Chapter 263

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“I-is that beer?”

“Beer! It is really beer… Maria-sama, thank you!”

“Phew, I was so tired about collecting lumber, some nice beer would do us good!”

“I want a cup as well!”

The people gathered in a line as I began to share beer with every adult, sometimes some children would try to ask for beer, but we gave them fruit juice instead, they were happy with just that.

The people of my town were not lazy or anything, it’s just that the distribution of resource is mostly done by us and our population is quite small, not everybody got enough food inside their houses to make their own personal meals, and we prefer to use the food reserves to make food for just everybody instead of giving it in little pieces for everybody to cook themselves.

A lot of the people, especially the lazy males that don’t know how to cook anything at all, prefer this way, but some of the people had also told me that I should begin selling food now that they’re slowly gaining a capital, as I am paying them to do work for me. Some examples would be helping Darfu in constructing the Greenhouse, a new Job, which I will be paying some copper coins for those that help. Or people cutting lumber or constructing houses, or cleaning and dismantling the old houses of the demon kingdom too, all of that is paid if they show me their work.

Like that, through a primitive reward system, people that work hard have begun to earn some money, and there is also some that don’t have enough stamina or strength to do that, and are dedicating themselves to other activities, such as crafting all sorts of clothes, accessories, small utensils, and even cleaning the castle where we live. Everything helps at the end so I paid them for what I find is worth money for, of course, I don’t have endless coins, so I have to be moderate or my entire capital will be owned by my own people, which would be a bad form of government! If the ruler doesn’t have power over the economy, how can I call myself a ruler?

That’s why we must make the money rotate back to me while slowly adding more and more people and money, this is pretty much how nations are born, I need more population, more items, more resources, and more money, an endlessly growing kingdom… but that’s way too complicated, so let’s keep it humble for now, no point in endlessly trying to improve and expand if we are going to get stomped by humans if we get too far ahead of ourselves.

Also, unlike the examples of Earth, in here we got magic, a big factor that completely changes the rules of the game and make it way more entertaining, in fact, so we have to take that into consideration as we move forward with our plans. For now, it would be better to use this magic to offer things for every day lives such as water and fire, warm water makes all sorts of food, can wash clothes, and wash themselves as well, and then there is the plants, which we’ll grow with magic so they grow super-fast, something unrealistic to expect in the world where I come from.

Anyways, for now I plan to see the greenhouse being constructed and then we’ll begin our “project greenhouse” where we’ll begin buying vegetable seeds and plant them there. I want tomatoes, onions, garlic, potatoes, lettuce, and all of that, the basics of the most basic of stuffs will be there, fruits? Well, they’re not that needed, but perhaps apples and oranges would be enough, I want to eat apple pie… While all of this is happening, I am also going to slowly prepare for a big trip back to the Duchy of Affnaria, where the new Duchess, our new friend, got us some new jobs.

I had left there one of my ghost snakes to spy on her and see what’s going on, it has been roughly over two months since we last saw her, and she has been working on paperwork nonstop, doing all sorts of transactions with guilds, merchants, and more, while trying to improve the self-sufficiency of her duchy so it doesn’t crumble apart with every passing year and drowns in poverty.

She hasn’t been able to catch any slaver because of how busy she is, but she has been getting more clues about an organization selling a new drug, so we are moving there next to investigate what’s up with that and help her out. I have write her a letter with the snake ghost I left there and left her over her desk yesterday morning. I had written there that I was coming there in at most a month, and that I needed to get done a few things in here before going there again. And that’s why I told her that I might take almost a month to get there.

Anyways, after giving fish hot pot to everybody alongside some beer and bread, we began digging in outside of my castle, gathered in the middle of our small and humble town, we enjoyed the company of everybody as we began eating. I couldn’t get enough of this hot pot though; the flavor of fish soup was so tasty! And the onions and garlic I added made the flavor even more tasteful, to boot, the delicious potatoes that came with it filled my stomach quickly, and the bread was fresh and crunchy. The beer was just nice as well, so everything combined pretty well into an entire and wonderful meal.

The entire meal was nice and I was left pretty happy overall, I had never eaten something so refreshing for some reason, maybe I have begun to get attached to this town to the point that even eating something here feels way tastier than elsewhere. I guess I really like it in here… I have finally found my home after dying twice.

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