“The resources from the Alchemy gardens have their prices half that of what is on the market, but still, without needing to buy the plant and growing it, we are slowly being able to build up a larger stock. We have traders wishing to buy these from us, but Elise decided to wait, increasing our stock. The mines have not had a great increase in skill, but they have increased safety standards, and gained better equipment. Their speed has increased and they mine out not only iron ore, but gems and other useful items that are held in auction between the traders.”
“Okay, so how much are we making from these areas?”
Rose pulled out a notebook and flipped through a few pages. “We are making roughly fifteen Mortal Mana stones per year, though this is expected to increase if the gardens or fields are expanded, or new iron ore mines are found by the exploration team.” Rose looked back at Delilah.
“Okay, so the other streams of income?”
“With taxation, every service or trade that is made in Alva Dungeon is subject to a five percent tax. We make approximately thirty-six Mana stones per year. The academy fees, for schooling, access to different workshops, better materials, and other supplies—we make about sixteen Mana stones’ worth. We have loans—to students, to traders, business owners, and private citizens—in the amount of twenty-one thousand, five hundred gold, or twenty-one Mana stones and five hundred gold. With the interest payable every month, or when returned to Alva Dungeon, the managing interest is five hundred and thirty-seven gold and fifty silver. Though we usually get more as people like paying off their debts as an economics class was held.
“The traders have asked if they can borrow more. They are expanding at an accelerated amount and need more money to purchase more items. With them going further, it will take a longer time until they are able to even come back and pay their interest payments, but in their contracts they must pay interest accrued at least once a year. Rugrat was complaining about investment accounts and loans the other day when he was checking the balances for the treasury. I asked him more and I might have a way to increase our people’s money and be able to offer more loans.”
“Go on,” Delilah said.
“If we opened a savings account, one that it would take time to pull one’s money out from, a person could put their money in this location; we use it as collateral to lend out to the traders. The person holding the account has their money grow by one percent just sitting there, and the trader has to pay a two point five percent loan, making it so we collect a one point seven percent fee just moving money from one to another and accounting for it all.”
“Will we have enough money to help the traders?” Delilah asked.
Rose smiled. “They might not have in the past, but the costs for food and housing, although they are high compared to the outside world, for the people of Alva Dungeon, it is not hard to make gold.
“There are thousands of gold being moved through Alva Dungeon on any given day. There is plenty of work to be done. Some of the crafters have looked toward production and they are able to make a massive amount of money. Others don’t focus on money, but with high-level goods, their worth is astronomical. It required someone to make a few products to make up for the initial costs, but with people paying a fee to use the blueprint that is passed to the ones who own the blueprint, it is cheaper for the crafters and the people who get the blueprint get a steady income for the rest of their life. With the advent of factories, we will be looking at a massive increase in the quality and quantity of goods. Although we have people making Expert-level items, they can produce Journeyman-level items with relative ease, not even needing someone trained in that skill. A rough estimate puts the people of Alva Dungeon with one Sky-grade Mana stone in wealth, or ten thousand Mortal Mana stones. If we were to collect interest on just half of that, say five thousand Mortal Mana stones, we would gain one hundred and twenty-five Mortal Mana stones per month. Fifteen hundred per year.”
“Do you have a plan to carry this out?” Delilah asked.
“I do.” Rose pulled out a piece of paper with bullet points on it.
Delilah looked the sheet over and nodded. “I approve this plan. It will create a stimulus for the people of Alva Dungeon, both in growing their money over time and allowing people to take out large loans to increase their business and reach.”
“The next thing we need to discuss is expenditures,” Rose said with a weak smile.
Delilah nodded.
“Expenditures include the council, military, farms, gardens, mines, and the academy. The council are paid ten gold a month, but with all the benefits and access they have, a fee of about four Mana stones per month is cut from their expenses across the board.
“Per month, the military cost five gold per trained private, six for lance corporal, eight for corporal, ten for sergeant, fifteen for warrant and second lieutenant, twenty-five for captain and company warrant. One company will cost six hundred and six gold per month in wages, another nine gold a month in food, ten gold in maintenance fees and supplies. They also get free admission to the academy. A death benefit is to be paid out to the family of the deceased, for three years of service at the current pay rate and food to be supplied for one year without cost, which would be one hundred and eighty gold for a private.
“The farms cost eleven per month in wages but the farmers get a bonus from the total sales, and they get a free meal every week from the cookhouse.
“The alchemists in the gardens grow their own plants but look after the others. They keep their plants once complete.
“The miners get one gold per month, foreman gets three gold, for a total of fifty gold per month and the academy heads cost about seven thousand gold per month in materials and ten gold personally per month.”
Delilah’s head bounced around with so many numbers.
