The World Dragon's Heir - Chapter 785: They’re Not Leaving

Once the negotiations were finished, Dominic had thought that the two Crown Princes would head back home and let him upgrade his Duchy in peace.

But that was not to be.

Not only did they remain after the negotiations were over, they showed no inclinations of leaving before the biplanes were delivered to Axbridge.

Or, at all.

While they were generating a massive amount of paperwork for Dominic, who found himself in charge of relaying all the letters from messengers directed to the two Crown Princes, they seemed quite content building their social relationship as future monarchs.

That was also valuable to the Kingdom, he supposed.

If they could get along so well, they were unlikely to go to war with each other over a small thing, or easily stab the other in the back. That was good for everyone, and with Cygnia still struggling to recover, while Dagos had completely collapsed, the region couldn’t afford another conflict.

There wasn’t much risk that Cygnia would actually lose, not with the technological advantage that they had. But the economic fallout would cripple generations.

By the time that two weeks had passed after the negotiations were finished, the hangar had the first shipment of ten biplanes ready for Axbridge, as they had simply paused all other deliveries to complete their order first.

The Barons would understand.

Having the two Crown Princes in the city also attracted random visitors. Most of them were there to pass messages to one of the Princes, but a few were definitely dropping in for the chance to try to build some connections.

There was no other logical reason for them to have stopped in Wistover on their route.

Dominic didn’t really mind, it was always good to get some more customers. Everyone who stopped in to try to make an impression on the Crown Prince ended up buying something before they left, and many of the purchases were not small ones.

They had sold two more airships that were not for the Merchant’s Guild, and over a hundred vehicles.

They were going so many of the stretched transports that the factory had to build an expansion. It was a good problem to have, even if they were beginning to struggle to get enough employees.

There wasn’t a lot of unemployment in town, and there was even less motivation for two income households.

There were some, but they weren’t strictly necessary. A single job paid more than enough to raise a family in town. So, they didn’t have nearly as many workers as their population would have suggested in another city.

They also didn’t have many people working multiple jobs. Odd jobs, yes. But not double shifts.

They were still slowly gaining residents, but not nearly at the rate that they had when they first arrived. Everyone who was eager to get out of where they were had already moved. Now, it was more targeted recruitment than random refugees.

The problem that they were finding was that there weren’t many experts or even trained workers in the fields they needed.

So, now they were stuck in limbo until a fresh batch were trained and graduated from the local Academies.

There was something to be said about scarcity driving demand and keeping the price high, but at this point, the demand was growing faster than they could possibly scale operations. Even if they had more workers in a year, the demand would have increased by more than their capacity.

Unless the other magical academies got on board with improving their techno wizard programs in a practical direction, it would just slow growth for a decade or more.

And by that point, the first customers would be looking for a new model.

Ten years was a generous lifespan for a noble carriage that saw heavy use, so Dominic assumed it would be the same for the vehicles they were buying. After a decade of steady use, they would strip the badging off the carriage and sell it to an untitled Noble or a middling businessman who wanted a luxury carriage and couldn’t afford to commission a brand new one.

They were still good, still quality items with a lot of lifespan. But they were in need of a refurbishment and those with money preferred to get the latest styles.

Of course, if they kept developing new vehicles, the lifespan of the personal transports for Noblemen might actually be shorter. If a new style really got popular, they would either sell the older one, or relegate it to use by the staff.

Just a subtle way to flex on the less wealthy noblemen.

Compared to Dominic’s concerns that the two Crown Princes were going to come up with more work for him, Alexis was having a grand time. She had decided that it wasn’t practical to keep Katerina away from Prince Fahad, though the child had not been revealed to the public yet.

And true to form, Prince Fahad enjoyed playing games with the little dragonkin just as much as Dominic did.

Though, he wasn’t brave enough to try giving her coffee.

He had heard all about the incident, the maids still told it when they needed a laugh, or to remind Alexis that there was no cure for Dominic. But the fallout hadn’t been quite as bad as he had been expecting.

Largely because that very same evening, Katerina had managed to get her hands, quite literally, on a slice of tiramisu cake that had been left on Alexis’ desk for an afternoon snack.

And it turned out that she liked coffee in cake just as much.

The young Princess had not been happy when she was forcibly removed from the cake, or when they had tried to bathe her to get the rest off her hands and face. It was like she had reached the terrible twos, but she couldn’t even crawl yet.

Perhaps that was what the two Princes were waiting for? Princess Katerina was showing remarkable progress, so they might actually be delaying here so that they could see her crawl for the first time.

Dominic was actually surprised that the talk of arranged marriages hadn’t come up yet.

Among the Royals, that was exceedingly common. And both Alexis and Dominic were good friends with the Crown Prince of Axbridge.