Chapter 18 - Smooth Sailing

With my apprenticeship decided, I went back to my family's villa to recuperate. My body is still not at its best. I also need to get used to my strength as a tier 2 knight.

I can still train my ability as a mage but why don't I read some updates about the projects I started? It has been roughly 3 weeks since I arrived at the capital which is also how long my projects have been running. I am curious whether anything major happened.

First is the report from the orphanage.

Oh, it seems Rocky has been busy. He had rebuilt the orphanage building by using his earth magic. The building wall that was made by earth magic is just like a one-color tone rammed earth. It is strong and durable. Not to mention, fast. The only thing needed left in the building process is just the doors and windows parts as wood is preferable for that.

I can ask Robin to 'grow' the doors and windows using nature magic but he is already busy with other projects. It's better to let a carpenter do that job manually I guess. There's nothing wrong with helping strengthen economic circulation.

Anyway, the orphanage team has bought out the land around the orphanage so we can expand it. it is located in the slum anyway so the land around is dirt cheap. I planned to make a school in the area too so I can start educating the orphans and other children in the area.

The physical training for the orphans has been going well. With my experience and the meat support from the ranch, those orphans managed to reach adequate physical fitness in no time. So the ranch team has accepted quite a few able-bodied orphans to help there immediately.

There are some unexpected findings as the orphans start working on the ranch. Actually, the beastling girls that I hired before after saving them from bandits, Moon and Night, are actually talented in dealing with kids. When they saw kids starting to work on the ranch, they started to lead them, take care of them, and scold them when needed. When asked by Jane, Moon said that she had experience in taking care of children when she was still in her tribe. She also said that the next generation is the tribe's treasures so the people in her tribe will do their best to nurture them.

Jane was convinced and gave notice back to me, asking my permission to let the two beast girls transfer to work at the orphanage instead. And I of course agreed. I think that having known someone from a different race since childhood would do the orphans good in growing their EQ. It would be good to not be overly proud of being human, right? It'll help them from not courting death when they meet people from the other race at least.

It hasn't been long since the beast girls transferred to the orphanage so there are still no reports about their performance but at least they are well-liked by the kids and that's all that matters.

The orphanage team had also hired a few women from the area to help take care of the orphans. Good. Sprinkle some more money around. My popularity rating would definitely be skyrocketing if I were to be joining a campaign to become the mayor. Well, I don't want to become one though.

Oh, the project for gathering the street kids found some resistance from the local gang. Typical human traffickers I guess. Jane and Leon have made arrangements to make those lowlifes turned into slaves. Heh, I usually liberate my slaves after they finish their contract which is 10 years or 20 years in case they are criminals but human traffickers like those who exploit children for their own benefit will be slaves forever. I too exploit children but I don't squeeze them out to death, it is my way of nurturing them. We are not the same.

Anyway, there might be some revenge from the underworld group, but I hope that buying slaves from them would mellow them out for a bit.

There are concerns that slavery will become rampant with a big buyer like me but they could try kidnapping people around the capital or Goldcastle. My army won't let any bandits roam free. They are one of our important sources of wealth after all.

And what's this? Leon is injured? It seems that he fought against a tier 3 knight who is the head of a human trafficking group in order to free a woman according to her daughter's request in the hunter guild. He let his opponent break one of his arms to deal a killing blow to the tier 3 guy. Good fella, his smell as the main character is getting stronger. But I should look for a healer to quickly heal his broken arm. There are many things he needs to do in this early stage of development. Can't have him down for too long.

As for the rescued mother? Oh, she started working in the orphanage and stays there with her daughter now? Leon, oh Leon, you complete another deed perfectly again.

Damn, when I am fighting a demon, Leon is also making his own hero stories. As expected of the face of my Milo Army. Good going there our symbol of virtue.

Next is the report from the hunter guild.

