Chapter 72 Tail Administration
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Four days later, we were finally out of quarantine. Lhorne would personally deliver the parasite to Edelweiss together with Jona. Lily was currently sitting on her rightful throne in Edenthal. She was swamped with paperwork and whining about it.
“Shiro… please do this part!”
“I could do it, but you need to be the one that wrote them.” I talked back,” I am currently hurt and can’t hold pens well.”
“Ugh… nooo!”
“Now, this is about the food supply to dwarven caravans later.”
”Ugh… due to quarantine, we lose a lot of time. Do you think we could fulfill the quotas?” Lily asked.
“Yes. We could fulfill it. It would be tough, but we can simply buy the surplus from other cities.” I replied. Our food surplus was outstanding. We could fulfill about eighty percent of what the dwarves requested in exchange for their precious metals.
“The problem is the last twenty percent. Do you think we could force that twenty percent by ourselves? Our civilians will suffer if we do it.” I commented.
“We could buy it from Regoia later, right? Didn’t they have enough food surpluses too?”
“Yeah, it is not a big problem. Our estimated profit would decrease, though.”
“From 1,2 million to 900 thousand, huh?” Lily moaned. Her greed sometimes gets the better of her as she doesn’t want to lose that 300 thousand.
“Ugh…. I guess we just have to do it, huh?” Lily moaned. “Let’s write a letter to Lord Edelweiss about buying the necessary supplies.”
“Yeah, we should not force our citizens to suffer food shortages due to our greed.” I nodded to her by swinging my tail.
“With this, our debt would decrease from 30 mils to 29 mils!” Lily clenched her fist but deflated the next moment.” it’s odd! One million is a lot, but why it felt so little compared to our debt!”
“If we rely on dwarves, we would need 30 years to cover all of our debts.” I reconned.
“I would be dead or turned into granny by then!” Lily shouted.
“There will be other opportunities.” I consoled her. I wonder if every CEO and leader faced the same hardships as her concerning her debts. I heard even the most profitable company on earth had millions or billions of dollars of debt.
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“Should we open up more farms? We could raise more farms in Edenthal regions.” Lily suggested.
“Our food sufficiency is already over two hundred percent. If we found no buyers for our food, we would be in deep shit,” I advised her.
“Really? The worst we could face is simply turning food into compost, right?” Lily answered.
“Wasting food is a sin, you know. Farming also had costs. The tools and workforce, if we forced our agriculture, our per capita wage would remain low.” I tried to advise her with my minimal economic skills.
“I don’t care about wages. I don’t want to live in luxuries. We should be good to go as long as I can eat food together with families! Let’s focus more on farming!” Lily shouted.
“But if we do that, villages won’t grow either. Many people would migrate to cities.” I advised.
“If people wanted to move to cities, that’s fine! Our job is to provide a full meal and a warm home! How do we expand farming without destroying the ecosystem? Ahh, wait. What is this?”
Lily looked over our expenditures and figured out our military expenses. It consisted of five thousand tailfolk troops; their extra expenses included weapons and food. The most concerning matter about our soldiers is their armor and weapons. We could reduce it by making all of them wood-based, but we still need to hire carpenters and wood workshops to make them. And to be honest, we are getting close to the limit of environmental law the elves dictated.
“Did we need this many for guards?” Lily asked while puzzled.
“They are the troops for undead liberation forces, you dimwit,” I shouted. To be honest, I also forgot about them, but for Lily to completely not recognized them even after seeing the extra expenses on her budget was baffling.
“Oh yeah. I forgot.”
“Ahh, we also needed to send 100 of them for mock battles with Ghander from Hoeth. Should we send them a letter?” I reminded her.
“Let’s write a letter now. The mock battle would be somewhere in the next month. We had a food problem right now, and I think instead of dedicating this tailfolk to the military, we should put them to help farming and ranching.” Lily suggested. She still tried to make money out of our agricultural sites.
“Give up. Nine hundred thousand is the best we could make at the moment. And we had leeway remember? The debt will not increase.” I spoke out. “It would be worse if these soldiers performed worse than expected. If the high council decreased our honor, they might not relent about debt repayment plans.”
“Ah, I see. You are right.”
“Let’s train them personally before sending them out! I want to see them up close. Want to call a group or two for sparring matches??” Lily suggested. She tried to find some path to escape from paperwork.
“Lily, sorry to break it to you, but you need to write letters to order those 100 soldiers.”
“Ehhh!? I need to write 100 letters!?”
“This is a special case. All of them have families, right? Normally we should give out an announcement when they gather for sortie. We also needed to explain why we chose that 100.” I explained, my tone slightly disheveled, “Ugh… we only had numbers, but our coordination is a mess. They are nowhere near the level of coordination expected of even the most incompetent elven soldiers.”
“Well, they had only been trained for like two months. We haven’t even fleshed out their decarions, let alone captains.” Lily muttered.
“Well, I only need to write to their squad leaders or legionnaires, and we are good to go. It is only five letters.” Lily tried to take the easy way out. She expected the legionnaires to tell their squad members our orders.
“I wanted to know how strong they are. Let’s battle them!”
“Let’s go!” I cheered her. Our mock battle for Edenthal tailfolk troops began.