivalry, and let everyone know that a true knight cannot be defeated by those competitive knights. Marna, however, clearly did not convince her.

"How foolish!" Pegasus, who already had a bit of stubble, shook his head. What could a young, inexperienced knight do?

Trying to defeat the master of the rules within the other party's own rules? And didn't she even consider what she was actually doing?

She thought she was reclaiming her family's honor and the glory that belonged to knights. In reality, she was serving as a free weapon for the Business Federation.

Who are her opponents? They are competitive knights, and ordinary people who yearn for a path to advancement. Why does Marna never oppose commercialized competition, and is even willing to be a dog for them? Is it because they are despicable?

No, it's because he used to be a ranger. He traversed every inch of Kazimierz, crossed the wasteland, and visited Ursus and many other countries.

He knew that the stubborn girl wasn't just arrogantly confronting those merchants who tarnished the honor of knights; she was going against the dreams of all the people of Kazimierz. They craved the arena, they craved this relatively fair path to advancement, they wanted to become arena knights and enjoy the glory just like the nobles.

But she wanted to slam the door shut and put up a sign that read "No lower-class people or dogs allowed!"

"Foolish! Vanity! Incurable!" But there was nothing she could do, because it made no difference whether she chose it or not. She went to the competition, lost, and proved that competitive knights could be more capable and more chivalrous than traditional knights.

If they win, as mentioned before, they've closed off everyone's path to advancement—not just commoners, but also minor nobles and lowly knights.

The Lightbringer family and Margaret are the most dazzling knights in Kazimierz, and also the most hated beings by the people of Kazimierz.

If she doesn't go, and even the Lightbringer family doesn't take the lead, then soon the Business Federation will become increasingly demanding, and there will be no more knightly glory or honor. Merchants will gradually deconstruct the spirit of chivalry, turning it into entertainment, sanctifying it, and placing it high on a pedestal, as if it were in the clouds. A moral standard that no one can achieve is equivalent to non-existence.

Or rather, from the time their fathers chose to stand on the side of the knights, from the time Margaret received knightly education from a young age, and from the time when every Pegasus of the Nearl family could only stand on the side of the nobles, they had no choice.

No, there should be another option, which is to do what I did: surrender and join the side that is bound to win.

“Knights, they should have been phased out long ago!” Marna sighed. “Boss, a bowl of sour noodle soup.” Kazimir’s land is fertile and flat, producing a variety of agricultural products. Therefore, to cope with the problem of too many vegetables, they began to produce large quantities of pickled vegetables long ago.

Pickled sweet and sour cabbage is a traditional local export product. It can be found even in Lungmen and Kazdel, and even in Lao Xia's area, they are doing business in canned cabbage.

Because... his cabbages and sugar are cheaper. Hmm, it seems that when Kazdel is short of money for construction, the farmers of Kazimir are going to suffer.

Sour noodle soup is somewhat similar to dumpling soup in Chinese cuisine. It is made by stewing butter, mushrooms, pickled cabbage, and various meats. It contains a lot of dough pieces, and one bowl is enough to fill up even an adult with a big appetite. It is one of the main daily diets of urban low-income workers.

Another type, made with beets, sauerkraut, and potatoes, is cheaper and is what the lowest-paid laborers eat. In addition, there are dreamers and contestants from all over the world.

Therefore, the cuisine of Kazimierz also incorporates the styles of several surrounding countries. Here you can find mead and honey-cured venison from Ursus and Sami, as well as roasted pies from Victoria and roasted pork knuckle from Letania.

So, for Kobel, who was visiting Kazimierz for the first time, the lower city was much more comfortable than the upper city. He really couldn't get used to the knightly, aristocratic cuisine up there. Besides, he was originally just a farmer from Ursus.

"Bornet soup, I like this, one for each of us. Do you have bread? Oh, no, never mind then. One serving each of grilled sausage and grilled potatoes, and one of your grilled meats."

Kazimierz roast meat is second only to their sauerkraut in popularity, after all, they are a nation of knights and warriors.

Whether you're a knight, a gladiator in the arena, or a trainee chasing this dream, not eating meat will truly kill you. [If you don't eat meat while training, you'll be urinating blood and about to kick the bucket in a week...]

"Which team of gladiators are you?" Marna looked at the strangers. There were more than ten of them, but only four of them were wearing fine armor. Their clothes were standard uniforms, but the material was good, so they didn't seem like the kind of team that would appear in the lower city.

"Us? We're not here to compete; we're here for security work." Kobel thought for a moment, realizing he hadn't been told not to reveal his identity, and it didn't seem like it was anything shady.

"Security?"

"Ah, I can't tell you the specifics..."

"Are you Ursus people?"

"No, the people of the Kazdel Republic now..." This is something that needs to be widely publicized.

"The Kazdel Republic, the newly formed one? Where is your Demon King?"

“We don’t have a Demon King anymore…” Kobel shrugged. “Well, actually we still have one, but he’s not a king. Who can expect a child under six to be a king? That would be ridiculous.”

“Indeed…” Marna could only agree. After all, there were even three-year-old Grand Knights in Kazimierz, which was why he had no expectations for the so-called chivalry and noble honor.

He could have earned a title on the field and military merits on the battlefield. With his strength, he could have crippled more than half of the Business Alliance before the Unarmored Alliance could react. So what happened?

What good is it? He can't stop the people of Kazimir from pursuing the glory and wealth that originally belonged to the nobility.