The Runic Alchemist - Chapter 772: The Trade Towns of Sanctuary

Chapter 772: The Trade Towns of Sanctuary

Finally the day had come. Damian gave the green light to all three countries and they had the liquid mana for their waygates.

The management of the waygates was still Sanctuary’s right. But Damian had given the right to choose entry conditions to each kingdom. His rules stated clearly, however, that it had to be open for commoners and nobles alike. As long as there was no discrimination Sanctuary would not interfere in the system or rules of entering the waygates for each country.

It was the first day of international waygate travel, Damian had limited each country’s access to only one border town. Out of five waygates, only two were open – both connecting one of the three border towns of the Sanctuary. The Sanctuary city waygate was only for private use of the government, and the government allowed selected people. But before activating the waygates, the three kingdoms had to first send a messenger through the border waygates informing the Sanctuary authority that VIP guests were coming. Otherwise Damian had made it clear that whoever came through would be considered an intruder and treated as such.

All the waygates Damian had installed were big and circular in size. Three wagons could pass through at once. All people coming through had to register with Sanctuary officials. Damian did make it optional for the Eldoris border waygate. Those people were not exactly coming to Sanctuary land, it was more like his people going there. So it would be unfair to push his conditions onto them. Still, the Eldoris people could register and get a unique foreign Sanctum ID – a must-have thing for future waygate travels in Sanctuary land.

As expected from the very early on, the town was packed with people. The town he had chosen near the sea had also gathered a lot of Sanctuary and Faerunian people for this unique business opportunity. The Faerunians had to register first and only then could they do the business. Despite the tension between their countries, the business-minded folks didn’t seem to care much about the political cloud and were busy looking for good deals.

Still, compared to the town Souldealer was overlooking and the city Einar was in, this town had fewer people. The biggest reason for that was the requirements and fees Faerunians had set up for people before entering the waygate. Damian knew the bastard sneaky snake would do something like this. But in time Faerunians would realize only they had to pay high fees and the public opinion on their king would get worse.

It was easy to bully people when they had no way to get information about other, better places, but after seeing the huge cultural shift and receiving the news from all over the mainland in such gatherings, people wouldn’t be that easy to fool. That was the greatest political attack of Damian’s seemingly free public service. He did collect 2 silver per person for each waygate entry, but that was negligible to most people. Even the homeless people had more than 20–50 silver coins on them.

Sanctuary’s biggest need was people – once Damian showed people how good this new country was, he would launch very attractive schemes that would get all these unsatisfied people to leave their own countries and shift to Sanctuary permanently.

Even right now there was no restriction on people migrating to his Sanctuary, however Damian had made it clear that foreigners had to live at least two years in Sanctuary before they could get the Sanctum ID. That would prevent clever merchants from abusing the system. Without Sanctum ID, no one was able to use the hundreds of waygates Damian had in his Sanctuary – which was what most merchants desired.

Damian could not stop people from going on foot, so he didn’t try. But the majority of Sanctum people had already registered, and the new Sanctum ID registration was not as easy to do anymore – it required proof of address from multiple people recognizing the man or woman as an old Sanctuary resident. Damian knew even that could be faked, but it would help in reducing such cases. Plus he already had plans on making an elite force that would investigate suspicious individuals. Damian also had other ideas related to their currency in mind to reduce the numbers of hidden deals.

The first day of international waygate travel was uneventful. The best outcome Damian could have expected. It was just starting though, only after a week or two could they say the plan was successful. Still, every time a person arrived in Sanctuary land through a waygate, their spatial storages were checked for money and the amount recorded. In return, the individual had to give a reasonable explanation for his increased money. If they made deals, they had to give tax.

It was pretty lax and there were hundreds of workarounds, but it was just a placeholder law for now. In time they would make it better. Even with this, however, they had earned hundreds of gold coins in just a single day.

The workload was quite a lot and both Souldealer and Einar requested more Sanctum officials to be assigned to their place for better workflow. They had a whole list of available people, hiring was not an issue. The list was getting short too soon though. Damian still had plenty of other projects in which he needed people who could read and write. Guess the academy needs to start soon.

They kept the waygates open till only 8 p.m., giving the people time to relax before starting it again tomorrow morning. The next day Damian took four of his assistants together with him to his town. While the public was busy trading, Damian and his assistants were in the small stone villa. This was the place where the five Sanctum officials managed this town from.

After removing all nobles from the towns and cities, Damian had mixed them up with other experienced knights and Sanctum officials, including most of the House of Lords members, in teams of five to manage towns and big villages. A team was better in managing a region compared to a single individual. Till now things were going pretty good, no major complaints and people were getting used to the job.

Damian was using one of the rooms temporarily to continue his work while keeping an eye on the town. Just his presence was enough for the people coming through waygates to think twice about making problems. The towns had ten times the guards as others, keeping the waygates in mind, and no major problems had been noted till now – not here or in Souldealer’s town.

When he was building things, the army and demons had not stopped entering the dungeons. He had not read many reports but his assistants were up to date. They had gotten used to the heavy reading. They still used papers for note-taking and things which Damian hoped to digitize in future. Papers were expensive.

“I have several metal and ore sources, Lord Keeper. Too many to put it on a page, do you want me to read it aloud?” Celestine asked.

Damian shook his head, “Send them to Einar and Sam, they will check the places for extraction potential.”

Damian already had a good supply of Blazur metal and the factories were doing a pretty good job. To increase his output from the dungeons for these metals he would have to use the common public. That event needed a little more time to prepare and then he could launch that. He also needed to put up dungeon waygates for all hundreds of ocean dungeons and check all of them out quickly, to open them for the common public. The aim was to check if the dungeon was too dangerous, if yes – Damian could seal it before it became a problem. The rest would be open to the public.

“The list of unique mana beasts and monster abilities is also prepared, Lord Keeper,” Agatha spoke up next.

“Yes, I received that last night.” Damian replied while handing her a paper. “These are the ones I need, make an efficient plan for securing them with Seraphina. You two should focus on that for today.”

“Should we continue reading the new dungeon reports, Lord Keeper?” Valen asked.

Damian looked at him and Celestine. It was Hester’s turn to attend the meeting. And he replied,

“No, I want you to find as many blacksmiths and runesmiths as you can in the whole Sanctuary and tell them to gather in Sanctum tomorrow morning at 7. The meeting won’t take more than a couple hours. Get all the individuals and also those guilds. Tell them I have a job for them. Only the owners of smithies, not the apprentices and others. Those who can make decisions. Also prepare an empty room where they can gather and inform the management we are inviting them in Sanctum tomorrow so as not to stop them at gates, do check the Sanctum IDs of theirs though.”

His assistants got to work and Damian also continued his runic designs. He was making a collection of simple runic tools that he could sell through his digital store. But there was no way he was making all of those with his own hands, so he needed a permanent solution for his runesmithing and blacksmithing needs. If everything went as he planned, his future potential for mass-producing runic tools would see exponential growth.