The registered hunter has already passed 2500 and is still on the rise. The ones registering are not just fighter-type hunters but also worker-type hunters. Actually, there are no distinct work divisions between the two hunter types. Fighter type could still take civilian work if they choose to do so and worker type could take subjugation quests if they are capable. Of course, fighting-type jobs would have a bigger pay than worker-type so it will be mostly the worker types that will 'upgrade' themselves into fighters after receiving training.

My team has experience in dealing with this massive amount of people wanting to register in the hunter guild so they hired many young women as receptionists to help with the process.

Of course, there were a lot of troublemakers trying to join in on the fun but with my army members standing guard, those troublemakers can be swiftly dealt with.

For marketing the guild's service, well, most of the hired young ladies are the daughters of a merchant family so they will also work as sales ladies in their free time. With the commission system for their payment, the ladies have been very zealous in selling the guild's services even to their own families.

In the beginning, most of the quest in the hunter guild was commissioned by my army but the private quest has been growing steadily. And the type of quest also grows alongside it. There were only subjugation, transportation, and odd jobs before, and now, there are requisition, exploration, and civil service jobs added.

I have planned to make the ranch my number 1 source of money for now so most of my focus is in that place. Hunter guild and the orphanage are the side projects that are meant to support the main project, especially in providing a workforce. So the 3 early jobs that the guild provided were all from my ranch.

Subjugation quests are mostly about hunting the magic beast on Tusk Plain. But there are also other related quests meant for public service like driving away beasts and monsters that get close to the capital city or the surrounding villages to ensure safety and prevent disaster.

Monsters that do not yield anything lucrative and a nuisance to subjugates like goblins are also in the public service category. Well, goblins are still the worst monsters out there. They are basically bandits in monster shape. They are weak individually and they don't have any body parts worth selling, unlike the other monsters. But if left alone long enough, they will form a horde that would even give the kingdom's standing army trouble.

That's why it is important to thin them out frequently. It's just that, it is a thankless job. That's why I give some charity by making a public service quest for hunting goblins which I would pay with my own money.

Next are the transportation quests which main point is, of course, to help transport something. The guild will get some worker hunters who are experienced in driving a cart to help transport supplies and loot to the ranch or to the capital. They are, in simple words, middle age's uber.

But horses are expensive and not many own them. Of course, the guild could not lend all the transporter so many transporters used their own body strength to haul the goods.

The guild can't lend them horses but we sure can lend them human-sized pull wagons.

On a side note, there are many manual transporters who haul goods with pull wagons and successfully rank up into a tier 1 knight. That was an unexpected yet pleasant surprise.

Odd jobs are the other kinds of jobs that can't be categorized in transport or subjugation. Basically, a part-time job. There are jobs for butcher, herder, carpenter, farmer, and many more. There are also odd jobs type work that are close to the front line. They mostly work like a field mechanic in which they will set up traps and build fortifications. Their pay is second to the fighter types as they are also at risk of injury with their close proximity to the front line.

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And now, with our market growing bigger, new kinds of quests are also introduced.

The first one is requisition. Just like the name suggests, it is simply a fetch quest. Oh, there is the famous newbie quest collecting herbs also listed in the available quest. Gee, I'm surprised (monotone).

For this quest type, I also add my own personal quest. And that is to capture a beast that can be used to harvest its egg.

Yes, eggs! I'm so used to eating those back on Earth but I could hardly find any here. I can only find eggs occasionally from bird-type beasts but most of the bird-type beasts back in Goldcastle area were hard to domesticate as none of them are the landwalking bird type.

If I can just start producing eggs, I can start making many new things. So many recipes are being bottlenecked by eggs.

Unfortunately, according to the latest report, there is still no one taking on the quest. I guess everyone is still focused on doing the quest around the ranch.

The next new type of quest is the exploration quest. This is basically a scouting mission of a certain area. I also issued my personal quest here. 2 of them in fact. The 1st one is to scout the northern area beyond the Tusk Plain until they reach Goldwater River. And the 2nd one is to scout the southern area to find the sea. Those two are for the second phase of my plan.

