Chapter 97: Ninety-seven Benefits the Local Area
That evening, a letter from Moni arrived outside the fortress. He agreed to the sublease conditions and also promised to continue negotiating with the island owner on behalf of the Baron's Mansion.
The next day, Olivia received a sublease contract written by Moni. She didn't know whether Moni had a contract with the island owner, but they had to have one.
After Olivia carefully read the contract, she signed her name and stamped it with a bunch of seals.
The contract will take effect in mid-April. Once the ship is dispatched and the land is divided, the rewards for the "Plantation" mission can be collected.
As a player with a God's perspective, she can see that these talents at her disposal each have their own strengths.
If Letilen can increase the success rate of going out, then the advantage of Moni may be socializing.
After the contract reply arrived, she opened her character card and saw that Moni's favorability had risen to eighty.
It's not far from completely conquering her, and she will be able to use it sooner or later.
She hadn't turned off the system yet and continued to check the population of the city.
From the moment the ship returned to the harbor, the population of the town skyrocketed, and there were dense crowds of footsteps lining up outside the city to enter.
In just half a day today, more than three hundred people have arrived from all over the surrounding areas on foot or by boat from far away.
There was still a queue outside the city gate, and it seemed that today could create a grand spectacle of a population increase of 500.
It’s almost April, and the mountain roads are now passable. As time goes by, more and more people will come here.
At the same time, the servants set out from the fortress to Dunfermline to invite Baron Renault and his family to stay with them.
A whole year passed, and there were at least eighty letters from Dunfermline. Although she had only been there twice, she was very familiar with the situation there.
Last year, after conducting a population census, Old Reno began to repair the town.
The existing small town was simply renovated, and some fields and pastures were developed in the territory.
Although their place is barren and there is not much to do, the main source of income is animals, so they just need to feed the sheep and cattle.
I heard from Theresa's letter that her father built a village in the mountains and raised 500 sheep and 500 cows when he moved there last year.
Last winter, he sold dairy products and wool and collected some taxes. This spring, these cattle and sheep are expected to reproduce a new batch, and he plans to continue buying livestock.
There is nothing much to develop in that mountainous area. Unlike Eindhoven, it requires a lot of hard work to build even a prototype. A year has passed and it is still under construction.
However, most of the letters sent in recent days were about concern for her health.
At the same time, on the other side of the town, after enough paper was left to meet the needs of the nine departments and the fortress, the remaining paper quickly found a buyer.
However, there was more than one buyer. This time, two merchant compradors from the southern continent came to the north.
They came with Letilen to look at the warehouse and the goods, and they were keeping an eye on each other.
This small pile of papers was not much and could be packed into a few large wooden boxes.
After the two merchants had looked at the dazzling array of porcelain, and then saw the delicate and smooth paper that was not made of parchment, they were unable to move.
After looking at all the samples in the warehouse, the two merchants each ordered goods worth two to three thousand gold coins before returning to the post station to stay.
The two businessmen appeared to be on good terms with each other, but secretly they both sent people to say that they did not want Letilen to give the paper to one of them, and were unwilling to split it equally.
Letilen was thinking about who to give the goods to when Moni suddenly came and handed him a map of the island.
So, after taking the map, Letilen asked Moni to help him with some advice.
It was the first time that Moni came into contact with white linen paper. After thoroughly understanding it, he felt a little itchy and taught Letilen a few tricks.
The next day, Letilen sent his men to the post station to meet with the two merchants separately.
While informing him of the time to pick up the goods, his men also spoke a few more words to the businessman, pretending to be on his side.
The two men's words are as follows:
"My boss said that this paper is in great demand and that selling it to anyone would offend them, so it's better not to sell it at all.
Anyway, it only adds up to a few dozen gold coins, which is very cheap. Why not see who orders the most goods in the end, and then secretly put them in the shipping box and give them away without worrying about offending anyone."
Upon hearing this, the two businessmen kept their men and each placed an additional order for bulk goods.
Compradors like them have powerful people behind them, and the money in their hands is not their own.
When buying things for a noble person, I don’t care about the price. I just want something new, something that has never been seen before and is exquisite and beautiful.
The goods they ordered from the north were either beautiful furs, precious porcelain and cashmere, various agate crystals, bear bile, tiger bones, deer antlers, musk, and wolf teeth.
Any item picked from the warehouse, plus a few dozen more, would be worth hundreds or even thousands of gold coins.
After Letilen received their order for additional goods, he gave the paper to the one who paid more.
He ordered goods worth seven thousand gold coins, the bulk of which were two thousand pieces of porcelain.
This kind of porcelain is also a new product. It has ice cracks when fired and has relief patterns on it. These are all popular patterns in the south. Each porcelain bottle is sold for about two gold coins.
When they arrived in the southern continent, the porcelain was sent to the palace, and then overflowed out layer by layer. The price was doubled and people bought it.
After the deal was done, Letilen approached Moni, treated him to a drink, and persuaded him to come and work for the Baron's Mansion.
