The World Dragon's Heir

Chapter 705: Balancing Costs

As soon as they were outside the city, the mages opened a portal large enough to drive through, and led the group directly back to Wistover so that they could begin to send everyone back to their own holdings and spread the news about the changes to governance.

"How are we going to explain the situation to the rest of the Province?" Jack Merlot asked the moment that it was explained to him.

"For the sake of simplicity, we will just say that Kinewen Province is coming under our jurisdiction as a protectorate, and Stansia Province will begin sending security patrols to help survivors of the disaster.

That should just about cover it.

The rest of the payment details will mostly be on the Nobles, and they can explain that to their people however they want. For Wistover, we will be hiring more people to produce goods, as the King has generously offered a tax credit for the supplies.

So, I plan to use a portion of our revenue to make the payment to Dagos for Kinewen Province. That will offset taxes for some time, and as long as we don’t go overboard, we can make it work for everyone.

We can levy a tax on the people if we really need to, but I suspect that we won’t have much problem convincing the farmers to sell to us at a reduced price to ship out the food crops for Dagos.

Food prices here are already much lower than in most of the country, and low enough to make most of the continent cry after the year they’ve had.

So, we can fulfil our part of the bargain easily enough, even without opening too many new factories." Dominic replied.

Jack nodded. "I will bring it up with the others. I think that we can just dedicate a portion of the products made by Duchy owned factories to the transfer, the same as we would for taxes. It cuts down on revenue, but doesn’t directly cost us money like a dedicated factory would.

It’s the food transfers that they need which will be unavoidably expensive."

"That is true. But we can sort it out later. There are other Nobles in Cygnia, it’s not all on us here in Stansia Province. If food is what they can spare, then they can send the quota. If not, we will step in to make sure it’s filled."

The Advisors sighed, while the other Nobles began making plans to cooperate and come up with a list of what they could easily spare every month.

It had to be something that wouldn’t hurt their budgets or supplies too badly, but on the list of things that Dagos had demanded.

Though, looking at the list, it was clearly aimed at Wistover.

No way around it, everything that they demanded were things that he produced in abundance. So, even if the rest of Cygnia was on hard times, Wistover Duchy could likely struggle through and make the payments.

Once people started to move back into Kinewen Province, they could help as well, but it was hard to say what the province would look like over the next few years, with the former Capital now a forbidden zone.

It was the only major city in the entire province, after all.

"Alright, we will send everyone home and then keep in touch. We have a month to the first shipment, and that will take some coordination. Hopefully, the King will have done most of the organization, but spread over hundreds of Nobles, it’s actually not much from each of us.

If we each sent one trailer load of food or equivalent in items, we’d be there every month.

That seems a bit excessive for some of the landless Nobility, but even if we just combined it to that much per Noble with a County or larger territory, it would be enough.

I’m sure that it will all work out in the end."

If it didn’t look like it was going to work out for them, Dominic knew that he could work a deal with the Trolls to work their nature magic and produce massive amounts of food for the Merchants’ Guild to ship to Dagos.

If it came with a good spot to live, the Trolls would be more than happy to spread their magic across the farms of Stansia and Kinewen Provinces.

With their help, an entire crop could be completed within a month, and they would be able to refresh the nutrients of the fields as well, preventing them from being stripped barren by the extraction of a poor crop rotation.

Though, Dagos didn’t specify what they needed for food, so he could give them different stuff every month, or split the area that the trolls were working on into four different major crops so that they could limit the need for magic.

But the payoff for the extra work was immense. Governorship of all of Wavemates, giving him the largest single territory within Cygnia, by a large margin, and the symbolic return of his family’s ancestral lands to his control.

Plus, the titles were hereditary, assuming that the King didn’t see fit to change the Governor. That was something that he could do, though the titles often remained within a family for many generations.

"You look like you’ve got a plan." Alexis noted as Dominic stared off into the distance, watching the Nobles head home through portals made by the Duskblade Sect.

"Mostly about bribing trolls to enhance farmland so that we don’t have to buy huge amounts of food for Dagos."

Alexis laughed. "Somehow, I suspected that it might be like that. You know, we’ve got more than enough Trolls for it, right? Just build more storage warehouses for the pulse crops, and find some reward that they want for refilling them every month.

We might need to make new farm equipment that will fit Dave, though."

Dominic shrugged. "That’s fine. There are plenty of Larry trolls who fit human sized equipment. But we do need more tractors, especially if we’re going to keep accelerating the crop cycles. You know, we could make them, use them until we have another batch, and then send them off lightly used to pull the convoys full of the food they harvested."

Alexis laughed. "Just a casual flex on Dagos, sending them everything they need to farm, including the crops and seeds? I like it."