Chapter 660: Flourishing

The wide castle walls were covered with thick layers of ice. The old walls had been repeatedly heightened over the long years, with towers, ballista holes, winches, crossbows, catapults, and other sort of equipment added over the years. Perhaps this could be called the taste of war.

Thanks to hard work from both smiths and mages, the original castle walls had been thickened by more than 30 meters. The walls were also more than 100 meters tall, reaching into the clouds. Just looking at the physical appearance, this was probably the most solid castle wall in all of the Northlands.

But right now, this city was under no threat of war. All the castle gates were wide open, and there was plenty of people walking around even before reaching the downtown area.

Beastmen were selling their leather wares and hunted prey right on the streets, simultaneously purchasing smokes, alcohol, warm clothes, and other such “Northlands exotic products”. Dark-robed undead were carefully avoiding the hot-blooded beastmen while purchasing dark but legal “products” from stores deeply tucked in small alleyways.

Adjacent to these dark alleyways were the dwarves’ stores, where black plumes of smoke from their forges could be seen rising up into the air. The dwarves’ weapons would forever be bestsellers. Northlands barbarians were showing off their martial prowess on the streets, hoping to find somebody to hire them. At the same time, the barbarians were also drooling while staring at the strong alcohol and excellent weapons in the dwarves’ stores.

Right when I arrived in Diffindor, I had even thought that I arrived in the wrong location. The Diffindor from my memories was a forever fiery city prepared for war, so this city filled with merchants and wares seemed like it was a mistake.

“Compared to eight years ago, the number of recorded transactions and business tax collections has increased by 337%. You can literally say that Diffindor is hundreds times more flourishing than before.”

Reyne’s words were filled with pride. I could understand why she would feel this way. The growth was truly too ridiculous. Although the original base numbers were indeed quite pitiful, this change still came about mostly because the people of Diffindor had worked so hard. What could possibly make one prouder than seeing your home become ever more flourishing?

I glanced at a map of Diffindor, and discovered that just the business district of Diffindor alone was already larger than the entire city of Diffindor from eight years ago.

I looked over the map legend. The great majority of stores was run by locals or goblins. Most outsiders were travelers or traveling merchants who had been drawn here by the city’s reputation. It would seem that as the unofficial capital of the Mist Alliance, the improved status of the city had helped to greatly improve its economic and military status as well.

Diffindor was highly suitable as a fortress city. This city’s location had been chosen originally for its defensive properties. After so many generations of building here, Diffindor had become the #1 most solid fortress in all of the Northlands. This was also a critical location that blocked off the Northlands beastmen and the Demon Abyss in the northeast from spreading any further.

But as the entire Northlands entered a time of peace, with former enemies such as the beastmen becoming allies, Diffindor no longer was so useful as a fortress city. However, this didn’t mean that Diffindor would bow out of the stage of history. Instead, as the Mist Kingdom became ever more important in the Mist Alliance, Diffindor also became ever more important.

Diffindor was no longer a lonely, isolated city. Seven satellite cities surrounded Diffindor in a radius of several hundred kilometers. These cities included an engineering base for mining and alchemy, along with a warehouse for storing food and other material resources. Another city was the single largest weapons, equipment, and munitions trading city in all of the Northlands. Half of these cities was also training grounds for the Mist Kingdom’s knights and warriors. Diffindor and its associated satellite cities were the biggest barracks in all of the Northlands.

Every day, traveling merchants and diplomatic envoys would travel thousands of kilometers to come here from countless different locations. Young knights and heroes with hopes for the future would also come here. Various species in the Mist Alliance would also come here for various reasons. The massive influx of people brought prosperity to Diffindor, along with the interaction of many different people and species. This all served to massively boost Diffindor’s culture and economy.

The more important the Mist Kingdom became to the Northlands’ politics, culture, military affairs, and economics, the more important that Diffindor became. Compared to eight years ago, the central part of Diffindor had been expanded by more than four times. If you counted the satellite cities as part of Diffindor, then you could technically say that the central part had been expanded by more than several dozen times. Over the short period of eight years, Diffindor had undergone so much construction, which meant that the streets here seemed rather narrow and chaotic. However, when looking at things from a different angle, countless different languages and species living here also represented endless potential and life force.