The purpose of the second exploration is easy to understand for my fellow earthlings. Yes, salt! Salt is beeping expensive here but it is used in many things in everyday life. Why should I waste a lot of money if I can make it myself?

But I also heard that there are an overwhelming amount of monsters in the sea. It might be hard to clear an area for making salt so I can only take it slow. That's why I just put an exploration quest and not a subjugation one. Besides, I need more information before I can start subjugating anything.

For the exploration of the Goldwater River, well, the reason the river is named Goldwater is because its source is from the Goldridge area. Can you guess it now? Yes, I am trying to open a river transportation route from Whitecastle to Goldcastle.

I am fed up with a month-long travel. It is absurd for me who have experienced the convenience of Earth's transportation means. If I can open up a river route and make ships, the travel time to go back home should be shortened. Which would increase commerce in Goldridge area and strengthen my family as a bonus. I can kill many birds with that one stone.

Of course, it won't be easy. First of all, water is the source of life. It is also the same in this isekai. Or, in this case, the situation is even worse in this isekai because mana in the air makes everything in the wilderness grow and breed faster. Goldwater River should be teeming with monsters and it might be as bad as the situation in the sea.

But well, the guild is still growing rapidly after all. We might reach the power level to clear those two places in no time.

Sigh, so many things I want to do but I don't have enough workers. This will be a recurring problem even in the future. It is funny when I think that there were a lot of highly educated unemployed people back on Earth while I was here desperate for educated people in isekai.

Anyway, the last one, civil service jobs… are basically necessary jobs that no one wants. Stuff like cleaning the sewer and latrine pit are just some examples.

The only problem is, the one who commissioned the quest is the Whitecastle government. And they are so stingy in paying the quest that basically no one is willing to do it. And it seems that certain groups in the local government office want to force us to do the job or face penalties.

Well, the hunter guild in my vision is not an organization that would yield to such blatant oppression so Jane enforced her spies and black-mailed those people back. No one dares to bother the hunter guild after that.

Those people seem to be embezzling the money that should be used to maintain the city. So it's not weird that those civil service jobs give low pay for the heavy and dirty work they demand. And to top it off, those embezzlers also tried to shift the blame to my guild. Yeah, in their dream. Maybe I should consult Master Alfonse or the princess about it.

There's also a problem with misbehaved members. Well, we can't have that, can we? I want to make it a brand recognition that the hunter guild is not a place where ruffians and roughnecks gather. Jane made short work of them and threatened them to make them slaves if they kept being unruly.

Yeah, for a semi-militaristic organization like the hunter guild, the management needs to possess adequate strength first if they want to be respected and obeyed. And Jane already has enough experience to handle the guild from when we test-run one back in Goldcastle.

There are rough places but all is still well in the hunter guild. So now, let's get to the main menu. The last report for the day.

The ranch.

I call it the ranch but the place is actually the size of a small village now rather than just a set of buildings and grazing farmlands. It is located in the Tusk Plains where it is teeming with monsters before after all albeit still on the border. Because of the monsters, no one could develop any real estate here before so I am free to use as much land as I want to.

Well, yeah, at first the ranch team does not take that much land. It started with a barrack to let the soldiers and workers rest. But buildings got added and more land was developed to fulfill the ranch’s needs.

Now, the southern area of the ranch that is facing away from the Tusk plains’ center area is used as a farm and the northern area is used as a grazing area. It was placed like that in consideration of safety of course. The one further away is safer. Plants and vegetables should be protected from pests, or in this case, monsters. While the farm animals are placed in the more dangerous areas because they can defend themselves. Those farm animals were, after all, tamed monsters. They are still pretty vicious in a fight so those farm animals could also become the guards of the ranch.

