Volume 2 Chapter 16 (1/2)

A week after the completion of my city and its subsequent opening, the number of humans visiting my city had increased. My most recent tallies stated at least 300 humans per day were visiting and at least 50 of them stayed the night on our inn.

DP too was steadily being gathered.

An average of 5 DP was gained per human that stayed in the city for a full day. If they only stopped by momentarily, this number would drop to 2 DP on average. All in all, my daily income was around 500 DP.

It seemed like this city stimulated various human desires and since human emotions fluctuated more than I expected, my income amounted to such.

At the moment, Kuina and the others hunting in the [Crimson Cavern] still provided me with more DP but that was bound to change as I gained more human visitors.

Because I had finally secured a steady flow of income, I could now prepare for [War] and build my vicious dungeon without worry.

It would be a rather bad idea if I did not begin preparing for a [War].

It was to my advantage that I was able to make a dungeon whose sole purpose was the annihilation of any and all intruders while the other Demon Lords had to balance protecting their crystals and drawing in humans into their dungeons.

“At last, I’ve finally made it this far. The headaches were endless but I made it.”

…but there still were problems.

Given that a great number of hot-blooded adventurers were coming to our city, it was only natural for them to have disputes with their fellow adventurers.

On top of that, there were issues of theft too. The group of people trying to steal swords were especially high in number.

The Golems, however, resolved all these problems with a show of force.

The Golems were programmed to suppress ensuing acts of violence at once and also to arrest anybody trying to take with them items from the store that they didn’t pay for.

Besides those problems, there were an endless supply of apple thieves, people squatting in order to skip out on the inn charges, and people who harass the Mythological Foxes, Dwarf Smiths, and High Elves.

…They were all dealt with by the Golems though so our city remained peaceful. Golems were truly convenient.

“Oto-san, things have finally settled down.”

“Nice, isn’t it? We’ve hired helped, after all.”

At the moment, I was at the city leader’s house, diligently doing office work.

The store and inn now had at least 10 adventurers working part-time which freed up Kuina from working there.

It seemed like with a daily salary of 12 silver coins, twice the average salary of a manual laborer, the job was so fascinating that some of the broke and lower-class adventurers even wanted to keep on working for us for the long-term.

In some point in the future, it might be better to give them a house to settle into instead of letting them live meagerly and stay at a communal room in the inn.

I hoped to have full-time employees at the inn and store rather than part-timers.

As I was thinking so, the door burst open and in came Elder Dwarf and Ancient Elf.

“Master.”

“My master.”

The two wore serious looks on their face as they walked.

“What’s wrong? Why do the two of you look like that?”

“Master, we’re shorthanded. I need more help.”

“Me too. There’s too much work.”

They were quite distressed.

The store and the inn didn’t require much skill out of its employees so adventurers working part-time were able to do most of the work and only needed to be watched over. Blacksmithing and agricultural duties however needed expertise.

Apparently, the adventurers boasted about the swords they bought in our city and were steadily spreading news about it, leading to even more adventurers visiting our city to buy the swords. Perhaps it was even too popular that even if we doubled its price, more will still come.

The apple, for its mysterious ability to relieve stress, and the bread, for its unusual deliciousness, had also gained popularity among the adventurers.

These were all reasonable but the number of swords that could be made in a day was limited while the apple and wheat—the main ingredient of our bread—were only grown at an accelerated rate due to the elves’ power.

It was becoming quite taxing.

“I kind of understand. But first, Elder Dwarf, I ordered to to lessen the number of swords produced down to twenty a day but did even that not help? Sure, you already have a month’s worth of advance orders but is that pace too much?”

I was hoping that increasing the scarcity of the swords instead of selling them all out at once would, aside from making the dwarves’ workload lighter, keep the customers going back.

Furthermore, the blacksmiths and the resale merchants of the nearby city would seriously complain if we sold too many swords.

However, if we went to the other extreme and sold all the swords only through advance orders, its effect to draw in visitors would be gone. So I decided that five of the twenty swords made daily would be displayed over the counter and would be sold to the winners of a lottery.

In addition, the raw materials were also an issue. The Golems diligently dug and gathered the materials night and day but between their current mithril output and our [War] preparations for the dungeon proper, that was really all we could spare.

“There are still a lot of requests for weapon and armor repairs. Also, the orders for custom-made items are too detailed and bothersome. The Dwarf Smiths couldn’t handle it all by themselves so I’m forced to working on the orders too. The humans have increased so an expansion of our buildings is also necessary. We are just barely able to handle the orders right now but it keeps me from doing my true job: the development of our weapons.”

I understood what she meant then. The sales aside, the repairs of their equipment wasn’t something we could make the adventurers wait for too long.

“Alright, I’ll give you two new Dwarf Smiths.”

“Thanks. Two of them should be enough.”

In our past week of operations, my DP had increased by a considerable amount. This much of an expense should pose no problem.

Plus, Dwarf Smiths were B rank monsters and would become a significant addition to our fighting force so it was like killing two birds with one stone.

“Okay then, how about you, Ancient Elf?”

“Yes, as for us, we are harvesting more than we are able to grow. No matter how much we accelerate the growth, it is rapidly being consumed. It’s to the point that the High Elves have gotten groggy.”

“The apples aside, instead of you guys growing the wheat, could we not just use the ones bought from Eclaba?”

“It’s better that we don’t. Our bread is now known to be delicious and there are a lot of visitors coming to our city for the bread so if we used the wheat bought from Eclaba, they might get upset.”

She was definitely right. If the bread suddenly stopped being delicious, the customers would indeed get upset.

The taste of the wheat was the result of combination of the blessings it had received from the elves, the fertile farmland, and the water supply.

Even if the elves did not accelerate the growth of the wheat, good tasting wheat could still be harvested in our lands. In the future, the immigrants shall be the ones to grow the wheat, only it would take them longer before they could harvest.

“I understand. I’ll also give you two new High Elves. Like so, the growth acceleration to the crops would be enough. Also, why not make your work easier and make use of the humans to harvest the apples and wheat? As soon as possible, hire part-timers… no, they’ve got to be immigrants, don’t they?”

So far, we still didn’t have any immigrants. Something I should rectify soon.