Compared to other business cities, Diffindor had one great advantage that no other city had. This was also the foundational reason why it could flourish so.

A holy silver light formed a faint barrier all around the city. An invisible eye seemed to be overseeing this miracle city. Not only were Mist Kingdom warriors patrolling the streets, Justice Knights and Church of Law priests with the Church of Law’s scales emblem were protecting this city as well.

Transactions here were quite unique and swift. In fact, outsiders would even consider transactions here rather inconceivable.

“I promise to the God of Hell and Law that everything written on my contract is the truth. I shall meet all the conditions written here on the contract, and give the product to the other party within three months.”

“I promise to the God of Hell and Law that we shall pay the money within one month of receiving the furs.”

A barbarian and a goblin were simultaneously swearing an oath to Wumianzhe, the God of Hell and Law. They also signed their names on the contract in front of them. A Church of Law priest acted as the intermediary, and prayed to Wumianzhe. There was then a flash of silver light, which represented that Wumianzhe, who was also the God of Contracts, would personally enforce this contract. No mortal would dare to break such a contract.

Eight years ago, back when I’d returned with my army to the Northlands, Wumianzhe had blessed the city of Diffindor. A divine forbidden spell had transformed this entire city into Wumianzhe’s Divine Kingdom. Diffindor had truly become an almost completely crimeless city as all criminals and scammers would instantly be marked with a red light indicating their crimes. Judgementors and Justice Knights would also arrive within five minutes of anyone being marked.

And as Wumianzhe gained more Divine Concepts that kept becoming stronger, his guarantee of contracts became part of his responsibilities. What would it mean and represent for there to be a city where there were truly no crimes or scams? Every honest merchant would probably go crazy about wanting to come here.

Not only would everyone in the Northlands come here to perform any major transactions, even human kingdoms from mainland Eich would choose to travel here for important trades. The Church of Law’s income from contract overseeing fees alone was already an astronomical amount.

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In fact, many people even recommended expanding Wumianzhe’s Divine Concept of Contracts to oversee more than just business contracts. They wanted Wumianzhe to also guarantee more important diplomatic and military contracts. If that was accomplished, it was likely that Wumianzhe’s reputation would truly reach the peak.

However, I knew after careful consideration that this would be a giant pitfall.

“Guaranteeing contracts between countries” sounded incredible. However, countries weren’t individual existences, and relationships between countries were purely about benefits. As long as it was deemed necessary or useful, betraying an alliance would be incredibly commonplace, and if one truly attempted to guarantee a contract between countries, it wouldn’t be realistically possible to send divine punishment upon an entire country for betraying the contract. Thus, countries would still betray their contracts.

And even if the person who signed the contract between countries was divinely punished for the betrayal, the contract would still have been broken. This would naturally be a bad deal in the long run. After one, two, and even more successive failed contract guarantees, the Divine Concept of Contracts would gradually become tainted, becoming a negative influence on Wumianzhe himself.

Err, I was getting off topic. Anyways, when Reyne mentioned how business taxes had explosively increased, more than half of this income had actually been tax income from contract guarantee fees. Since the contract guarantee fees were percent based, major transactions would be incredibly profitable, and since so many people would travel long distances to perform important trades here, Diffindor had become the financial center of the entire Northlands. Diffindor’s tax income was increasing exponentially every year, with lots of profit even despite tremendous military expenditures.

The tax percentage on transactions varied from 6% to 30%, from minor transactions like beastmen purchasing furs to resource and weapon sales between human mega empires. Just thinking about this would make one easily understand that the profits were enormous.

Less than 10 years had passed since Diffindor had been an incredibly poor city. It seemed inconceivable how rich it was now. However, this was something quite normal for Eich, a world with Gods that would intervene for the sake of their believers.

The rise in power of a God would commonly correlate with the rise in power of a country or the God’s people. As the People of the Mist were the first people to worship the Church of Law as their national church, they were now benefitting from the rise of Wumianzhe and the Hell Gods. At the very least, it was certain that Diffindor would continue to flourish until Wumianzhe’s death or loss of power.

