Chapter 342: You Get Mail?
Prince Russel sighed as he looked out the window of the office. "Nothing about this situation strikes me as normal. We’re missing something here, and it’s got to be deeper than the surface politics."
Dominic frowned. "I barely understand that much. I get that everyone is concerned about what is going on in Dagos, and with the Skiple Academy’s missing members. But I don’t even know the names of half the people involved."
Prince Russel shrugged. "Well, you’ll learn them sooner or later. You’re in a bit of an odd position. Most of the senior Nobles of the region grew up together. We either went to school together, or we met regularly at holidays. Our parents know each other, our businesses work together.
None of that is true for you, and now you’re here in the middle of nowhere, and you don’t even get a regular mail service delivery."
Dominic blinked slowly. "There is a regular mail service?"
"How did you think that we all communicated?"
Dominic smirked at the Prince. "I just assumed that you used a magical communication token. Like, every Noble should have a whole stack of them for their friends or something."
"Do you have any idea how expensive that would be? No need to answer that. The Royals all have a few of them, but magical communication tokens are specific to the receiver, and somewhat rare.
If you make it that far in your Magitech Engineering course, perhaps you’ll learn to make them." Prince Russel suggested.
"Except that most of the ones I have seen are the work of Techno Witches. They only work because of witchcraft. That’s not something I can replicate with magitech. Perhaps with a spell, if I met the right Archmage.
Oh, that reminds me. I need to talk to the Second Prince. He promised me he’d help with the Materia Gem Creation spell, so I can make spell gems. I suppose that I could likely ask one of the other mages, but he’s an excellent teacher.
He taught me to make mana crystals in only a few hours." Dominic replied.
Prince Russel just nodded in acceptance. He wasn’t a mage, and he had no idea whether that was fast or not. It did sound like a reasonably short period of time to learn a new skill, but little about mages made sense.
"Well, Second Brother certainly can make them. He’s the one that made all of mine, and I can ask him to send you a copy of the relevant learning materials.
They might take a while, as the mage towers are quite particular about who gets to learn what.
It’s an elitist thing, they don’t want commoner mages running around with highly valuable spells, spilling trade secrets for bowls of soup." Prince Russel replied.
Dominic chuckled, and the Prince looked a bit abashed.
"You get what I mean. Mages hold a high position in society, but if just anyone had access to the knowledge that they have hoarded, they would lose most of it and face demands for anything and everything, like common tradesmen." He added.
Dominic nodded. "Oh, I understand quite well. I found the same thing once I started working with Pops. The moment that others realize you have a skill that can benefit them, they often become truly shameless in their requests.
The first day that I worked with the old man, there was a mage in the shop demanding that he make a Dimensional Compass to order on a single day’s timeline.
Quite unreasonable."
"How have you been sending messages to get what you need so far?" Prince Russel asked.
"The Merchant’s Guild. The Castellan is a member, and we get regular visits, usually twice per week." Dominic explained.
The Prince frowned. "They come twice a week down this route? How incredibly odd. There isn’t even a good road."
Dominic smirked. "It’s an old trade route from before the roads in Cygnia began to get developed. But soon we will have a road. I’ve been working on a road building machine, and with a few more tweaks, I think that we can increase the speed the infrastructure teams build new roadways by more than triple."
Prince Russel nodded. "If they make you a road back to Lympsbury, it would be spectacular for trade. I suspect that there will be discussion about using the river as a trade route as well.
Barges are better suited to bulk cargo than airships, and from Wistover they have a clear route with no shallows or rapids all the way to the ocean."
If there was a road here from Lympsbury, bulk goods could travel on major highways all the way from Kinewen, or Witheton in Axbridge. Then, they could transfer goods to barges to go to Cygnia City without taking the highway through Dagos.
Kinewen was technically still in Dagos control, but Dominic suspected that it would not be for much longer, with Axbridge here holding political meetings.
Goods could also go the other way, from Witheton south to Wistfield, then Causter to get them onto the river. But that would still pass the goods through Wistover on their way.
Both major cities needed the trade, now that they were cut off from Kinewen by politics and a civil war.
Without the ability to move their goods, they would be in serious financial trouble.
"I will ask them what direction they’re going. At the very least, we might be able to get them to build a road to whatever highway they reach next after they finish here.
But that’s a bit of a secondary issue with the number of monsters that you found.
I am hoping that our messages to the Adventurer’s Guild get a response soon. We’re going to need the assistance, and I strongly suspect that there are rules about asking the gathered armies to go hunt monsters for us." Dominic joked.
Prince Russel laughed. "There are, but I would love to see the look on their faces when you asked."