131 3.43 A plan - Part 3

Duke stroked his beard once again. "Can you tell me what you plan to do after that?"

"In the north of this kingdom, there is a place where I can revive my familiar. I plan to go there. It will be a long journey, but I plan to return in a few months."

"Few months!"

The duke was surprised, and I don't blame him. At this point, I knew that there weren't many people capable of fighting demons in the nation. And if I leave at a time like this, their defenses would be several times weaker.

"Yes, right now, I am not capable of fighting Satan, and without my familiar, it's almost impossible. I need to get him back somehow and train myself more on the way."

"Okay, I understand."

"But father!"

"No Markus, I too think that it would be the right course of action. We can't be selfish here. If the demon lord is revived, history will repeat itself. But unlike last time, we won't have Dragon god with us."

I didn't think he would agree to it that easily, but it just shows how good of a leader he was.

Markus lowered his head in response. It looked like he was also aware that it would be wiser to let me go.

However, I wasn't planning to go without preparation. My first goal was to perfect the teleportation technique based on how Zagan used to do it. But instead of using a space as a central point, I was planning to teleport using my familiars.

"...Now that it's settled, let's move towards the reconstruction part."

Duke lifted the paper on his desk and looked at it. Although reconstruction was an important issue to discuss, it felt like we were missing something.

I rubbed my chin to think what it was, and right then, it came to my mind.

"Before that… I think we should send a party of earth and holy magic users to the city immediately. In the presence of that much miasma, there is a high chance that the dead bodies would become undead. We need to purify the bodies using holy magic and bury them using earth magic. It would be wiser to go now, and return before evening, or to wait and go there tomorrow morning. During the night, there is a high chance that they would become active."

Everyone inside had a concerned reaction on their face. It was already afternoon, so there was very little time left. If they were planning to head out, they would need to do that soon.

"I don't think it would be wise to do it today. Most of our soldiers are already at their limits, and we don't have enough horses to reach there quickly," Markus replied.

That made sense. Normally, it takes some time for dead bodies to change into undead, and since they died just a day ago, we still had some time.

"It's alright. We can go there tomorrow to bury the dead. And when we come back, we can also bring the resources necessary here."

"Sounds like a plan," Garo said with a smile.

Now that the issue had been discussed, we moved towards the reconstruction part that Duke was about to discuss.

"Now then, for reconstruction, we would need the villages to supply us food and resources. Financially, it won't be much of a problem since we still have enough gold in the treasury. But it will take us some time to be stable in trade again."

That was understandable since the business of many merchants were ruined in the fire. The villagers could still bring the goods, and the merchants here could start selling them again, but it would take years for them to get to the same position as before. 

On top of that, trade outside the province would suffer much more than domestic trade. The outside merchants who used to do business here would start looking for some other cities to trade, and because of that, the already established network would be destroyed.

"Then how about we start processing the raw material and sell the product instead of doing a direct trade? Like we could sell clothes instead of threads and prepared food instead of selling grains and meat. That way, we will be able to give employment to people, make a steady flow of money within the province, and keep things running until the business becomes stable. We would also be able to make the city an industrial center instead of just trade center."

"But… We would need resources capable of management and supervision for that," Lady Hina said in a concerned tone.

This was one of the things that were different in my previous world and this one. Here, people believed more in supervision and management instead of just making the workers more skilled. They lacked venues to train workers, so their only method to learn was through experience.

"It takes many years to be skilled by collecting experience, so instead, we could train a group of people for a specific task. Like how we do for knights and magicians. It would be a faster way of producing human resources."

Lady Hina nodded in response. The smile on her face was saying that she understood my point.

A city entirely focused on trade was good, but as far as I know, there were barely any industrial cities in this country. So, trying a different approach now had a better potential of producing better results.

"Yes, but will our resources be enough? I mean, we barely have 5000 people, and among them almost a thousand are knights or magicians." Viscountess Sara asked.

That was a fair question, but answering it was easier than responding to the concern that Lady Hina raised.

"There are many small villages out there where people are living in constant threat of monsters. We could just take the immigrants from there. If we give them a job, food, and shelter at the start, they will start earning for themselves and become contributors to the provincial economy."

"That's some useful strategies you have got there, makes me wonder where you attained all that knowledge," Markus said.

The answer was simple. It was because I used to watch plenty of political speeches back when I was alive in my other world. But I couldn't say that I learned it from there, so I had to come up with an excuse.

"I am not sure. I just felt like that would be the right course of action."