“The expenses sound large, but they are small compared to the money coming in. I did not include the battlefield dungeon, or Erik and Rugrat into my report as their stability cannot be verified, or the production speed of the dungeon core with the Mana stones on the roof as I was told that they would not be touched for financial means.” Rose phrased her statement as a question.
“We won’t be using those Mana stones, no.”
“Very well. And I also feel I should remind you that although the wages that the people seem small, most of them, if they make good items in the academy, or more crops in the farms, or get loot in the dungeon battlefield, their winnings will be much higher than what they are paid, which motivates them to work harder and to become stronger while their wages make sure that they will never be hungry or needing in personal money to take care of their basic necessities or that new people entering Alva Dungeon will be at a disadvantage because prices are so high here that it is difficult for them to live here,” Rose said.
“So what is our costs to income?” Delilah asked.
“We make roughly ninety Mana stones per year, and pay about twenty-eight, for a rough profit margin of sixty Mortal Mana stones per year, or sixty thousand gold. We have about seventy Mana stones in the treasury,” Rose said.
“And it cost two hundred of what we saved up to pay for the tailor shop and the smithy,” Delilah said. Just thinking of the kind of wealth that Erik and Rugrat had injected into Alva Dungeon was no simple thing. And the money that was moving through the small dungeon was more than what moved in the capital cities of the First Realm.
“Correct,” Rose said.
“Okay, so do you have any plans?” Delilah asked.
“If we put the lending idea in motion, that will allow us greater access to liquid funds and with time, we can build up an impressive reserve for people to borrow money from.”
“We will maintain fifty Mortal Mana stones and the rest will be used to bring the other departments of the academy up to tier three. Once that is complete, then we will look at increasing our treasury,” Delilah said.
“With the increase in tier, it will cost power but decrease the number of wasted resource
s.” Rose nodded and put down a note.
How different minds work. Delilah was focused on increasing the academy because she felt that it would be the best thing for the people, but Rose saw the numbers, the cost and benefit of it all.
“What other ways can we increase our income?”
“We can build more fields. They are relatively easy to set up. We have housing for one thousand people already planned out with an ‘apartment building’ planned out by Matt that will have room for two hundred and ten people on a plot of land that would fit three houses. We have another four hundred acres that we can use in the dungeon for fields. At first it might take three or four weeks to harvest all of the fields, but the farmers have only shown increases in farming speeds. If it was one harvest a month, we would increase from five Mana stones a year to fifty. I have talked to the farmers. To lay down that kind of farmland, it will take up to two Mana stones.”
“With farmland it’s easy enough to build on it, so if we need more room for the dungeon’s living areas we can find it. Also, having a bit of greenery instead of just rock might do the people of Alva Dungeon some good. I agree with the plan,” Delilah said decisively.
Rose smiled and made another note.
We had four acres and we thought that we were rather well off. Alva will have four hundred acres and it’s one of the lowest-grossing incomes. How the world changes.
Chapter: Age of Factories in Alva Dungeon
As winter came, opportunity came with it in the First Realm. Those who didn’t have enough food on their farms or in the different villages moved around, trying to go to the cities so that they wouldn’t starve. The trading caravans of Alva Dungeon regularly came back with people they had recruited in the different cities. Given a place that was warm, being healed, having some meals and jobs, the population only increased and Alva Dungeon grew to six hundred people.
The traders went far and wide, with more people leaving the military training and joining the Adventurer’s Guild, heading across the First Realm and to the higher realms.
An Adventurer’s Guild branch was opened up in Taeman, with more planned in the region. Matt finished the manor and started to work on the tunnel. Others, seeing his work in the Third Realm, asked for him to make plans for manors and homes.
The crafters were all working to adapt to factories and fill the orders placed by Erik and Rugrat.
Erik stopped listening to the message that Delilah had sent him, keeping him updated on everything that was happening in Alva Dungeon. He had been focused on training and had only stopped to read reports and then continue on.
The leadership and the soldiers had been brought together, changing the way that they had been operating.
Traders were now heading to the Third Realm. Although there might be plenty of ingredients to be found in the realm, few people grew food, increasing the price of food astronomically.
Matt had returned quickly, buying up all the food he could, and recruited a few cooks before quickly returning to the Third Realm.
He made some adjustments to the manor and with Erik and Rugrat’s agreement as well as Jia Feng’s, he had set up a branch of the cookhouse department in the Third Realm.
The shipping costs of one Mortal Mana stone was sky-high, but with the expansion of the fields to four hundred acres, in one month they would be able to get half a years’ worth of their previous output of food; add in their higher base cost for foodstuffs in the Third Realm, and the fact that they had trained cooks preparing the food, what they would have originally gotten five Mana stones from could now return almost thirty Mana stones.
