Lucas and Eris quickly arrived at the Manor's yard to find a small crowd already gathered around, as well as the two usual kitchen helpers who were trying to coordinate what was being brought in.
As soon as the children appeared, they naturally drew attention; or rather, Eris drew attention as she was an easily recognizable figure in Redwood Town. Having already been told what to do beforehand by her little brother, Eris immediately called out, "Mom sent us over to help!"
"Lady Sasha sent you two to help?" Helen, the older of the kitchen staff asked curiously.
"That's right! Mom put Lucas in…" Before Eris could run her mouth, Lucas quickly covered her lips with his hand and cut in, "Lady Sasha said that we could use all the help we can get right now. Since Big Sister Eris and I can read, write, and calculate, we were sent here to help take inventory!"
Although some of the adults were a bit surprised, seeing the blazing red hair of Redwood Town's little princess and the oddly mature expression of its best blacksmith's son, they recalled that Eris and Lucas weren't just ordinary children and decided to accept this explanation, for now.
As for Helen and Grace, Sasha's kitchen aides, they had worked together with Lucas on a number of projects already and knew what he was capable of, so they saw no problem even if the boy was put in charge of things here.
Glancing around, Lucas quickly took stock of the situation before speaking up, "Aunty Helen, Big Sister Grace, I'll take over recording things, so please focus on getting the crowd in order."
Her brow twitching slightly, Helen wanted to ask Lucas why she was 'Aunty' and her colleague was 'Big Sister' despite them only being a few years apart in age.
It was a point which had always bothered her a bit, but Helen knew that now was probably the worst possible time to bring up such a trivial matter, so she swallowed her vexation and focused, "If the two of us are organizing the crowd, and you are recording what's being brought in, who is going to stock and organize the storage?"
Lucas already had an answered prepared, so he didn't hesitate to say in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, "Vice-Captain Carl has assigned some of the Town Guard to help out with security and stockpiling; they should be here soon. When they arrive, Big Sister Eris, who knows how the warehouse and cold storage are set up, will work with them to store all the supplies away."
Just as the young boy had anticipated, the everyone present looked slightly relieved to hear that some of the Town Guard would be watching over the foodstuffs they were bringing over.
Although no one wanted to believe that Charles and Sasha would cheat or scam them out of their hard-earned harvest, or that any of their neighbours would be greedy enough to try to steal food in this time of crisis, it was always better to have some extra insurance.
"Additionally," Lucas continued, "If anyone wants to volunteer to help, please speak to me directly when your turn to deposit food arrives."
Lucas understood that this was just the beginning, and that more and more non-combat tasks would begin popping up as time passed, so building up a reserve of volunteers right now would surely come in handy later.
If there had been time, Lucas would have preferred gathering his own employees, the ones he had hired for the soap workshop and bathhouse, as they were already familiar with working for him.
He especially wanted Gabe, Rebecca, Joel, Laura, and Finn, the original 5 he had recruited on Director Leah's recommendation.
Gabe was both intelligent and serious, so he was a great at handling administrative tasks. On the other hand, Laura was strong willed, righteous, and quick-witted, making her ideal for leading people.
Rebecca, Joel, and Finn were a bit younger and slightly less dependable, but over the past several months, Lucas had been teaching them a lot of new knowledge and giving them ample practical training, so they were still very capable compared to ordinary youths.
With his original employees help, Lucas' job would surely be easier, but there was simply no way to find them in all the chaos right now, Once I recruit some volunteers, I'll send a few of them to look for those 5. At the very least, I need to find Laura and Gabe.
Setting aside these future plans, Lucas quickly ran over to a nearby crate which was being used as a kind of desk and picked up a stack of papers that Helen and Grace had been using to record what type, and how much food was being brought in by the individual townsfolk.
Upon seeing that the two kitchen-staff were actually just writing out in full what people were bringing in, almost like a diary, Lucas couldn't help but frown slightly.
There was nothing wrong with this kind of record-keeping per-say, but it was highly inefficient and difficult to read through and do calculations with, so Lucas decided to make a few changes.
