CH 80.3

At some point, there was a slight movement around the Royal Capital.

The wealthy merchants of the Royal Capital were reluctant to sell their crops at a low price to the provinces where there had been a bad harvest, and were looking for a place where they could sell at a higher price. However, it was difficult to raise prices in the Royal Capital, which had been enjoying a good harvest, to the point that they even sold it to local noble families. 

Peasants who had become wild thieves were appearing on the streets, and the soldiers who were fighting them were unable to completely suppress them, as the knights’ order was still not functioning properly.

Clothing and other necessities of life, which have nothing to do with food, could not be produced without the arrival of wagons from other regions and countries.

At this time, I was introduced to a merchant who wanted to buy food from a commercial guild.

The guilds were not happy with the stagnant economy, and the local guild branch had just come to buy from the Isbell Continent and offered them the opportunity to use their merchant ship.

Isbell Continent ships come once every few years, but this year was not one of those years. However, the merchant ship was not from the usual country, and they were looking for food that had not been harvested in that country.

The Isbell Continent merchant had also been trading near the border, bringing in cloth and a large quantity of goods from the neighboring country.

The merchant from Royal Capital gave them food in exchange, and succeeded in selling the surplus for more than double the usual price.

“Do you have more food? We will buy as much as possible. Unfortunately, we only have Isbell silver coins currently, but even if you don’t have any food, we would be truly grateful if you could exchange it for cash. Even merchants who do not deal in Isbell silver coins would be willing to sell them to you.”

The Isbell Continent merchants negotiated to sell the food for as high a price as possible, and sold it for four times the price. The merchants who did not deal in food also realized that they could make as much as 20% profit from the exchange of a good amount of money, so they exchanged all the gold they had on hand.

The leading figures in the guilds who were close to the Prime Minister also began to exchange their accumulated food and personal wealth for Isbell silver coins.

The largest amount of silver coins was exchanged by the Lannon Trading Company, one of the fastest-growing companies in the Royal Capital. Alice, the head of the Lannon Trading Company, even used raw materials that were to be processed and sold in her store, and exchanged most of the gold she had made so far for Isbell silver coins.

Alice and other wealthy merchants close to the Prime Minister released a large number of foodstuffs and exchanged them for silver coins from other countries because the Royal Capital still had room to spare. In addition to the farms owned by the nobles, each of the wealthy merchants had farms that they were in close contact with and could still afford to purchase food.

At the same time, however, there was another development. Small and medium-sized merchant associations in the Royal Capital, which had been doing business with commoners without any connections to the prime minister or high nobility, began to pay tribute to the king through the commercial guilds.

The merchants were scoffing at the King, saying that they could not compete with them, who had been the driving force of the economy, but with the Queen’s absence, the royal family did not call on the merchants, and the King enjoyed the banquets they held and favored the new merchants.