The World Dragon's Heir

Chapter 727  Soundproofing Matters

Benedict and Wilkes deactivated the soundproofing at dinner time, and then reconsidered calling the Duke and Duchess down to eat. Instead, they had the veiled maids bring the meal up to them, along with a larger folding table to hold the side dishes.

It was not the easiest way that Dominic had ever gotten out of a day at work, but it might have been the most enjoyable.

Enough so that the entire staff had to hide their amusement at the happy smile on his face as he came down for breakfast the next day, still sporting faintly visible claw marks on his exposed lower arms.

"Alright, what is on the agenda for the day? I put off yesterday's meetings, so I'm sure there is plenty," he greeted Alistair as the advisor took a seat next to him at the table.

"Nothing out of the ordinary. The soldiers are still making their way through the Baronies, with no major crimes or arrests reported.

The airships reported nothing out of the ordinary as they flew over the Provinces, but the number of beasts near the summoning array is said to be higher than usual. Perhaps it was a higher density spawn, or an oversight in the search pattern of the cleanup teams.

Other than that, your new Royal Guards sorted and organized the documents for you, so you can go through them at your leisure.

I must say, they are proving to be quite popular, especially with Castellan Julio. That magic they have for sorting through documents by origin and urgency is quite the innovative use of the spell.

It can actually tell what is false, or political doublespeak, and what was written by someone who finds the topic genuinely urgent."

"Oh, now that is something that I did not know. Do you think that it's going to save time?"

Alistair nodded. "Not only can you do the most important things first, you can also save the ones that you know are false for analysis later, instead of trying to decipher the politics in them while you have other things to do.

They also have agreed to work with the accounting team to use their magic to check numbers. You see, the one known as Benedict was a teacher, and he has magic for grading papers. It will automatically point out mathematical errors."

Jenna, the chief accountant and financial advisor, sat down beside the mage with a sigh.

"The problem is that it doesn't fix the math, it only tells you if it is wrong. I don't even know how that could possibly work, but it does every time, even when it's not intentional. We tested it with airship blueprints from a version before revision, and it found all the math issues they later corrected after testing, and a miscalculation of the structural integrity that we hadn't noticed.

Fortunately, after recalculating, it's stronger than anticipated, so no design changes were made." Dominic nodded and continued to eat. That was excellent news. They now had a magical calculator for their accounts. It was a strange magic, not powerful in the conventional sense, but so utterly and completely indispensable that nobody would want to be without it now that the knew it existed.

He fully expected that Rill would be here soon, begging to get a copy of the spell gem.

Julio was a loyal member of their staff, but he was also a member of the Merchant's Guild, and magic that calculated numbers in a ledger were precisely the sort of thing that they would pay an exorbitant amount for.

At least, until they had it and could make copies for their branches.

"Well, I'm certain that the airship designers will be happy to know that the error was in their favour. How have things been with the harvest for next month? I know that we have been receiving shipments from the Baronies now that their storage facilities are getting full." "The farmers view it as food aid for the commoners, and they're happy to help where they can. The Barons have been giving them a discounted price for it, as they're all short on cash as well, but the people are happy to help. Most of the ones who came from the Provinces already know what it's like to be under Dagos rule, and they wouldn't wish worse than that on anyone.

So, you're not going to get too much anger at the transfers. At least not this year.

Given that you'll be paying for a decade, I'm sure that it will set in eventually, especially, as it's paying for Kinewen Province, but the payments aren't coming from Kinewen.

That's going to grate on them if we can't afford to pay them market price for the crops. Fortunately, the farmers only get a small portion of retail if they're selling for shipment by the Guild, so we can give them a discounted price. Though, from what I can see in the reports about the Trollish village, we might not need to worry about it.

They've got even more potatoes growing this time than last time, and they've somehow found more trolls.

I don't even know where they came from.

There was no report of them arriving, but the official report counts far more of them in the fields than there should be in total, and none of them were in the robes of the Mage Sect, so they're likely all from the village."

"Well, that should probably have been expected. The trolls are all looking to come back to the old Wavemates territories, and I'm actually thinking of holding a special place for them in Kinewen Province as well.

The southwestern portion of the Province, west of Skipton River, has always been pretty desolate. Not great for crops, too far from anything to have a population more than a few kilometres from the river.

I think that it would be a great region for Trolls to make new settlements.

They don't like being too close to the humans if they can avoid it, and we can just send portals or airships to gather resources from them. They'll happily pay in crops for tenancy, and then we can use that to pay Dagos."

"That sounds like exploiting tenant farmers."

Dominic shrugged. "If I don't charge them taxes, they're getting the good end of the deal."