Fortunately, while they were waiting for the guardsmen that Carl was sending over, and for Helen and Grace to re-organize the crowd into a proper queue, Lucas had a bit of time to spare.
Taking out a new sheet of paper and using a small piece of wood that was relatively straight, Lucas quickly drew up a simple table with columns for people's names, grains, meats and fish, fruits and vegetables, and 'others'. A ruler would have been better, but Lucas didn't have one on him right now, so he had to make-do.
Lucas also left columns on the sheet for weight estimations for each category of food.
Once he had a prototype, Lucas waved Eris over and handed it to her, "Big Sister, can you make me several more copies of this. At least 10 more."
Accepting the sheet of paper from Lucas and looking at the simple table, Eris didn't find it too complicated so she nodded seriously and immediately got to work.
She might not have enjoyed all the lessons her mother forced her to take, but that didn't mean Eris was stupid; something like copying a table was a breeze for her.
Having assigned some work to Eris, Lucas began the more difficult task of translating the records Helen and Grace had already written into the new format.
Upon reading the first entry, Lucas was pleased to find that the two kitchen helpers had fully adopted his new system of measurements, recording many things in kilograms, rather than 'sacks' or 'bushels' as was customary before.
This wasn't too surprising though, as all the new recipes that Lucas had been providing to his Aunt Sasha over the past 9 months had been in grams, kilograms, litres, and millilitres. The boy had even gone so far as to 'gift' his aunt a pair of calibrated spring-scales and measuring cups he had personally designed and half-forced his father to make.
In fact, back at Lucas' home and at his soap workshop, there were multiple sets of measurement equipment the boy had painstakingly created, including rulers, weights, and scales.
Lucas had even tried to create a kind of mechanical caliper to further increase the resolution of his measurements, but he ran into a small stumbling block here, he couldn't quite remember how this tool worked.
He knew that this knowledge was part of his inherited memories, but it seemed to be buried beneath a layer of fog, probably because it was more abstract and less applied than other pieces of information.
Suffice-it-to-say, once Sasha started using Lucas' standard measurement units, the rest of the Manor's staff began using them too. They were even beginning to creep into other parts of Redwood Town under Lucas' persistent efforts, but they were far from becoming widespread.
Regardless, the fact that Helen and Grace were using standard measurements in their records made Lucas' work much faster, and within a few minutes he had managed to condense 5 pages of notes into just 1 page of records.
Just as Lucas was finishing up, Eris also finished her task and handed him a stack of 13 papers, all with neatly drawn tables on them.
Helen and Grace were also done getting the townsfolk in line, and Lucas could see a pair of Town Guard jogging over from the main entrance.
Good, let's get started then, Lucas thought to himself before calling out, "Whoever's next in line, please step forward!"
As people walked up, Lucas quickly asked them what they had brought, then converted whatever units they were using in his head and recorded that down.
Most of the townsfolk had simply hauled whatever they could carry on their backs, while a few had carrying-racks or carts, so it didn't take long for Lucas to process them.
Lucas had thought of setting up some kind of scale or performing simple inspections to verify exactly how much food was being dropped off, but upon seeing the crowd growing larger and more restless, he decided that a rough estimate was good enough for now.
As long as there was enough for everyone to eat for the next month or so, the precise distribution of who brought how much of what wasn't that important.
As food came in, Lucas divided it broadly into two categories, perishable and non-perishable.
Then, he had items piled up onto large nearby carts.
Once a cart was fully loaded, Lucas had one of the guards, along with a few volunteers, wheel it to either the Manor's granary warehouse, or the cold storage.
Lucas also had Helen, Grace, or Eris accompany the carts, as they knew the situation inside the storehouses well and would be able to direct the unloading of the carts.
After some initial confusion and a bit of troubleshooting, things started progressing smoothly, with everyone unconsciously following Lucas' instructions. While some found it odd that a boy was seemingly now in charge, since there were no serious problems, no one bothered to object.
For a brief moment, the situation calmed down and a semblance of order was established, but the loud sound of horns coming from the west soon broke that illusion.