The manor Matt was working on had undergone a number of changes, going from the utilitarian building that they had talked about to a massive nine-story monster with private residences, stables, and restaurant, with a connecting passageway down to the Division Headquarters dungeon. There were plans to cultivate this area and turn it into another farm, to make sure that the cooks had enough food stores and they could cut down on the shipping costs moving from the Third Realm to the First.
Delilah had settled into her role well, getting used to all of the academic departments and people she needed to talk and work with. Her family had settled in well and Alva Dungeon seemed to have hit their stride.
Elise had headed out to the second and third realms on a trip to open more trade routes. She had taken over as the leader of the traders rapidly. She directly bought factory equipment and ordered more, buying up a plot of land in the warehouse district and creating a textile mill, and she was working on making an Alchemy production line for healing and Stamina powders and potions.
Alva Dungeon was a hive of activity with production up across the board, people increasing their skills daily, the military being changed for the better.
It’s starting to be a real town—well, town in a dungeon. Erik moved to the next report from Vermire.
Aditya’s power had grown, but he had continued to live in and operate Vermire, leaving the nations to fight among themselves, remaining a neutral party to it all.
Before, nations, empires, and counties looked down on Vermire, simply seeing it as a place where they could carry out trade and find a good selection, or meet up with others from distant countries secretly.
After Zatan, they had become more respectful, seeing that Vermire, although calm on the outside, was not “Just” a trading outpost.
Many had tried to pull him to their side, but he stood his ground, making them appreciate him more. There was a need for a broker between people and a place where they could buy and sell goods privately.
The news of the Alva Healing House continued to spread but they were under the shadow of Vermire now.
Students from the Alchemy and healing department continued to do an exchange at the Alva Healing House. With the Adventurer’s Guild creating new locations, Blaze had also put up a posting, looking for healers and alchemists at the new branches.
Having a guild with a rich collection of missions, weapons, and armor to purchase and healing services was appealing to many.
Not all of the healers and alchemists would reach the level of Journeyman or Expert and they were perfectly happy with that. Instead of staying in school, there were plenty of other opportunities available to them.
Chapter: Final Touches
The military from Alva Dungeon had been changed completely.
They had started with going over sanitary, first aid, and weapon training. How to attack a position, defend it, offensive operations, scouting operations, guerrilla tactics, battlefield tactics came next.
As they moved on a soldier basis, they would move to positions that allowed them to support one another and would allow them to get to cover quickly. They had soaked up the information like a sponge as they had nothing to do. Those who weren’t paying attention would get the whole group punished. It had pulled them together as they had left behind their duelist tendencies to charge forward. Thankfully, being in parties had made them work better together than when they had first started. Still, it took them going through hardships to learn to rely on one another and create a unit.
The leadership passed on what they had learned in their training beforehand. They were still the same people, laughing, joking, and smiling with one another, but as soon as they needed to get to work, like Erik and Rugrat, their smiles faded away and they changed.
Men and women turned into soldiers. They worked on individual skills, then worked as a section, then as a platoon and finally as a company.
It wasn’t easy and it meant a lot more working than it meant sleeping. People had dropped out, unable or unwilling to hack it. Most of them headed to the Adventurer’s Guild or to other jobs.
“We all ready?” Erik asked Rugrat, who walked over to him in the snow.
“All set for tonight,” Rugrat said. They looked over the camp as the sunlight started to fade down. He sat down on a rock next to Erik.
“Good. We’ll get to see the difference between the special te
ams and the regular forces. It’s about time we changed up the special teams. I plan to have one of them on operations, one on standby, and the other training in Alva Dungeon, rotating them once every three months unless there is something important.”
“So for the Fourth Realm?” Rugrat asked.
“One of them will be coming with us. I’m thinking Special Team Three,” Erik said.
“Right on,” Rugrat said.
They looked over to a group of people coming out of the forest. They wore white-colored gear, so it was harder to see them in the snow.
They passed the sentries and headed to Glosil’s tent.
A runner was sent out moments later and the leadership headed over.
“Looks like they’ve got a plan,” Rugrat said.
***
The whole company was up and moving through the forest. Every footstep and breath sounded alarmingly loud.
Domonos looked around the group. He had been accepted into the military when he applied with all of the other applicants.
The training had been hard but they had learned more about warfare than they thought there was to be learned about warfare.
All of their actions were now nothing more than rote responses that had been programmed into their minds, beaten into their bones.
They were strong individually but they worked as one, looking out for one another, willing to die and kill for them. Instead of focusing on personal glory, levels, and loot, their job was simply to kill the enemy before they were killed by that same enemy.
He kept on scanning the area. All of them held crossbows, staffs, or other ranged weaponry. Only when the enemy closed were they supposed to pull out their close-range weapons.
They stopped as the scouts who had been here before talked to the leaders.
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