Chapter 410 - Bale Town still remains Number 1

Bale Town or best known as the former poor town who made it big after Gustav Iron discovered that there has been a Coal Mine near them all along, is continually making tremendous progress! Since that day, they have made huge profits from these beautiful black riches.

What aided to get such a good profit, was the minimum expenses they have made on Salaries there. Payments started off small and gradually increased, thanks to this move and of course thanks to the Coal mine accompanied by the additional profit they made out of Tailoring and the profit from tourists (This month included).

Bale Town now at the beginning of February has piled up a total budget of 670,000 Gold Coins! This quantity is large without a doubt, and it still stands bigger than the Budget at Pameres Kingdom and the reasons are obvious.

With the current profit of 52,000 Gold Coins here in Bale Town however, it is noticeable that Pameres Kingdom will pass this Domain Budget-wise by the end of February since the profit there (Not to be confused with Income) is around 350,000 Gold Coins! That amount is legendary.

However this isn't a race on who is richer and more powerful, since they helped each other out in several cases, furthermore they are in this together. By in this, I mean they are facing the ill.u.s.tratian Alliance together.

Sure it has become a blur regarding which Domain stands with the ill.u.s.tratian Alliance, but it is no blur that they can get attacked any day at any time. That's when sudden military expenses come in handy, and that's where a Budget can aid it.

Hell, it doesn't matter if the sudden expenses are 20k, 50k, 100k, or even 500k. If they have a budget backing them up in severe cases, it is a lot better than not having one at all.

A good example of using a Budget, is regarding the outpost all the way to another Country [Orientis Ignis], all the way to Frozen Toe Kingdom. King Zar is covering those expenses with the monthly income instead which doesn't let the Budget shrink, but it is still a good example.

Apart from military expenses, Budgets can also be used on making any mass expansion on a Domain or buy material from any other domain to aid that mass expansion. These are differently called "one time expenses" who Doc.u.mentation-wise aren't included in the monthly income and outcome but are quickly covered with the piled up Budget.

The triangle of Domains are in this together, they are against the whole Continent together. Meaning we can calculate all three Budgets together and sum up how strong they are Economically against Every other Domain who might or might not oppose them.

At the moment, when we put all the three Budgets together they have in total piled up 1,772,000 Gold Coins! That amount is large no doubt, the three Domains have proven economically smart.

When we consider military numbers, this total piled up Budget can support 10,000 Soldiers financially for a span of 10 years! Considering the military shortage across Ignis, this gold is enough to compress both the Alliance and Meridionali Ignis who apparently has left the Alliance.

But of course, 1.7 million can't suddenly be blasted all over an Army, that would be a bad idea in the long term. The best idea is to gradually grow the Army at the outpost for example where they can be required more than here in Occidentis Ignis in terms of keeping peace through threats.

The second reason why spending 1.7 million on the military isn't an option, is that these three Domains would not have 10,000 people to hire. It would be straight up impossible considering that the total population on all three of these friendly Domains barely breaks over 4,000 people.

Pameres Kingdom has set a foundation of military expenses when they sent 100 people to Frozen Toe Kingdom to set up an outpost. That outpost will have to expand sooner or later and when a certain point reaches, Pameres Kingdom alone won't be able to support further upgrades.

Because as rich as Pameres Kingdom is becoming, no Soldier would volunteer to freeze his or her ass in those extremely cold temperatures for 100 Gold Coins a month. The preferred pay about this starts over 150 Gold Coins, meaning a platoon [100 Soldiers]  alone would take 15,000 Gold Coins.

And when a year's of expenses are considered, the salaries alone from one average Platoon range 180,000 Gold Coins!

That's when the three Budgets will come in handy, that's when the three Domains will practically hand out their gold earned with hard work in the exchange for safety.

...

Meanwhile, the Touristic attraction which is the big and beautiful Coal mine here in Bale Town has not failed to drag in more... well Tourists.

Last time, 14 tourists arrived here which equaled to a total secondary profit of 14,000 Gold Coins. It is an insane amount for something so simple, Bill would practically have to walk these Tourists around the mine, explaining in detail what happened here and there while at the end the pay is 1,000 Gold Coins per individual.

It is indeed a great way of making more gold, and this time thanks to recommendations from the previous badge of tourists, 22 people have arrived now in the break of February.

That's 22,000 more Gold Coins that will fly in the Budget. Since it can't be predictable how many Tourists will come each month, it is best to label this as a secondary profit and just pile it up in the Budget.

There is no reason to include it in the monthly income which will cause a shit ton of more calculations for the officials due to the randomness of this secondary profit.

These Tourists come with a translator, and Bill makes sure to give that translator enough time after every explanation he lays upon them.

At the moment, they have already reached the third Section, and for sure liked the Tower who descends or elevates people in or out of the third Section. Although they had to sweat in order to use it, and only 5-10 at a time could step over it since it can't carry everyone at once.

This can be considered Bill's favourite Section since it holds a bit of sentimental value. This is the first Cave/Tunnels he was authorized to explore and determine how much Coal the Miners can get out of it.

Bill started to explain, "Although this Section looks and is expansive, it made it difficult for us to fill in the order since it only yielded 5.3 Tons of Coal."

And of course, afterwards he [Bill] gave the translator a bit of time to do his work. He tried to keep his explanations comprehensive for the Translator, explaining something for over a minute without a break is something obviously hard to suddenly memorize. 

"To make it even more difficult, that tower behind you also took a few weeks to build. So you can understand that we were far behind schedule, the order was 7 tons and the yield here was 5.2. We had a bit of Coal left from the second section to fill this order in, but overall this was a setback." The explanation here became a bit extensive, but the translator looks more than capable to catch up and Bill doesn't start another topic if the translator hasn't yet finished explaining to the crowd.

While the translator was doing his job, Bill led everyone towards the first right turn in this Section. This turn, features a tunnel smaller in width that stretches for about 30 meters in length and leads to a big cave that stretches 20 meters long and 15 meters wide.

"This Cave alone here, has granted us with 1.5 tons of Coal. That's the most we got here out of one specific portion in this Section." Letting the translator do his work, Bill bent down and felt the ground which gave him an idea of what to explain next.

"If you feel the ground, it is noticeable that there is nothing but sharp-ish rock left, along with small pieces of coal here and there." Trying to make a joke, he added. "So be sure not to fall down."

...

In the meantime, we can describe a bit about the wall that is surrounding Bale Town. The first Watch tower is being built, it was a good idea to do so since it will sleep better with the wall that stands on each side.

They have built the Watch tower in one corner, and more will be built soon enough. The soul intend of these Towers is to grand the Guards with what the wall couldn't, a safe place to shoot enemies from.

The wall is only half a meter thick, in the heat of battle it would be a bad idea to run over it and over 50 people running at one spot is also a bad idea.

However the wall being this thin isn't necessarily a bad thing. Since one side of the wall for example is only 50 meters long and an Arrow can be shot for over 100 meters so they have a grasp of control regarding where they can shoot. There will be more than four towers here, which will make everything even better for the Guards defending this fine Town.

The best thing about the way this wall is being constructed, is the fact that it's cheap and it will be built faster than usual. Most walls take over a decade to build, but yet again the Domains who can afford to build a wall are usually bigger in width and population.