This time, Moni did not deny it outright.
"Once the plantation on the island is developed, I will naturally be doing business for the Baron's Mansion."
He could tell from the treatment he received when working with her that the Baroness was efficient, not fussy about details, and knew how to use people, making her an excellent leader.
If you hesitate any longer, you will be judging others by your own standards.
Many nobles hope to enslave talented people, but this one really wants to cooperate with them.
…
Inside the fortress, preparations for the April banquet were in full swing.
The ice and snow melted, and Olivia took a walk in the repaired arena.
Today was a rare day and Caesar had no official business outside, so he took the wolf and wolfhound for a walk in front of her.
The wolf that was adopted at the beginning, with the help of the animal trainer, married a dog and gave birth to a litter of wolfhounds. Currently, these wolfhounds are all pups, with gray hair, chubby heads, and look like sesame glutinous rice dumplings.
While playing with the little balls, Caesar talked with Olivia about the retired soldiers moving north.
Soldiers have been reporting to the barracks one after another with their credentials, and all fifty people will be here by mid-April.
He planned to divide these people into ten teams, with each team divided into five groups.
Each group is expected to recruit twenty soldiers in each team within two years.
As for the team types, they are also divided according to the type of soldiers. Whoever is better at something will go to that team to teach that thing.
Cavalry, archers, shield and sword soldiers, spearmen, sailors, infantry, grenadiers.
Fifty non-commissioned officers, each recruiting twenty soldiers, would make a total of one thousand men.
Add to that the five hundred men in the ten military garrisons and the current conscripts, and the total number reaches two thousand.
This is just the army, not including other auxiliary forces, such as city defense and coastal defense.
This time, it was Olivia who asked Caesar for people to send to the overseas island to guard the plantation.
Caesar agreed without hesitation. He thought that no one was familiar with the island, so he sent people there to train and accumulate experience, which would be useful in dealing with pirates in the future.
The sea had begun to become uneasy recently, and he had to go to the barracks every day to deploy defenses on the sea.
The defense of the coast is the responsibility of the coastal defense forces, while patrols on the sea are carried out by the military.
Water warriors and archers, who can throw one-handed throws, will go out to sea in fast wooden boats that are only slightly larger than fishing boats. Their patrol area is mainly within ten nautical miles north and east of the port.
They always encountered pirates who also approached in small boats.
When the distance is far, the one-handed thrower will use a lever to throw the burning stone coated with palm oil over. It is a very simple and rough way of driving. A thrower with good accuracy can accurately throw the stone into the opponent's ship.
If they are close and a fight breaks out, the archers will start shooting and the water warriors will dive over.
They looked at these pirates with particular kindness, after all, a head was worth one silver coin.
When Olivia heard about these traditional methods of attack, she couldn't help but think of cannons and flintlocks.
However, first of all, she is a liberal arts student, and secondly, with her current prominent status, if she or the workshop made something like this with their bare hands, it would definitely be widely known.
Weapons are not like porcelain. Porcelain is just a commodity, used to make money, but weapons represent power.
In this situation where everyone's fighting power is similar, if her family has lethal weapons, then other people will not care about business or dignity and will all start to be wary of her family.
This is a matter of life and death and of rule. No noble would not be able to sleep at night because of this, and even the earl would feel a chill down his spine.
She hasn't accumulated enough capital yet, so she can't do something like this.
So after Olivia heard about the situation on the sea, she just laughed it off.
If she had a country now, weapons development would replace making money as the top priority.
After strolling around the Colosseum, she and Caesar returned to the fortress to prepare for lunch.
Today's lunch is full of tropical flavor, with fruits such as fresh oranges and lemons brought back from the ship.
The main dishes are baked corn with cheese and potato waffles.
The main dishes also became air-dried tropical sea fish and air-dried chicken, a specialty of the south, stewed with coconut, a specialty of the south.
As for dessert, it was a cocoa meeting, with raisins coated in cocoa powder and dipped in almond cookies.
Among them, the potatoes and corn, after being unloaded from the ship, were mostly sent to the farmland estate and taken by Jagabu to be planted in the spring.
Normal northern meals were also prepared, including snow-melted mushroom soup, which is just right for this season, and steamed buns stuffed with wild vegetables.
While they were eating, Caesar mentioned that the midwives he had sent people to look for had arrived and were now staying in the church yard.
There were three wet nurses and three nuns who midwives. They were all found in various towns. They were capable and had clean backgrounds.
Caesar said that these people had already settled in the city and would move into the fortress in a few months.
Upon hearing this, Olivia opened the map and looked around the church.
What she didn't expect was that one of the nuns named Hai Xili was also a four-star medical talent.
Could this person be the one with the "1/2000" drop rate that was automatically refreshed?
As a lord, the talents in the territory are her most precious wealth, especially such high-star medical talents who can benefit the area to the greatest extent.
Olivia asked a few more questions, intending to keep the nun by her side for a long time.
…
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