Milo - One Month Later
“What the fuck are you doing!?” I rush forward to slap the idiot loading the cart. Alistair returned just recently, and we are using one of his carts to start transporting coal. We are also using a fleet of other carts that we bought, or rented out from merchants, or just random peasants.
What we are left with is a fleet of about 500 carts that will be traveling across the continent. The problem with this is guarding it. We had originally been planning on trying to find a crew of merchants to transport it across the continent, but every merchant we found was lowballing us so much, we would be making negative money.
So, instead of doing that, I dumped 100 or so gold coins, plus a carefully negotiated agreement with the Dark Knights, onto the whole situation.
The 100 gold went towards buying the 500 something wagons, and the agreement with the Dark Knights, allowed us to contract a small army of 50 or so of their finest people to come guard our caravan. Most of them were in the high C ranks, and slightly less than half were in the B ranks, while they were led by an A ranked Hemomancer.
A hemomancer apparently being someone who aided themselves in combat by controlling the blood in their bodies, and the spilt blood on the ground.
In total the whole situation was a bit of a monstrosity as each one of the necromancers, being a rare breed, could field 500 or so F-D ranked undead, and if they preferred, a smaller force of C ranked undead. What ended up being fielded was a field of nearly 20 thousand undead creatures, surrounding a tightly packed caravan of wagons, the caravan carrying roughly 1 million copper, worth of coal, or 100 gold. By the time they came back two months from now, I’d be able to do the whole thing over again, or hopefully I would have found a better way to do this, as it was very inefficient.
I was only making a total of -25 gold from this trip. Yes, I mean I would be losing money. Which was sad, and even worse than that even more of it, would go into paying the miners.
I quickly find Gertrude, and we talk. “We need a different method. This is inefficient, expensive, and we are barely making any money.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
She nods in agreement. “I suggest a couple things. First, reduce how much you are paying workers. Second, you aren't going to be paying 100 gold every time you run a caravan. Most of the expenses are already paid for. So all you have to do is cut out the dark knights, who at the current time are taking 50% of your profit which is fine, for now, but in the future replace them with other guards. Hopefully keep the budget at 25 gold or below for the guards. Per caravan of course.”
I nod. “I see, so I’ll actually be making closer to 75 gold every two months with the caravan.”
She interrupts, “Actually, not right now. Remember you still have to pay your workers. You lose about a silver a day paying those twenty men, that's five copper a day for each of them, and you lose 60 silver, by the time your caravans come back. This doesn't seem like a lot, but it's enough. Right now, three other decent sized mining companies have formed in the depths down there. Most of them are producing similar quantities of coal to us, but they are making more money. Because they pay their workers less. About 2 copper a day, quite a big difference.”
I nod, and grimace. “Wow.”
She nods again. “Most of them employ predatory contracts, where once someone has signed it, it can be enforced using force. So, they most likely have guards down there keeping them working longer hours, for less pay, and less food.”
I nod, but she smiles. “But that's actually great for us. Because this game is rigged in our favour. We own the dungeon, and we tax them, but we are also mining. We get unlimited tax breaks, plus we make money off of our competitors' success. So, we pay our workers a little less, 4 copper a day, and we double the operation. Now, we will be losing 80 copper a day for every twenty workers, and since we are doubling it, we will be losing 1 silver, and 60 copper a day. But also doubling our mine output. The problem with this; we also need to double our fleet of carts. So, you need to start searching for more wagons to double it. See if you can get Alistair to make some more of those big wagons, and I'll have a couple adventurers take me down to speak with the foreman.”
I nod, and quickly rush off to try to find some more carts for sale at a cheap price, but as I run I'm interrupted by her again. “Hold on. 500 tons of coal isn't a lot for the scale of mining you are doing. It doesn't seem like a lot, but in big coal mining cities, with pro miners, they can produce 5 tons an hour, per person. Your workers haven't figured out all the little tricks, and shits yet. Give them a couple more months, and you find your coal output is easily ten x-ing, you'll be producing five thousand tons, instead of five hundred.”
I grimace, nod, and then run off to find more wagons.