CHAPTER 1437: CHAPTER 1436: QUICK PREPARATIONS (1)

At the end of the day it was still a contract that was a tad egregious but it was also something that had terms I was willing to stomach thanks to everything else that came along with it; the land alone was worth all of this, but adding onto that the financial support of the Clans to help develop some of it as well as the agreement that we would act as a checkpoint to and from Nogart was really nice.

It wasn’t a lot of capital being promised to us - more so they were just agreeing to ship materials to us from the resource rich area around the ruins of Nogart - but it was more than enough to get things jumpstarted for our future, while the entire promise of merchants stopping by would give us a plethora of opportunities for quite a lot.

As for the length of the contract itself I will admit that I was a bit uncertain about signing a deal that would last an entire decade but also seeing all of the agreements being made about future stipends of coin and resources to help nurture growth made it a bit easier to swallow.

Even though I wasn’t the most business oriented or skilled in deciphering the legal jargon that was thrown around I was rather decent at reading people and gauging how to move forwards based on that, so I used the Empress, her wives and our parents to see what was good or bad.

Belian was obviously an unreliable source of facial expressions since the man was perpetually hiding behind a mask, and he caught on to what I was trying to do instantly, leading to him giving fake reactions to various things suggested or discussed just because it would lead me to a different solution or option that benefited him more.

It took an hour or so for us to go over it, something that surprised me a little before I remembered that legal agreements were far more binding here than they had been before since we were swearing on something that actually existed.

We couldn’t just use our vast amount of wealth to escape any consequences of our actions since no God or Goddess would give a damn about whatever coin we had, so there wasn’t anywhere near as many pages to go over and even less things to sign.

That was a blessing that wasn’t even disguised since it saved us all so much time, which was put to immediate use with a celebratory dinner that was even more grand than the night before, at least to me.

Mainly because the wines were more catered to our preferences now and the meals were far more carnivorous thanks to the abundance of requests from everyone seated at the tables; juicy steaks and whole roasted birds adorned our plates today compared to the variety of yesterday, and honestly?

Just tearing a chicken apart and leaving it in a pile of bones while I drained glass after glass of wine was extremely fun and enjoyable for such a simple dinner, especially since we were chatting about whatever came to mind now.

The various ideas and warnings that we were given about this land was welcome while the promise of some more aid in the form of materials and a familiar face - who we weren’t allowed to know just yet - that could help build things was also very welcome.

I was hopeful that the building of a house wouldn’t be as difficult as I was thinking it might be, and of course that would then lead into the difficulty of constructing multiple other buildings that all needed to be fully functional...

Which meant I needed to learn how to use my Water Magic in yet another new way while also ruminating over the idea of converting ’cheap’ Mana Crystals into water sources that could maybe be replenished naturally..?

Create a system of ’batteries’ that expelled water upon request to keep the people in the city clean, allow them to clean other things besides themselves and keep everything functional going forwards..?

A tall order that would need some tinkering, so until then I was also left with the other important tasks like figuring out how to keep the four of us fed during the set up time without resorting to boring and bland meals or how quickly we could get both Anput and Leone to begin production of goods so that we could get some money flowing.

Before the night ended we actually left the Palace and made our way down into the city to return to the cozy cottage that we had all inhabited ’way back when’, gathering the rest of our things and using it as a bit of a blueprint for what we wanted while also discussing some other things for the future.

I was excited about this prospect of creating something for ourselves, but at the same time the concern of not being capable of doing it right was looming right there in the back of my mind, reminding me that our failure actually had a price that wasn’t going to affect just us.

We would be letting down the potential citizens of the city and hindering the growth of the Empire at large with any action that failed, which was a big responsibility compared to the more individualistic things we had been doing for so long.

With that weighing on us a little we went on back to the Palace with the knowledge that tomorrow we would be preparing to depart the following day for our new home - so soon after we got back, I know, but thankfully Mother and the others were going to come with us to just observe.

For them it was a camping trip, for us it was the new start to the next Chapter of our lives that was going to be the foundation for at least another decade, though hopefully it was even longer than that... but the only way to find out was to get to that day and start.