Chapter 503: Chapter 487 – Prosperity from Harsh Lands

“As a pioneer, it is our task, our duty, to lay the foundations so that our descendants in the future could prosper.” - Saying attributed to Aphelie, Lichdom Necromancer and one of the earliest recorded disciple of the Bone Lord.

Aideen had taken to her temporary task of teaching the children – along with Kino – when she had time like a fish to water. Perhaps it was some combination of maternal instinct and the responsibility of a teacher that influenced her, but she truly felt comfortable and fulfilled to help the young shoots prepare themselves for the world they would be released into in a few years.

 

Unlike most of the children’s other tutors, however, Aideen often took her lessons to the road. 

 

That naturally added some complications, and eventually they arranged it so that she could take them out once or twice every month for her lessons, with the others rearranging their schedules to fit the remaining time. The children in particular loved the outings she took them on, and always looked forward to them every month.

 

Of course, Aideen also took Celia with them, since many of the things she was showing to the children would also be new to the younger woman as well.

 

On their current outing, Aideen brought them to a region roughly three days to the south of Tohrmutgent, where a tall mountain – at least three kilometers or so at its peak – dominated the landscape. The mountain was named Mount Aphelia, the tallest mountain within the territory of the Lichdom proper. It was also home to a bustling, prosperous city also named Aphelia.

 

The mountain showed a stark juxtaposition on its two sides. The northern and western faces of the mountain were dominated by mines and quarries along with the tools that were necessary to perform mining on a mountain like that, with thousands of undead toiling endlessly in the mine shafts. On the eastern and southern faces, however, the mountain was dominated by terraced fields filled with greenery, dotted with buildings all over.

 

Mount Aphelia’s northern and western sides were the source of a certain type of granite – nowadays commonly known simply as “Aphelia” as well – that was considered to be one of the finest – and hardest – examples of the material in the world. The granite itself was commonly seen in use in the Lichdom, in the form of tables or tiles that decorated the floors and walls of temples and the likes, but it was outside the Lichdom that Aphelia Granite became a true luxury good.

 

Nobles and other wealthy people from outside the lichdom literally paid for the granite by its weight in silver, which did not sound that impressive until one considered the hefty weight of the dense, solid slabs of granite which made most such expenses a literal fortune. While the mountain had massive quantities of the granite in it, its hardness also meant that not that much of it was mined out, which created a natural scarcity.

 

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Other than the granite, Mount Aphelia also housed fields that grew various crops on its other faces. Most of those fields grew hardy crops like leafy greens and various tubers that survived well in the high altitude and relatively poor soil of the mountain, but some fields, situated on a specific band of height in the mountain, were different.

 

Those fields grew a certain plant known as Copperscale Cloves, which were greatly valued both as a spice – where most parts of the plant were used – as well as an alchemical material – where only the fine, hair-like threads of which each flower only grew two were used – that was even more in demand than the fine granite.

 

As a spice, the cloves were literally worth their weight in gold, but as an alchemical material, the fine threads harvested by hand from the plant – the only way to do it safely – were worth theirs in platinum. The clove fields of the mountain were all familial inheritances, passed down over the generations by the first settlers of the mountain to their descendants to the present day, and they jealously guarded that inheritance for good reason.

 

Between the granite and the cloves, there were plenty that attracted merchants both local and foreign to trade in Mount Aphelia. It was for that reason that the residents eventually decided to build a city at the foot of the mountain, named after their home, of course. In contrast to most places where the rich could be expected to live in grand manors within the cities, in Aphelia the true rich and powerful typically lived in simple houses built within their fields up on the mountains. It was a way they used to not forget their humble beginnings.

 

In the past, foreign merchants braved all sorts of dangers and penalties – mostly from their home nations, especially if they were from a hostile nation – to sneak into the Lichdom and trade with them. The lure of profits won over the fear of punishment – or even death – in the minds of those merchants, who often reaped great profits when they sold their goods on the black market of their homelands.

 

Now that the Lichdom had officially opened trade with its allies, most such merchants no longer took the risky route. Instead, they bought the goods they desired from Elmaiya or Istria and resold them in their own nations at a notably higher price. Since the goods were traded openly to Ptolodecca’s allies, their scarcity naturally diminished, and the prices there were naturally lower as well.

 

As for the locals, they didn’t mind either way, as while they might have sold their items for less these days, the volume of trade they received had magnified by more than an order of magnitude. The Lichdom was already prosperous to begin with, so the addition of foreign funds just made the locals’ lives even better than before. 

 

Of course, under the protection of the Lichdom, none of the foreign merchants dared to undervalue their goods. Some had tried in the past, and they were made examples of. It was said that the skeletons of those greedy merchants were still the ones that stood guard before the city gates to this day.

 

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