The older farmer glared at Doran as he said, "Stop blaming others unreasonably. Do you think hunting is that easy?! Many inexperienced hunters die easily! Even the experienced hunters who are proficient in the bow and arrow and swords can't assure that they will return alive! You think life is all fun and games and that as soon as we quit farming we will become expert hunters?

Many of us haven't even touched a sword till now! What the leader did was delay our deaths!"

The older farmer who spoke was Darren, Doran's older brother.

Doran glared at his older brother as he said with his teeth clenched, "What do you want to do then? Starve to death? We barely scraped by last time because the hunters pitied us and gave us some meat in exchange of whatever valuables or clothes we had. Do you think that they'll do that again?"

Darren started laughing. He then said with anger, "They 'pitied' us? Seriously? What they did was rip us off! They sold a chunk of meat for exorbitantly high prices! You gave off our family heirloom, the only thing we have left off our mother, just to feed yourself and your wife for a few days!"

Doran glared at his brother as he smirked. "Yes I did. So what? So what if they ripped us off? They gave us some food atleast, right!?"

Darren screamed, "Austin is the only good one of the hunters! The rest of them have hoards of meat which they're hiding! Austin is the one who donated meat to all of the Lyrians!"

Now, what he said was a complete misunderstanding.

The hunters did not have 'hoards' of meat. They themselves have just a bit of leftover meat after feeding their families.

Austin was the leader of the hunters. All the hunters of Lyria gathered together, gave how much ever meat they could to Austin, and Austin donated it to the Lyrians without explaining anything.

This caused the misunderstanding that all the meat was Austin's and that the hunters actually had hoards of meat stored.

But, the hunters did exploit the situation. After the meat that they donated was consumed by the people of Lyria, they began selling the meat that they had acquired for exorbitantly high prices.

Meat became a hot commodity and people bought meat with passion. People began auctioning for meat like they were sacred relics.

Many people and families who couldn't buy the meat due to the prices died. Some people tried a last ditch attempt as they entered the forests themselves to hunt for beasts. They either died in the forests, or returned defeated and heavily injured.

Suddenly though, a new commodity came into the market. Mushrooms from the forest. The trees in the forests were strange.

No fruits grew on them and the only thing that looked edible in the forest were mushrooms.

But, the mushrooms were poisonous too.

Many people who bought the mushrooms died miserable deaths due to poisoning.

Just when the situation looked hopeless, and everyone thought that the famine would kill most of the people of Lyria, the noble of the nearby town donated rice to Lyria.

He only donated rice, nothing else. Just pure white rice.

But, to the people of Lyria who were taken over by hunger, this rice was as tasty as divine nectar.

The noble too had his own selfish intentions. He wanted to take over Lyria, and wanted to gain a good impression from the people of Lyria.

After all, they were extremely strong and he was nor going to risk deaths of his already less soldiers for the task.

Note : This book is being rewritten and all the comments for this chapter were for the previous version of it.