City of Ilma, Outskirts.
A middle-aged farr was slowly making his way to his farmland early in the morning, just like usual.
Seeing him walking on the road, a fellow farr who was working on the field right beside the road smiled and shouted,
"Oh! Old Paul! You are here early today!"
Hearing the shout of his friend, Paul stopped and replied in a calm voice as he wiped the sweat from his forehead.
"The weather’s hot today, so I thought it would be better to finish up work early today..."
"Also I had no money to drink yesterday, so I couldn’t even sleep properly... even cheap wine is so expensive these days that it’s unbelievable!"
Hearing Paul’s words, his friend sighed and shouted loudly while replying from far away,
"Oi oi! It’s already been three months since the incident with Beila! How long are you going to ss around in the taverns?"
"There are plenty of fish in the sea; you should move on now from the past, you know!"
"Thinking about her all the ti and being won’t fill your stomach!"
At his friends’ words, Paul gave a wry smile and replied with a sad look on his face,
"You won’t understand it man... you haven’t married anyone after all... she still cos in my dreams-"
Before Paul could finish his sentence, his friend laughed and replied,
"Poor people have no ’dreams’! We only have ’survival’ and ’suffering’ in our life!"
"But if you start enjoying the suffering, it won’t be much of a problem anymore!"
"Take my advice into consideration and stop wasting your ti in the taverns and start looking for other won! There are kinds of them out there, you know!"
Paul knew it was pointless to argue with that guy, and thus he shook his head and continued on his way.
With his empty stomach and no money in his pockets, Paul arrived at his small farm, which he had inherited from his father.
Legend has it that the lands of the Ilma County once used to be lush and very productive, but a powerful monster once ravaged the land and died rampaging in this land.
Its body destroyed the land and made most of Ilma County barren and unproductive.
Only a little bit of land around the city of Ilma is still barely able to produce so food, and many farrs inherit it from their parents with each passing generation.
Paul was the sa, although his land was much less productive, and it barely produced enough yield to fill his stomach for a few months.
Old Paul had been working on this farm since his childhood, and he had spent decades of hard work to save enough money to buy a small ho for himself and his family in a cheaper area inside the city walls.
The City of Ilma is very big, but it’s not big enough to keep up with the changing tis and the increase of population in the county.
The walls of the city of Ilma were made dozens of decades ago when monster attacks ravaged the land, often in this area.
Population was small back then, and everyone had enough space to live inside the city walls safely, but in his day and age, when monsters don’t have much interest in attacking the city of Ilma, the population has exploded.
There is no more space left inside the city walls, and many poor and holess people have settled outside the city walls over the past few decades.
Most of the poor farrs and laborers of the city live outside the city walls, and the area is commonly referred to as the slum area of the city of Ilma by many.
Paul wanted a better life for his children.
He had seen all the chaos and despair a poor person could see in his life, he had often starved for days, he had seen his parents die from a disease, and his life was filled with sorrow just like any other normal poor person’s is.
That’s why he worked hard his entire life, married his childhood sweetheart, and tried to give her a better life.
He was blessed with a son, and just a few months ago, his son had finally beco five years old.
Although Paul’s own life was filled with despair and suffering, he didn’t want that kind of life for his son; he worked hard to buy a ho in the city so that he could finally leave those dirty, lawless slums behind.
But fate seed to have sothing else in mind.
Paul’s greatest wish was thoroughly crushed and destroyed when, three months ago, his wife and his son fell sick after drinking water from a contaminated well.
He later found out that the well was constructed by the subordinates of the Ilma family, but they had used cheap material to build it.
Those subordinates were corrupt, and to take most of the money for themselves, they built the well with cheap material and forced the people from the slums to work for them without paying them at all.
One of the people forced to work was even suffering from a contagious disease and ended up dying while working from sickness; instead of disposing of his body, they pushed his body in the well and forced others to keep building.
Food and water shortage was a common occurrence in the barren land of Ilma, where nothing grew and it barely ever rained.
Despite knowing that the water was contaminated and despite removing the rotting corpse later, it still beca a breeding ground for disease and death.
Paul’s unfortunate wife and his young kid had no idea about the contamination of the water.
Most of the people in the slums were uneducated; they had no knowledge that even after removing the corpse there would still be health issues.
Hundreds of people from the slums were wiped out in just a few days of the well’s creation, and unfortunately for Paul, his beloved wife and his little child were among those many victims.
Paul even sold his house, which he had spent so much effort on, just to find dicine for his wife and his child.
But there was nothing that could save his family; it was as if Fate had already decided that suffering was unavoidable in his life.
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