The witch thought I am a Demon God
Chapter 209 - 148: Territory Base Construction Plan and the Thousand-Year Fire Stir Up Again_1

Chapter 209: Chapter 148: Territory Base Construction Plan and the Thousand-Year Fire Stir Up Again_1

The beggar, seeing Ivita not responding, began to cry even louder.

Ivita then understood, the half-snake, half-man creature he was speaking of must have been the Snake Man from the Son of Forest.

It seemed likely that this fellow might not have been a beggar originally. Instead, his family had died in the war against the Son of Forest, leaving him destitute.

Ivita didn’t owe him anything.

Without Ivita, this guy might not only have lost his home and family, he could have been killed as well.

Curious villagers started gathering around at the sound, looking at the scene with interest.

They were not fools; they could tell that this man was trying to con Ivita.

The old witch laughed coldly, sweeping her gaze over them, then focused on the beggar who dared to con the Lord, saying, "My Lord, we should catch him and send him to the mines."

"Even you dare to deceive, you’re simply seeking death."

The old witch reminded Ivita, saying, "We must establish authority here."

"If we allow such a person to get away with it just once, soon, everyone will ignore the rules and act recklessly. Chaos will ensue here; they will fight against each other and eventually destroy themselves. I’ve seen this kind of thing happen in a village in Hearthstone Castle."

Ivita shook his head, actually it was because of poverty.

Only when they are poor, such things tend to happen.

But indeed, such behavior cannot be condoned.

The crying man clutching the horse’s leg, looked terrified, his face went pale, "My Lord... My Lord, I have a three-year-old girl at home, she’s all alone. She..."

Ivita snapped his fingers, used magic to lift the man away from the horse’s leg, ensuring that he wouldn’t be trampled if he lost control of the horse.

In a loud voice, Ivita declared, not just to the middle-aged man, but also to the observing villagers, "I will build a prosperous lordship."

"So that everyone can live the life that only citizens in the city can afford, but we can only create such a land if we work together."

"Therefore, I will not tolerate any acts of extortion, deception or theft."

Ivita, exercising his judicial power towards the middle-aged man, declared, "Now as your Lord, witnessed by the God of All Things, I sentence you to one month of free obligatory labor for my lordship."

The middle-aged man paled, thinking that his daughter would starve to death.

Had he known this would happen, he wouldn’t have tried to be clever.

He thought this lord seemed easier to deal with than Baron Moro, so he dared to act this way.

He was indeed mistaken.

He was indeed regretful.

The young man in front of him was more decisive than the old lord.

But what about his daughter?

Ivita suddenly changed his tone, "As for your daughter, I’ll find a maid to take care of her."

"The children and the elderly in my lordship are my responsibility."

"What’s your name? I will send someone to your house, tell me your name and come back to the castle with me to work."

Upon further thought, Ivita realized that he might actually be gaining from this.

The man was working for him while he provided for the daughter, it didn’t seem too bad.

The middle-aged man hesitated for a moment, then said, "I’m Antus."

Ivita nodded, then rode his horse towards the castle.

The old witch smirked, scanning the surrounding villagers who were deep in thought and evidently intimidated by Ivita.

Antus watched as Ivita rode away, then suddenly stood up and shouted, "I’m sorry, my Lord, I shouldn’t have deceived you."

Ivita waved at him, signaling him to catch up and not think that his apology and nice words could get him out of his punishment.

Upon returning to the castle, Ivita called for Rayli, the butler, and Tartax.

Previously, the bankers had already arranged for the money to be sent over.

Now it was time to plan how to spend the money. Ivita had already drafted the plan during his time in the study.

He showed his subordinates the plan.

First, the technology to produce soap was not difficult.

If the quality expectations were not too high, all that was needed were fire alkali and vegetable oil, or animal fat.

They would also need a soap factory with a large fat separator and many containers.

The manufacture and procurement of this equipment, with the efforts combined of Ivita and Tartax, were expected to cost at least 500 gold pounds.

As for the workers in the soap factory, they could be hired from the civilians within the territory.

Second, to expand the scale of cast iron production, Ivita estimated a cost of 600 gold pounds to build thirty more blast furnaces, increasing the scale of the blast furnaces forging cast iron to forty-five, and spending another 100 gold pounds to recruit an estimated two hundred blacksmiths and more than four hundred apprentices.

Apprentices could be primarily recruited from the young people of the territory, those from other territories could not be hired in principle.

Meanwhile, the blacksmiths would have to be recruited from other territories, but they would have to sign life-long contracts.

Of course, Ivita was prepared to pay these life-long serving blacksmiths a higher salary than the standard wage.

Similarly, he was ready to allocate 500 gold pounds to rapidly rebuild all the villages within the territory.

After all, this represented the appearance of his own territory, otherwise when merchants passing by saw these unkempt civilians, they would not feel safe investing in his territory.

Ivita decided to remain neutral in Ambros’s war as much as possible, take advantage of the chaos to develop his territories, and strive to become the wealthiest local lord in order to improve his sky-attribute magic power.

He had a feeling that when he built his territory to become a wealthy and powerful land, that would be the time when his source of sky-attribute magic power was accomplished.

Then, he was preparing to spend 2500 gold pounds to buy six hundred thousand bushels of grain, which was about a year’s supply for seventy thousand people.

And this was a quantity that could feed eight to nine years for the territory currently with a population of more than eight thousand.

Of course, grain was somewhat difficult to store, so some account had to be taken of losses.

He also reserved two thousand eight hundred gold pounds, to be used to purchase raw materials and increase production capacity once the soap industry was established, and also to prepay salaries.

Although, at present, his territory could generate more than seven hundred gold pounds per month.

After the meeting ended, Ivita was glad he had bought Tartax from the slave dealer. Otherwise, with only a few of them, it would be truly difficult to implement this massive infrastructure plan well.

And Tartax was pleased with Ivita’s large-scale and ambitious infrastructure plan.

In his eyes, all of this had nothing to do with magic.

The scale of these infrastructure plans, the ambition they embodied, seemed to far exceed what a small baron could aspire to.

This fact made Tartax more determined to recommend Ivita to Scholar City.

After resolving this matter, it was almost evening. Ivita entered the mirror space to continue studying his water magic.

He had to hurry and create magic that could protect him while he was asleep.

He sought to prevent what had happened when Pan God approached him easily during the night from happening again.

At the same time, Ivita began to meditate with his eyes closed, exploring his soul world, which had already produced the Spirit Knowledge Mist, which made him feel quite comfortable.

But on the third day, in the afternoon, the Griffin troops returning from Kappa Town brought some terrible news.

Outside the castle, Ivita saw his soldiers were wounded. He immediately realized something was wrong.

And the first sentence uttered by the Knight Griffin to Ivita completely changed his expression.

The Knight Griffin said timidly, "Lord, the mayor of Kappa Town asked me to tell you... a baron is not qualified enough to touch the secret of that place."

"Those were his exact words, not mine."

"I’m sorry, Lord, we... we failed and let you down."

Ivita ignored his apology and further questioned about the so-called mayor. "Did he say anything else?"

"No, that was all." The Knight Griffin felt ashamed. He suddenly remembered something else, "Oh, while we were captured, we overheard the townspeople talking."

"They seemed to say that the place used to be the altar for lighting the Thousand-Year Fire, and they will not allow outsiders to enter."