The direct attention of a God would also bring another factor absolutely necessary for flourishment: safety.

No matter how much the profit, money would be useless if you weren’t alive to spend it. Nobody was an idiot in this day and age. It was an open secret just who was truly behind the Northlands Mist Alliance. Investing and trading would always look at long-term security, not just the typical “safety.” Security would also include a country’s political stability.

Although the Hell Gods were a new faction, all these Gods were veteran Gods, including the Goddess of Wealth, God of Fate, Goddess of Moonlight, and God of Death. At the very least, they were all previously neutral Gods with good reputation. Meanwhile, the Concepts of Law and Justice that Wumianzhe represented would be what honest merchants desired the most.

As for keeping important merchant trade routes to the Northlands safe, the combat airships had already helped to develop multiple routes leading from major cities in the land to Diffindor. These cities also included the capitals of Bardi and Auland. Although the fees for taking these airship-protected trade routes were rather high, it was still far better than potentially meeting with bandits, magical beasts, or even the dangers of war. Such a fee would then be insignificant, and the merchants could simply increase the price of their wares. Paying the fee was far preferable to losing everything, including even your life.

Safety, swiftness, and stability, along with an almost inconceivable fairness of enforced contracts. With so many different factors, Diffindor was already faintly becoming the business capital of the entire mortal plane. Such a remote northern city had actually become a major business city, and might even potentially develop into the business capital of the world? I truly didn’t know what to say.

This flourishment brought the Mist Kingdom and all Northlanders more wealth. It wasn’t like the Northlands truly had nothing. For instance, while the hide of a Northlands winter wolf might only be worth 50 gold coins here, it could be sold for thousands of gold coins in the center of the continent. In the past, people had also been interested in Northlands specialty products, but the transportation costs were far too much due to the dangerous and lengthy journey. That was why most Northlands hunters would far prefer to sell the hides for the much safer amount of 50 gold coins.

Munitions, all sorts of various artisanry products from various Northlands species, resources from magical beasts, alchemical products, engineering products, and so on were all commonly traded and sold here.

Meanwhile, although I was exclaiming over everything here, I had to constantly wear a heavy white cape. I didn’t dare to remove it even when I was eating or drinking.

Even with how shameless I was, I couldn’t really take it how statues of myself were everywhere, and how people were even praying in gratitude to my statues…

“I’ll forget about how they’re praying to my statue for more wealth or a better job, and I’ll tolerate how they pray to Karwenz statues instead for good fortune in marriage, but why are people praying to my statue for safe families and having many children? Shouldn’t they pray to a statue of Beifeng for that instead?”

“Don’t mention it. There really are those who pray to Beifeng statues. However, that’s a dark cult that’s been forbidden everywhere in the land. They call themselves the ‘Brotherhood of Truth That Reveals How Love Has No Boundaries…”

“…I don’t want to hear another word about this.”

I covered Harloys’ mouth while recalling the person who must not be named in the Chaos Abyss. A while back, he had sent me a letter, telling me that it would take him some more time to conquer that birdhead, so I needed to be patient… I really wanted to respond with “Who told you to conquer that birdhead? I only wanted top-level resources, just the resources! I’m begging you, please don’t cause another major scandal! Reputation is really important in this day and age…”

But, I felt like it would be useless no matter what I said. I should trust my own subordinates, so I decided to let him do as he pleased. Yep, I definitely wasn’t intending on selling out that bastard right after obtaining my sword’s resources from him so that I could obtain the reward money for Beifeng’s capture. Did you think that I would be someone so heartless, throwing a subordinate away after their usefulness was ended?

“You dare to say such a thing? Amelia and myself… You truly were so heartless back in the day. Do you even remember how many times you betrayed others? But, for the sake of world peace, it would be best if you really did betray Beifeng. The whole world will thank you.”

As I sipped on some tea and chatted with Harloys out of boredom, Reyne suddenly brought something major to my attention.

“The Soen Dukedom and Feldis Kingdom are applying to join the Mist Alliance? When did this happen? Why do they want to join?”