And yeah, all the farm animals are tamed monsters. Most of the monsters living in the plains are herbivores which fit the category of farm animals perfectly. For now, the monsters chosen to be tamed are the cow, goat, and sheep-type monsters. There are still rabbit, deer, boar, horse, and mammoth types left but I decided to not tame any of them for now.

The 3 types are chosen because those 3 can give other products besides meat and leather. So rabbit and boar types that only yield meat and leather are not included. I don't know how to rear a deer so I will pass that one too for now. For horses, those seem to be useful, especially for transportation and military uses but they cost too much for my startup project. We only tame as many as we need to help with transport but no more than that. And lastly, the mammoth types, the tusk mammoth… for now, those are simply too strong for my army to face.

Those mammoths are twice as big as Earth’s elephants. In this isekai world, most monsters are much bigger than their counterparts back on Earth. I did mention rabbits, right? Well, in this world, those are as big as a goat while a goat is as big as a cow and a cow is as big as an elephant.

Now you can see why getting meat in this world is easy, yet hard at the same time. Those monsters have large size and great strength that easily overwhelm humans in the same tier as them. They also move in a pack and they can detect you from far away if you manage to kill one of them. There are no limitations in the number of mobs you have to fight and no limitations in the enemy aggro like in games. If you want to harvest the carcass then you must do it fast or you need to fight hordes of them that will come at you after detecting the carcass.

On the flip side though, if you managed to hunt one and bring the carcass back, the amount of meat is just stupendous.

Most of the traditional hunters who hunt monsters only harvest monsters’ valuable parts like their claws, fangs, leather, and cores while only taking a bit of meat so they can quickly escape the area. Oftentimes, those little bits of meat they harvest get thrown away again as a diversion when monsters manage to catch up to them. So although hunting monsters was always the norm before, meat yields are always low.

It's not like there were large-scale monster subjugation battles before where armies were involved but the focus of that subjugation is usually on quickly thinning the monster population in the area so the army needs to move fast and without any burden. So they burn the monster carcass to dust. What an absolute waste. Those nobles commanding the army never experienced being hungry for sure… Wait, I'm also a noble thought.

Anyway, that is what my army with additional workers and hunters do in the tusk plains. Fighting against a small horde of monsters one at a time and collecting all the monster carcasses back to the ranch. Of course, fighting monsters head-on will result in casualties no matter how skilled the fighters are, not to mention that the workers and the new hunters are mostly new to fighting. It will be a tragedy.

That's why my army uses traps and field fortification to fight the monsters. A simple trench could turn most heavy four-legged monsters harmless. A dirt ramp could slow them down. My army can then shoot them up from a range with arrows and javelin. With that, my army almost always finishes the hunt with no casualties. There's no way to keep it at 100%, after all. Random accidents would happen from time to time but at least my army could make sure nobody lost their life.

And then, from there, mountains of monster carcasses get transported into the ranch to be slaughtered. The slaughterhouse in the ranch is now working like a factory, churning meat and other animal products all day long. Those products then get processed and packed, ready to be sold.

While in the slaughtering process, it is inevitable that there will be wastes generated. Especially those inside the monsters' digestive tract. As those innards will be sent to me to fill my flesh stock magic by using the devour technique, I ordered the ranch side to gather those wastes first to lessen the transportation burden and turn the excrement into fertilizer. That's why I also order them to make a farm to digest the fertilizer generated.

And now, the only happy trouble that we have is that we have too much meat to sell. That's why I have been calling the merchants affiliated with me. Well, those are the kids from Goldcastle’s orphanage who have grown up and do not want to take up a military career. Some of them take up merchant careers with my angel financing to kick-start their business. They are the main source of wealth for my group now as they can sell all that meat away from Whitecastle where the price has dropped too low.

All operations are currently sailing smoothly. Yeah, there are some troubles with the hunter guild with the local government but I got a new backing to get them off my back. The situation is brewing in a good direction.

I'll go to the hunter guild tomorrow. Seems like I need to show my face there from time to time. And let's make sure there won't be any problems there in the future.