First Leonhart looked around himself to observe his surroundings properly. What he saw was not very encouraging as it was filled with only dilapidated wooden houses. The memories of the person whom Leonhart had possessed was also not very helpful as he had no memories of anything other than begging in the streets.

So Leonhart tried to gather some information about the town and mostly about the nation but his actions earned him nothing but a severe beating from other beggars as he was interrupting their trade. It was very humiliating for him as the emperor of a large nation, but Leonhart was powerless in this weak and malnourished body.

Leonhart had a majestic atmosphere around himself that he had cultivated in his years of ruling the nation as an emperor. And that natural atmosphere did not vanish when he got into the body of this malnourished person. But the contrast of a malnourished, dying body having some kind of magnificent presence was very weird and eerie.

After trying his best to gather some information for the whole day and magnificently failing in doing so, Leonhart returned to the place where he found himself after starting the stage and fell asleep instantly as he was terribly tired. Throughout the whole day, he only managed to eat half a piece of bread and nothing else. Leonhart had no more energy left and his head was also not working at all. He was on the verge of failing this stage.

...

Elena somewhat expected this to happen but did not think that Leonhart's condition would be this bad. It was actually not a very hard round and he could have easily got the information that he was trying to collect only if his approach was just a bit different. Not so high handed and more grounded.

Elena never thought Leonhart to be an arrogant person, but after acting as a ruler for so long, he might have lost his ability to sympathise with the common population. This stage could help Leonhart understand the true suffering of a person from the lowest of the low tier of the society and that would be beneficial for his future.

...

On the second day, Leonhart did not try to gather anymore information. Instead he left the city itself to go to the nearby forest. Even tho Leonhart looked like a walking skeleton, he still had the soul of a great warrior inside him. So he thought that he would be able to at least hunt some small animals. It was still better than begging in his opinion.

The forest that was outside the capital was not very large or scary. It mostly had small animals like rabbits and squirrels. The only dangerous beasts present inside the forest were a group of wolves. So Leonhart was not in a lot of danger actually, but even if he was Leonhart was confident that he would at least be able to run away.

This little hunt was actually a success for Leonhart, as he was able to hunt 2 rabbits and one squirrel in a single attempt. As a beastkin, he could eat the rabbit without cooking and even at a low level without any problem and Leonhart did exactly that without wasting any time. After eating those three small animals, Leonhart was full as the body he was currently occupying did not need much nutrition.

But just as he was enjoying the sense of fulfillment that he felt after eating his fill after starving for a whole day, a few robust looking men appeared. They were all wearing the same time dress who looked like a guard's uniform so Leonhart guessed that they were working for a noble.

"Hey, you fucking beggar. How dare you hunt in the private properties of the Ashcroft Company. Men, capture him."

At first Leonhart tried to talk to them but the soldiers did not pay him any attention. Then he started to resist, but he was way too weak to resist more than 10 individuals who were quite a lot higher level than them. So that captured Leonhart and took him to a warehouse and locked him in the basement of the warehouse.

As Leonhart had nothing to do inside the basement and he did not have enough strength to get out of this place he started to walk and observe the basement. The whole basement was filled with various misslenious items and Leonhart started to go through them to see if he could find something useful.

Unfortunately most of the things present in the basement were broken pieces of furniture or accessories. But soon in the pile of junk he found a few books. They were not normal books but were mostly ledgers. Normally no beggar would be smart enough to understand writing and even if a few beggars knew how to read, it would be impossible for them to understand something so complex like a ledger.

But as Leonhart was not a normal beggar, he was able to completely understand the ledger. After analysing the content of the ledger he found out several things and also guessed a few things on the basis of the information written in the ledger.

He was very sure that the famine was not entirely natural and many merchants played an important role in creating this famine. They also had support of a part of the nobility as the ledger had information about several dealing among the merchants and the nobles.

After Leonhart was done analysing all the ledgers, he once again started his searching once more. And this time he was lucky once more and actually found some discarded letters. Those letters were not from some big shots of anything and were mostly letters written by the low level employees of the company.

But after carefully reading all the letters, Leonhart was able to find several important pieces of information. Among them, the most important thing that he found out was the information that this nation was actually in the middle of a civil war.

The emperor of this nation was very tyrannical and crazy. So, All the inhabitants of the nation were very dissatisfied with his rule. So a little revolution occurred in some parts of the nation but they also ended very soon after the imperial army reacted.

But using this unrest as an opportunity, some of the big noble houses started to conspire. They support the runaway leader of the revolution and send their armies in his support.

Those nobles also made deals with many prominent merchants to secure funding and those merchants also joined the war efforts indirectly. That made the situation of the nation to be dire and the price of all kinds of stuff started to rise.

Unfortunately, during this exact time of unrest, a crop failure happened and they led to a food shortage. But many beastkins believed that they would be able to get out of the situation by hunting wild animals but that plan failed when various marcantile companies started to take over the areas filled with weak beasts and made them inaccessible to the common population.

So, when the famine really started to take effect, the merchants used several schemes to enslave many beastkins and started to sell them to various nobles and even outside the nation. So letting the famine go on was more profitable for them and so they did not allow the famine to end even after the problem of the crop failure was solved. And that is the current situation.

If Leonhart wanted to end the famine to get a perfect clear he had to go against all the big merchants and his starting point in this stage was very low. But from the letters he was able to find an easy and straight forward way to at least clear this stage. He found out that the current emperor was giving noble titles to anyone who could bring back the head of a rebel leader. And that would also be the easiest way for Leonhart to get a noble title and after that he could focus on making money.

And just when Leonhart was finishing his future planning, the door of the basement suddenly opened and those guards came back with a fat, bearkin following them. That bearkin looked like someone important as he was wearing expensive clothes and the guards were all behaving modestly around him. One of the guards addressed him as "Master Botheven" and Leonhart remembered that one of the 3 founders of this Ashcroft Company was also named Botheven and he was also a minor leader of the rebel forces.

His head would probably not be enough to make Leonhart a noble, but if he could bring back the head of all three founders of the Ashcroft Company then that might just be enough for him to get a barony.

So Leonhart started to plan how he could kill them without using brute force as with his current situation that would be impossible.

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